I walked home the same route I had taken since Sarah passed. Inside the kitchen, I washed my hands twice before I touched anything. I pulled bread from the cupboard, sliced an apple, and tucked a folded note into Emily’s lunch bag the way Sarah used to.
On the refrigerator, in Sarah’s handwriting, a small paper had been hanging for twelve years.
Show up for her, Jack.
She had written those words in her last week in the hospital, when her hands were thin and the effort showed in her face but her eyes were still completely steady. Emily had been asleep in the chair beside the bed, six years old, curled under a pink blanket from one of the church ladies, one shoe dangling from her foot and her stuffed rabbit wedged between her arm and the armrest.
Sarah had looked past me at our girl.
“She’ll act brave,” she whispered.
“She gets that from you.”
