PART 4

A year after the wedding, my son and his wife had a baby girl.

They named her Grace.

When I held her for the first time, I looked at her tiny face.

My son stood beside me.

“She would have loved her.”

I nodded.

“She would have spoiled her rotten.”

“Definitely.”

He laughed.

Then he handed me something.

The cassette.

“You keep it.”

I looked at him.

“It’s yours.”

“No.”

He smiled.

“Mom gave it to Dad.”

I held it carefully.

“What if it breaks?”

“It won’t.”

“What if the tape wears out?”

He shrugged.

“Then we’ll copy it.”

I smiled.

“That’s not the same.”

“No,” he said.

Then he looked at his daughter.

“But neither are we.”

That night, I went home.

I put the cassette in my old recorder.

I sat alone at the kitchen table.

The same table where my wife had recorded it eleven years earlier.

I pressed play.

Her voice filled the room.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

I closed my eyes.

“I know you’re probably listening when you shouldn’t be.”

I laughed.

“That sounds like you.”

She continued.

“I know you will miss me.”

I whispered:

“I do.”

“I know there will be days you feel guilty for laughing.”

I looked at the photograph beside me.

“But please don’t.”

Her voice cracked slightly.

“Promise me you’ll keep living.”

I touched the recorder.

“I promise.”

Then she said something I had never heard before.

Something that made me understand why she had waited until my son’s wedding.

“Your boy will become a man.”

I smiled.

“He already has.”

“He will love someone.”

“He does.”

“And when that happens, don’t stand between them because you’re afraid of losing him.”

I swallowed.

“Let him go.”

I looked toward the window.

Outside, the evening sky was turning gold.

“Because if you raised him right…”

Her voice softened.

“…he won’t leave you.”

The tape clicked.

The recording ended.

I sat there for a long time.

CONTINUE FOR NEXT PART….