Epilogue: Loving Me From Somewhere
Benji sleeps outside my bedroom door now.
Angie’s friends come by sometimes for dinner, to walk him, or just to sit quietly when grief feels too heavy alone.
They tell me stories.
How Angie once made them drive back to return a stray shopping cart because “somebody has to do the right thing.”
How she spent forty minutes coaxing a terrified kitten out from under a car.
How she talked about me all the time.
That last one still breaks me.
Angie did not get to come home.
But somehow, she still found a way to leave something living, warm, and waiting at my door.
And some nights, when Benji rests his head on my lap and those kids laugh in my kitchen the way my daughter once did, it feels like my girl is still here.
Not gone completely.
Just loving me from somewhere I cannot reach.
