The Cost of Forgetting You

by Hannah Bird

He smells like sweat and sky and home. Like a memory I’ve been pretending not to have.

“You’ve got to allow people to grow, Delilah. You can’t spend your whole life seeing people as their worst mistake. I doubt you’d want to be judged by yours.”

How do I go on, knowing my father gave up everything for me? Not only his life, but his one chance with the woman he loved. For the first time I see so clearly what Truett meant about my father sacrificing himself at the altar of everyone around him. At the altar of my happiness.

I collapse into him, my arms tight around his neck, and let myself cry in my father’s arms. Perhaps for the very last time. “The cost of forgetting you,” he whispers into my hair, “is that I’ll never be able to make it right. To show you how very sorry I am for the way I let you down.”

“If you love him, don’t let him pass you by. I promise you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

Love is a lot of things. It’s reckless when you want to be careful. Gentle when the world is anything but.