“Riley?” Mal says, standing on the other side of the table. His voice is low, barely a whisper. “I’d like to show you something, if you don’t mind.”

He leads me down the hallway to his bedroom. I’d never been inside before but I just assumed it would be like Dylan’s—sparse and covered in flannel. So you can imagine my surprise when he opens the door to a beautiful dark timber setting and white cotton sheets with a knitted throw at the end. He must see the shock on my face because he chuckles, low and gruff, just like Dylan. “It helps remind me of Ruby; Dylan’s mother. It’s the only space in the house that has any form of feminine touch.” He sighs. “Twenty-three years she’s been gone and I still can’t find it in myself to change the washing detergent she used. Smells like her, you know?”

It’s the most he’s spoken about her and I wonder why. Out loud. Then kick myself for doing so.

He doesn’t seem to mind though. He just points to a beautiful armchair in the corner of the room and indicates for me to sit while he goes to his closet. “I made the decision early not to talk about her too much around Dylan. I didn’t want him feeling left out if Eric and I speak about our memories of her since he never knew her.”

“I’ve met her,” I tell him, my hands gliding across the fabric of the seat.

From inside his closet, he asks, “Oh, yeah?”

“Dylan took me to meet her right when we started dating.”

“He did, huh?” he responds, walking out with a shoebox. Then he stops in his tracks. “Has he mentioned anything… about us not talking about her too much? Would he like us to?”

I shrug. “To be honest, I think it’s something he thinks about but doesn’t really talk about…”

He nods and continues his path toward me. Then, carefully, he places the shoebox on my lap. “Take a look,” he says, sitting on the edge of the bed a couple feet away from me.

I lift the lid. Letters. So many letters addressed to My love, Malvin, but no addresses. I look up at him.

“She wrote me all these letters while I was deployed in Panama. I never knew about them until she passed and I was clearing out the closet to move here.”

I take a calming breath, wondering why he’s telling me all this. Not just telling me, but showing me. “So you’d never read them before then?”

He shakes his head. “She didn’t write them for me, Riley. She wrote them for herself. I guess it helped keep me close and make the distance easier to deal with.”

“And why… I mean, why are you showing me?”

He smiles. “I think there’s a lot you can learn from these letters. If not learn, then at least understand. No one is cut out for this life but we make it work. Because that’s exactly what life is, sweetheart. Work. And in the end, it pays off. I know—I have two amazing boys as proof.”

I spend the rest of the day in Dylan’s bed, surrounded by tissues and letters filled with immeasurable heartache and longing and fear, but also joy and love and excitement and questions of the future. And plans—there were so many plans Ruby Banks made with a man oceans away, doing exactly what Dylan is—helping to provide a life better than the one we know.

Every letter starts the same. She loves him. She misses him.

Some are sad, some are funny, but most of them just spoke about him. About her memories of him which she missed dearly. Memories that reminded me so much of Dylan that I spent most of the time with my hand to my mouth to stop from crying out loud.

There were also a few pictures in the box. Mainly of her taken over the years, even one of her pregnant with Eric going by the date stamp.

But there was one letter that hit me right in the feels. One that changed my outlook on everything. She told him about all the unsent, unread letters and she promised he’d never see them. At least not while he was deployed. She wanted him to focus on absolutely nothing but getting home to her. Safe. So they can continue making the memories she holds so close.

And when she ended the letter with “Fuck the oceans,” I lie down on the bed, her letter against my chest, listening to the silence that surrounds me and release the fear of grief.

I connect to a woman whose words give me a sense of calm, of hope and of understanding—long after her last breath.

Ruby Banks—she was something else.

She was brave, she was funny, and she put love first.

She was an exceptional woman.

And she was everything I hope to be.

Thirty-Four

Dylan

“You think this is enough?” Dave mumbles, sitting against a wall of what I’m sure was once someone’s home… now ours for the night.

I pocket the picture of Riley I’d been staring at and face him. “What’s enough?”

“What we’re doing? You think we’re saving the world?”

I shrug. “You think that’s our purpose?” I ask him, my weapon to my chest, finger off the trigger. We hadn’t heard anything since the sun set. Our duties are done for the day—at least me and Dave’s—and I plan on spending the next couple hours trying to get some sleep.

Apparently Dave has other plans. He likes to save these philosophical conversations for the times when we’re alone. He ignores my question and asks, “You ever regret it?”

“Regret what?” I shuffle further down the wall until I’m lying on my back looking up at him.

He shakes his head. “Nothin’.” After a pause, he smiles. “I miss my fuckin’ mom, man. And my brothers.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out some photographs. “Ricky had a birthday party. They sent me photos.”