"I promise we did everything we could for him, Everly."

Her voice squeaked, "How?"

"He went to sleep. That peacefully. That easily."

Truth was Truscott had slipped into a coma and been put on life support for ten weeks before Wanda decided her son had suffered enough. Her decision to remove life support wasn't swift or rash, but rather a tender gift of mercy to her child. I envied and watched in awe as she bravely bathed his pale, gaunt face in kisses she could never again offer, crossed his hands one over the other, and smiled at him for the last time as if she was looking at her newborn baby, not the ghost of the boy she watched wither into bones. Her bravery spurred a new sense of hope under my ribs. Goodbye could be peaceful. Goodbye could be quite beautiful.

I needed that kind of resilient hope in the midst of cases such as Scout Everdeen. While bruises and injury were common in my world with Everly, his bruises were not easily kissed away. He had a long journey of scars ahead of him-like Truscott-if he managed to hang on long enough. As my life became painted powder blue, his stretched on as a crimson-filled nightmare, all the while Earth spun its dutiful course, neither of us the wiser for what fate had in the works.

I navely reached into the plot of my life and dug out reserved coins I needed to find a home. A wish was granted as I employed Peter Everdeen to restore a memory the summer Everly had been absent in my life. He came by to work secretly every Sunday at our house, never revealing to Everly what he was doing out in the woods behind our house. As I admired his work, the steel made it hard to hate a man like Timothy Brighton, because he had unknowingly saved a part of his daughter's happiness, before she even spent her first cry.

The sun was high, the birds were on queue as they sang high-pitched cheer, and she was absolute perfection in a lavender dress as she followed me into the wildflowers overtaking our yard. She held a glass of cold lemonade in her free hand and sipped as we found the west side of our property.

"Okay, close your eyes and just follow where I lead."

"Kinda my signature move," she laughed.

Eyes closed I led her deeper into the woods and then kissed her hand. "All right. Open."

Peter sounded the whistle. At first Everly dropped her lemonade, closed her hands over her ears. But then she lit up like the Fourth of July as she took in the brilliant boxcar gleaming jubilant red.

"Ho-lee-buckets."

Even a stiff like Peter Everdeen laughed.

"I think our son will prefer the color red," I said nonchalantly. "It's fiery, bold and undeniably seen . . . just like his mother."

She was too shocked to move or speak. She stood wide-eyed beaming at the boxcar.

And then . . .

"Oh, God Bless America!"

AND THEN . . .

"Grandpa Wiley," she whispered. "This was the train!" Her hand clapped to her chest as if she was trying to keep every memory of him locked inside. Everly's eyes turned to me and asked why how where how long until I pulled her into my arms and told her I couldn't possibly think of a more deserved gift for the mother of my child. This was a thank you. This was the most outrageous I love you. This was-unbeknownst to me, Everly, and absolutely Peter Everdeen-the most profound discovery of prophetic fate locked inside of a memory.

Our house was nearly forgotten as the boxcar became our preferred place of life building. As our feet danced between the aisles to night-song crickets, and our eyes spoke of hunger that wasn't easily satisfied, we began to unearth the prophecy one love-stirred moment at a time. The heat of my kiss on her mouth encouraged fate to carry out its mission, and the content hum in the ever after of love making solidified the choice-there was a heart that thumped so bravely-there was a heart that thumped so purely full of love-and there were two boys in the dutiful spinning world who greatly needed both.

HER INFLUENCE BLED SLOWLY.

When Everly Anne entered room 221 of New York Presbyterian Hospital a shift occurred in the paradigm of many lives. At first her influence bled slow, affecting negligible parts of human composition such as remaining neutral in unsure circumstances. But what hid from our view was the composition of Everly's life. We could have fired every question in our arsenal and we would have never begun to unravel her story. And truthfully, the same could be said about each of us.

The Unknowns of Life are as fragile and misleading as a snow globe. Left alone it's nice to look at, but really quite boring. Shake it up and you chance the glass slipping from your hands-but oh-what a different world it holds, even if just for ten simple seconds.

I'd like to believe that we'd all choose to shake the globe of our lives, but as I sat in that class that year, I learned how fearful most people were when it came to crossing a line. Out of a hundred other students, it was only me and one lonely, mysterious girl who crossed over with the hope and desire to seek something beyond the black and white.

And at first her influence in my life bled slow, affecting only minor parts such as second guessing my choices, debating hope and faith, and most importantly learning how to listen. But when you shake up the contents of your life searching for purpose, mysteries, and wonder, there's no telling what you'll find until it is right before your eyes. The influence of her life eventually bled through every facet of mine, until we were infinitely synched with the bond of one precious, teeny heartbeat.

As I walked through the doors of Presbyterian Hospital, for the first time since I graduated, I had come full circle. I sat in the back of his class as he led a lecture, admiring the center of the room where Everly Anne and I first met. The feeling of the classroom was too wide open, as if I could breathe. By the end of the class I went to his desk, and he only glared up at me.

"I came for Everly," I said.

Timothy nodded, but looked down to his papers. "When?"

"Sorry?"

"When did she pass?"

"Oh," I replied, "No, Sir. Everly is very well. She's . . . we're married, now."

He glared at me again. "I didn't get an invitation to the wedding. Forgive me."

"It was small, on the Fourth of July. Everly didn't want a big fuss."

"Who walked her down the aisle?"