When I was three years old, my parents died in a car accident. I remember almost nothing about them—just fragments of warmth, a laugh I can’t quite place, the smell of my mother’s perfume that sometimes returns to me unexpectedly. Most of what I know about them came from stories told by other people.
Thomas had been my father’s best friend since they were children. They grew up on the same street, went to the same schools, and eventually stayed close even as adults. Because he had been so close to my parents, he stepped in after the accident and adopted me. From that point on, he raised me as if I were his own daughter.
I never felt alone growing up with him. Thomas was always there in the quiet, steady way that mattered most. He read me bedtime stories every night, sat in the front row of every school performance, and showed up to every parent-teacher meeting even when he had to leave work early to do it. When I graduated from college, he cried harder than anyone in the audience. And years later, when I got married, he was the one who walked me down the aisle.
Sometimes I would ask him about my parents. Whenever I did, he would smile sadly and tell me small pieces of their story—how my father used to play guitar late at night or how my mother loved planting flowers in the backyard. But he never went into much detail. He always said it was too painful to revisit those memories because my parents had been like family to him. I accepted that explanation without questioning it.
Thomas never married and never had any other children. I was his whole world, just as he was mine.
Last month, he died of cancer.
The loss felt like the ground had disappeared beneath my feet. Losing him was like losing my father all over again, even though technically he had never been my father to begin with. For days after the funeral, I walked around in a haze, barely able to focus on anything. Eventually I forced myself to go back to his house and begin sorting through his belongings.
The place looked exactly the same as it always had, filled with the same familiar furniture and photographs. I was standing in the living room trying to decide where to start when I happened to glance out the front window. That’s when I saw a woman I didn’t recognize quickly slipping something into the mailbox.