It was hard for me to look at that picture the first time I saw it, so many months after Trent’s death—hard not to feel the sharp pang of loss all over again. But it was impossible not to be moved by what I saw captured in that photo, and the raw emotion on Colton Thomas’s face. It made me want to know him. And after months without any reply to my letter, it was through his sister’s words and pictures that I started to.
I went through all of Shelby’s posts and, with them, constructed parallel time lines. On the day we buried Trent, Colton had the first biopsy of his new heart and showed no signs of rejection. Nine days later, he was strong enough to walk out of the hospital and return home with his family, and I was too weak to attend the last day of my junior year without Trent. I spent the summer, and then my senior year, suspended in a haze of grief. Colton spent that time getting stronger, impressing doctors with his progress. Healing. I didn’t know it at the time, but months after Trent’s death, when I wrote my anonymous letter to the anonymous male, 19, from California, he was doing everything in his power to move forward and move on. And then yesterday I decided I needed to see him to do the same.
Now I don’t know what comes next.
I scroll back up to the most recent post on Shelby’s blog, written weeks ago, on day 365. The anniversary of Trent’s death, and of Colton’s second chance at life. The beginning point of our parallel time lines. I brought them together yesterday, though that should be the end of it. There shouldn’t be any “sometime.” But then I think of him standing there on the porch smiling at me, with the sun shining down on us like an invitation, and regardless of what it should be, it doesn’t feel like the end.
A knock on the door interrupts the thought before it can go any further. I recognize the quick, staccato raps, and I know it’s Gran. I also know she’ll only knock once more before she uses her key to let herself in and starts up the stairs to see why I haven’t answered. She’s surprisingly fast for an eighty-year-old, so I snap my laptop shut, finger-comb my hair, and get up from my desk just as I hear the second knock. I cross the room quickly, but the sight of Colton’s flower on my dresser stops me for a moment. It lies right beneath the picture of me and Trent, and the now-crumbling flower he gave me that first day.
My eyes go straight to him, and his smile freezes me there. I tense reflexively, wait for the familiar tightness in my chest to come. But it doesn’t. I glance down at the new flower again. “Was this you?” I whisper.
Though I know it’s not possible, I almost expect an answer this time. But just like all the other times, the only thing I hear in the silence around me is the beating of my own heart. An undeniable reminder of a once-unfathomable truth: that I am still here even though he’s not.
“Well, look at you,” Gran says, taking off her Jackie O sunglasses when I get to the top of the stairs.
“Look at you,” I answer with a smile.
She holds out her arms and does a little spin. “Everyone always does, doll.”
They have good reason to, especially today. Gran’s dressed in her red and purple “full regalia,” as she and her Red Hat Society ladies call it. Her feisty group of “women of a certain age” proudly wear clashing combinations as a symbol of the fact that they’re old enough not to care. The glitzier the better. And Gran was born glitzy. Today she has chosen purple leggings with a matching flowing top, a red feather boa, and her signature wide-brimmed red hat with a tall plume of purple feathers that continue to float and bob in the air above her even after she stops moving.
When I get to the bottom of the stairs, she spreads out her arms and envelops me in a hug of feathers and her familiar Gran scent of Estée Lauder, Pond’s cold cream, and peppermint Lifesavers. I breathe it in and hug her right back before she pulls away and takes a good, long look at me.
“How are you?” she asks, turning my chin from side to side. “Something is different here. . . .”
My hand goes to the three stitches in my lip, and she waves her hand dismissively. “No, not that. That just makes your lip seem full and pouty.” She angles my chin once more, turning it to one side and then the other, and I hold my breath. Gran has a way of looking at you that feels like she’s actually looking into you, and today it makes me nervous about what she might see.
“I dunno,” she says finally, dropping her hand. I exhale. “You look good today. Good enough you should’ve made it to brunch with me and the girls.”
I smile at this. “The girls” who make up her chapter of the Red Hat Society are all seventy plus, but you really would never know it. They’re a rowdy bunch. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I was pretty tired after yesterday.”
Gran gives a quick nod. “Well. I’m glad you’re up and about. We’ve got work to do. Brownies. Twenty-five dozen of ’em for our booth at the fair.”
“Wow.”
“Wow is right. Now come help me with the groceries.”
We unload the car, Gran dons her red apron as I preheat the oven, and then the two of us get down to the business of baking. It’s one of my favorite ways to spend time with Gran. She directs and I follow, and we fall into a rhythm of cracking eggs, and measuring, and stirring, sometimes talking the whole time, sometimes quiet, in our own thoughts. Today we stay quiet for a little while, but I know it won’t last. She waits until I pour my first batch of batter into the greased pan to start with the questions.
“So,” she says, not so casually, “your mother says you had your little fender bender over at the coast yesterday? That you went driving over there without telling anyone?”
I busy myself with the spatula, scraping all the batter from the bowl, feeling bad about taking off and worrying my parents, not to mention getting into an accident.
“Were you on the prowl?” she asks with a mischievous grin.
“What?” I laugh. Her question surprises me, even though nothing about her should surprise me anymore. “On the prowl?”