Gabriel looked so tortured, so heartbroken; her heart was bleeding, too. She understood grief, and now she understood love because she would give everything she had to ease his torment, to lessen the burden he had carried around all these years. The room fell silent, except for the sound of his ragged breathing and she pushed herself out of the chair and walked around to kneel at his side. “Now I know why God saw fit to bring us together,” she said stroking his arm. “Why I seem to understand what you’ve been searching for.” He dragged his hand down his face, the strain of suppressed emotion evident. “How can you know the question? How can you know what drives me when I don’t even know myself?” “Because I know what grief is, Gabriel. I know what it is to want to turn back the clock and make everything right again. I know how it spins us into its web until there is no life beyond, so we are stuck, clinging to the silken thread hoping we can survive a bit longer. I know all we can do is search for the answer to the question — what can I do to live a day without the pain of grief?”
