I kept waiting to find the end of your love and beauty, the end of your generous heart. I never did. I never will. I don’t know how or why you chose me to love, and youdidchoose. You could’ve walked away and saved yourself. Instead, you chose to stay, and so saved me. That’s my legacy: I loved you and was loved by you.
I’m at peace, and I hope to God I gave you the same happiness you gave me. I hope the love we have outweighs the pain when I’m gone.
Live fully, sing loudly. Share your beauty with this world and know I’m watching over you from the next.
All my love to you, Kacey. My angel, my heart.
Your Jonah
I held the letter to my heart, protecting it from the tears dripping off the edge of my chin.
That the love we have outweighs the pain…
I felt myself nodding as a smile spread beneath my tears. If I had to do it all again, I would. I wouldn’t change one minute, except to tell him sooner I loved him and that being with him wasno more a choice than eating or breathing.
“No regrets, Jonah,” I told him, my hand skimming over the piece of the universe. “And I will love you forever.”
EPILOGUE
Theo drove us west, into the heart of the desert on County Road 20555. No headlights passed us. No street or city lights or even the moon dimmed the star-filled sky. Not the diamond-dust canopy of Great Basin, but hundreds of silvery pinpricks in the midnight canvas above us.
We were silent on the drive through the winding terrain, low, dark hills rising up around us on all sides.
“This looks good,” Theo said, as the headlights illuminated a tiny rest stop overlooking the desert. In the starlight, the land was an undulating plateau of indistinct shapes, stretching out for miles.
Theo parked on the dirt shoulder, then came around to open the passenger door for me. I held the urn secure in my arms, its brass weight warm from my skin and heavy. Outside, the wind gusted cold and sharp.
The headlights cast yellow cones of light around us, glinting off the urn as Theo took it gently from my arms. Neither one of us spoke while he removed the lid and let the wind take the ashes. By the light of the truck, I watched them lift into the sky where they were blown into wisps—like smoke—and thenvanished.
I felt untethered, as if the wind would take me too. Lift me up and tear me into a million little pieces and fling them against the sky.
Then his hand closed around mine.
“Stay here,” Theo said softly. I felt his pulse beat through his palm, warm and strong against mine, keeping me from blowing away. Keeping me whole.
My fingers tightened around his as we stared toward the edge of the universe where Jonah now lived.
“I will.”
