“I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

She hugged me, her fingers digging tightly into my back. I let her hold me, but didn’t return the hug. I wanted to; wanted to feel something. Anything. But these days I just felt frozen. I was starting to wonder about the coldness inside me. I’d murdered a man, yet I felt nothing. My heart had hardened to stone. A new person had formed inside me, forged from the devastated rubble of this new life.

“Mommy!” Josh shouted when he spotted me. He dropped to the ground and ran to me, throwing himself into my arms. I tried not to flinch at the impact of his body against mine. The pain was my punishment and my reward.

“Mo chuisle,” I whispered into Josh’s hair.

For a minute I felt that new person inside me soften, melted by the warmth of Josh’s love, the precious delight of his breath on my neck, the endless promise of his life, which I held in my arms. I closed my eyes, cherishing the feeling, enjoying the weight of his very alive body against mine.

The CAR T-cell therapy had literally worked a miracle on my boy. His hair had grown back. His long eyelashes left spidery shadows across his creamy skin, which was flushed, rosy with life. The endless loop of doctor appointments had ended, the smell of hospital was gone from his clothes. We could finally say the treatment had worked.

Josh was perfectly healthy now.

I tucked him under my arm. “You excited for your birthday tomorrow?”

It felt good to say it out loud. Your birthday. Josh was alive and had made it to another birthday. We’d suffered one of the greatest losses a family could suffer. The future I’d imagined with Nate was gone. But I’d promised to save Josh, and had.

My grief was a motivator of sorts. I was determined to make Nate proud, and looking at Josh now, I was sure I had made him proud. Our son was still here, still surviving, still going forward. That meant something. It was a gift I wouldn’t waste.

Josh bobbed his head up and down, grinning. “I hope you got me a bike. Or a science set. Or a tarantula! Yeah, I want a tarantula!”

I gave an exaggerated shiver but laughed. The shiny red bike he’d been asking for since last year was sitting in Moira’s garage right now.

Josh’s face fell. “I want…” He looked at his hands, his chin quivering.

“What is it, sweetie? What do you want?”

He turned his face into my shirt, his words muffled. “I wish Daddy could come to my party.”