Admittedly, there are days where it is hard for me to put one foot in front of the other, but I have my boys to get me through it. Just knowing you and all the other people Annie touched with her gift are out there, undoubtedly living every day to its fullest, brings me peace. And while I would love to someday hear my daughter’s heart beat again, it is enough knowing she lives on. May that spark she left behind help you find your way through your recovery and beyond, and know that my Annie is watching over you, now and always. Sincerely, Robert P. Caldwell.
As soon as I finished reading, I reached for several tissues from the dispenser on the nightstand and handed them to Ash. I got one for myself too. We sat in contemplative silence for a moment before I said, “Talk to me, baby.”
He pulled in a deep breath and wiped at his face with the crumpled tissues before looking at me. “He wants to meet me.”
It wasn’t really a question, but I nodded anyway. “Yeah, it sounds like he does.”
“That’s why I never tried reading it again,” he murmured as he took the letter from me and carefully began folding it back up. “I knew he’d say he wanted to meet me.”
“And that scares you?”
Ash nodded. He was quiet for a moment before whispering, “What if he finds out, Aiden?”
“Finds out what, baby?”
“What I did after… with his daughter’s heart.” Fresh tears began rolling down Ash’s face. “I’m alive because his daughter is dead. But instead of going out and doing something with that gift— that amazing, incredible gift— I let Billy…”
As his words fell off, I leaned into him and cupped his face. “Hey,” I said gently. “You did nothing wrong. You didn’t squander or waste what you were given. And it was never about who deserved to live more— you or that poor girl. Call it fate or destiny or God or whatever, her death was meant to be from the moment she took her first breath. The only say she or her parents or any of the people who loved her had in it was choosing to give life to others afterward.”
“She was going to be a doctor—”
“Stop it,” I cut in, because I knew what he was going to say and I just couldn’t bear it. “You know what I heard when that man talked about his child? I heard him describing you. Your kindness, your strength and tenacity, your generosity, that spark… that’s all you, Ash. Annie’s heart is your heart. I may not have known you before the transplant, but I know you were all those things back then, too. There’s no better person on this earth to take care of Annie’s heart than you.”
Ash managed a sickly nod and allowed me to pull him against my chest. The letter was clutched between his fingers like some kind of lost treasure. He clung to me for several minutes, long after the moisture of his tears stopped hitting the skin of my arm. “Let’s go to sleep, okay?” I suggested.
He shook his head and carefully extricated himself from my grasp. “No, I want to do this,” Ash said as he sucked in a breath and dropped his hand to the guitar. I sensed the change in him and felt pride surge in my chest. Gone was the insecurity about embarrassing himself, and in its place was a stark determination that wasn’t about proving to me he could do this.
It was about proving it to himself.
I watched as he carefully put the letter back in the pocket of the guitar case and then searched out the paper with the song lyrics on them. When he reached for the instrument, it looked so natural the way he held it across his lap while his fingers sought out the strings. If I hadn’t already known about his connection to his father’s guitar, I would have figured it out from the way he held it alone. He strummed a few chords as he fiddled with the strings to tune it, and I found myself sitting forward in anticipation. When he finally seemed satisfied, his eyes connected briefly with mine, and he sent me a shy smile.
I knew right then that this was it for him. This was what he’d been born to do. I could feel it in my bones. My instincts were confirmed a moment later when he began playing a haunting melody that had shivers running up and down my spine. And before he even finished singing the first line of the song, I knew what I had to do.
I had to find a way to give him his dream.
Chapter 20
Ash
I wasn’t sure what woke me up, but I knew instantly that I was alone.