Written in 65 minutes.

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The door to the second bedroom had only been opened once since that terrible night — the day she and Jason had stood in the apartment, and he’d asked her for more pictures. Elizabeth had given him the only pictures she allowed herself — the family photo from her wallet and those inside the baby book she’d given him.

She’d thrown out the idea to clean Cady’s room almost as a dare to herself than an actual plan. If she said it, if she made a date and a promise, well, then she’d have to actually do it, wouldn’t she?

And yet.

Elizabeth stood halfway between the kitchen and the door, her fingers curled around a cup of coffee, staring at the closed white door. Behind her, she heard the click of the coffee pot—Jason switching it off after pouring the last cup.

“We don’t have to do this,” he said, coming up behind her. “We can do something else today.”

“Maybe skydiving,” she murmured. “I think I’d rather jump out of a plane.”

“Elizabeth—”

“I told you, didn’t I, that I refused to come into the apartment after I got out of the hospital. I knew there were pictures everywhere. I framed everything — ultrasounds, her first day at home. Her first morning in her crib. Her first—” She cleared her throat. “There were toys. And baby things everywhere.”

“You said you made me clean it up,” Jason said, and she looked at him, leaning against the wall.

“A horrible thing to ask. I don’t know if I really understood how much I was asking of him—you—” she corrected, almost absently, as if Jason’s use of the pronoun had made her feel safe to use it, too. “You never even blinked. Never argued. Never said a word. You just turned me around, put me back in the car, and drove me to Luke’s. When I got home, it was like she ever existed. Out here. I thought it made it easier. And maybe it did for me. But I took her away from you, too. And now—” She finally looked at him again. “Now I regret it. Because you don’t remember her, and I feel like I stole those final weeks.”

“I can’t speak for who I used to be,” Jason said. He hesitated. “But I hope I would have understood.”

“Maybe you did. I found the baby book after the accident. It was in the desk,” she said. “Between tax forms and bank statements — somewhere you knew I’d never look. I felt better when I found that.” She exhaled slowly. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to think about before the accident — that it’s separate for you—”

“I’ll let you know when I get annoyed,” he interrupted, and her smile was faint. “Justus said maybe it was easy for me to do that, but I couldn’t force everyone to feel the same way. And maybe—” he shook his head, sipped the coffee, considering what he wanted to say. “Maybe it’s selfish to want people who used to know me to act like I’m someone different.”

“I think you get to be a little selfish, Jason, with everything you’ve gone through.” She bit her lip. “You are different. I mean, you’re the same person. But your personality, it’s…you don’t care so much about taking care of people’s feelings—” She winced. “That sounds terrible—”

“Customer told me last night I was a rude asshole when I decked him for pinching the waitress,” Jason offered. “I’m okay with that.”

“You used to…” She drew her brows together. “You worried a lot about what other people thought. About you. About your intentions. It’s not that it made you less honest — but sometimes, you weren’t always clear. That’s…I think that’s the biggest change. You say what you think and there’s not three layers to dig out what you feel.”

“I figure it makes it easier to know where you stand when you just say what you really mean.” He retrieved her cup from the desk, went to the kitchen and ran some water. “Why did you want to clean out her room today?”

“Because it has to be done, and I—I think—” Elizabeth looked down at her fingers, twisting the ring on her finger. “I think it’s the last thing I get to do as her mother. And if you help—it’s…”

“The only thing I get to remember about being her father,” Jason finished. Her throat tight, she could only nod.

“And maybe if we did it together, it might not hurt so much,” Elizabeth said.

“Then let’s see if we can do it.” Jason held out his hand. “And if it doesn’t work, I’ve got the number for a skydiving place. We can start lessons.”

She laughed, but took his head, and together they approached the closed the door. She touched it first with her fingertips, then slid her hand down to the knob, twisting it.

And pushed it open.

Sunlight from the window streamed in—illuminating the thin layer of dust on every surface.  In the center of the room sat a white wooden crib with a soft yellow blanket hanging over the end, the mobile with ducks still dangling. A matching wooden dresser in the corner, and next to it a changing table.

There was a tall set of shelves — they’d been half empty the last time she’d been in this room, but now there were picture frames filling them.

Elizabeth released his hand, walked to the shelf, and picked up the first one she saw. In the hospital, taken only a few hours after labor. She was holding Cady, a squalling red-faced baby bundled up in the hospital’s white and blue linen. She was grinning at whoever was taking the camera, Jason leaning in, one arm extending over her head, the other braced against the bed.

Their first photo as a family. She touched Jason’s face. His hair was longer, but his smile was the same. How could the woman in this photo ever think that her life was be dismantled piece by piece only months after it was taken?

With trembling fingers, Elizabeth set the frame back on the shelf, cleared her throat, looked over the room—found Jason still in the doorway. “I thought…the clothes. They’re clean. Some of them weren’t even—” She folded her arms. “I could pack them into some brown bags. I’m sure there’s a thrift store or a shelter that would appreciate them.”

“Do you want me to do that?” he asked, almost gently. “It might be easier—”

“No. Um, no. I was hoping—” She exhaled in a shaky breath. “Could you take these photos? Um, out of the frames. I have a shoebox for them for now. But later, I want—I want to put them into albums. So I can take them down and look at them.”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

“Okay. That’s a good enough place to start.” Elizabeth brushed past him, heading the kitchen where she’d stowed the bags.

——

Had it only been a month since Jason had stood in the living room, and asked to see more photos? Only a month since he’d learned about the baby whose entire existence had come and gone before his memories stopped.

It’s not fair to put you through this just so I can maybe one day feel a connection to her.

Jason picked up another frame, this one with his face looking back at him. He knew it well enough now that it didn’t take much to understand the image. He was laying on the sofa—he recognized it from the living room. His eyes were closed, and the baby was stretched out on his chest, her head tucked under his chin. They were both sleeping.

What had it been like, he wondered, to hold something that small? Something that came from you? A person who hadn’t existed until you’d met someone else, and together, you’d made someone new.

He heard a dresser drawer, and looked over to find Elizabeth carefully taking a stack of clothes from inside and setting it into the brown paper bag open at her feet. The clothes were so small, he thought. And in the photo, the baby hadn’t even been reached longer than the end of his ribs.

“How much did she weigh?” Jason asked, the words leaving his mouth before they’d even formed in his mind.

Elizabeth blinked, then cleared her throat. “Nine pounds, twelve ounces.”

Not even ten pounds. Christ.

“I can bench 150 pounds,” Jason said, which was stupid thing to say, but it was all he could think. 150 pounds. That was fifteen times what his daughter had weighed when she’d—

His fingers clenched the frame more tightly, his chest aching. It was stupid, he thought. To get upset because he didn’t remember holding a baby he’d never met.

But she wasn’t just a face in a photo, the way she’d been the first day — when looking at himself before the accident holding her had been something like a novelty. You could see emotions in photos, he’d realized. Learn from them.

And she’d been a ghost in this apartment since the moment he’d stepped foot inside, the closed door haunting Elizabeth every day. How had she been able to keep moving forward? To keep breathing? She remembered everything.

The baby had been a fact about himself, something he’d learned about on his own. But he didn’t feel anything more than that—not really. He hadn’t known what it meant to love anything or anyone. Not then.

But now—looking at a picture of himself in a quiet moment with the daughter he’d never know—

Pressure built behind his eyes, and they began to sting.

“Jason?” Elizabeth’s voice was quiet. She’d come closer when he’d replied to her, but he hadn’t noticed. “Are you okay?”

“I—” His voice cracked, and his cheeks flooded with heat. He set the photo down almost with a thud. “I’m fine.”

Her fingertips skimmed his jaw, cool to the touch. “What’s wrong?”

“I just…” He lifted his gaze to her. “I won’t ever remember her. I don’t know what she sounded like when she cried or how it felt to hold her—I can’t learn those facts from anyone else but you and it’s not fair—”

“Jason.” Elizabeth pressed a hand against his shoulder, so that he’d face her more directly. “Come with me.”

He frowned, but she took his head and pulled, so he followed. They went into the living room, and Elizabeth opened a cabinet where he knew she kept her movies. She pulled out a tape, then slid it into the VCR above the television.

“Here. Here, um—” She found the remote. “I know you don’t do well with the moving part of it, but if you just close your eyes—”

Jason felt like an idiot, then closed his eyes. He heard sounds in the background. A door opening, closing. Then voices.

“Jason, don’t point that thing at me!” Elizabeth, sounding so much happier, almost laughing. “I look so awful!”

“You look beautiful,” came the response, and Jason frowned, because it—that was him, wasn’t it? He’d heard his voice on recordings at the hospital, after therapy sessions with the doctors.

“I do not—you’re a terrible liar—Cady, tell Daddy not to lie to Mommy—”

There was a thin cry, then a louder wail, and then the voices again.

“See? Cady doesn’t like it when you accuse me of lying. That’s right, you have Daddy’s back—” There was laughter in the male voice, even over the sound of the baby crying. After another moment, the crying faded.

“Twelve hours of labor, and she’s already got you wrapped around her finger. Daddy’s girl.”

The sounds stopped, and Jason opened his eyes. He looked at Elizabeth who was staring at the screen, tears sliding down her cheek. He turned around, and she’d frozen the picture—paused it, so that he could see himself, holding a swaddled bundle, grinning down at the baby who wasn’t crying anymore.

“I don’t—I don’t know if that helped,” she tried, lifting the remote again, but Jason closed his hand over it, his eyes still locked on the screen.

It was real. All of it. He’d been a person before the accident, a person with a full life, happy life. A family.

He knew what his daughter sounded like. And that she’d stopped crying when he’d held her. His daughter. Cadence Audrey. Cady.

She’d been his, and he’d never know her. It was just like that day, holding the photograph. Seeing her had made it a real fact that he’d learned all on his own. The first moment, really, that he’d been able to do that. He’d learned her name on his own.

And hearing her—hearing himself talk to her—

He’d learned something else. You could create a feeling from nothing more than series of facts and images and stories, and he’d been doing that little by little over these last few weeks. Finding those pieces of the Jason he didn’t know.

“Jason?”

And now, all those pieces had formed not just a picture, but a person. They’d given him just a brief glimpse of what it had been like to be a father.

He’d loved his daughter. And standing here now, sorting through the memories left behind, Jason knew that he’d learned to love her again.

His cheeks were wet when he looked at her. “How did you do it?” he asked, his voice almost hoarse. “How did you keep breathing?”  How was he supposed to just keep living—

“I don’t know,” she admitted, her smile wobbly. “I just did. I’m sorry. I just wanted you to hear her—”

“Thank you. For — for giving her back to me.” He leaned his forehead against hers. “Can you  let it keep playing? Or will that be too hard for you?”

As her answer, Elizabeth aimed the remote at the television, and the sounds of their former life filled the room.

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