EPILOGUE Paul
EPILOGUE
Paul
November
Six Years Later
This town hasn’t changed much.
Still the same stores, the same people, the same Harvest decorations lining the Main Street. An almost overwhelming feeling of nostalgia washed over me yesterday when I drove in, my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel as I pulled into my parents’ neighborhood.
Six years.
Six years since I left this place in a haze of heartbreak and shame for Connecticut, with no idea what the future held.
When I went away to college, I was eighteen, young and dumb, just wanting to get out, just as all my friends did.
Typical teenage/young-adult rebellious feelings.
And I did well. But I always had that cushion of being able to return home to Starling Cove.
My hometown, where I lived easily and was deeply loved, would welcome me back with open arms.
Until I fucked up. Monumentally.
My therapist tells me that acknowledging my past actions without drowning in them is the only way I’ll move forward.
“Recognizing your mistakes is a form of responsibility,” she says. “Punishing yourself for them endlessly is not.”
Sometimes I can’t help it. Some days, I wake up sweating, remembering the look on her face when I confessed.
I have nightmares about it, which my therapist said is sometimes a good sign of healing, processing instead of suppressing.
You’re not scared to think about it, really think, and sit in your actions and feelings.
It’s painful, but growth doesn’t usually come without discomfort.
One day, hopefully, the nightmares will subside.
Maybe in another six years.
I’m back in town for Thanksgiving. For the last six years, my parents have either come to my condo in Maybrook, Connecticut—the place that offered me a fresh start.
Or they went down to Florida to visit our extended snowbird family.
My parents understood that I wanted to build something on my own first before stepping back into the place where I had imploded my life.
And I think they wanted to see the new life I was building in Maybrook, to confirm that I was at least doing fine.
And I was. I am. I have been.
Not great. Not extraordinary. But I’m doing just fine.
After apologizing to Sophie, I came home and apologized to my parents, too.
I owned it all, and thankfully, they forgave me, allowing us to move forward and build a better relationship than we had before.
Distance makes the heart grow fonder, it seems, and my mom’s coldness melted away, leaving behind the warm maternal presence I had come to take for granted.
My mom and dad gave me everything I could ever want or need growing up, and I spat in their face for it, blaming them for my own mistakes and choices. Life came easy to me because they put me in a position to make it easy. That’s what you do for your children.
And I blamed them for my cowardice and fear.
Strangely, though, hearing Sophie tell me—without hesitation—that she would never choose me again cracked something inside of me that desperately needed to break.
When I asked that question, I already knew the answer.
It burned, but it also freed me. I could finally let go of something I was holding onto desperately, unnecessarily.
Hope. For her to take me back. For her to see that I was a better man.
In its place came clarity.
My therapist's words ring true. I cannot hinge my healing on anyone but myself. And I think, in the last few years, I’ve made good progress on recognizing my avoidant tendencies.
Rebuilding from the ground up was difficult. When I arrived in Maybrook, I didn’t know anyone besides my boss, Lori, but it seemed like a place for me to lay my head while I rebuilt.
And I did—very slowly. I worked at City Hall, attended all my therapy sessions, had late nights at the gym, and spent evenings alone in my small but safe studio apartment.
Rinse. Repeat.
I’ve kept in touch with Brian and Chris, even attending their weddings, which—thank God—were not here in Starling Cove. Brian and Maude moved to Manhattan for her job. While Chris and Adriana stayed in Starling Cove, he married Adriana in her hometown in Pennsylvania.
We still meet up when we can, and Maude no longer looks like she’s imagining ways to kill me. It helps that Chris and Adriana’s kids now steal everyone's attention.
I’ve kept up with my therapy appointments, putting the techniques I’ve learned to good use when I wake up from a nightmare and want to collapse in one myself. I’ve learned that healing isn’t linear, and sometimes progress looks like breaking down in your shower when your feelings overwhelm you.
The last time that had happened was when I was unpacking my things in my new apartment. My bag had overturned as I tried to shove it into my one closet, and it had spilled out some random items, or so I thought.
As I was picking up random papers, documents, and phone chargers, my hand froze when I saw Sophie’s engagement ring and the Polaroid I had kept of her—the one of her blowing me a kiss.
I don’t even remember shoving them in his bag, though my mind wasn’t really running at full speed during those months.
It’s probably been in there since... that day. Or it was the universe taunting me. My karma.
My legs gave out, and I collapsed to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably as my grief exploded out of me. The ring still sits in the bottom of my sock drawer. Pawning it seemed wrong, and throwing it in the ocean like the old lady from The Titanic seemed worse.
So it stays with my socks, buried deep in the drawer, a reminder of the worst day of my life. A reminder of my enormous fuck up.
Every once in a while, I see it and break it into pieces. Every break is less and less frequent.
I’m stronger now than I was before, and that counts for something.
Now, I stand in the heart of Starling Cove’s Harvest Festival and take it all in.
My mom brought me with her today, wanting to grab some baked goods for Thanksgiving on Thursday. I said yes to coming along, curiosity winning out in the end, of my wanting to see the town again, the familiar faces, and hopefully, time has allowed them to either forget or forgive.
The Harvest Festival stretches across the familiar field near Wilkins Stables, just like it has every year since I was a kid.
Mr. Wilkins brings his ponies over for the kids to ride and leads them around a fenced path.
The scent of fried dough and cinnamon from the food stalls drifts to my nose, making my stomach growl.
Endless booths of residents selling handcrafted jewelry, knitted scarves, Christmas ornaments, and homemade baked goods.
It’s packed, the sunshine and mild weather bringing pretty much everyone from Starling Cove out on this Sunday before the holiday. The hum of laughter, of conversation, of pure happiness makes me smile as I absentmindedly walk from stall to stall.
I’m looking at handmade soaps for my mom when I hear someone shout behind me.
“Sophie!”
The name hits me like a lightning bolt. My entire body tenses and then moves on its own, whipping my head around to find the source.
It’s a young girl, probably twelve years old, bouncing up to a familiar dark-haired woman whose back is turned to me.
I don’t have to see her face, I already know who it is.
Sophie.
The little girl chattering away pulls a book out of a bag and shows it to her, and Sophie says something that makes the kid laugh. Then the girl turns and bounces away, and the woman turns too, just enough for me to see her profile.
I’m frozen in place as I get my first look at her in six years.
Six years.
I spent six years with Sophie. And now six years without her.
And there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss her.
When she faces fully toward, giving me a clear view of her face, my heart skips a beat, and my mouth curves unbidden into a smile. God, she’s beautiful, always has been ever since I first saw her... but now she’s something else entirely.
She beat cancer. I knew that from overhearing my mom all those years ago. She doesn’t tell me anything about Sophie, not one thing, and that’s fine. I understand that’s a boundary that Sophie has probably set, or one that my mom has placed on herself. Either way, I don’t deserve to know.
But, fuck... she’s still so goddamn gorgeous it makes me ache.
Her hair was longer than it had ever been when we were together, falling to her lower back in dark brown waves. Her pale skin looks luminous, and her genuine smile makes her eyes sparkle.
Then my eyes drop lower, and everything in me stops.
She’s wearing a dark green sweater dress, fitted enough to show the unmistakable swell of her stomach.
I blink a couple of times to clear my vision, and then I finally register what I’m seeing.
Sophie’s left hand—fingers painted that soft, light pink she always loved, two rings glinting on a very deliberate finger—rests protectively over her very pregnant belly.
A complicated mix of feelings runs through me—jealousy, regret, bitterness, disappointment, hurt, and heartbreak—all swirling together until I feel dizzy. And I have no right to feel a single damn one of these things. I haven’t seen her in six years.
Of course, she’s grown an entire life inside that time.
Of course, she’s growing a life inside of her.
She’s living the future I once envisioned for us... the one I could have given her if I hadn’t destroyed everything. Little boys and girls with my eyes and her smile. We had plans—our wedding, maybe start trying for a baby on the honeymoon, then come back to buy a house here in Starling Cove.
We would start our life together.
Then I ruined it with my carelessness, with my cowardice. I made choices I will regret until I die.