He wasn’t coming.
I cried the entire drive home. The next day, I packed away everything that reminded me of him. The photographs took the longest. There were dozens of them. Trips. Birthdays. Barbecues. Ordinary moments that had once felt important. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away.
So I did something else. I cut him out. One photograph at a time. By the end of the weekend, every picture contained a strange space where Jack used to be. Then I packed them into a box and moved on.
Or at least I tried to.
Life has a way of continuing whether you’re ready or not. Years passed. I got married, had Maddy, and built a life. The marriage eventually ended, but that’s another story.
The point is that Jack became part of my past. A chapter I stopped rereading.
Or so I thought.
Then my daughter brought home a young man with his face. And suddenly the chapter didn’t feel quite so finished anymore.
