Epilogue
Karla
One Year Later
Ash and I married on a Saturday in September at a beautiful estate mansion that had a garden filled with milkweed, wild bergamot, and purple coneflowers. Those flowers meant one thing to me: dozens and dozens of butterflies.
When we first went to tour the estate, a butterfly landed right on Ash’s shoulder. Like our loved ones who passed away were telling us we were exactly where we were supposed to be.
We’d invited all our loved ones to our celebration and had the best night of our lives. We danced until the music stopped, and then we danced some more. My body ached, but my spirit soared.
Uncle Landon danced with me at one point, smiling down at me. “The most beautiful bride,” he told me.
“Thank you, Uncle Landon.”
“How’s your heart today, Karla?” he softly asked.
I grinned ear to ear as I replied with words that held so much special meaning to me. “Still beating.”
And oh, how strongly it beat.
I wanted more moments like this. More moments filled with love, with family, with comfort, with care. As I stared around at everyone I loved, I realized that this was all I’d ever wanted and for the remainder of my life, I’d simply want more of that.
More love, more family, more light.
Yeah . . .
More of that.
Wedding planning didn’t go exactly as planned, and I for one never thought I’d grow so passionate about different types of frosting, but alas. Don’t even get me started on seating charts.
That was what I learned to love about life, though.
It had its ups and downs. For a long time, I fought against the downs, but then I realized how much more appreciation I had for the ups.
The good days felt brighter after coming out of the cave of darkness.
It was almost as if you bathed in the light with much more gratefulness because you almost lost yourself to the shadows.
You thought you’d never see the light again, so when it appeared, you surrendered to it fully.
Same with the down moments. I realized the trick to defeating the downs was to make peace with your sadness, knowing that that feeling, too, wouldn’t last forever.
Even with all the good in my life, I still had bad days.
I had days when I struggled to get out of bed.
I had nights where it was hard to breathe.
So instead of belittling my sadness, I sat with her.
I had coffee with her and allowed her to grieve whatever was aching her soul.
Because I learned that I didn’t need to be hard on myself when I was low.
If anything, I just wanted to comfort myself with the love and comfort I always gave to others.
That was what life was about: the ups and the downs.
The zigs and the zags. It was about getting up each day and trying again one more time.
Because, that one more time could easily lead to the greatest of happy endings.
I’m so grateful the me I used to be never succeeded at the attempts we made at our life.
I’m glad she failed at bringing us to an end.
Because without that failure, I wouldn’t have lived the best days of my life.
And you know what? There were still some best days of my life that I hadn’t even met yet.
That thought kept me happy. That thought kept me hopeful.
That thought kept me alive. Because I was determined to discover more of those best days. And I knew it was a privilege to be able to do so with the loved ones I had in my corner. Both birth family and found family. Both my beginnings and my endings.
And most importantly, my husband Ash.
Husband. I still wasn’t used to that word, but I guess I had the rest of forever to grow accustomed to saying it. I loved the life we were building, and I couldn’t wait to see what else we’d create. The amount of love we would share.
That night, after we got home, Ash drew me a bubble bath and poured us two glasses of champagne. I climbed into the bath, wanting nothing more than to soak away some of the aches in my body. Truthfully, I hardly noticed my aches, seeing as how my heart was so happy.
Ash sat on the bathroom floor across from me as we sipped our champagne.
“I was thinking . . . the family room doesn’t get much use here. Maybe we can host a few game nights where we invite everyone to come over,” Ash mentioned. “We could have Saturday game nights and Spaghetti Mondays as our traditions.”
I smiled. “We can do that forever, if you’d like.”
“I love you, Karla Banks,” he told me, using my new last name that matched his.
“I love you, too.”
We continued to talk for a while, drinking a whole bottle of champagne as we debriefed about the wedding. Then after I grew a little tired, I relaxed more into the water. I felt my pain slowly leaving as I stared at the man who meant the world to me.
Then Ash picked up a novel, and he began to read.
After the bath, he helped me out of the tub, dried me off, and we crawled into bed after putting on our pajamas.
At the foot of the bed, Rolls and Royce cuddled up with one another.
When the two cats first met, they weren’t too keen on one another, but over time, their love blossomed. Now they were the best of friends.
I snuggled against Ash’s body, and he held me close to his heartbeat.
“Karla?”
“Yes?”
“Can we do this forever, too?” he whispered, placing a gentle kiss against my forehead. “Can we always be this happy?”
“Absolutely,” I breathed out as my eyes began to shut, and sleep began to overtake me.
“Swear?”
“Yes.” I snuggled into the nape of his neck and let out a soft sigh. “Swear.”
Ash
Ten Months Later
“That’s not fair! He cheated!” Lorelai shouted as she stood from the couch in the family room and pointed a stern finger toward Adrian, who’d just beat her in yet another round of Jenga.
Adrian tossed his hands up in surrender. “It’s not my fault that you made the stack fall, Lorelai. Who’s next to go against the undefeated Jenga master?”
I was still a bit amazed at how our game nights had turned out. Each week, Karla and I hosted our friends and family at our home to play board games. All my friends would always come, along with Karla’s friends—who had become good friends of mine, too.
Maa and Karla’s family came over, too. Ellie and Maa would cook together in the kitchen while everyone else sat in the family room making enough noise to wake the dead.
Over the past few months, I’d started framing and hanging Rian’s photography throughout the whole house.
I’d gifted Maa some of the photographs to hang in her new Chicago condo, too.
It felt important to walk into every room and see pieces of my brother on the walls.
It was a beautiful way to remember him. Even though he wasn’t there physically anymore, he’d live on forever within his artwork.
My favorite photograph was one that Rian took of Dad laughing at a car show. I loved how my brother captured Dad’s joy in that moment.
I also loved that whenever I stared at my own face in the mirror, I could see pieces of my brother and father within my own eyes. They’d live within me for the rest of my life, and I was grateful for that. I was grateful that they’d always be resting against my heartbeats.
Sitting on a special shelf by the fireplace in the family room was the Kintsugi toy truck that Karla had repaired for me.
It sat between a collection of mine and Karla’s wedding photos from the best day of my life, along with Rian’s photograph of a tiny flower growing in the cracks of a sidewalk.
Each time I noticed the toy truck, I noticed us.
And when I noticed us, I saw the tiny flower, too.
That part of the family room stood for healing.
It showcased how broken things and people could still be damn beautiful—scars and all.
“Let me get this over with so he can stop being a sore winner,” Shawn grumbled as he walked into the room. He rolled up the sleeves on his flannel shirt.
I arched an eyebrow. “Wait, Shawn. Is that lipstick on your . . . ?”
He wiped the back of his hand against his mouth. Then he stared down at the red lipstick on his skin. He grumbled some more. “Ketchup,” he lied as he walked over to try to defeat Adrian in Jenga.
“It’s funny how Shawn has the same shade of ketchup that Grace has as lipstick,” Karla whispered toward me as we sat on the couch.
Just then, Grace walked in and wiped her finger beneath her bottom lip, which was also smeared with “ketchup.”
I smirked. “Shawn and Grace, huh?”
“Probably just for the summer,” Karla joked. “Grace isn’t really one to settle down.”
“Shawn doesn’t know what settling down means.”
“A match made in heaven.” Karla smiled.
“Or hell,” I joked as I pulled her into the curve of my side.
The rest of the evening was packed with laughter, a dozen rounds of Jenga, Connect Four, card games, and wine.
I couldn’t stop looking around the space and feeling as if Rian, Dad, and my mother-in-law, Nicole, were in the room, too.
Life felt lighter when my family and I slowed down to enjoy one another, to enjoy the family room.
The room I thought I’d lost forever.
But I had it all back. Maybe it wasn’t the same as it had been in the past, but it was still filled with more love than I knew what to do with. Karla rested her head against my shoulder as we sat in the middle of what would one day become one of my favorite memories.
For a while, I thought my world would stay gray, draped in darkness for the remainder of my days, but that didn’t happen. Karla didn’t allow it. She grabbed my hand and pulled me back into reality. She saved my life. She returned me to the light.
Because of her, my color came back.