Chapter 24 Audrey #3
Her words wrap around my heart. Given all the trauma and shock of that night, I never put it in those terms. But she’s .
. . she’s not wrong. In that moment, when I saw Beck’s mangled leg and knew what to do, I had been more my mother’s daughter than ever before.
While my mom’s life had been seeping out of her, I had saved Beck’s.
Maybe the accident was Mom’s fault. In the end, she still died, and for years, the four of us carried so much guilt. So much wasted time, so much anger and hurt and loneliness . . .
Oh, Mommy. I miss you so much. I wish I’d known. I wish I could’ve taken care of you.
My faulty brain is hiccuping. The clouds engulf me, fast and thick. The most important story of my life has just changed so fundamentally that I fall back into the fog. There’s a story about a car, and my friends. There was an accident, and someone was hurt, and someone died. Someone I loved.
Within seconds, I’m not sure what we’re talking about or why I’m crying. Why everyone is crying. Stephen hugs me, and I feel a little safer.
I look up at my brother. “Is everyone okay?”
“They are,” he says gently. “We are.”
I’d like to tell you the fog conveniently lifted and the Core Four had a beautiful goodbye, that we said all the things and made all the promises.
And maybe we did. Stephen said it was really nice, and I do remember tight hugs and tears, if not words.
He told me he’d promised to stay in touch with the three of them and update them.
Afterward, I took a nap, and when I woke up, Clay was lying beside me, holding my hand and looking at me, his blue eyes soft, and my mind was clear again.
Now Clay is making dinner, and Stephen and I are outside on the two swings that still hang from a maple tree ablaze with flame-colored foliage.
The smell of woodsmoke and autumn is heavy in the damp air, and it’s likely the rain tonight will take down most of the leaves.
Stephen and I are scuffing our feet on the ground, our swings occasionally knocking against each other.
“I’d have given a lot for another year with Mom,” he says softly. “I’d give a lot for another year with you, Auds, even if you aren’t a hundred percent. You know that. You wouldn’t be a burden. Not to me.” Tears slip down his face. “I’d take good care of you, same as you would for me.”
Oh, my little brother. He’s lost so much already. “I know, Stephen, I do. But I’m scared. Not to die, but to be lost in my own life. I don’t want to forget you or Mathilda or Clay. Or myself.”
While this has been my plan for a long time, it’s a lot harder when I’m thinking in terms of weeks, not months or years.
Every minute is loaded now, every memory could be the last one I get to keep.
And now, after this weekend, when I was the me I used to be with the people I loved the most, I suspect my disease will pounce, and pounce hard.
Stephen wipes his eyes and looks at the sky. “Promise you’ll let me be there at the end. I need that.”
I look into his face, the face I love best in the world, I realize. Yes, I love Clay, and Mathilda, despite her lack of reciprocity. But my brother has always been my best and most constant friend. “I promise,” I say. “Name a baby after me.”
His face crumples. “I will,” he whispers.
“Beck probably isn’t too old to have kids,” I say.
He gives a half laugh. “I should be so lucky.”
“You are. You’re the lucky one, too.”
“Lucky to have you as my big sister, Audrey. The best in the world.”
“You got that right, mister.”
Beck could be my sister-in-law and the mother of my niece, though I’ll never know about that. The thought makes my heart overflow with love and sadness. Maybe the afterlife will let me see it, even if it’s just a little.
“She’ll take you back,” I say. “So many steamy looks this weekend! Even though you’re ugly and underemployed and dorky, I think she likes you.”
“One can hope,” he says. “Now, want to see how high I can push you?”
It’s one of those beautiful moments you wish you could relive whenever you wanted.
I don’t have that option anymore, so I’ll just have to be right here in the now.
The brilliant leaves showering down with the movement of the branch, the swoop in my stomach, our laughter ringing through the air like church bells.
I have always felt so lucky to have had my parents and Stephen, the Core Four, this beautiful home.
But maybe I can give myself a little credit, too.
After all, I was the little girl who took in a heartbroken boy and made him her instant brother and lifelong best friend.
The girl who drew those three others right to me because I saw the best in them.
I am the kind of person who wanted to heal a lost man and love his child, and when she didn’t love me back, I loved her even more.
I am the person who brought four friends back together and restored us, using the last bit of my life to burnish us all in gold.
I’m the kind of person who can look death in the eye and not flinch.
I am still the lucky one—always have been. It’s nice to know, even at this late date, that I’m more than that, too.