Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 37164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37164 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 186(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Later, back at Aunt Carol’s, I sit at the kitchen table with my laptop open, notes spread around me, my mother’s notebook resting beside my tea.
I trace my finger along her handwriting, the loops and margins filled with thoughts she never meant to polish, only to remember. I can almost hear her then, not as a memory but as something closer, steadier, like she’s standing just behind me, patient as ever.
Don’t overthink it, Sav.
Just tell the truth.
I add one final line beneath her notes.
— Love works best when it’s shared.
The words sit there, simple and certain, and I understand that they aren’t advice or legacy or even belief. They’re instruction. The kind she lived by without ever saying out loud.
In New York, my life is there, waiting for me.
In Pineview, something meaningful is growing.
I can almost feel her hand at my back, dependable and sure, like she always trusted I’d find my way.
For the first time, I don’t feel split.
I feel whole.
EPILOGUE
Erik
Pineview teaches you how to wait without feeling left behind.
I used to think staying meant standing still. If you didn’t leave where you came from, you were somehow choosing less, but time does different things to you when you stop measuring it by what you’re missing and start measuring it by what keeps returning if you let go and trust.
Savannah returns and often. Most importantly, she returns by choice. She arrives with schedules, return flights already booked, calendars synced, and ideas half-formed that turn whole once she says them out loud. She comes with her mother’s notebook in tow, the pages worn soft from being opened again and again. She comes with New York City still in her bones and Pineview still in her heart.
She never apologizes for either. She never should. They are the two sides of her that make her whole.
Some nights she stays with Aunt Carol, the house loud again in a way it hasn’t been for years. Other nights, more often now, she stays with me.
Those nights are quiet in the way that matters. The nights that fuel me when she’s back in the Big Apple.
She pads through my house barefoot like she belongs there, hair loose, sweater slipping off one shoulder as she makes tea she forgets to drink. We talk in low voices about logistics, funding and how The Christmas Kindness Drive is reaching towns Diane never got the chance to touch.
Paris is next. Savannah always wanted to take her there but never got the chance. Little does she know I’m taking them both there next year, Diane in spirit, for Sav’s birthday. I may be small town but I’m a big dreamer too. I’ve already booked the flights, the hotels, the surprise dinners. All of the details down to the little black dress I plan to leave on the hotel bed with a note directing her to slip it on and meet me out on the town.
When our brains can’t retain big dreams and bigger plans any longer in our days, things go quiet as nightfalls in the ways that matter the most.
She kisses me like she’s been thinking about it all day, very slow and intentional, transporting me back to when I was eighteen and didn’t think life could be any sweeter than it was.
When she straddles my lap, her hands warm at the back of my neck, there’s nothing hurried in it, only hunger that trusts it won’t be taken away. She fits against me like something that always knew where it belonged and I fit inside of her like my body was made for hers.
We don’t pretend the mornings aren’t coming. We don’t pretend distance doesn’t exist. We make love like people who understand time is precious but not fragile. We are people who know staying isn’t the same thing as being trapped.
I wake up with her hair draped across my chest, her leg thrown over mine, the taste of her still on the tip of my tongue and I think to myself, every single time, that this is what choosing looks like.
This is what being chosen feels like.
The community center has a way of becoming part of you if you let it.
Between the houses I build, the flights to New York just to see Savannah, and the quiet hum of The Christmas Kindness Drive, this place has worked itself into my life. It feels like my second home.
I’m stacking empty boxes when I notice my mother watching Savannah.
She’s standing near the long table, sleeves pushed up, laughing at something Mrs. Kincaid says, her hands moving as she talks. The color is back in her cheeks again. Life is returning to her. The grief is still there but it’s not swallowing her whole.
I notice my mother in the corner of the room watching Savannah.
Sav’s hand drifts, unconsciously, to her stomach. There’s nothing there yet, no announcement, no certainty, but it’s a habit she’s developed lately, like her body already knows something her mouth hasn’t dared to say. We’ve talked about it, about what it would mean to bring new life into a world that can be both cruel and kind.