Epilogue: Four Years Later

Epilogue: Four Years Later

In her dream, Tania watched Caleb chase a little girl across a stretch of green grass, both of them laughing, the sound of it warm and easy and whole. The girl had his eyes. They’d planned to name her Nia.

Tania woke the way she always did now, slow and quiet, her hand finding her own chest first, feeling for the steady beat that still sometimes surprised her.

She walked out to the beach instead of going back to sleep. The island was hers now, technically, along with more of Caleb’s holdings than she’d ever wanted to inherit. She still remembered every one of their good days here more clearly than she remembered most of the bad ones.

Marcus found her partway through her walk, a folder of contracts tucked under his arm.

“The collaboration paperwork,” he said, handing it over. “And there’s interest from a jewelry house overseas. Looking to partner with TC Jewelry directly.”

“Why not,” Tania said, scanning the first page. “I’d like to meet their CEO myself.”

Marcus nodded and headed back up the beach. A moment later, small footsteps came pounding across the sand toward her, and a boy of three collided with her legs, breathless.

She crouched down and brushed sand out of his dark hair, the same shade as his father’s.

“I made a friend today,” the boy said. “He has a daddy. Where’s mine?”

Tania had answered this question more times than she could count, and it never got easier, and she never once considered giving him anything less than the truth.

“Caleb,” she said softly, using his own name the way she always did when the question came, “have you forgotten? Your daddy’s right here.”

She took his small hand and pressed it flat against her own chest, over the steady, borrowed beat of her heart.

“He’s always here. He goes wherever we go.”

The boy considered this with the serious concentration only a three-year-old could manage, then nodded, satisfied, and ran back off toward the tide pools.

Tania stayed crouched in the sand a moment longer, one hand still pressed to her own chest, and let herself cry, quietly, the way she did most mornings now.

Four years ago, a blizzard had taken down a medical transport plane over the ice city, killing everyone aboard except the one passenger the pilot had shielded with his own body until the very end.

Caleb’s last words, relayed to her weeks later once she was well enough to understand them, had been simple.

Give my heart to Tania.

They had. It still beat in her chest every single day, steady and sure, carrying both of them forward into a life he’d never get to see.