Page 94 of Dirty Fighter

It fucking breaks my heart.

“Com’ere.” I pull my wife into my lap, let her burrow her head in my shoulder and just hold her for a while.

“I’m okay,” she sniffs, lifting her head. “I am.”

I run my hand over her low ponytail. “What do you want to do? We can bring it home with us. Open it when we’re alone.”

Her brows furrow. “I kind of feel like it’s waited long enough?”

That is my wife. Strong and brave. And done letting the lunatic who raised her take anything else.

Gently, she slides her finger under the flap and opens the card.

It’s sweet. Purely my dad. He’s wishing her a happy birthday and a wonderful year and that all her dreams come true. And at the bottom, he signs it, “Love, Ed.”

She’s teary again as she pulls the ribbon loose from the box. Then carefully frees the edge of the wrapping.

“Jason,” she whispers, lifting a heavy wooden keepsake box much like the one she delivered to me, more than a year ago. “He knew I loved it. I don’t know if he totally understood why looking through all of those pictures of his family meant so much to me… that just touching the evidence of that kind of love made me feel like it could be possible.”

She opens the lid, and together we share an emotional laugh. Because it’s filled with duplicates of the photos from my box.

“He knew,” I say with all certainty. “And he was telling you that this love and history is your family too.”