Tuesday, June 20, 10:30 PM. Amy.

June 20. Happy anniversary, Brewer.

This would have been our eighteenth. The 21st year since I met you.

It would be a fine day for me to get drunk, but I still won’t have it in the house.

I miss you so bad. I ache and I ache.

I miss your voice, deep and soothing and always with that touch of rasp. I miss the words you said, the way you said them, words like “river,” and “corn,” and “sunrise,” and “window.” Words like “pretty” and “precious” and “beautiful” and “dear.” You said them in your own way, how no one else could say them.

I miss your hands, so broad and long, rough and dry from basketball practice and biology experiments, from farming and fixing things. I wish they were here so I could touch them and feel them and complain about how rough they were, and make you rub girly lotion into them before letting you touch me, secretly wanting you to touch me right away.

I miss your eyes, gray and faraway, like clouds reflected on a lake, deep and still. They’re the part of you that is most still with me.

I can’t remember your face anymore, Brewer. Not really. And I hate that. But I can see your eyes in my mind like they’re right in front of me.

I am not aching. I am the ache.

Things are fine. Maybe that’s surprising, but we’re fine. We’re surviving. We have our routines, and they work for us.

Beth is a charmer. She reminds me of you. She spends a lot of time on her back making her dangly toys shake and watching them and laughing. I…I hate to say it but I haven’t bonded with her all that well. The first month or so was just going through the motions. I fed her. That’s about it. I think Claire was her mom almost more than I was. I don’t want to exaggerate. I have happy memories of holding her and whispering to her and looking at each others’ faces. But I was barely there, and there wasn’t much left of me to give. Claire was a huge help—all the kids were. Lately I am starting to get my mojo back. Beth and I are connecting more. I spend a lot of time reading books to her, watching her play, or just carrying her around.

Trevor and Claire are adapting well. They’ve grieved well. I think they’re past the worst of the grief. It’s been three months since you left us and…for kids that’s a long time.

Trevor is out and about and involved much more than when you were here. Partly that’s because he’s just that little bit older. Partly it’s because he has moved up the food chain. He was always in Garrett’s shadow, the little kid of the family. But he’s not the baby anymore, he’s one of the two men left in our world, the second in command. He’s smarter than Garrett, they both know that, they’re both fine with that usually, and Garrett is stronger and more knowledgeable and a lot steadier. Garrett works with Trevor on things much like you used to with Garrett. Only, neither of them is nearly strong enough, mentally or physically, to do all the work imposed on them. But they do what they can, and Trevor knows he has to help or we won’t make it. He keeps machines going. He totes fuel and feed around. He helps Garrett figure out pulleys and levers. They roll that hoist, gantry crane thing around with them everywhere and use it almost every day.

I actually think Trevor’s pretty happy, in a way. I hope that doesn’t hurt your feelings. I don’t mean it in any way that should. He misses you really badly. But he’s engaged in good work every day and he knows he’s important. There are not a lot of eight-year-olds who can say that.

He moved back into his own room a couple of weeks ago. He was tired of Beth waking him up at night. Claire still sleeps with us.

She has had a harder time. There was a period in the spring when I thought she might not make it. There was one week where she would not come out of her room. Every time I went in there she was laying on her bed, not doing anything, just laying there. Right after you left she started eating all the time, and was putting on weight. But that week in May she didn’t eat anything, and since then she’s gotten probably too skinny.

I don’t know what all this means. I know it means she has suffered. She has no filter. She can’t escape from good emotions or bad, she just feels them: her own, other peoples’. She loves you so much, and…well, this very nearly destroyed her.

She is doing better. She’s back to riding the horses, helping with supper, or knitting in the evenings. She’ll smile and even laugh. But she seems so grown up now, so wise and sad.

She still takes care of Beth a lot during the day. That’s not me being neglectful. I take care of her most of the time. But it’s good for all three of us to get the variety and change of scene that comes with switching out. It’s almost like Claire is “Dad”: or, more probably, I’m Dad and Claire is Mom. When I’m taking care of the animals or cooking or cleaning, she’ll watch Beth. When she’s doing those things, I’ll take over.

My point is that Claire, like Trevor, has some joy in her life amid the grief. She lost you; she gained a little sister whom she adores. It’s not a fair trade, not one bit, but it’s a big part of what she’s holding onto.

Garrett is a miracle, and I’m not so sure I’m using that word figuratively.

He’s not you. He’s not your clone. But he’s so much like you in so many important ways. I would stand back and admire him with matronly pride if I didn’t depend on him so constantly with childish need. He’s got your will and your drive. He will find a way forward. He’s had some very discouraging moments these last few months, and like you he’s spent some days miserable and defeated. But like you, he jumps back up and keeps going. He has kept the family alive: the water, the power, the vehicles, the animals. Church.

I still can’t believe. I can’t trust God. Can’t trust him, can’t trust in him, I’m not sure there’s a difference. Part of me wants to. But I can’t make myself believe. And I don’t think it would be right to try.

But I think I’m doing a better job standing out of the way of our children’s belief. I’m encouraging it. I pray with them, in my own way. We enjoy church together, we smile and talk and learn. Sometimes I know that what the Bible says and what they’re believing is far too simplistic. But I’ve learned to hold my tongue. I hold it because I know you’d want me to. But I do it for them too. Even when the lesson makes me grit my teeth, there are golden nuggets of insight that they need to receive. And I’m amazed how often, as they discuss together and reflect on how things apply to them and us and the farm, they’re able to pluck the crucial truth from the chaff.

On Sunday we were in Matthew where it says, “If you have faith and do not doubt…even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen.” I thought to myself, “Good luck with that one.” The kids got into a discussion about whether one of them could get an actual mountain to move just by praying. Claire said they could; Trevor said they couldn’t.

Claire said, “You couldn’t because you don’t have enough faith. But if you did, you could do it. That’s what it says.”

Trevor said, “If that’s so then how come you don’t go do it? How come things you pray for don’t always come true?” He was getting kind of heated.

I saw Claire’s eyes glisten, and she quickly looked down. She said, very quietly, “Because I don’t have enough faith either.”

Garrett spoke gently. “I think you have a lot of faith, Claire. Maybe more than the rest of us. Maybe the problem isn’t with faith but with the things we ask for. Even Jesus never actually asked a mountain to jump into the sea.”

We thought about this. I said, “Maybe Jesus was exaggerating, using hyperbole. Maybe faith can accomplish great things, just not mountains jumping into seas.”

Garrett shook his head. “I don’t think the problem is with size. God really can move a mountain into a sea, and prayer really can get God to do anything he can do—which is anything. The problem is with what you ask for: not how big it is, but what it is. You can’t get God to do something he doesn’t want to do.”

“But…why even pray then?” Trevor asked, still exasperated. “Why do we pray if he just does what he wants?”

After a pause, Claire suggested, “Maybe there are some things he’ll change his mind about and some things he won’t. With faith, sometimes you change his mind and sometimes you don’t. But if you don’t have faith, you’ll never change his mind.”

Lately they’ve been talking and praying a lot about finding other people. It’s been nearly a year. I’m afraid they have so much disappointment still waiting for them.

So you’ll be glad to know that church and Bible time and prayer are going strong in your absence. And Garrett, I admit, is unmistakably the spiritual leader of the family. He’s not you, but he’s stepping into your shoes in a way that would make you proud.

And what about me? Yes, what about me?

My life has become a matter of pure, unadulterated loss. And yet, somehow, I press on. Everyone I ever held dear is gone, except the kids. And how long will I have them? For as long as I can, is the answer.

But when we are all gone? What will any of it have meant? And if it means so little then, eighty years from now if we’re lucky, what can it possibly mean now?

We have little hope of finding anyone else in the world. There are still no planes. The ham radio offers nothing but broad oceans of static dotted with islands of automated messages. Garrett has checked the Dallas message box regularly. We’ve had no contact. There are no signs of anyone anywhere.

We’ve talked about going out on the road like you and I had planned. But a woman with her children out in the wilds? What if we did find people? With a three month-old baby? With just one experienced driver to navigate a crumbling America? Leaving behind our cows and horses—not to mention the dogs and cats and chickens—to fend for themselves?

No. For now we prepare for another year of gardens and crops and calves and foals, propane and power and heating. Maybe we’ll search next year.

I don’t suppose there’s any way you could come back home, is there? God took everyone away last year; I don’t suppose he could use a similar trick to just pop you back down, could he?

No, I didn’t think so. Why do I torture myself?

We’re stable, Brewer. We’re stable and hurting and lost. We survive by putting one foot in front of the other, sticking a fork into the food into the mouth into the food…and trying not to think about the future.

I suppose, when I put it that way, it’s not so different from the way we always lived.