I told him Frank deliberately sang the wrong words to familiar songs.
“He did that too.”
“I know.”
“And he checked all the doors twice before bed,” Eli said.
“Every single night.”
For the first time since Frank died, I laughed without immediately feeling guilty afterward.
Claire sat across from us and cried quietly.
Eventually, Eli went back upstairs.
Claire watched him disappear.
Then she turned toward me.
“Can we still come home?”
I thought about Frank.
I thought about the anniversary message he had replaced with a warning.
I thought about nine years of silence.
About Claire’s fear.
About my husband’s cowardice.
And about a twelve-year-old boy who had created none of this.
“Yes,” I said.
Claire started crying harder.
“But there can’t be any more secrets.”
She nodded.
“No more.”
“If you come home, Claire, I need the truth. Even when it’s ugly. Even when you think telling me will make me hate you.”
She covered her mouth and nodded again.
“You’ll have it.”
Three weeks later, Claire and Eli stood with me beneath the willow tree.
Eli helped me lift Frank’s urn.
Together, we scattered his ashes beneath the branches where Frank had first kissed me forty-two years earlier.
There was no speech.
There didn’t need to be one.
Claire stood on one side of me and Eli on the other.
For a moment, I thought about how strange it was that Frank’s death had left me more alone than I had ever felt while also giving me more family than I had known existed.
Before we left, I handed Eli Frank’s old baseball cap.
His whole face brightened.
“Really?”
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