I captured that moment in my head like a photograph, because I knew it wouldn’t last. She wore a striped T-shirt and blue capris that hugged her willowy body. Heeled leather boots made her taller than me. Her hair was blonder and longer than my own Karly had kept it, and even her breasts seemed to swell larger from her torso than the woman I remembered. But her face was the same. Her blue eyes gravitated to mine like a magnet. Her mouth broke into a wide smile, and in that heartbreaking smile was everything I’d lost.

She was my wife. She loved me.

“Hey, sweetheart,” she said, with happy surprise in her voice. “I thought tonight was your night to work late.”

I tried to say something, but I couldn’t. I simply stared at her, enraptured. I wanted to run to her and sweep her into my arms. We stared at each other for no more than a beat or two, and then instead of closing the front door, she kept it open with her foot and pulled something inside the apartment behind her.

A stroller.

Karly closed the door, then bent down and carefully lifted a baby into her arms, holding it like the treasure at the end of a rainbow. “Look, Ellie,” she cooed to her child. “Daddy’s home early. Don’t we love that?”

Ellie. Eleanor. My mother’s name.

My child. My daughter. Our daughter. That was the creaminess of this place. It was the smell of a baby, of life, of innocence, of freshness and beginnings. Staring at the two of them, I felt something tightening in my chest, as if there weren’t enough oxygen in the world to let me breathe. I could not love this woman more, and yet suddenly, I did. I had never dreamed of what it would be like to have a child with her, but in that moment, I knew my life was empty without one.

“Are you okay?” Karly asked, studying me with a crinkle in her forehead.

I struggled to speak. “Fine. You look beautiful. Both of you.”

“Well, you don’t look so bad yourself.” She crossed the space between us and casually deposited our little girl in my arms. “Here, can you take her? I need to feed her, but I want to change first.”

She kissed my cheek and headed for our bedroom. I had held few babies in my life, but holding Ellie felt utterly natural. I wondered how old she was, but she looked new to this world. Her face, her hair, her eyes, they were me. And Karly. And Edgar. And my mother, even my father, too. My entire family lived in that child, free of anything bad, of anything that wasn’t good and perfect. I wanted everything in my life to stop where it was right then and there. I wanted that moment to last forever.