After Greer died, I couldn’t sleep, so I had rearranged my schedule, grabbing a few hours of rest in the early morning before heading back to the office. If he didn’t approve, the boss—my father-in-law—never said so. Everyone was still treating me like I’d crumble if they looked at me wrong. I would.

This morning I crumbled at the thought of Greer in a fitted black work dress and shoes that cost more than my first car. She was petite and pretty, but that girl was powerful. She would have taken the time to sit on my lap, to kiss me, to make plans for the night. She ran her own Florida-based arm of her family’s national media conglomerate, the nonprofit she had created, and the world. But she always took the time to make sure people knew how much she loved them.

And me? She loved me a whole damn lot. But not a tenth as much as I loved her. I stood up straighter when she walked in the door. I loved to look at her across the room at a party and know that she would be leaving with me, to see her throw her head back in laughter and know that I could make her laugh like that. She had been mine to protect. And I had let her down.

Everyone told me I had to move on, that this pain and emptiness would ruin me if I didn’t get back out there. I was young. I could still have everything I wanted out of life. That was what they said. But she was what I wanted out of life.

It had gotten to the point that my mother—my own Southern, pearl-wearing, churchgoing, never-said-a-dirty-word-in-her-life mother—had said that maybe I should consider a one-night stand. That is a conversation one does not ever want to have with one’s mother.

My friends had suggested I move. This neighborhood was full of wealthy, retired snowbirds. It was too stuffy for me. But Greer had wanted to be near her family when we had children. This was her world. How could I leave it? Leaving would mean taking the clothes out of her closet, throwing the rows of shoes from their racks into boxes, removing the purses from their storage containers and giving them away. I couldn’t do it.

I looked over at the journals, debating which one I would pack to take with me on my trip home to Cape Carolina the next day. I let myself read one entry every day, chosen at random. It was my way of holding on to her. Every day, I fought the urge to sit down and read them all, all at once. I held myself back so that I could stretch out the joy of those fresh words. When I had read through them, I planned to start all over again, read them in order. But then they wouldn’t be new. Then they would be a memory.

And then I would have to admit that she wasn’t coming back.