Once the paperwork was complete, after I had finished my drug study and vitamin Z was introduced successfully into the controlled population, we were flown by helicopter to Outpost 37.
My father threw open his arms and said, “Welcome home.”
You and Dad took to each other right away, and he presided over our wedding a few weeks later when we discovered that I was pregnant.
That’s right, Leonard. You’ll be hearing from our daughter next. You love S even more than you love me, and I don’t mind that one bit, because I love you both to death.
You are a fantastic dad.
Fantastic!
And I know that your childhood wasn’t all that great—that you felt a lot of pain, and that you are in a lot of pain right now. But maybe you have to go through all that so you’ll learn just how important having a happy childhood can be, so you will provide one for our daughter.
I wish I could send you a video or a picture of you and S playing in the water with Horatio the dolphin. If you could see that, you’d know that all of the pain you have to endure to get here, where you are happy in the future, is most definitely worth it.
Even though she’s getting too old to be sleeping with us, she still falls asleep with her head on your chest every night. You kiss the top of her hair before you man the lighthouse with Dad and me.
We send out the beam for twenty minutes, and then conserve energy for twenty minutes, repeating the forty-minute cycle all night long. Three or so minutes before we switch the light back on, after our eyes have just begun to adjust to the dark, you and I always go out onto the observation deck to search for shooting stars. There are a lot these days and we’ve been keeping track of who spots the most. This year I’m beating you 934 to 812. We’re hoping to get to 1,000 each before the year ends, and it’s looking good.
And we kiss every time we spot a shooting star too.
So we’ve kissed 1,746 times on the observation deck this year alone, and many more times have we kissed elsewhere.
I like that you are so affectionate with me. You always say you’re making up for lost time and that you wished we could have met earlier in life, so that we would have been able to spend more time together.
It’s a good life, Leonard.
Hold on.
The future is better.
We have so much sex!
Your daughter is beautiful.
And my dad becomes a dad to you too—just like you always wanted.
Just hold on, okay?
Please.
Love,
Don’t-You-Dare-Call-Me-Ophelia,
A