When it rains in the desert

7 years

Dear Celia,

Shit.

It's been seven years. Seven years since I last spoke to you. Seven years since I last heard you laugh. Seven years since I felt a kiss pressed to my forehead. Seven years since I felt your heart stop beating.

I don't think I can do this Ceils. I've made it this far but I think it's as far as I go. I have a pile of letters in my closet that grows every single day, I write to you every single day. I have seven years worth of letters in my closet that have no where to go but every time I sit down to write to you, I lose a piece of myself.

It was Rory's 12th birthday two weeks ago, She's growing into such a beautiful person. I mean she gets her looks from Lia, but she has a cheekiness about her, a bubbliness that I know she got from you.

I see you in her, in the way she knows she's mischievous. In the  way she runs outside when the moon is out, in the way she becomes stubborn about everything, in the way she's independent, even as a 12 year old.

I still love you Celia. It seems stupid. How can you still love someone who's no longer here but I feel it. In my bones. I can still feel the same love I had for you the day I met you.

If anything it feels magnified. I feel like knowing I can't have you anymore makes the love more.

The main reason I needed to write to you was because I finally decided on a place. I signed the papers today and it's finally happening. I'm opening my own law firm. You're the first person I've told. It only felt right that I tell you first.

As I was deciding I felt you there. For some reason I imagined how you'd decorate the place, how you'd put a black desk in my office and a vase of roses at the window.

It's a weird thing. To go from wishing you weren't alive to slowly feeling things get better. I think what I did wrong for seven years was to try and live the way I lived before you. When you wrote to me you split your life into three. I have three too. My life before you, my life with you and then my life without you.

It was hard to make that distinction, to realise I could never go back to before you, I had to learn to live without you, after you'd made your mark in my heart. After you'd made me a different person

I have a lot to do yet and the place needs a lot of work before we can open it properly but I have my first employee. Of course it's Henry. He's turning into a great lawyer. He went from being my assistant to a paralegal and last year he graduated from law school.

He's working his way up so when I offered him the job he jumped at me. I don't know what it is about him, I think it's his loyalty that I admire. The fact that he's willing to leave his job at Jackson and Jackson to follow me, even though we have to build it from scratch.

But I couldn't have done it without you Celia. I'm trying to live our life to the fullest and I hope i'm doing a good job. I hope you're proud.

Of course I'm saving the best surprise for last. We've known for a while now but we're getting a new addition to the family! Yup. Lia and Mark are having a baby, they're giving me another niece and I'm already in love with her.

It seems absolutely bonkers that I can love a child that doesn't even exist yet. Are you ready to hear what we're going to call her?  Natalie Celia Newman.

I love you Celia Lockheart . Always.