Chapter 29
NOW
Dear Lexie,
If I can’t have you back, I can only hope that somewhere in your life, there was someone who listened to you the way that Joe does to me. We all need that, don’t we? To be heard – unfiltered; unjudged.
I tell Joe all about you. Your dedication, your tireless campaigning. Your love. How I hadn’t realised how much you struggled with what you saw as wrong in the world.
‘If that’s how Lexie really felt, there wasn’t anything you could have done,’ he says much later that evening after we’ve moved into the sitting room, where he closed the curtains against the world before lighting a log fire.
‘But I could have tried,’ I whisper. A part of me knew you had burned out, that you were drinking to escape the pain you felt. As your mother, I should have been able to do something. And I couldn’t.
‘Is there any comfort in knowing Lexie did so much with her life?’ he says softly, getting out a tissue and gently wiping my tears away.
In the dim light, I watch the flames cast flickering shadows. ‘She did. So much.’
And you did. More than I can ever explain, than you will ever know; from your first breath to your last, Lexie.