This was our common ground, the secret we shared but never spoke aloud.
We had just heard that story recounted so many times over the years that it was easy to take the details and fold them into our own sparse memories.
It’s not a switch you can just flip off”, Dr. Marshall had told me once. “If you didn’t love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love-and everything that followed is part of letting it go.
A wedding is a series of special moments, strung together like beads on a chain. Sure, by themselves, they are lovely, but put them all together and you get art.
But here in the present, my mother and I had no choice but to move ahead. We worked hard, me at school, her at outselling all the other builders. We parted our hair cleanly and stood up straight, greeting company – and the world – with the smiles we practiced in the quiet of our now-too-big dream house full of mirrors that showed the smiles back. But under it all, our grief remained. Sometimes she took more of it, sometimes I did. But always, it was there.
Because in the summers, the world came back to the lake,” she’d reply. “And that was when it felt like home.
When’s something difficult to come by, you’ll do that much more to make sure it’s even harder- if not impossible- to lose.
She just looked at me, and I wondered what on earth it was about her that made me be so honest. Like she was sick with truth, and really contagious.
What did it take to claim a person, really? One perfect night? A few weeks of phone calls, hundreds of texts, all of them full of future plans and promises made? I’d spent less than a day with Ethan, but still felt like he knew me better than just about anyone. You can’t measure love by time put in, but the weight of those moments. Some in life are light, like a touch. Others, you can’t help but stagger underneath.
It seemed amazing to me that one night could hold so much, from a merry-go-round to a Pop-Tart with frosting to the most beautiful singing I’d ever heard.
What would you do, if you could do anything?
It’s pretty rare to find someone you actually like to be with in this world. There are a lot of annoying people out there.
I’m not into appearances. I like flaws, I think they make things interesting.
The way I see it is that some things are just meant to be the way they are.
It was like Abe took some part of him when he went, you know? He’s never been the same.
After loving someone you couldn’t depend on, you realize how important it is to trust someone will do what they say.
More than our old house, or our Wildflower Ridge place, the beach shack was my dad. I knew if he was haunting any place, it would be there, and for that reason I’d stayed away.
Sometimes even the shortest distance can be impossible to navigate, whether you went road or shore or some other route.
If life is a journey, wouldn’t you rather be the person behind the wheel than the one just being carried along?
There were endless ways to spend your days, I knew that, none of them right or wrong. But given the chance for a real do-over, another way around, who would say no? Not me. Not then. Call it crazy, or just chicken salad. But within reason, or even without it, I was in, too.
Parents are always precious. But when you only have one, they become crucial.