“Good,” she said, drawing the word out, her voice carrying the tone of someone wondering what the heck was going on. “Are you gonna...” It was her turn to gesture toward the house. I’d sent Selene inside thirty minutes before to wander at will, telling my daughter and granddaughter to pay no mind. “A mystery was afoot.” It was a phrase my wife had always used when she was trying to figure something out for one of her stories. It meant, “Give me a minute and don’t ask any more questions. For now.”
I smiled at my daughter.
“I still need a minute,” I said. “Is she...”
“In the hall. Looking at the pictures.”
I nodded.
“Okay, honey. I’ll be right there.”
She left and I turned back to the journal, my heart still lodged in my throat. Taking a breath, I opened it again, flipping to the page I’d found in the back where only two words were written.
“William. Forevermore.”
It wasn’t dated, and the way it was buried amid the blank pages made it feel like an acceptance. Maybe even a surrender. She hadn’t known how things would turn out. She’d only known she’d loved me.
Wiping my eyes again, I got to my feet and went inside the house, giving Lizzie what I hoped was a reassuring smile when she shot me another concerned look.
“All will be revealed in time,” I said in what she used to call my “wizard voice” when she was a little girl.
“Alright, oh wise one,” she called. “But we’re getting hungry and the lasagna is nearly done. Mom put extra cheese on it.”
“Is she trying to clog my arteries?” I asked.
“Can’t live forever, Old Man,” Emma yelled from where she was sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, several boxes open in front of her, her ponytail now piled into a messy bun on top of her head. “But,” she added, looking up, a worried smile on her face. “Please do.”
“Can’t get rid of me that easily,” I said, giving her a wink before heading toward the hallway.
Selene was halfway down, a small smile on her face as she looked at pictures of Olivia and me on our wedding day, a newly born and angry-looking Emma, Lizzie in a leotard, a ladybug costume, her high school graduation gown. The family on vacation in California, New York, and Paris.
“You must miss her,” she said, pointing to a photo of Olivia. It was her first official author headshot. I’d told her she was a babe and had immediately run out to buy a frame. She’d blushed profusely when I’d hung it in the middle of a then-bare wall. But I wouldn’t let her take it down, so instead she’d added to it, thus creating what was now known as Memory Lane.
“I do,” I said. “She was fun. Smart. Classy. But she could also be silly. And a little bit devilish.”
She grinned, watching me as I spoke. Again there was something in her smile that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“And you?” she asked.
“What about me?”
“Could you be silly and devilish as well?”
I pressed a hand to my chest. “Who, me?”
“Yes!” Emma shouted from the other room, making the both of us laugh.
I shrugged. “I suppose yes, I could be.”
“Yes,” she said, an almost knowing look in her pale eyes. “You could.”
She pointed to the door to my left.
“Is that your office?”
“It is.”
“May I?”
