I placed my hand over my stomach, where she was, at that very moment, shifting and settling, entirely unaware that her father’s last words to her were resting on the table above her.

And then I began to read.

Mark described the afternoon when we chose her name.

He remembered it exactly as I did — the silly list, and the laughing, and then the kick beneath my hand at precisely the right moment, and the way the two of us had simply known, together, that she was Cecelia.

He wrote it down for her, that moment, so that she would have it, so that she would know that her name had not been assigned to her but discovered, arrived at, agreed upon by her mother and her father and her own small insistent movement, all at once, on an ordinary happy afternoon before the world changed.

He wrote about how much he already loved her, though he might never get the chance to hold her.