Chapter 1 – The Bear at My Door
“Daddy, the nice lady said Mommy wanted me to have this.”
My four-year-old daughter, Bella, stood in our entryway holding a handmade blue teddy bear. A neat K was stitched into its left foot. My wife’s name was Katherine, and I had buried her four years earlier. The sight of that bear turned my knees weak.
I’m Scott, thirty-four, a freelance designer and the parent who handled bottles, midnight crying, and eventually scraped knees. Katherine and I met at Henderson Tech Solutions, where she was a brilliant project manager and I was the designer who could barely focus around her. Because her father, Robert, controlled much of Millbrook County’s commercial property, we kept our relationship quiet. Then Katherine challenged me to quit and ask her out properly. I did. Eight months later we married, and six months after that she was pregnant.
Her joy always seemed edged with fear. After Bella arrived, Katherine returned to work within a month, saying she had to protect our future. I stayed home with the baby while her mother, Helen, helped during the day.
Then Robert called during a thunderstorm. Katherine’s car had left Highway 9, struck a barrier, and burned. He said identification had been confirmed, but the damage was too severe for me to see her. I grieved beside a closed coffin while holding our infant daughter.
For four years, my mother helped me raise Bella. Katherine’s parents mailed costly gifts but seldom visited. I thought grief was the hardest truth I would ever face—until that blue bear entered our home.
