Epilogue
I never see the angel again.
That’s not to say I don’t think of her and my divine second chance, endlessly.
Every time my pickleball paddle smacks plastic, winning the point.
Every time I hear the twins sing from a stage, their ethereal chorus echoing a piece of me from their lungs.
Tomorrow, tomorrow. Every time Max smirks and mumbles, I love you, or even, I hate you, and I hear instead: You’re my safe place. Thank you for being my mom.
Every time Reid wraps me into his arms at the end of a tiresome day, and I remember the days when I’d flinch at his touch or fail to ask him questions—feeling too old and tired and restless, running on empty and sometimes inexplicably sad.
The sensation of getting older is, yes, sad and weird some days still—on to the end, I’m guessing. The passage of time, youth, and memory.
And yet love remains, along with hope, possibility. I let Reid hold me in all of it. I don’t want another life. I want him.
This peace and this breath, the best and the worst.
Yes, the experience changed me—transformed my belief in the unknown and the unseen.
Forever I feel the hand of God through my birthday miracle.
Not just on me, but the world.
I feel it as sure as I feel my fingers clicking my laptop keys when I finally see the news on my screen, an old headline from 2011.
Los Angeles Times Covers Bombshell Investigation into Hollywood Sex Crimes.
Los Angeles model Parker Voss tipped off a reporter with initial allegations against producer Craig Coleman, while protecting the anonymity of the victims. Dismissed at first, Parker wouldn’t give up.
He gathered the stories of ten women in Hollywood—which snowballed into one hundred more.
Ultimately the victims received tens of millions of dollars across various settlement cases, but more importantly, their stories were heard.
And more importantly still, Parker’s quest for justice saved hundreds of additional women from future assault, years before the story “first” blew up in my original Sutton life.
It didn’t make sense.
But Parker followed a hunch from somewhere, altering history.
Further sleuthing informs me that he is now a wealthy private investor living in the Hollywood Hills with his wife and two kids. He’s worth one hundred million dollars, thanks to smart stock choices made in his early twenties.
And I witness a power not bound by rules, earth, or time.
Sure as the warm orange sunset and feel of Nicaragua’s breeze on my face, five years from now, when I take Reid and the kids to go see the house with the pool and the school where Camila taught.
Charlie’s still living there, running the home, directing the local hospital founded by Abba Project.
He never left. He married a local woman named Stella. They have four children together.
Forever, yes, I feel it.
Sure as the way my Holden ache disappeared, once and for all—the one I didn’t know was still sensitive in certain temperatures, tender at the oddest of angles.
I thought of him very little after all the balloons.
I only heard it confirmed that he did get divorced a few years ago.
If I ever saw him, though, I’d say hello.
I’d search his eyes to see if the torture remained.
Did he ever find peace? I’d tell him I believe that anybody can change—that I didn’t mean what I said in a rage at Coachella.
I’d tell him I believe there’s still time.
There’s always tomorrow.
I’d give him a nod of forgiveness, but I wouldn’t say, We were young, no big deal!
Holden taught me that things can be a very big deal, even when we are young.
They can haunt you forever, in fact, if you don’t find a way to forgive.
It’s an irrefutable truth that our early years shape the middle—who we become as adults.
As for what the middle years do, I know time unfolding will tell me.
But for now, I’m forty, so thankful for the decades that led me here, with a special spot for those twenties that paved the way for this life. Both versions of them, no doubt. The ones that made me into the woman I am—and the ones that reacquainted me with the girl still forever inside.
At once, I’m also the seventy-two-year-old me, married for fifty years, surer than I’ve ever been that family, connection, faith, and joy are what matter—our prime investments by far, our deepest roots locking and strengthening foundations for futures we can’t yet see.
And I’m ninety-seven, leathery, cheetah-like, spotted, laughing at all the money I once spent on skin care, in a fluffy white bed saying goodbye to my children and grandchildren.
Soon they will kiss my eyelids, just after one last nice to meet you to another great-grandbaby.
Reid is already gone; he’s been waiting for me.
Soon I will see him once again and feel the shine of heaven’s glow on my skin as a voice speaks:
You did good, Sutton.
Mother, wife, daughter, and friend.
It’s the only thing I hope to hear.
In any given moment, I hold all these Suttons inside of me, and I honor them—years folding into each other, simultaneously linear and a collage of me.
All of them worthy, every last one. Every size, season, and shape.
Versions entwining, embracing, informing, affirming.
Their beauty, complexity, edges and scars, lessons, loves, and regrets.
Because that’s the thing about women.
It’s bananas what we can do.
The hurts we can heal, the people we can touch, the worlds we contain in our lives.
We have delicate peels, maybe, but are fortification and stamina to the core, conduits of the holy, not only for ourselves but for everyone around us we nourish every single day.
Every one of us.
We’re something else.