And, unless I get hit by a bus, I don’t think I’m dying any time soon.
I’m in remission.
The doctors can’t explain it, and I don’t understand it, but I’m so grateful to get a second chance. When Carter found me in the library he called for an ambulance and did CPR until they arrived. I believe he saved my life. The paramedics said I was clinically dead for seven minutes, but then they resuscitated me. So in some ways, Thanatos was right—I did die on the day they predicted—but then I came back. When I was in the hospital—after they pumped my stomach—the doctors did a few tests. In the months that followed, my tumors started getting smaller. Maybe there is something to be said for sea air after all.
Life has changed a lot in the last year. Sunday and I have moved into Spyglass and made the place our home. Giving the house backto me was the least Harrison could do given the circumstances. He didn’t tell me he was the CEO of Thanatos—I found out by accident—and then he still let me believe I was definitely going to die that day. Even after everything we had gone through together, his work was still more important than the mother of his child. Since he sold the company for a staggering amount of money, and now that we are on better terms, he confessed to me that the AI algorithm doesn’t always get a person’s date of death correct. But I almost died because of his lies.
Death is as uncertain as life.
Everything. Can. Change.
Everything.
Accepting that things change and learning to navigate wrong turns is the secret to a happy life. No prediction is ever one hundred percent certain, that’s why it’s calleda prediction. Accurately predicting a person’s death is like predicting the weather; rarely accurate. Almost impossible to get right. But lies tend to be more profitable and easier to sell than the truth.
I’ve made a few changes to my life and I’m trying to take better care of myself. I’m choosing to live every day as though it were my first, and learning to appreciate the little things again. The things we think don’t matter but do. Seeing the wonder all around us that I’ve been blind to has changed my perspective. I’ve started running with Sunday and I love how it makes me feel. We like to go out at dawn; it seems like a positive way to start the day. As we leave Spyglass this morning, and jog down the hill toward the village, I see clouds of my own breath. It makes me inexplicably happy, because it reminds me that I’m alive.
Stepping into Hope Falls still feels like stepping back in time, and I am part of the history here now too, even if nobody knows it. I wind my way through the network of narrow lanes and cobbled streets tightly packed with tiny terraced houses, pass The Smuggler’s Inn—where Carter’s mum and dad are the landlords again—andcarry on running toward the seafront. I pass the church and glance at my favorite headstone in the graveyard. The one belonging to my grandmother. I don’t know why she didn’t try harder to find me after Mum died. Maybe, like me, she made the mistake of thinking it was kinder to stay away, thought that someone else would do a better job. History has an unfortunate habit of repeating itself in most families. What I do know is that thanks to the woman who died twice, I got a second chance at life.
I keep running, past the Driftwood Café and the art gallery, and toward the coast path, with Sunday trotting at my side. The sun is just starting to rise when we reach the harbor, and I am greeted by panoramic views of the sunrise over the ocean. Lines of bobbing fishing boats decorate the waterfront, and a flight of swallows swoops and soars above them. There are so many it’s as though the sky itself is made of birds, blue shapes flying between them. By the time I turn onto the coast path, the sun is high in the sky over a turquoise sea. It really is beautiful here and I feel so lucky to call this place my home.
I run with the wind in my face and the sound of the sea in my ears and propel myself up the hill to the waterfall before heading farther inland and onto the moor. I know some people run to get away from it all, but I run because it makes me feel alive and free, and I love that I always end up back where I started. Home. I’m even happier than normal to be home today. As soon as I get inside I plan to have a nice bath, put on my favorite loungewear—my joggers with the rainbow stripe and an old eighties sweatshirt—then I’m going to read a good book. With my own lovely little library at Spyglass there are always plenty to choose from.
When I reach the front gate I stop to catch my breath, stare up at the old house with a bird-shaped knocker reinstated on the front door, and am once again filled with a mix of gratitude and astonishment that I am somehow still here. Everyone got their happy ending in the end. Carter got promoted, he and his wife are mortgage free, and his parents are back at The Smuggler’s Inn. Harrison sold hiscompany and moved to Switzerland with Mary. Gabriella is being properly cared for by people who love her, and I came home to Hope Falls.
I like who I am now. We’re all built from invisible scars, building blocks of heartbreak, shame, regret, disappointment making us taller, stronger, harder to knock down. And I’m grateful to have a perfect ending for the story of my imperfect life.
I hurry up the garden path to Spyglass and go to put my key in the front door.
It doesn’t seem to fit in the lock, so I try again.
It still doesn’t work and I don’t understand.
I experience a strange sense of déjà vu even though this has never happened to me before. But itdidhappen to Eden. I know that because it was my idea.
I stare at the key, then at the door.
Then I have a word with myself and try one last time.
The relief I feel when the door opens is so overwhelming that at first I don’t realize that the key didn’t make it happen. Someone else opened the door from the inside and now she is standing there, staring at me.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
I don’t speak. Instead I just stand there and stare back.
She’s wearingmyjoggers with the rainbow stripe, andmyeighties sweatshirt.
“I didn’t say you could wear my clothes! Who do you think you are?”
She smiles and whispers, “I’m Gabriella and this is my house now.”
My daughter lives with her father in Switzerland and visits me once a month. My little girl is nineteen, and I’ve been trying to make up for lost time. Sunday adores her just as much as I do and the feeling is mutual. Gabriella’s voice is still quiet, but that’s the only thing about her that is. We have matching senses of humor andtattoos—she got a swallow like mine—and I think she’s forgiven me for being gone so long. Life is an invisible cage for birds who don’t learn to see the bars it builds around them. When the door is left open you have to fly. I think she locks the doors all the time because that’s what they did at The Manor.
“Please stop locking the front door from the inside when I go out. There is nothing to be afraid of here,” I say, giving her a hug.
“Sorry, Mum,” she whispers.
Every time she calls me that it feels like my heart mends.
