I stayed in my car for a minute. I wasn’t scared exactly. More like I understood suddenly that whatever I was about to find out, I could not un-find out. I almost drove home. I think part of me already knew, even then, that whatever this was, it was not what I had been half-dreading all these years. It didn’t feel like a lie in the way I’d been quietly bracing for.

I got out and walked along the tree line. I could see him clearly enough. He had something tucked under his arm. A book, a small one, thin. He walked through the headstones like he knew every single step by heart, which of course he did. He stopped at a small stone near the back, on the east side where the ground dips a little. He sat down in the grass, right in front of it, crossed his legs like a kid would, opened the book, and started reading out loud.

I could not hear the words from where I was. Just the sound of his voice carrying through the quiet. Thirty minutes he sat there. I don’t know if that is a long time or a short time for something like that. It felt long. He was not crying, not that I could see. He just read. And when he finished he closed the book, sat for another minute or two, then stood up, touched the top of the stone once with his hand, and walked back to his car.

I waited until he drove out before I went over.

The headstone was small and pale gray. Simple carving. “Emma Grace Holt. March 12, 2013. November 8, 2016. Three years of sunshine.”

I just stood there reading it maybe four or five times. I did the math without wanting to. She was three years old. She died four months before Daniel and I went on our first date. I had no idea she had ever existed.

In the grass in front of the stone, there were small white stones arranged in a cluster. I counted them. I don’t know why I counted them but I needed to do something with my hands, I think. There were 468. One for every Wednesday since she died, I figured out later. He had never missed one.

I drove home. The whole twelve miles my brain was just quiet in a way it almost never is. Not processing, not spinning. Just quiet.

He was in the kitchen when I got back. Coffee was already made, which it always was. He had his back to me, rinsing something in the sink. I stood in the doorway for a second and then I just said it.

“Who is Emma?”

He went very still. Not startled, not guilty. Still in a different way. He set the mug he was holding down on the counter very carefully, like he was buying himself just a couple of seconds. Then he turned around.