Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
EPILOGUE 2
Verity
Two More Years Later
I haven’t been back here since the day we buried them.
I face my parents’ graves and stare at the headstones marking the short span of their lives. I’m thirty-seven years old, and they barely made it into their thirties before they died. I’m glad I visited in spring when life is breaking through the ground around them. When the air is redolent with the familiar scent of honeysuckle and everything feels reborn.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come.” I sniff, annoyed that I’ve been here all of twenty seconds and the waterworks have already begun. “It was hard to face you both.”
I swallow and swipe at my wet cheeks.
“Especially you, Daddy,” I whisper.
I sink to my haunches and lay the flowers I brought between their graves.
“Picked these myself,” I say. “Remember Aunt Roz’s garden? She’s still got it. It’s bigger now. Aunt Grace has a greener thumb. Shoot, you remember Grace, right? I know everybody liked to pretend they were just roommates.”
A laugh cracks in my throat.
“Well, they’re married now and they took care of me after you…” My voice withers. “After you were gone.”
I touch Mama’s headstone, caressing the name Bernadette, but hearing my father’s loud boom of a voice laughingly, lovingly calling her Bernie.
“I figured out what was wrong with Daddy, Mama.” I tug at a stubborn weed near her headstone. “Feels bad saying wrong when it’s not… wrong… our brains are just made different. You were right when you told him to get help, but I don’t even know if the help he needed was to be had at the time. If he’d have known how to get to it or what to do with it. I barely did.”
I shift on my haunches as I squat to talk to them.
“Actually, there’s some really cool things about me because of how my brain is made. I think having bipolar makes me a better writer. I write for a living.” My smile is a little smug. “All those nights you made me put my book away and when y’all made fun of me carrying around my ‘diary,’ as you called it, and look at me now, Mama. I run a TV show. I won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Oscar. Can you believe that? An Oscar! I bet you already knew that ’cause Aunt Roz is always bragging. No way she could’ve kept that to herself.”
My eyes drift to my father’s headstone. I place my index finger on the tiny dash separating the day he was born from the day we lost him.
“I’m so sorry things were hard for you, Daddy.” Tears mark a slow trek from my eyes and over my cheeks, salty rivulets that collect at the corners of my mouth. “Sometimes I think the universe made me different so I’d know what it was like for you. So I could forgive you, knowing how hard it is to live in this skin.”
It’s taken a lot, but I can finally understand him and this condition without letting either completely define me. I learned a lot witnessing my parents’ life, their love, their end, but I’m not him. I’m not them.
“It took a long time,” I say, brushing dirt from Daddy’s stone. “But I’ve forgiven you and I’ve forgiven myself. I pray you’ve found all the peace this life denied you.”
I stand, chuckling a little as I stretch my muscles.
“I do pray now sometimes. I’m not sure it even works, but my partner comes from church folk. Pastors and preachers and such.” I snort a laugh. “He’s definitely not a preacher, but he’s… I think he’s a believer at heart. I know he’s a dreamer. You’d love him, Mama. He’s a romantic. And I know he loves me. I want y’all to meet him.”
I glance over my shoulder to where Monk leans against our rental car, waiting. I wave for him to approach. He picks his way through the old country cemetery just up the road from Aunt Roz and Aunt Grace’s place. When he stops beside me and loops one arm around my waist, I turn back to my parents’ headstones.
“This is my partner, Monk.”
Monk dips his head and smiles.
“And this…” I say, pulling the blanket back from the little girl’s face. She is swaddled and held securely against Monk’s chest. “This is your granddaughter, Dessi. She’s asleep now, but she’s a mess. She’s gonna be a handful, just like her daddy.”
“Right,” Monk scoffs, “because I’m the handful.”
“You’d love her,” I go on, ignoring Monk’s sass. “And you’d love him, too, though he is a lot.”
Monk playfully elbows me, and even though I still taste my tears, the smile on my face is warm like sunshine and sweet like hope.
“I’m thinking about marrying him,” I say, a hundred fireflies flying and lighting up in my belly when the words leave my mouth. “If he still wants me, that is.”