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my sorrow over Ben slipped into the background of my mind.
    Grey started on my neck and slowly worked his way around to my throat, then up to my jaw and the corner of my mouth. I pulled him closer, kissing him hard. I could feel the warmth of his palms through the thin material of my pajamas. I shivered as his thumb grazed the bare skin of my stomach above the drawstring waistband.
    Then I heard Daniel calling to Connie, and the haze that usually fell over us when we were alone together receded as if I’d heard my own father’s voice. Daniel often waited up for Grey to leave at night, or for me to come back in from being out at the guesthouse. He would sit in an armchair in a corner of the spacious main hallway, the sports section of an old newspaper open in front of him, waiting and watching. Those were the only times I ever saw him sit in that chair. He’d always pretend to be engrossed in an article, but then he’d shuffle off to bed, yawning, as soon as I closed the door behind Grey.
    Even though I knew my parents were dead, it continued to shock me every time something made me remember. Would my dad have reacted the same way to a boy being in my bedroom?  It made me sad that he’d never had the opportunity to show me that protective side of himself.
    “Hey,” Grey said quietly as he leaned forward and took my suddenly chilled hand in his own. “Where’d you go? Are you worried about Ben?”
    I shook my head and forced a small smile through my lips. “Well, yes, but I was actually thinking about my dad. I wish you could have met him. And my mom, too. And Sarah.”  And so many other people who’d been in my life not long ago.
    “I wish I could have met them, too, though I feel like I have because of how much you’ve told me about them.”  He pulled something out of his sweater pocket.  “And because of this.”  He placed the object in my hand.
    It was my father’s iPod, still warm from being in his sweater. When we went back to The Water Tower after arriving from Hoover, I found my father’s iPod in his office, tucked away in a drawer. It was the trend now to exchange MP3 players with friends, to listen to their music and then trade them back when you were done. Daniel, Connie, and Shad had already had their turns with mine, but I wasn’t ready to let my father’s go, even for exchange, except to Grey.
    He leaned across me and grabbed the earbuds on my bedside table, then pulled himself up into a sitting position and began to pick apart the tangled wire with his long, square-tipped fingers. I sat up too and leaned my head on his shoulder, watching him. He offered me one of the earbuds, and then plugged us in.
    “There’s a song I want you to hear. I’m sure you’ve probably heard it, but it’s one I keep coming back to, and I want to know the memory associated with it.”  He scrolled through the menu until he found the song and, tilting the screen away from me when I tried to see what it was, pressed play.
    A dim applause filled my ears, and with the opening strains of the orchestra, I immediately recognized the voice. A voice as strong as one of Notre Dame’s bells on a clear day in Paris.
    “Edith Piaf,” I said, smiling.
    Warmth filled my stomach as I let the tinkling piano and weeping violins carry me to the small cottage on the rocky, Ireland coast. Rain pattered against the windows, and Mamó cursed at my grandpa in Gaelic for not tending the sitting room fire. My mother was telling Mamó to lay off, and my dad was flipping the Edith Piaf record playing in the corner. Coddle stew and soda bread cooked in the kitchen, the smell filling the entire cottage. And I was on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and drying out after my wet afternoon down on the cold beach searching for fairies. I was eleven.
    I sighed and leaned further into Grey’s chest. I told him about that afternoon, and his arm went around me, pulling me closer against him.
    “Mamó told me there were fairies on the beach