When she was 13, her schoolgirl crush on Adam Estep was so strong, she filled six diaries with fantasies about him. In a tiny bottle, she kept lint from his pocket, two Tic Tacs he had held in his palm, and a pink shard of spoon from Baskin-Robbins that had touched his lips.

Two months ago, she married him. Now, at 20, Demara Estep is a widow.

Sgt. Adam Estep, 23, of Campbell, who graduated from Prospect High School in 1999, was killed in Iraq on Thursday. A rocket-propelled grenade hit his vehicle near Baghdad. He died on the way to the hospital.

He was the second soldier from the San Jose area to die in action during the past two weeks. The first, Pat Tillman, who died in Afghanistan, made national news because he had given up a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to serve his country. Adam Estep, though, left behind the bride he called ``my dear and darling Demarally.''

Demara Estep received the news Thursday in her University of California-Santa Barbara dorm room. By Friday night, she had returned to her father's San Jose home.

She brought with her a shoe box filled with memories -- the Tic Tacs and lint she had saved, his first valentine and a pile of letters he had sent since being deployed to Iraq in March. They weren't just simple letters in white envelopes. Adam Estep loved to draw, and when he wrote his wife's name on the envelope, it became a piece of art.

Like Tony singing about Maria in ``West Side Story,'' the name Demara (a name taken from the Greek word meaning gentle girl) took on a new dimension when Estep committed it to paper. D-E-M-A-R-A he drew in bold block letters. Demara, he wrote like a streak of lightning. Demara, he sketched with gossamer details of shadow and light.

In his letters, he wrote of helping his injured comrades and watching them die, about the pain of holding back tears and the relief of letting them flow. He doodled in the margins -- his wife on his shoulders catching a butterfly, himself lying on a beach towel next to his Humvee reading a book, a fallen soldier's helmet, boots, rifle and dog tags.

``If by some chance I don't make it back, well, I want you to be happy,'' he wrote in mid-April, in one of the last letters she received. ``I love you, Demara, more than I can say or do anything about. Take care of yourself and please do whatever you can to be happy. Until then, I'll be back as soon as I can.''

He signed it, ``Your ever loving husband and collector of your kisses, Adam.''

They had so little time together.

Adam Estep was her big brother's best friend. She was 13 and he was 15 when they met. He was the first boy to hold her hand. They dated briefly when she was 15, but as much as she was smitten, ``I wasn't ready for all the boyfriend stuff.''

A year-and-a-half ago, while he was deep into his military service and stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, they got serious. They had long talks on the phone. He sent her flowers and letters. Their time together was limited to his occasional weekends on leave.

When he told her in late February that he was being shipped to Iraq, he proposed. She accepted. She wanted to give him something more to live for.

Her father, Rick Miller, objected at first. They were so young. Her husband would be 10,000 miles away and could be injured, maimed, killed. But they were determined. In five days, the couple planned a wedding. Everything fell into place: She bought the first wedding dress she tried on, a family friend offered his back yard for the ceremony, the rainy weather cleared for the wedding day. Her father gave his blessing.

``It felt so right,'' she said. ``Everybody felt that whatever happened, it was going to be OK.''

They spent their wedding night at the Fairmont in downtown San Jose, then he drove her back to Santa Barbara. He flew back to Texas the next day and was in Baghdad two weeks later. He was proud of being a soldier.

``Even though you say you wouldn't have married me YET if I hadn't been leaving,'' he wrote in his last letter to her, acknowledging her chides about their quick wedding, ``our marriage and your love and support have been exactly what I need.''

He had dreamed about going to college and studying art. She would be a marriage and family therapist. They would have a house with a blue bedroom and he would paint fairies on the walls. They would have children -- and money, ``but not so much that we could get full of ourselves,'' she said. ``We just wanted to be happy and grow old together.''

She gains solace from her faith -- she is Mormon, and her husband had converted -- and believes they will be together for eternity.

She will return to Santa Barbara and -- as he asked her to -- try to be happy. But for now, in San Jose this weekend, she is grieving in the arms of her family and his -- and keeping her old diaries and his letters close.

Just two days before he died, they talked on the phone. He told her three more letters were on the way.

She expects them any day.