Setting the empty tumbler down, I reach beneath the desk and feel for the scroll. I pull it out, unroll it, mechanically open it on the desktop and set the bottle on one corner, tuck the other beneath the base of the desk lamp.

I survey the images, the boxes, scanning the names as I open the drawer and take out his pencils, dulled by use, the eraser worn to a nub. I rub my thumb over it. Try to feel him.

Dragging my attention from the sheet, I search deeper in the drawer for a ruler. That’s when I come across the other sheet there. This one lies flat. I take it out, set it on top of the parchment so I can study it under the light of the lamp.

It’s me. My face. At least a partially sketched image. I see smudges from his effort to perfect what he saw, and I swear, I see it too. Like I’m laid bare here. Like he drew my soul.

I set my thumb over the print of his bigger one and smear it across my cheek, like he has before, and the moment I do, every hair on my body stands on end and all at once, he’s here. He’s here with me. Behind me. Holding me. One hand closed over mine, his thumb on mine, his other arm wrapped around my middle, hand flat on my belly, and that’s when that sobbing begins again except that this time, he’s holding me. He’s holding me as I fall apart. As I weep loudly, with a voice not my own, with anguish that can’t belong to me. That I don’t want.

“It’s not fair.”

It’s stupid, but it’s all I can say. Because it’s not. We were supposed to have time. We were supposed to have a little bit of time.

And I feel his arms squeezing me, cradling me against his chest, holding me so tight that for a minute, I just close my eyes and imagine it’s real. Imagine he’s real.

“Come back,” I sob.

He can’t, though. I know that. I watched them put him in the ground.

The high-pitched wailing is me, I realize. And even as I feel the feather light kisses on my temple, even as the hair on the back of my neck stand on end at his touch, I wail. Because this is it. This is goodbye.

I hear his words inside my mind. The whispered “I love you.” Feel one final squeeze of his arms, the flat of his hand on my belly. The scruff of his jaw on my cheek.

And when I’m able to breathe again, I whisper those words back as he slips away. Sergio gone. Sergio gone from me. Gone from this world forever.