I didn’t know there was more behind it.
As Daniel grew weaker, the three of us began looking almost like a family.
Then one afternoon, while Lily was at school, he took my hand.
“Marry me.”
I thought I had heard him wrong.
“Daniel, we barely know each other.”
“I love you.”
His voice was weak, but certain.
“And I’m scared.”
He squeezed my hand.
“More than anything, I need to know that when I’m gone, Lily will be with someone who truly loves her.”
By then, I already did.
So I said yes.
We got married in his hospital room.
I wore a simple white sundress.
Lily wore yellow.
She held my hand through the entire ceremony.
Before the wedding, Daniel had already completed the legal paperwork naming me as Lily’s guardian after his death.
Two weeks later, he was gone.
Lily and I moved into his house.
The silence there felt different after him.
Heavy.
Like the rooms were waiting for a sound that would never come.
That first year was difficult.
We grieved him together.
Through burned pancakes.
Nightmares at two in the morning.
Random crying spells.
But slowly, Lily and I created things that belonged only to us.
Friday pancakes shaped like whatever animal she requested.
A ridiculous song we made up in the car.
Movie nights with our feet tangled together on the couch.
She became my daughter in all the ways that mattered long before either of us knew how to describe it.
Then came the first anniversary of Daniel’s funeral.
Lily had been unusually quiet for several days.
That afternoon, I was stirring soup when she walked into the kitchen carrying a small box.
“Dad told me to give this to you today.”
I turned around.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
She held it carefully.
“Before he died, he showed me where he hid it in the back of his closet. He made me promise I wouldn’t open it until today.”
“Okay, sweetheart.”
She hesitated.
“I’m supposed to tell you something too.”
Something about her expression made the hair on my arms rise.
“What?”
She took a breath.
“You still don’t know why Dad chose you.”
I wiped my hands.
Sat down.
Then opened the box.
Mr. Bunny was inside.
A scream came out of me before I could stop it.
I knew him immediately.
His fur was worn thin across the stomach from years of Josie squeezing him.
His left ear still had the crooked stitch I had sewn one night after Josie went to sleep.
And on the tag were Josie’s initials written in green marker.
My hands began shaking.
I lifted the rabbit and pressed him against my face.
Dust.
Cedar.
Nothing that smelled like Josie anymore.
But it was him.
Mr. Bunny had come back.
Lily started crying.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t know! Dad told me not to open it!”
She backed toward the wall.
That brought me back to reality.
She was six.
She had no idea what she had just handed me.
“Lily.”
I put the rabbit down.
“Look at me.”
She did.
“You did nothing wrong. Nothing.”
“Then why did you scream?”
“Because I don’t understand how your dad had this.”
That was when I noticed the envelope beneath the rabbit.
My name was written across it in Daniel’s handwriting.
I opened it.
The paper shook in my hands.
Daniel wrote that he had been there the day of the accident.
He had been driving nearby.
When he saw the wreck, he stopped.
He called 911.
