The Last Letter

by Rebecca Yarros

“Thank you,” I said quietly, knowing he couldn’t hear me. “Thank you for her.”

“Sometimes you have to leave so you can know what it is you left. You don’t really value something until you’ve lost it.”

“I like you, Mr. Beckett. You let my best friend borrow yours.”

“That of course they have a father, because babies have to have a father and a mother. But they don’t have a dad. Because while all men can be fathers, not all of them are qualified to be daddies, and theirs just wasn’t.”

“Right, and you’ve armed her with a slingshot and sent her against the giant. I’m telling you that I have a damn tank, and you won’t use it! Are you really going to watch her die because you won’t gamble that I’m a decent guy? What do you want? Character references? A lie detector? Put me through anything you want, just let me save her!”

He might look all fluffy and frosted, but under the clothes he was devil’s food, period. And I really, really, really liked chocolate.

“It matters because you matter. You know when you’re on an airplane, and they tell you to put the oxygen mask on you first before your kids? This is that. If you only put the oxygen on your kid, then you pass out and can’t help them. Every once in a while, you have to take a breath, Ella, or you’re going to suffocate.”

We are imperfect people made that way by an imperfect world, and we don’t always get a say in what shapes us.

“So you’re not together, but we get to keep him? He’s ours?”

“Thank you for them,” he answered. “What did she tell you?” “Really want to know?” “Beckett,” I warned. “She said that was her wish, the only thing she’d wanted was…me, in a roundabout way.” “She wanted a dad,” I guessed. “You to be her dad.” “They’re kids,” he said with a shrug, but I knew how much it meant to him. “They’re our kids.”

“Take the good. Feel the happy. This is the best kind of good, and you did it. You got her here.” “You got her here, too.”