epilogue
“maggie, can you bring me the bag of salt from the garage?” my mother called from the front door. I got up off the couch and made my way to the foyer.
My mom was covered in fresh snow and I could see it falling from the late-January sky behind her. “I think your dad put it up on the shelf. Hurry up; this snow won’t shovel itself.” I pulled on my boots and thick wool coat. I stuffed my hands into a pair of gloves and went outside, then around to the side of the house toward the garage.
Over a month had passed and I was still trying to feel normal, like I still fit inside this life that I had once called mine. My parents kept me busy. My weekends were now filled with shopping trips and movies. My parents had decided to try their hand at some home improvements and enlisted my help in figuring out how to hang drywall and use my mother’s ancient sewing machine to make curtains.
Christmas had been hard. I had expected to hear something from Clay, but the holiday came and went. Nothing. Just silence. I tried to hide the hurt I felt, but I wasn’t fooling anyone. Rachel and Daniel had been glued to my side for the entire winter break. Even though it was a little suffocating, I appreciated their presence.
Now that we were back in class, Rachel had talked me into signing up for the school musical. I was helping out with the set design and that was eating up a lot of my downtime in the evenings. Time I would have otherwise been moping in my room.
Everyone else was trying, so why couldn’t I? Most of the time, I put on a good show. I had become practiced at pretending I wasn’t broken inside. Pretending that part of me didn’t still linger in that tiny room in the ICU where Clay and I had last been together.
“Do you need help with that?” my dad asked, as I struggled to get the bag of salt from the shelf. I gave up and let him lift it down for me. “Wow, that’s heavier than I thought. You want me to take it to your mom?”
I laughed at him. “You are so out of shape, Dad. We’re getting you on an exercise plan as soon as it’s warm,” I threatened.
My dad feigned indignation. “I’m plenty in shape.”
“Sure you are, Mr. I-eat-four-doughnuts-for-breakfast-and-a-bag-of-Doritos-for-lunch. Go on inside and let us younger, fitter people handle the heavy lifting,” I joked. My dad chuckled, but left me to my chore.
It felt good to have my relationship with my parents on the mend. Sure, they still watched me closely. But I really couldn’t blame them. I had dragged them through hell and back. I deserved their vigilance, despite how much it smothered me at times.
I wasn’t entirely sure what they were watching for, though. Clay was gone. I hadn’t heard from him or his parents since that day in the hospital waiting room. Not that I was surprised. His mother had made it very clear she wanted me to have absolutely nothing to do with her son. I had spoken to Ruby several times but she never had any information to give me. So I struggled with the betrayal that pierced my chest when I wondered why Clay hadn’t tried harder to get ahold of me. I had honestly thought his love for me was stronger than that. If the tables had been turned, I knew I would have stopped at nothing to talk to him again.
But I tried to focus on the marginal happiness I felt in knowing that, despite my not hearing from him, he was getting help somewhere. Even if it was away from me. Yeah, I didn’t wear selflessness very well.
And every time I thought of him, I ached inside and I found it hard to breathe.
I had wondered a million times how I could possibly go on living when my heart was gone. How was it possible that it still beat in my chest when it felt so empty?
“Here you go, Mom,” I said, as I let the heavy bag fall to the ground. My mom stopped shoveling and bent over to rip it open.
“Thanks, Maggie May,” she said, before scattering some salt on the sidewalk.
“I don’t know why you bother. Just wait until it stops snowing. You realize it’ll just have to be redone in the morning,” I told her, watching her freshly shoveled path disappearing under a blanket of white.
“Because it’ll be much worse in the morning if I don’t do some of it now,” she said, returning to her task.
I just shook my head and turned to go back into the house. I stopped for a moment, possessed by some childish impulse. I turned my face upward toward the sky and stuck out my tongue, letting the cold flakes melt in my mouth. I loved the snow, and it, like almost everything else, reminded me of Clay. I remembered our time at the cabin, lying together in the loft as snow fell outside and me thinking that I could never be happier than I was at that moment.
I sighed. Those memories were a blessing and a curse. I was thankful that I had them, but they hurt so much. It had to get better eventually, right? I asked myself this every single day. I slowly trudged forward, my steps feeling heavier than they had before.
I tried hard to pull it all together. I wanted to be the daughter my parents deserved, and the friend I knew Rachel and Danny needed. But it was hard to be that girl some days. Maybe it was the lack of closure. Not knowing what Clay was doing, orhowhe was doing, made it torturous.
Then there were the doubts that festered like a disease in my mind. Sometimes I found myself thinking that maybe he realized hewasbetter off without me. That what we had wasn’t as life-altering for him as it had been for me. That maybe I was alone in the love I still felt as deeply as I had from its onset. I tried to put my dismal thoughts away. Every day I tried. I couldn’t let myself get mired in them, or I’d likely find myself in the same depression I had been drowning in for too long after leaving Clay lying there in the hospital. I determined that I must go on, move forward, live my life, and be as happy as I was capable of without him. Despite how daunting and impossible the task seemed.
I caught sight of the mail truck as it skidded to a stop in front of the house. I don’t know why it made me pause, but it did. I walked out to meet the mailman. “Here, I’ll get that,” I said, forcing a smile and taking the pile of envelopes.
“Drive safely,” I told him as he got back into his truck. He thanked me and left.
My hands began to shake as I sorted through the stack of bills and junk mail. My reaction was always the same when the mail arrived. I always wished—actually, yearned—for, just once, a letter addressed to me to be in there. I hated that I repeatedly got my hopes up, but I did anyway.
But this time, I found what I was looking for. There at the bottom of the pile was a small envelope. As I pulled it out, my heart stuttered at the sight of my name written in a familiar, sloping hand. Funny how just the sight of his handwriting had the power to shred my guts.
Standing there, with snow up to my ankles, I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to rip the letter to pieces, frightened by the crippling pain that would inevitably accompany his words. But that was such a small part of the hurricane of emotions I was feeling that I hastily shoved it away. Of course I would read it. I had to. I felt compelled to, never mind the emotional wreckage it could create. It wasn’t really even an option. I most definitely would read it. Just not right now.
I folded up the letter and put it in my jeans pocket and went about the rest of my day, even as the envelope weighed me down like a stone around my neck.
