Page 72 of Better as It

Just peace.

Just family.

Just us.

Two days later, we are rested and feeling more human. After a solid feeding, we head out.

Early evening. The sun starting to drop low. Benjamin’s strapped in the carrier against my chest, small and warm and completely unaware that today is something sacred.

Dia’s quiet beside me still in the truck, one hand on the door handle, the other resting on our baby. She hasn’t said much since I suggested it this morning—Let’s take him to see his dad.Her silence isn’t refusal. It’s something deeper.

Grief, maybe.

Fear.

Closure, if that’s even really possible.

We walk out into the cemetery as the sky turns a soft gold. The place is empty. Still. Peaceful in that way cemeteries always are when the living don’t bring too much noise with them.

Benjamin Ward Miller is one week old and already feels like my whole heart beating outside my body.

Dia brushes her fingers gently over his hair. “Let’s go see your namesake, baby boy. Let’s go see your dad.”

Clutch’s grave is like the man simple stone, grass neatly trimmed, a motorcycle charm someone left tied to a wooden stake in the ground. The name still hits like a brick.

I shift little Benjamin slightly and crouch down.

Dia kneels beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch.

“We brought him,” I say, as if Clutch can hear me. “The little boy with your name, your blood. The one you never got to meet. Thank you for this gift, brother.”

Dia reaches over and lifts the edge of the blanket from Benjamin’s face. He shifts a little but doesn’t wake.

“He’s so perfect,” she whispers. “And so loved.”

The breeze picks up. A slow hush through the trees. It almost feels like something listening.

“I wish you were here,” she says. “I wish you could’ve seen Justin hold him in the delivery room. You would’ve cried. And then you would’ve pretended you didn’t.”

I smile, but it hurts. If he was there, I wouldn’t be and that’s the tragedy of all of this.

“He’s everything we never planned,” she goes on. “And somehow still everything we needed.”

She looks at me. “Us. All of us. You too.”

I nod, not trusting my voice.

Then I hear the gravel shift behind us.

I stand up fast, eyes narrowing.

Dia follows, body tense.

And then we see her.

Patricia Henderson.

Clutch’s mother.

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