Chapter 12: The Girl Who Never Called Him Back, and the One Who Never
Stopped
The Last Weight
By the end, Stephen had stopped pretending he could tie everything up neatly.
There would be no final phone call, no perfect apology, no dramatic reunion wrapped in bows and tidy endings.
Real love rarely ends with closure.
It ends with weight.
With what you carry.
With what you leave behind.
In his home, Josh had drawers filled with old letters. Photos she’d sent. Screenshots of messages. Receipts from when she needed help, and he sent it — without hesitation.
Most of it she never asked to be saved. But he saved it anyway. Not because he was sentimental… But because he knew someday she’d need proof she was loved.
What Honey would never fully grasp is what it cost him to keep choosing her.
Not just financially — though that part was staggering.
($70,000 across years, quietly forgiven, quietly replaced by his mother so that Honey would never have to carry that burden.)
No — The real cost was in what it did to his spirit.
To keep believing in her when she doubted herself.
To fight for her when she aligned herself with the wrong people.
To stay loyal when the entire world said, “She doesn’t deserve you.”
But here’s the thing:
He didn’t love her because she was perfect.
He loved her because she was his.
His Chava.
His rib.
His echo from Eden.
Even when she was silent, even when she was harsh, even when she shut him out — he never shut the door on her.
He prepared things she didn’t know about:
- Legacy folders.
- Letters only to be opened after he was gone.
- Documents explaining how to claim benefits.
- Passwords entrusted to Sheri.
- A single, final will with her name in ink — so that no one could take away what he left.
He never told her all this directly. Because he knew how she was. She would have felt guilty. She might’ve pushed it away.
So instead, he simply did what he always did:
He loved quietly.
But completely.
Some people measure love in anniversaries.
Josh measured it in presence.
- The night she got sick in 2019? He stayed on video until she fell asleep.
- When her child needed birthday gifts? He sent the money, but always made it feel like she had given it.
- When she started to pull away? He wrote emails anyway, even if they went unanswered.
What was left behind?
Enough to build a monument.
But what was never let go?
Her.
Even when he saw the truth about Marge.
Even when he collapsed in Oregon and realized he might not make it another year.
Even when he cried alone in the hospital room, confused and slurring, the first name out of his mouth was:
“Honey.”
She will never fully know the depth of his devotion.
But maybe one day… she’ll open an envelope. Or play a song. Or hear her daughter whisper,
“Did you love him back?”
And she’ll pause — the way you do when memory tightens your throat — and say:
“Yes. Maybe too late… but yes.”