At the funeral, a number of people talked about how losing a child was the worst thing that could happen to a person. It took me a while, but I thought I understood why it was so hard. It wasn’t just the little human being you mourned. It was the stories that were so closely connected to them too.
From the moment Jessica told me she was pregnant, I wrote a script in my head about how our life would be. The delivery. First steps. First birthday. First day of kindergarten. Then there’d be the first boyfriend. First broken heart. And as the years passed, there’d be the drama of driving a car. Next would come prom. Graduation. The wedding day, with me walking my daughter down the aisle, giving her away.
So many stories that didn’t get to happen. Parents left to mourn them all.
I’d never get through this if I focused on all the bad. Searching my brain, I tried a different tactic, something that helped me feel closer instead of so separate.
“Remember how I always complained about you stealing my covers?”
I chuckled. It didn’t matter how many blankets we put on the bed, Jessica would be rolled up like a burrito in them all the next morning, leaving me shivering in the ten inches of bed she left me as I hung off the side.
“Guess what? I learned to flip and omelet.”
Zoe had cheered and high fived me when I finally accomplished the simple task. Had that been only two days ago?
“About that…”
I scrubbed my face with my hands. Why was this so hard? Had my isolation made me crazy? Jess was dead. She couldn’t hear me. But it also felt good to be having this honest conversation, get it out of my mind where it was driving me nuts.
“There’s this girl. This woman. She kind of just appeared. I wasn’t looking for anyone to replace you…”
Dammit. I swiped at my face again.
“Jess, I’m going after her, just like I went after you. And if she’ll have me, I’m going to build a life with her. But I’ll never forget you. I’ll never stop missing you. And the place that you own inside my heart will always be yours.”
I stood, my knees cracking from the effort, making me feel like the old man Zoe teased me about. Leaning down, I placed my hand on the cold stone.
“I hope, if there’s any way you’re hearing this, that you can rest easier knowing that I’ll be okay. Kiss our baby girl, hold her tight for me.” My throat seized, emotion choking off my breath. “Daddy loves you. I love you both.”
I stood there, the sun shining down on the cool day, knowing it was time to go. I’d done what needed doing, faced what I’d been hiding from.
“Bye.”
Then I turned from my past and strode toward my future.
If my future would have me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Zoe
The late evening sun was setting, casting ribbons of brilliant color over the westerly sky.
Lisbeth stood alone at her bedchamber window, breathing in the cool autumn evening, watching the leaves from her favorite oak tree flutter to the ground.
“To everything there is a season…”
My voice cracked as I read that line to my mother. Lifting my gaze from the laptop before me, I watched another type of season end as time ticked away on the life of Cynthia Diane Meadows.
I blew out a breath and began reading again.
“Every season is beautiful, my love,” Byron said, encircling his hand around her rounding waist, lowering his lips to her hair.
Lisbeth turned in his arms, pressing her cheek to his chest. The dark green silk of her skirts swished and settled between them. She ran a hand over his lapel, caressing the silk. “Did you get your business arrangement settled?”
She looked up just in time to see the scowl crease his brow. He was still worried, she realized. His silence was an eloquent declaration. After the grandfather clock ticked nearly a minute away, he finally answered. “It was carried out by proxy.”
Though her relief was great, Lisbeth dared not release the audible sigh lingering in her chest. There was safety in ignorance at times, and for now, she was content to allow the silence to stretch between them... for a few moments.
When she could bear it no longer, she asked, “And you are still displeased?”
The scowl returned. “I shall remain displeased until the bastards hang, my love.”
She shivered. Should she hang too? For also wanting such an end to her family? The man and woman who gave her life only to attempt to take it from her in such a way.
I stopped reading again and turned my attention back to my mother. If there was some small part of her that could hear my words, they needed to be said.
“It wasn’t right what your parents did to you, Mom. They stripped you of the life you were destined to live. In my book, Lisbeth escapes their clutches. She turns the tables on them.” I squeezed Mom’s fingers. “I wished you could have escaped.”
What if my grandparents hadn’t been money hungry sadists? What if they had been normal parents to Cynthia and hadn’t driven her into the sex industry?
Would my mother have been a school teacher? A nurse? And what of me? Would she have married a man with a normal sized dick, had me and maybe a few others?
So many question marks, and those were only the beginning.
If my grandparents had been normal and had created a normal child, who then created a normal me… would that mean I’d never have met Gray? Never had a need to isolate myself in a cabin, working in a career that allowed me to live as far away from other humans as I was able?
My head was beginning to ache, my eyes red and scratchy. My ulcer was throbbing in my gut.
“Can I get you anything? Water? Tea?”
I glanced up at the nurse who had taken over the care for my mother at the seven o’clock shift change hours ago. I smiled my thanks and glanced at her tag clipped to her pocket so I could remember her name. “Unless you have a bottle of tequila stashed away somewhere, I’ll keep sipping on this water. But thank you, Jean. I appreciate the offer.”
She laughed and nodded, her short gray bob swaying around her face with the effort. She had a kindly face, laugh creases at her eyes and mouth, strong looking hands that looked as if they were used to working hard. “If there was tequila around, it wouldn’t last long around here, believe you me.”
I looked around the sterile room to the sterile hallway on the other side of the door. Listened to the incessant beeping of machines, the hissing and sucking of respirators. It was so very different from where I was this morning, inside a silent cabin, no sounds but the crackling fire and click, click, click.
I missed Maggie.
I missed Go.
I missed Gray.
Why had my rescue team come at the exact wrong moment? Why hadn’t we had time to talk about the pictures, the video camera, the way he had “watched” over me? If Mom hadn’t been dying, I would have stayed, we could have been able to talk it through. Maybe fight. Maybe makeup. Was that part of my fate? To have happiness right at my fingertips only to have it yanked away?
Those questions again.
“It’s nice what you’re doing,” Jean said, changing a fluid bag on the IV pole. An unnecessary cost I was creating because I wasn’t ready to let Mom go.
At my confused look, Jean nodded to my laptop. “Finishing your book so she can know the ending.”