My stomach gripped when he asked. It seems insane now that we hadn’t talked about children before we married. It’s hard to explain our relationship. It was like I fell into this comfortable moment that made me feel like I was breathing again, and Glen was afraid to push too hard for fear that I would figure out what I had done and run away. Was this mad, passionate, great love? No. But it was safe. We were happy. Or as happy as I could imagine being while still mired in the grief that I was dead set on never letting go.

I had given thought to children, of course. I’d always wanted to feel that type of true, unconditional love. I spent a moment feeling terribly guilty that I could even imagine having children—my dream with Jeremy—with anyone else.

But Jeremy was gone, a fact that washed over me with fresh horror every single day. It certainly wasn’t fair to deny this truly decent man the joy of children because of the past I could never change. And so I smiled. “I think a baby would be perfect.”

I’ll never forget the way Glen beamed. “I think it’s time then,” he said.

Glen had an old knee injury that gave him the tiniest limp. He knew he needed a knee replacement, but he’d been putting it off as long as possible so that with luck he would only have to do it once. He was forty-two now, which was maybe not quite old enough, but he said, “I want to be able to run around with my children. I want to coach their teams and be the dad playing with them in the yard.”

His eyes filled with tears. Mine did too. Glen would be a wonderful father. Patient. Kind. Loving. Any healing I had done had come from his ability to meet me where I was. He would ask about Jeremy, listen when I needed him most. He never seemed threatened or upset with me for holding on to this part of my past. He never minded holding me, stroking my hair, when I woke up screaming from a nightmare about Jeremy. And, in that way, I was able to move forward.

I remember sitting in his lap, putting my arms around him. He kissed me softly. “I’ll schedule the surgery,” he said.

I was teaching when he went to his pre-op appointment. I went to the grocery store after school, anxiously awaiting his call. The police knocked on my front door right as I was walking in the back. When I saw them, I knew. I don’t know how, but I knew. I dropped the bag of groceries, the eggs breaking and seeping through the cardboard into the carpet. I’ve blocked out the rest.