The love of those days. I crammed so much into those two short weeks. I barely slept, carried along on this strange river of adrenaline, but I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to miss a thing. Not a single expression on your face, not a coo as you dreamed. I filed every second away, carefully wrapped up in my memories.

And then we came to Thursday night, ten days after we’d come home.

Halloween night.

I’d always loved Halloween. I carved up a pumpkin with a scary face, and I put a candle inside, and I set it out on the front porch to flicker and grin at the trick-or-treaters. I got a lot of them. I always did. They would ring my doorbell in their costumes, dressed like monsters, faeries, witches, and clowns. No store-bought costumes in Random; everyone made their own. Same with treats. If you handed out Hershey bars, you were lazy, so people made brownies, cookies, Rice Krispies squares, popcorn balls, coconut candies, and seven-layer bars. Me, I was known for mixing up Chex and M&M’s and nuts and chocolate chips and any other sweet things I had in the pantry. I poured it all into paper lunch bags to hand out.

Of course, some of the kids came with their parents, and they wanted to see you, Shelby. From five o’clock to eight o’clock, the parade came and went, hardly ever stopping for more than a minute or two. Knocks and doorbells, and screams of “Trick or Treat!” and mothers lightly stepping into the living room to tell me how beautiful you were. Which you were, Shelby. Absolutely beautiful.

By the time the candle in the pumpkin had melted down and gone out, and the kids had returned to their homes, I was exhausted with the efforts of the night. It was midevening. I ate a Wonder Bread, Buddig ham sandwich, and I fed you, and we both decided it was time for a nap. You fell asleep in a hand-me-down onesie with pink stripes, in the Easter basket I still kept from the day the doctor had told me I was pregnant. I held your hand, and you grabbed my finger, and I drifted off to sleep on the sofa next to you.

I was twenty-six years old, soon to be turning twenty-seven.

That was the single best moment of my entire life.

*

Then it was over.

I awoke, and you were gone.

I still had the dizziness of sleep, and my eyes landed first on the clock on the mantel, which told me that it was nearly eleven o’clock. Then I looked down at the little Easter basket with the blissful anticipation of seeing your face, only to find that you weren’t there.

Instantly awake, instantly panicked, I bolted to my feet. “Shelby! Shelby!”