Together, we scattered his ashes beneath the branches where Frank had first kissed me forty-two years earlier.
There was no speech.
There didn’t need to be one.
Claire stood on one side of me and Eli on the other.
For a moment, I thought about how strange it was that Frank’s death had left me more alone than I had ever felt while also giving me more family than I had known existed.
Before we left, I handed Eli Frank’s old baseball cap.
His whole face brightened.
“Really?”
“Really.”
He put it on immediately.
I kept Frank’s wedding ring.
The warning was still engraved inside.
Maybe one day I will have the words changed back to the anniversary message he originally chose.
Maybe I won’t.
Frank loved me for forty years.
Frank also hid something enormous from me for nine of them.
Both truths exist.
That morning, I didn’t need to decide which one mattered more.
As we started walking back toward the car, Eli reached for Claire’s hand.
Then he turned around and looked at me.
“Are you coming, Diane?”
I slipped Frank’s ring into my pocket.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’m coming.”
