Epilogue II
Author’s note:
Okay, so I don’t usually ever write endings like this. They’re heartbreaking, and I don’t want to make your heart hurt. I want the characters to ALWAYS live happily ever after, FOREVER. I don’t want to ever think about them dying.
However, a good friend from our CrossFit gym passed away recently, and yesterday we attended her memorial. Something her husband said made my heart literally ache. And I knew that I had to write that into a book.
So…read at your own risk.
Hux
Thirty-one years later
Married thirty-four years
“It’s time.”
I looked at my wife and knew that she was right.
Her body was failing her.
She hadn’t had a sip of water since Monday.
She was on a steady morphine drip, and it was still barely keeping her pain at bay.
“I know.”
Her fingers squeezed mine.
Barely enough to feel like butterfly wings.
“When I die, don’t spread my ashes.”
I looked at her. “What? I thought you wanted to go into our backyard?”
“I do, kind of.” She paused. “I don’t want to go anywhere without you.”
I instantly knew what she meant.
I dropped down to one knee beside her bed and said, “Then I’ll tell the kids that where I go, you go.”
“Mix us together,” she breathed, though it sounded like saws rattling in her chest. “Spread us at the base of the mountain, where we planted those wildflowers the first year we moved in.”
The tears in my eyes didn’t fall, but it was close.
“Where you go, I go,” I agreed.
“And the diamond,” she said. “Tell Mattie that when her firstborn gets married, she has to pass it down.”
“Okay.”
“And when Cade gets married, he gets to have the one I’m wearing now.”
I smiled. “Okay.”
“Damien can give his wife my wedding band,” she continued, her voice slowing.
“Okay.”
“Take them all to The Crater of Diamonds,” she said. “Every single year. Find all the diamonds, Hux.”
“Okay.”
She was a little slower to respond this time.
“Tell Sage that…” She was quiet for a moment. “I’m going to miss working with her every single day.”
“Okay.”
“Tell Odin that I’ll mostly miss him. He is cantankerous, though.”
I smiled. “Okay.”
Her breathing slowed even more.
“Tell my brother that he was the best…” A slow, deep breath. “Big brother that a little sister…” Another deep breath. “Could ask for.”
I smoothed my hand down her cheek. “Okay.”
“And tell Birdee.” She paused.
She paused for so long that I felt my heart lurch.
“She’s asleep.”
I looked over at Odin.
“For the last time.”
“Yeah, probably.” Odin sounded just as hurt and broken up as I was.
All of us were.
Odin and Sage were there.
My kids. My brother-in-law. My family.
Our friends.
They were all there.
Bernice had lived one hell of a life.
She was the best person that I’d ever met.
She was my best friend.
My confidant.
My everything.
What was I going to do without her?
I lay down in the hospital bed with her and cuddled her close.
“Tell Birdee that I love her.”
“Okay,” I breathed.
“Don’t forget to live, Hux,” she whispered. “Go work out. Go to work. Go ride your bike in the mountains every spring. Live.”
But I didn’t want to fucking live.
Not without her.
“Okay,” I said anyway.
“I love you.”
I felt the traitorous tears leak out. “I love you, too.”
Her breathing hitched.
And I felt her go.
I closed my eyes and cried.
“You have to let her go, Dad,” I heard my Mattie say.
I shook my head. “Never.”
Six months later
I stared out over the mountain where Bernice and I had made our home.
The first pop of spring had finally shown, and I was staring at the colorful wildflowers that would one day be my final resting place.
“I’m ready to come home, Bernice.”
A sharp wind blew, and a petal off one of the wildflowers blew directly at me.
It landed in my lap. The petal canary yellow, just like her diamond.
“Okay, I’ll wait,” I grumbled. “But soon.”
The wind blew again as if she was saying, “Soon.”
Mattie
Five years later
“Ready?” I asked my siblings.
They all nodded.
I took the bucket that we used to mix my mom’s and dad’s ashes together, then tossed it out over the wildflowers.
The wind picked up the fragments of my parents and carried it away as if it’d never been.
“Finally back together,” I mused.
“Finally back together,” Damien said as he threw his arm around me.
Cade came to my other side and tugged me close. “Think they’re happy?”
“I know Dad is.” I sniffed. “He’s been waiting patiently all these years.”
“Patiently?” Damien laughed. “You’re delirious. Dad was anything but patient.”
“No,” I agreed. “I guess you’re right. Mom was always his endgame.”
“In life and in death,” Cade agreed.
The sun came out then, and illuminated the patch of wildflowers, as if the gods were confirming that Dad had made it.
They were together.
“What do we do without them?” Cade asked.
I had no idea.
But we owed it to them to live happy and carefree.
That was what they would want.
Just as the thought occurred to me, the door burst open and our kids ran out.
They played in the yard that we’d once played in.
Happy and carefree, just as they should be.