I spent the next few days in her bedroom, inhaling her aroma and keeping her belongings close.
My ex-husband, Tom, found me the day before the burial, dressed in my black dress and clutching Emma’s hoodie to my chest.
He picked up a book on climate change from the nightstand and sat near me on Emma’s bed.
“She was going to change the world,” he whispered.
We gazed at each other and fell into tears.
Tom and I had stayed friends following our divorce. If anything, our relationship as co-parents was better than it had been when we were married. He’d even attended my wedding to Frank two years prior.
“She… she told me she’d decided which college she wanted to attend,” he said between sobs.
“UC Davis,” I said. “She said they had the best environmental science program in the country.”
“What will we do now? Without her?”
“I don’t know, Tom. I don’t know.”
A week after Emma’s funeral, Tom and I met to discuss her college fund. Tom and I had saved $25,000 over 10 years, and Emma had earned every dime serving ice cream at the boardwalk last summer.
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