Chapter Twenty-Nine Tranquility Estates, Vermont Present Day
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tranquility Estates, Vermont
Present Day
“You’ll find the afghan you crocheted Grandma in the bottom of the steamer trunk.
There’s also a stack of legal papers and a bottle of Jack Daniels.
That last one’s for you, by the way. You and Walsh both.
Drink a toast to me when you rush into his arms later, okay?
And then let him kiss all your sorrows away. Preferably with tongue.”
Chrissie didn’t want to laugh. She tried not to. But as she located the oversized 1.75 liter bottle complete with a handle, a laugh escaped anyway.
“Just how depressed are you expecting me to get? There’s enough whiskey here to get me drunk twenty times over.”
Scarlett leaned back on the chaise longue, a smile playing about the corners of her mouth, which was made up in a shade of red that would have given Dita Von Teese a run for her money.
She’d wanted to do Chrissie’s makeup, as well, the pair of them sobbing their way through layers of false eyelashes and no-run mascara, but Chrissie had declined the honor.
She was willing to do a lot to make her friend more comfortable, but dressing up for her deathbed wasn’t one of them.
The fact that she’d even brushed her hair this morning spoke to the enormity of what she was willing to endure.
“You can douse my body with the rest of the alcohol and light me on fire. That’s how the Vikings did it, right?
” Even though Scarlett’s words were uttered playfully, she immediately dropped the act.
“Actually, I made the arrangements already. I’ll be cremated here and sent back to Oregon.
I took your suggestion and asked the funeral home to make space for me to be interred next to Grandma. I hope that’s okay.”
Chrissie lifted the afghan out of the trunk and busied herself arranging it over Scarlett’s feet.
They were sitting on the back porch of the little cabin, their view of the mountains unimpeded.
It seemed strange that city-loving, life-of-the-party Scarlett Sanderson would have chosen nothing but nature and Chrissie in her final moments, but Chrissie wasn’t about to question her.
Scarlett had done a lot of things in this life that Chrissie would likely never experience.
Travel and glamour and a high-profile career.
Lovers and foreign languages and parties that didn’t involve latex balloons and homemade birthday cakes.
If a quiet, intimate goodbye was how she wanted to punctuate a life lived large in every interpretation of the word, then Chrissie would support her every step of the way.
“I think that’s nice,” Chrissie said as she smoothed the ragged ends of the blankets over Scarlett’s lap. “Nan would have liked that.”
She was trying her best not to fuss over Scarlett—at her request—so as soon as her friend was comfortable, she slid onto the longue next to her.
There was barely room for the pair of them, but they managed to shift and snuggle until they felt like girls again, hunkering down in a blanket fort barely big enough to hold them both.
“Everything else is arranged already, too,” Scarlett said as she pulled Chrissie’s head down to her chest and started running her fingers through her hair.
“My house and my bank accounts, I mean. I doubt I need to say this, but you and Kat are getting everything. That’s what’s in the stack of papers. ”
Chrissie didn’t respond. Underneath her ear, Scarlett’s heartbeat felt steady and strong in a way that felt totally wrong for the time and place. How could a heart that still had that much strength, that much determination to keep going, be so close to stopping forever?
“You aren’t going to argue about the bank accounts? That’s a new one.” Scarlett laughed lightly. “You usually kick and scream any time I transfer money to you.”
“I’m saving my kicking and screaming for after,” Chrissie said. “I’m determined to get through this without a single disagreement.”
“Is that a challenge?” Scarlett laughed again, this time with real humor. “Because I have a few other things I’m planning on saying before I take the pills. There’s no way you’ll last that long.”
Her fingers kept moving in long, slow strokes through Chrissie’s hair. In the back of Chrissie’s mind, she felt that this was backwards somehow—that she should have been the one comforting Scarlett, soothing and petting her way through this, but the familiar sensation felt too good to pull away.
“You can say whatever you want. After what you did for me yesterday, I owe you big time. Telling Kat the truth couldn’t have been easy.”
Scarlett’s fingers faltered. “She’s a good egg, isn’t she?”
Chrissie nodded and burrowed deeper into Scarlett’s embrace. “The best egg. Thank you for her.” She twisted her head to look up at her friend. “I mean that. She’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me—present company excepted, of course.”
Scarlett’s lips drooped at the corners. “Don’t lie to me, Chrissie. Not today.”
Chrissie’s heart gave an odd lurch in her chest.
“I’m glad you love her more than me,” Scarlett added before Chrissie could decide on what she wanted to say—if, indeed, she wanted to say anything at all.
“That wasn’t always the case, obviously.
That first year, when I ran away to Paris…
I never did apologize for that, did I? Going radio silent for as long as I did, not even calling to check in on how you two were doing—I don’t have a lot of regrets in my life, but that’s one of them.
I shouldn’t have abandoned you like that. ”
“Honestly?” Chrissie sniffled, but the tears had yet to fall. “It was probably for the best. I had to learn to stand on my own two feet eventually. Better to toss me in the water and make me swim. You know how reluctant I am to get wet any other way.”
Scarlett’s hand stilled on her head. “Do you really mean that?”
Chrissie gave herself time to consider her answer. Time was the one thing they didn’t have much of, but this was too important to rush.
“I do, actually. At first, I was furious and heartbroken, but in retrospect, I think it was the best thing you could have done. You gave me and Kat a chance to be a family—a real family.”
“I’m not sure she’ll ever forgive me. The way she looked at me yesterday, how quick she was to run out of the room and into your arms—”
Chrissie cut her off before Scarlett could travel too far down that path.
Nothing but pain lay at the end of it. “That was you giving us a chance to be a family, too. I’m serious, Scarlett.
For the first time in months, we’re talking—really talking.
I’m starting to suspect we might actually make it through these teen years alive. ”
She blanched as soon as realized what she’d just said. “Oh god. I’m sorry. I—”
But Scarlett chuckled, breaking the tension and wrapping her arms around Chrissie’s shoulders. “No, don’t apologize. Never apologize—especially when you’re right.”
“Is that another item for my list? Should I grab a pen?”
Scarlett’s hold on her tightened, though whether out of affection or to keep her from reaching for a writing utensil, Chrissie couldn’t say.
“Yeah, sorry about that whole thing,” Scarlett said. “I was being kind of an asshole.”
“It’s okay. You were just trying to help me get my life back on track.”
Instead of accepting this olive branch, Scarlett grew pensive, her steady breathing matching the light breeze swirling onto the porch around them.
“I don’t think that’s true,” she eventually said.
“I mean, I do want you to be happy, but that list was less about you and more about me. It’s just that…
none of the other kids at the hospital told me, you know? Grandma either.”
“Told you what?”
Scarlett’s fingers stopped weaving through her hair. “How desperate you get, right at the end, to leave something of yourself behind.”
“Oh.” Chrissie wished she had something more articulate to say, but words had always been Scarlett’s forte, not hers.
“Grandma told me once that you were the strongest person she knew. Did I ever tell you about that? It was right before I pulled that fake cancer scare to get you to spend more time with me. She knew, long before I did, that you’d be the one to carry us through life—that your strength would be the one thing I could count on.
” She sighed. “She was right, of course. She always was.”
“For what it’s worth, I forgave you for that about five minutes later.”
Scarlett released a light scoff. “I don’t know why.
I didn’t deserve it. Our whole lives, I’ve always been jealous of how well you know yourself, and how easy you made it seem to stick to your principles—that’s why I made you write the list. Not because you need to learn from me, but because I wanted, in my own desperate, clawing way, to inject a little bit of me into your DNA.
” She laughed, and that contained a scoff, too.
“But that’s not fair, is it? You’re already carrying more than one person in there.
The last thing you need is to scrunch yourself smaller to make room for me. ”
“Why are you still so obsessed with my twin? I’ve never understood it.” As soon as Chrissie said the words aloud, she heard the lie—not about Scarlett’s obsession, but about her own lack of understanding.
Because the truth was, she did understand Scarlett.
She always had. Her bright, funny, exuberant friend was the sort of person who loved outwardly.
Scarlett’s affection was unwavering, her joie de vivre the stuff of legends.
She could brighten a whole room with just a laugh and, once she claimed you as her own, would fight endless battles to keep you close.
But Scarlett couldn’t imagine a world where love took an inward path. Where you made room inside your heart, pushed a part of yourself down in order to ensure someone else had the space they needed to grow. That was what it meant to be a mother.
That was what it meant to be her.
So, with a deep breath and her head nestled against the best friend she’d ever have, Chrissie pushed down one last time.
“You don’t have to worry about being forgotten, and you don’t have to be afraid there isn’t room in my heart to carry you. Half of it has always belonged to you anyway.”
Scarlett sniffled. “You’re not just saying that?”
“Never. I gave it to you the day you called me into your hospital room. And in return, you gave me more happiness than I ever thought I’d see in this lifetime.
Thank you, Scarlett. For loving me. For sharing your grandmother with me.
For giving me our daughter and trusting me to take care of her for both of us. I won’t let you down.”
She felt Scarlett’s nod brush against the top of her head before they both fell silent.
Time passed, but neither one of them marked it in any discernible way.
They just lay curled up together on the chaise longue, the rhythm of their breathing and heartbeats in sync, the world continuing to revolve in the same way it always would.
Scarlett was the first to break the comfortable silence. “I think I’m ready now.”
Even though Chrissie had known this moment was coming, every part of her cried out in protest—so much so that it was a physical ache, a hard knot inside her chest that felt cemented in place.
“You think, or you know?”
“I know.” Scarlett kissed the top of her head. “And you do, too. It’s time.”
Chrissie’s eyes grew hot with tears as she sat up and handed Scarlett the medication she’d been prescribed.
The rules stated that Scarlett had to be the one to take them, and that she had to do so with her own two hands, but that didn’t mean Chrissie couldn’t hold the glass to Scarlett’s lips as she swallowed or pull her into her arms, her whole body rocking back and forth as Scarlett slipped into a time and place where Chrissie couldn’t follow.
In her thirty-four years of life on this planet, Chrissie had watched too many people go down that same path without her.
The twin she never met. The brother she barely knew.
The honorary grandmother who had taught her how to love.
The best friend who’d given her the greatest gift she’d ever receive.
It hurt—always it hurt, the wound cutting deeper each time it was reopened—but Scarlett had been right.
Chrissie had gotten through this before. She would get through it again. She was the strongest person she knew, and even though she’d never asked to be the person who carried the memories of the dead in her heart, she would do it.
“I’ll do it because you asked me to,” Chrissie whispered as she leaned down to kiss her friend for the final time. “And because carrying everyone in my heart is what makes me strong. Stay safe in there, Scarlett. You and I still have so much living left to do.”