Epilogue
Seven Years Later
“Sailaway”
A letter to my babies:
I won’t be here forever,
But I hope it’s long enough to teach you everything you need from me;
To learn everything from you I possibly can;
To watch every single inch you both grow.
I won’t be here forever, but I hope I get to see your smiles every day until I can’t.
I hope I get to see those nights when you’re too scared to sleep without me,
And the ones when you don’t need me there anymore.
I hope I get to see all the tantrums firsthand,
And the teenage attitudes that somehow lead to adult friendships.
I won’t be here forever,
And the very thought of not being here with you scares me more than any monster ever could:
Who will lift you when you fall?
Who will hold you when you cry?
Could anyone love you as deeply as I do?
As purely? As wholly?
I know they just can’t…
Just like I know I won’t be here forever.
So I promise to make every memory I can the happiest one you have.
I promise to keep loving every second I have with you, even those three A.M. wake-ups—
It’s just a few more minutes of today with you.
I promise I’ll soak up all our silly moments and savor every last one.
I promise you’ll have my full attention, every day, every hour, every minute I can spare.
I promise nothing will be my world more than you, my babies.
Nothing will hold my heart the way you do, my loves… Nothing.
So no, I won’t be here forever.
But forever,
I’ll be yours.
Love, Mama.
E folded the poem and put it back in its place—a box where I keep notes and poems I write for our son and daughter.
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
He grabbed me by the waist and pulled me to him. “You’re an amazing writer, Syd.”
My cheeks warmed with a blush, and he smiled at the effect his compliments still had on me. “Sometimes.”
"Every time. You should write something.”
“I wrote that.”
“I mean more. Like a book.”
I scrunched my nose at him. “That’s a lot. I don’t know.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Umm, I could write something and it sucks and everyone hates it.” He chuckled, and I frowned at him. ‘That’s not funny.”
“I’m not laughing because you’re right. I’m laughing because it’s cute you doubt yourself when you’ve only ever been great.”
I smothered a smile as my heart filled with warmth. “You have to say that. You’re my husband.”
“You should believe me. You’re my wife.” I pursed my lips in a smile as I locked my hands behind his neck. He brought his face close to mine. “And I’ve always been right.” I laughed at that. His soft lips pressed against mine and my heart lit up.
“You could do it, Syd,” he breathed. “I have no doubt in my mind.”
And he didn’t, did he?
E always believed in me. He always believed in us.
He knew we’d be here while I spent seven years avoiding my heart, too afraid of what would happen if I gave it away, ignoring the fact that I already had.
He knew I was too scared to lose the only other person I’d ever needed in life if it all came crashing down, as I believed it would—because it was all I’d ever seen.
He knew I had convinced myself our love wasn’t real. That it was just lust. Just the call of the forbidden fruit. And he knew I thought it was the one thing that would drag me down and ruin me if I let it. So, I told myself I couldn’t give in.
But it wasn’t what would ruin me. It was what would give me life.
And I would have seen it sooner if I hadn’t taken all the wrong roads.
Some of these events could have made me bitter—could have made him bitter.
But they didn’t. And really, they shouldn’t have.
You shouldn’t be mad at the roads that led you where you were meant to be.
Some roads you don’t see because you can’t yet.
They’re hidden behind the brush—the muck and mire of the life you’re meant to leave.
Some you see and don’t take, because the fear of going down the road less traveled is too great a risk to take.
And some roads you get completely lost on—you don’t recognize anything, your compass breaks, and even home becomes a distant memory.
But that’s the journey.
It’s all part of the beautiful, crazy, gut-punch, gut-wrenching, twisted story you were meant to write. It’s everything to lose and nothing to risk. And it’s always worth the fall.
This life—this love—it was never in the cards for me.
Not the way I saw life, at least. At best, I was supposed to become a teenage single mother, struggling and miserable as she blamed her hard life on everyone but herself.
A “victim of circumstance,” just like my mother claimed to be.
That was what I knew. That’s what I expected.
That’s what I thought would be my future, no matter how hard I tried to fight it.
It’s why I worked so hard to make the perfect life I knew nothing about.
To find the perfect guy and build the perfect world.
To create a version of happiness that was safe enough to believe in. Safe enough not to get hurt by.
But E saw something different in me. He saw all I was before I knew I was anything at all. And he never let it go.
When he saw me, he saw his future. His wife.
The mother of his children. He saw a girl worth loving, not discarding for not being good enough.
I never had to be anyone else when I was with E.
He saw everything in me and loved me for all of it.
He saw all my flaws, my sharp tongue and witty sarcasm and thought I was brilliant and strong, not bitchy or masculine.
When he saw me, he saw something precious to cherish, to love, and hold forever.
He saw all the things in me I never saw in myself, and the way he loved me—it was everything I always needed.
It was the freedom to sail away into the happiness I had always been meant for, and never would have known without him.
E kept up his encouragement to write something more, and his words played over and over in my head like a new favorite song when you’re trying to learn the lyrics.
When I slept, they were in my dreams. When I woke, they were my first thought.
When I was cutting our daughter’s sandwich into four perfectly sized triangles, they were the tune I hummed.
It took me weeks to gain the courage to dust off my old MacBook. And once I did, I spent three more weeks stealing glances at it as I walked past day after day.
E caught me leaning against the island one morning, staring longingly at the old machine. He wrapped his arms around me, his lips kissing my hair, and I closed my eyes and leaned back into his warm, familiar embrace. He kissed my neck and then my cheek before his mouth came to my ear.
“You can keep staring at it all you want, but the words are in here.” He pointed at my chest.
I turned, looking up at him, and he took me by the chin and kissed my lips softly. “I’ll see you later,” he said, and he kissed me again. “I love you.”
“I love you,” I replied, stealing one more kiss.
“Have a good day!” I yelled as he walked out the door. He yelled it back, and then he was gone. It was just me and my thoughts. And an old computer I had long forgotten the feel of.
I paced most of that morning, squeezing in my workout—that didn’t include running—somewhere in between. Then I paced some more.
I stopped at the island again later, the blinking white light of my laptop reminding me it was still alive, waiting for me to make the first move.
I took a deep breath as I drummed my fingers against the marble. A quiet voice surfaced in my mind from a distant memory—Gale Stanton and her empowering reassurance. I held my breath for ten long seconds as the sound of her soft southern voice sang in my head:
When you’re most afraid to fall… that’s when it’s most important to jump…
I let out an unstable breath, and with a fast-beating heart and a stomach quivering with nerves, I grabbed the dated device.
“Guess we’re jumping.”
I opened a blank document, and slowly, completely unsure of where it would go, I began to type.
The words came sparingly at first, oddly and misshapen from a place of their own. And then—like a child breathing their very first breath after a long and tiring labor, those first words took shape, and a story was born…
Once, there was a boy who loved a girl. And the way he loved her changed everything…