“Hey, you guys. Sorry I haven’t visited. Truth is I was trying my best to run from you, because I didn’t know how to live without you. I abandoned you and went searching for a replacement. For someone who didn’t even exist, because I couldn’t imagine not having a family anymore. I couldn’t imagine living in a world where you both weren’t. I don’t know how to do this without you. I don’t know how to exist…so just tell me what to do. Please. I’m so fucking lost. I don’t think I can do this without you.” My heart pounded against my chest as I slid down to the ground, finally allowing myself to feel the loss of Jamie and Charlie. They were my world. Charlie was my heart, and Jamie was my soul, and I’d let them down by turning away from them both. By not mourning their memory the way they deserved. “Please wake me up. Wake me up. Wake me up and tell me I’m stronger than I think I am. Wake me up and tell me my heart isn’t breaking anymore.”

I stayed with them until the sun began to set. My arms were wrapped around my kneecaps, and I stayed still, staring at the words on the stones. Missing people, missing the ones who knew you better than you knew yourself left emptiness inside of you. I tried to fill that emptiness, but maybe it was supposed to be left hollow inside my heart.

Each day, I felt the hurt, the memories. Each day, they both crossed my mind; I guessed that was the blessing behind the broken heart.

“If I could tell you a secret, Jamie, I would tell you that I still love her. I would tell you that Elizabeth is something good and right in the world. I would tell you she’s the reason I started to breathe again. So what am I supposed to do? How do I start to move on from her knowing that she can’t be mine? I just wish…” I cleared my throat, uncertain what I was wishing for. Answers to the unasked questions, I supposed. “I just wish I knew you would be okay with this. I wish I knew it was okay for me to fall in love again.” As I stood up to leave, I kissed my lips twice and placed my fingers against the gray tombstones.

Right before I turned to leave, a small white feather came floating down from above and landed against my arm. A wave of comfort washed over me as I nodded. “I’ll be okay. I’ll be good,” I muttered, knowing that it was a kiss from my loved ones. I knew I would be okay one day, because it was obvious that I wasn’t alone.

“What are you looking at?” Mom asked me one afternoon as I sat at the dining room table Dad had made her for Christmas a few years before.

I held on to the picture Emma had taken of Elizabeth and me with the white feathers many months before. I’d looked at it every day since I left. “Nothing.”

“Let me see,” she said, sitting beside me. I passed her the picture and heard a slight gasp fall from her lips. “That’s her.”

“That’s who?”

“Kevin!” she shouted, calling Dad into the room. “Kevin! Come here!”

He hurried into the room. “Yeah?”

She passed the picture to Dad, and he narrowed his eyes as Mom began to explain. “The day of the accident, that’s the girl. I was falling apart in the waiting room while Jamie and Charlie both went into surgery. I was sobbing uncontrollably, and this woman walked up to me and held me. She stayed with me the whole time, keeping me from falling apart, telling me it would be okay.”

“That’s her?” I asked, pointing to the picture. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I know without a doubt in my mind. That’s her. When Jamie and Charlie came out of surgery, I didn’t know what to do, who to check on first…so she sat with Jamie while I sat beside Charlie.” She looked at me with confusion in her stare. “Why do you have a picture with her?”

I took the picture back from Dad and stared at a smiling Elizabeth, trying to get a grip on what was happening. She stayed by Jamie’s side. “I don’t know.”

Chapter Forty

Elizabeth

Goodbye

“No,” I whispered, standing in the waiting room as a doctor stood in front of me.

“I’m so sorry. He didn’t make it out of surgery. We did everything we could to stop the bleeding, but we were unable to…” His lips kept moving, but I couldn’t hear him anymore. My world had just been stolen from me, and my legs gave out as I lowered myself to sit in the closest chair.

“No,” I murmured again, covering my face with the palms of my hands.

How could he be gone so fast? How could he leave me here alone?

Steven, no…

Before the surgery, I held his hand. I told him I loved him. I kissed him one last time.

How could you be gone?

The doctor walked away after telling me how sorry he was, but I didn’t care. Kathy and Lincoln showed up a few moments later, and their hearts shattered right along with mine. We stayed at the hospital for the longest time, until Lincoln said we had to leave, we had to start planning.

“I’ll meet you back at your house,” I said. “God. Emma’s at Faye’s house. Do you think you can pick her up?”

“Where are you going?” Kathy asked me.

“I’m just going to stay here for a little longer.”

She frowned. “Honey.”

“No, really, I’m fine. I’ll be over soon. Can you just…can you wait to tell her?”

Kathy and Lincoln agreed.

I stayed for hours in that waiting room, unsure what I was waiting for. It seemed that everyone in the waiting room was doing exactly that: waiting for an answer, waiting for a prayer, waiting for hope.