What scared me wasn’t just the idea of losing him; it was how very much I loved him. For the first time since Jeremy died, I felt like my heart was fully open, like something in the center of me was blooming and wide.

I heard noise out on the landing. Someone else was awake. Thank goodness. I hated the feeling of being alone in the dark. That’s when it was the hardest not to have someone to roll over and touch, someone whose arms could wrap around me and make me safe. I ached at the thought of how easy it could all be, if I were with Elliott right now, letting him hold me, synchronizing my breath with his. The rhythm.

Jamie had been having trouble sleeping lately and would sneak from the bunk room into mine, so I figured it was her creeping up the stairs that I’d heard. But when I tiptoed out of my room, I realized that Iris’s door was cracked, and I could hear Merit’s voice.

I wasn’t trying to listen in on their private conversation, but their voices wafted into the hall as I made my way toward Iris’s room. “You should have seen my dad,” she said. “He looked so small, so pale. It was just awful.”

“I get it,” he said. “I know what it’s like to lose the person that you thought could always protect you—or at least, the person you knew would always try.”

My heart broke for Merit. He’d had to be strong. I tried to be there for him, for Emma too. I tried to be the one to protect them. But I wasn’t, would never be, their parent. I couldn’t be that person for them.

As I reached out my hand, Merit said, “Julie wasn’t wrong about us helping with your dad—”

I opened the door slowly, pushing it with one finger.

“It’s really late, kiddos,” I interrupted.

Iris was sitting with her back against her headboard, her knees pulled to her chest, on the left twin bed. I knew that pose. I’d spent some time in that pose. Merit was perched at the end of her right twin bed. Still, I couldn’t imagine that Charlotte or Grace would be thrilled about them being alone in each other’s rooms at midnight.

“We can’t sleep,” Merit said.

It was so endearing the way he said it. We.

“And why is that?” I asked, sitting down on the other end of the second bed, beside Merit and across from Iris.

Iris shrugged. “We’re just bonding over being fatherless and alone in the world.”

“You will never be alone in the world as long as you have me,” I said. I turned to Merit. “But you need to get some rest so that you can be the star player we all love to watch on the field tomorrow.”