Then a photograph, a real one, framed of the three of them at the diner. Milkshakes in hand, Mr. Buttons propped on the table. Then Emma's spare toothbrush in the guest bathroom.
Then a plant which Victoria killed and replaced and killed again and finally kept alive on the third try with Emma standing over her supervising the watering like a tiny stern foreman. And one evening in that first real spring, Victoria took Ryan somewhere. She had never taken anyone. She didn't tell him where they were going.
She drove. She almost never drove. She had people who drove her, but this time she drove and Ryan understood that mattered without knowing why yet. She drove them out of the city north until the buildings gave way and she pulled into a cemetery and she parked and she sat for a moment with her hands on the wheel and didn't move.
I haven't been here in 3 years, she said. I couldn't. I'd get as far as the gate and I'd turn around. 3 years.
She let out a breath. I wanted you to be here the first time I could make it past the gate. Ryan didn't say anything. He just took her hand.
They walked together across the grass, and Victoria led him to a stone, a simple one simpler than Ryan would have expected, gray granite with a name and two dates, 10 weeks and four days too close together. And she stood in front of it, and Ryan stood beside her. And for a long time, neither of them spoke. "Hi, Daniel," Victoria said finally.
Her voice was steady, and then it wasn't. I'm sorry it's been so long. I couldn't. I told myself I was too busy.
But the truth is, I couldn't stand to because coming here meant it was real. And if I never came, some part of me got to pretend you were just at the office or traveling or she stopped. She wiped her face. I built the whole company so I wouldn't have to stand here.
Did you know that 7 years, Daniel, $40 billion in market cap? And the whole thing underneath the whole entire thing was just a machine I built so I'd never have an afternoon free to come stand in front of your stone. She laughed wet and broken. You'd have hated it.
You'd have left me a note. Stop building. Come home. This is stupid.
You'd have been right. You were always right about the stupid stuff. Ryan's throat was tight. He almost stepped back to give her privacy, but Victoria's hand tightened on his and held him there.
No, she said. Stay. I want you here. That's the point.
I want She turned to him and her face was wet and open and utterly unguarded. Daniel, this is Ryan and his daughter, Emma. She's not here. She's seven.
She's got a rabbit named Mr. Buttons. And your same laugh actually isn't that strange. She's got your same anyway.
She was crying now, but she was smiling, too. I wanted you to meet him because I know what you'd say. I know exactly what you'd say because you said it in one of the notes, one of the ones I found. You wrote it right before you got sick and I found it a year later and I nearly died reading it.
You wrote, "If anything ever happens to me, don't you dare turn to stone. Promise me you'll let somebody in again. Promise me you won't waste all that love just because I'm not here to catch it." Her voice cracked completely. I broke that promise for seven years, Daniel.
Seven years. I turned to stone on purpose just to spite the universe for taking you. And then this tired man walked into a break room and offered me a worse cup of coffee. And I She couldn't finish.
She pressed her hand to her mouth and Ryan Carter did the only thing there was to do. He put his arm around her and he held her up in front of the stone of the man she'd loved. And he said quietly to the granite to Daniel to a man he'd never met. I've got her.
I want you to know that. I don't know if I don't know how this works. If you can hear this, but I lost somebody, too. So, I figure if anybody's listening, it's you.
His voice was rough. I've got her Daniel and she's got me. And we've both got a little girl who needs about four mothers worth of loving. And we're going to do our best to be enough.
And I'm not I'm not trying to be you. Same way she's not trying to be Emma's mom. Those jobs are filled forever. We're just He looked at Victoria and then back at the stone.
We're just two people carrying two stones. And it turns out you can carry them easier with somebody holding your other hand. That's all this is. That's all it ever needs to be.
So, thank you for the note for telling her not to turn to stone. She listened. It just took her a while. He swallowed hard.
Rest easy, man. We've got it from here. Victoria made a sound against his shoulder. Half sobb and half laugh.
And she reached out and touched the top of the stone the way you'd touch a person's shoulder. And she said, "Proud of you always. Right back at you. Finally.
Right back at you." They stood there a long time, the two of them, in front of the stone, while the light went golden long across the grass. And when they finally walked back to the car, Victoria's hand was in Ryan's, and something in her had changed. Some final nod had come loose, and she drove them home lighter than she'd come. That night, back at the apartment that wasn't empty anymore after Emma was asleep in the guest room that had somehow become Emma's room with her drawings on the walls and her spare clothes in the dresser and the third plant, the one that lived on the windowsill.