He spent the rest of his life, he told me, chasing the feeling of that one sentence.
That was why he loved so hard, and so carefully, and so completely.
A man who has been left learns either to never attach, or to attach with his whole soul.
Jack chose his whole soul.
And that was why, in his last weeks, the thing that truly terrified him was not dying.
It was leaving Lily and the new baby the way he himself had been left.
Alone in the world, with no one who shared their blood.
“Promise me they won’t be alone,” he kept whispering from the hospital bed, his hand tight around mine. “Whatever happens. Promise me, Rachel.”
“They have me,” I would say. “They’ll always have me.”
“I know.” He would close his eyes. “But I want them to have more than one. I never had even one.”
