Beau wandered back into the living room holding two crackers. One in each hand.
He climbed up on the couch next to his mother. Jasper flopped down on the floor at his feet.
Beau studied me with his head tilted. His crooked eyebrow went up.
“Mommy says my daddy was funny.”
I laughed. It came out wet.
“He was. He was very funny.”
Beau smiled.
“Did you know him?”
I looked at Sadie.
She nodded at me. Go ahead.
I got up off the chair. I crouched down in front of the couch so my face was level with his.
“I knew him very, very well.”
“How?”
My voice broke.
“Because he was my little boy.”
Beau thought about that. You could see him working it out. Very serious.
Then his whole face lit up.
“So you’re my grandma?”
I couldn’t speak at first.
I just nodded.
Beau leaned forward off the couch and threw his arms around my neck.
It was clumsy and sudden. One small arm wrapped around me. The other one still held a cracker, and I felt crumbs go down the back of my collar.
I closed my eyes.
He smelled like crackers and baby shampoo and dog.
For three years, I had believed that the accident took every future version of Caleb away from me. His wedding. His children. Watching him grow into a man. Watching him get old.
I’d thought all of it was gone. Buried with him in Section Four.
I’d been wrong.
Not completely wrong. But wrong.
“Grandma,” Beau said into my shoulder, “do you want to see my dinosaurs?”
“I would love to see your dinosaurs.”
He took my hand and pulled me down the hall.
His room was tiny. A twin bed with a dinosaur comforter. A window that looked out at a chain-link fence. And taped to the wall above his bed, a printed photo of Caleb at eighteen, laughing, with a sparkler.
“That’s my daddy,” Beau said, pointing. “He’s in heaven. But he can see me.”
“I believe that,” I said.
He showed me every single one of his dinosaurs. All forty-one. He knew all their names. Some of them he’d named himself.
“This one is Kevin,” he said, holding up a stegosaurus.
“Why is he named Kevin?”
He looked at me like it was obvious.
“Because he looks like a Kevin.”
I laughed so hard I had to sit down on his bed.
That was Caleb. That was exactly, exactly Caleb.
Adrian Hawthorne is a celebrated author and dedicated archivist who finds inspiration in the hidden stories of the past. Educated at Oxford, he now works at the National Archives, where preserving history fuels his evocative writing. Balancing archival precision with creative storytelling, Adrian founded the Hawthorne Institute of Literary Arts to mentor emerging writers and honor the timeless art of narrative.