“Like a family. I love it, Emmy.”
She doesn’t say anything else; she just turns and runs off, leaving me a little mystified as to what I did to make her go. She comes running back, just as fast, a few seconds later, though, and something is dangling from her hands.
She stops in front of me to sift through the necklaces, taking the longer, thicker one from the clutch of chains she holds. “This one is yours,” she says, holding it out to me. It’s a dog-tag type chain, and at the end of it swings a clear hourglass filled with sand. “We made them for us. So you don’t have to put sand in your pocket anymore. You can have it with you all the time. Even at the grocery store.”
I glance back at Eden. Her eyes are shining. Obviously she shared my pocketful of sand with Emmy. I don’t mind. It’s nothing I’m ashamed of or try to hide.
I slip the chain over my head as Emmy pulls hers on, too. It’s shorter and thinner, as is Eden’s, who comes to get hers next. Emmy picks up her hourglass, kisses it and then trots off to the living room to watch her cartoons.
I turn toward Eden when she speaks. I’m still marveling at the sand, something that’s so special to me, trapped safely within the little vial. “The night after I brought her home, she told me that she’d gone to your house for help, but that you weren’t home so she decided to hide in the shadows along the surf until it was safe. I guess the water was colder than she thought and she…” Eden’s voice trails off on a choking sound and I pull her into my arms. I know it will take time for the shock, for that kind of fear to leave her unshaken. When she collects herself, she leans back and looks up into my eyes. “She wanted to go back to the beach yesterday. She said she wasn’t afraid of the sand, that it was where we met you and your little girl. Sh-she didn’t want you to forget either of them, so she wanted to make these for us.”
Tears well in her eyes again and I kiss her forehead. “I could never forget either of them. Charity was a part of me. She always will be, but Emmy has wormed her way into my heart, too. I want her in my life. Her and you,” I tell her carefully.
I glance behind me at Emmy then I swing my gaze back to Eden. “Can I stay for a while tonight? So we can talk? After Emmy goes to bed?”
Eden’s smile is small, but happy. “Of course.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. In my mind, I make a list of all the things I want to tell her, all the things I want to say. Like that I told Brooke that it was over. Like that I want to start over with her and Emmy. Like that I just ask for one day at a time, so we can learn and grow and do this the right way. So that I don’t screw it up. I feel like I’ve got a second chance at life and I want to make this work. For Emmy. For Eden. For me. For my daughter. She’d want me to be a better person for Emmy. She was amazingly generous like that. Nothing will ever make me stop loving her. Or missing her. Or wishing that things could’ve been different. But she will always be alive in my heart. In my soul. I’ll never let her go or replace her. I can only prove to her, every single day, that she made me a better man. That knowing her and loving her made me the kind of man who could deserve her. If I had her back again.
And all that starts tonight.
Eden starts to go around me to check the bread. I stop her with fingers lightly gripping her upper arm. “Eden?”
She looks up at me, those big hazel-gray eyes melting me all the way through. This is right. She is right. For me. For my life. She’s beauty for my ashes. And I’m hope for her heartache. We fit. Like we were made for each other.
“I’m going to make you fall more and more in love with me. Every single day. I promise.”
She grins at me, a different kind of grin, and I know I’ll remember it for the rest of my days. “I don’t doubt that one bit.”
EPILOGUE
Eden
Five months later
AS LONG AS I live, I don’t think the beach will ever look the same. Especially this one. I look down the long expanse that stretches out to the left, the way we walk to go to our little cottage, and I remember the first time Emmy and I stepped onto that sand. It was the day we moved here. The third time we’d moved hoping to find “home.” It was the day we met someone who would change our lives forever.