The day I lost my Ren.
Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days without him.
Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days of soul-deep sorrow.
But I wasn’t a girl left behind with the luxury of grief. I was mother to the best son in the world, and for him, I woke in the morning even when the darkness was acute. I kept living even while my sadness was constant. I helped Cassie with her horse business. I rode often for mental and spiritual health. I learned how to run our acreage and hire help when required.
And John was true to his vow to Ren, always there for me when the loneliness of missing a soulmate became too much.
Life had been gentle even after being so cruel.
And through it all, I had a contract with love.
A contract I did my best to uphold.
I never dared pity myself or begrudge my grief.
I was never angry that I’d loved the best man in the world and lost him.
Ren had given me his legacy, and together, me and Jacob would be okay.
Every day, I spoke to Ren as if he were there beside me.
He was in the sun, the sky, the meadow, the forest.
He was in everything. Waiting. Loving. Watching. And I lived every day for him because I knew a time would come when we would find each other again, and I’d have the honour of regaling a lifetime of tales.
I accepted each new sunrise without Ren. I endured each new sunset without Ren.
I chose to continue because that was what he wanted and that was what I owed.
After a lifetime of sacrifice, it was now my turn.
My turn to keep moving, keep fighting, keep living.
And I did.
I accepted I’d had my epic love story.
I was one of the lucky ones.
And I didn’t want another.
My heart was Ren’s—no matter where he was—and it would stay his until we met again.
At least, my family understood that.
No one dared murmur I would get over him.
No one dared encourage me to put my past behind me and open my heart for another.
No one dared because they knew the truth.
The truth that a love like Ren and I had…it was once in a lifetime.
And it wasn’t over yet.
The five stages of grief didn’t matter.
There were no five stages for me.
And I didn’t want there to be.
I didn’t want the wound to heal because I never wanted to be anything less than Ren’s. I still touched him in my dreams, kissed him in my thoughts, and accepted that I might endure in a world without him, but I would see him again.
I knew that.
And I could be patient.
“Mom!” Jacob’s voice rang through the sun-dappled house. “Moomm!”
“What is it?” I pressed a hand to my forehead, pushing aside my melancholy thoughts, tucking them into the pocket of my heart where yearning was a regular friend.
“Package for you. Need you to sign!”
Abandoning my laundry folding, I cut through the living room to the front door where a deliveryman stood on the veranda and held out an e-tablet. “You Mrs Wild?”
I’d long stopped scolding myself at the sharp intake of breath whenever anyone called me that. I both loved and despised that name. “Yes. I am.”
“Sign here, please.”
I took his tablet, scribbled on the scratched screen, and passed it back to him. “What is it?”
“Dunno, but it’s heavy. Need help carting it inside?” He raised an eyebrow beneath his red cap.
Jacob ducked to his haunches, testing the large box. “She doesn’t need help. She has me.”
I chuckled under my breath, running my fingertips over his dirty-blond head as he stood and huffed. “Ugh, it’s too heavy.”
“We’ll do it together,” I said.
“Leave you guys to it.” The delivery guy tapped his cap in farewell and bounded off the veranda. My eyes tracked him as the sun glinted off the windscreen of his van, obscuring him just enough to show a tall man running through the garden, giving me a millisecond fantasy that it was Ren.
Tears welled.
Pain manifested.
And I closed the door on the illusion.
“Wait. The package.” Jacob rolled his dark chocolate eyes at me, so much like Ren’s I sometimes forgot he was part of me and merely saw the boy who’d saved my life.
In a way, he had saved my life…just like his father.
Without him, I wouldn’t have continued trying.
Ren had saved me when I was a baby.
And his son had saved me when I was a woman.
Two boys of ten years old.
Two boys of my heart.
Charging toward the kitchen, he came skidding back with a pair of scissors.
My hands clamped on my hips. “What have I told you, Jacob Wild? No running with sharp implements.” Just like his father, he always had a knife on his person for slicing through ropes and other farm necessities. I was surprised he’d chosen scissors instead of the Swiss Army blade in his pocket.
The blade I was constantly fishing out before washing.
“Yeah, yeah.” He rolled his eyes again before falling to his knees and cutting the tape on the box.
Uncle John sometimes did this—delivered boxes of goodies from things he’d ordered online for Jacob and me.
Care packages, I called them.
Love reminders, he called them.
Either way, this wasn’t one of those as Jacob tore out brown paper packaging and yanked out a book nestled with countless other books.
A book that my eyes skimmed, discarded, then shot back to with a cry.
A book that took the strength in my legs and crashed me to the floor.
“I-I don’t understand.” Tears streamed down my face, obscuring the blue cover with a lonely boy walking in a blizzard. A boy almost hidden by the title and wrapped up in a blue satin ribbon.
“The Boy and His Ribbon by Della and Ren Wild,” Jacob muttered, reading eloquently and smoothly. His eyes flashed to mine. “Mom? Did you and Dad write this?”
My head shook blindly as I held out my hand.
Hardback.
Freshly printed.
Heavy as a gravestone.
It tingled in my hands, warm and alive and filled with ghosts.
What has he done?
“Mom?” Jacob asked again, but for once, I couldn’t put him first. I couldn’t assure him. I couldn’t push aside my own selfish pain. Jacob missed his father as much as I did…but he’d had Ren for ten years. I’d had him for thirty-two.
In this…my heart was cruel.
Standing on shaking legs, I couldn’t tear my eyes off the cover, desperate to open it, petrified to read it.
“I…I’m going for a walk, Wild One. Okay?” My voice broke and patched together, thicker and rougher than before. “I…I won’t go far.”
“Mom?” His voice rose with worry. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” I drifted forward as if my legs were no longer made of sinew and bone but air and storm cloud. “I-I’m fine.” I repeated, desperate to believe it.
I left my son.
I was a bad mother.
I abandoned my role and slipped back into a girl who missed her boy with every frisson of her soul.
I didn’t know how long I walked, but finally, when the shadow strings of willow leaves enveloped me and the grotto where so many things had happened whispered it would keep me safe, I sank to the earth and opened the book.
The first page was copyright jargon.
The second, print information.
The third, the title.
The fourth…the dedication.
For Della and Jacob.
I keeled over, rocking the book to my chest, sobs wrenched from my very toes.
No.
I hadn’t cried this badly…well, since the funeral.
I never let myself go.
Never could.
Never allowed.
I had to be strong for Jacob.
But that strength was now shattered and in pieces on the ground.
Four simple words.
Four words that broke me.
They broke me.
Ren.
His voice danced on the breeze as if he’d never gone. His wild scent of smoke and freedom swirled in my lungs. And the gentle, delicious pressure of his hand on my cheek forced me to look down at the pages, tear smudged and turning translucent.
Read, the breeze murmured.
Listen, the willow whispered.
Heal, the forest begged.
With another sob, I flipped the page.
A letter to the reader.
A letter from beyond.
Dear Reader,