Connor's POV:

I knew it was all too good to be true. After everything I had put her through, I just knew that I never deserved her back in my life, let alone her honorable hand in marriage.

Ever since we said our vows to one another at our wedding, the clock had been ticking by closer to her death. According to the autopsy of her body, she had died of apparent heart failure from all the years of stress and trauma.

Now, I kneeled down on my knees before her grave, placing another flower against the stone bearing her name in permanent engraving. It had now been a whole month since her death and it was a tradition of mine to give her a blossom of some variety, something to remind God that I had not forgotten her.

Today, it was a marigold I gave her, the flower of grief and heartbreak. My fingers ached to reach out and trace the letters of her name etched into the smooth stone, but part of me was afraid to even touch the very thing marking where my wife lay underground in her cold bedchamber.

Only by now, she was lifeless forever, with no signs of being revived. How many times had I been there to watch her fall asleep, to see her eyes close in a peaceful manner and listen to her calm breathing? Or when I would wake up before her in the mornings and just lay there beside her in our bed, silently treasuring the mere sight of her, the slow rise and fall of her bosom as she breathed in and out. Along with the way my own heart raced for a few seconds when her eyes would flutter open and she would greet me with her lovely smile despite the sleep still present within them…

She would never awaken from this slumber she was in. The life within her, the trait I loved most about her was vanished into Heaven, leaving behind only her deathly still body, where she had expired in my arms…

It was like people said: You never really know how much you love somebody until they're gone.

But why did it have to be now? And why did our unborn baby have to suffer with her? Why was God punishing our whole family like this?

All I had wanted was to love and care for…her. What was so fucking wrong about that? We had our disagreements and fights, but nothing she did would ever change how I felt about her. Everything she did was out of devotion to the people she cared about, even if it may not have seemed like the right thing to do.

Perhaps it was because I had corrupted her innocence, turned her into an impoverished single mother with no opportunity to turn her life around from the mess I had transformed it into. And now I was being rightly punished years later by having her die silently in my arms.

"Danielle." My voice managed to choke out the three syllables forming her name. The childlike portion of my subconscious longed to hope that her spirit was still with me. I remembered how her touch felt on my skin, no matter what kind of gesture of affection it was.

My eyes closed tightly against the approaching sting of the tears until I felt the cool caress of the breeze on my cheek…

Was she here with me now…?

The gentle wind blew once again on my skin, perhaps imitating the feel of her fingertips along my jaw.

My hands were pressed on the ground, green blades of grass tickling my knuckles in a somewhat teasing manner… The feel of her tiny hands holding my bigger ones in their loving grasp.

Opening my eyes again, I attempted to come to my senses when I saw something moving beyond my peripheral vision. It wasn't shaped like a person, but I could see something move out of the dusky light of the evening, just on the hilltop. I knew the creature wasn't large enough to be one of my horses, but my suspicion calmed into curiosity as my sight cleared from the tears and I was able to focus.

It was an animal watching me. The brownish-red tint of fur distinguished it as a red deer, a doe to be exact. Her head wasn't crowned with antlers like her male counterpart, so it was easy for me to tell.

Neither of us moved as our eyes connected. The doe was undoubtedly a magnificent creature, especially since I hadn't encountered any of them myself before. But, what the hell was it doing here?

She took a couple steps toward me. Not close enough to threaten me, just to observe me. But none of this made sense. A deer's instinct was to run from humans. Why was this gorgeous animal watching me grieve?

Her vibrant black eyes only contemplated me as she took in my posture, kneeling before a rock implanted in the ground. The doe's ears perched forward, as if she was asking me something in her own docile way. Now that she was closer for me to see, her beauty was more obvious to me as a human admiring one of God's subjects of nature.

Then, it came to me… The strange doe watching me, keeping vigil on me from afar was her. In God's own way, she was with me again, if only for a brief moment. Perhaps I was sinking into my own madness, but a majority of me wanted to believe that she was here with me now, just not in the form of a woman. She was around me, her spirit was.

I chuckled to myself, squeezing my eyes shut as my heart burst with something I couldn't comprehend right away. When I looked back up to see the doe again, she was gone.

The energy in my chest increased as the wind blew into my face again…her voice whispering that she wasn't completely vanished. She had given me back hope…

Maybe now I could take the small steps to come to terms with her death. It wouldn't be at all simple, but it would be the best way to honor her precious memory.

The breeze disappeared from my face, but just when I no longer felt it on my skin, I heard the faintest of whispers from the air as I inhaled a deep breath to unwind from what had just occurred.

"I love you, Connor."