I walked toward the bed with the absurd notion that if I spoke Loralee’s name, she’d open her eyes. I leaned over her to brush her hair off her face, and one of my tears fell toward the bed, landing with an odd splat.
Looking down, I saw her pink journal cradled against her side, the pen lying next to it as if she’d just finished writing. Carefully I picked up the journal and opened it to the last page. There, right beneath the one I’d written just a few hours before, in a very shaky and light hand, was Loralee’s final piece of wisdom. Life doesn’t get easier. We just get stronger.
“Oh, Loralee,” I whispered. How was I going to get through the rest of my life without her? Without her wisdom and advice? And how could I be the mother she wanted me to be for her son?
“Owen,” I said. “I’ve got to go get Owen. I need to be the one to tell him.”
“Let me come with you,” Gibbes said. “You shouldn’t be driving.”
Any courage or knowledge I believed I’d somehow attained fled, leaving behind the old Merritt who would always be afraid of the dark. “Yes. Thank you.” My mind raced, trying to make lists and find order to distract me from the growing numbness. “I’ll call Maris’s dad, tell him that we’ll pick Owen up at the theater and that we’re on our way. He needs to say good-bye.”
I turned to the nurse, not sure what to say, and she took the journal from my hands. “I’ll stay with her until you get back. You’ll need to tell the coroner which funeral home.”
I nodded numbly, my grief like a fist that had grabbed hold of my lungs, strangling the breath from me.
Gibbes and I said our final good-byes to Loralee and then we left the house. As I stood outside I looked up at the moon again and saw heavy clouds drifting across its face, hiding the light and casting the dark night all around us.
chapter 34
MERRITT
Thunder rolled across the sky as my cell phone rang and I let it go to voice mail. It was Gibbes again, and although I’d seen him at the funeral and several times since when he came to check on Owen and me, we hadn’t really talked. Maybe it was the New Englander in me, but I didn’t want to talk—to anybody. Judging by the number of people who’d stopped by with casseroles and Jell-O molds, the Southern way to grieve was through food and talking. If it weren’t for Owen, I would have simply sat in the silence and listened to the echo of the doorbell.
I glanced down at my cards and then at Owen across from me at the kitchen table. “Go fish,” I said.
He just looked at his cards as if he didn’t understand what I was saying and then back up at me. “Is it okay if we quit? I don’t feel like playing.”
“Okay, Rocky. That’s fine.” I began gathering up the cards.
“And I don’t want to be Rocky anymore. I decided I like Owen better.”
I smiled. “Good choice. I like it better, too.” I finished stacking the cards, then slid them back in their box. “Would you like to watch a movie? We could call Maris and see if she wants to come over later and have pizza and popcorn and watch with us.”
He shook his head. “No, not tonight. I just . . .” He looked at the new refrigerator, as if hoping it could finish his sentence.
I took his hand, wishing that Loralee were there to tell me the right words to say that could make it better for him. But all I had was me. “Owen, it will get better—I promise. One day you will wake up and that weight on your chest won’t be as bad, and you’ll be able to breathe in a little more air than you could the day before. And then you’ll know that it’s getting better.”
He rested his chin on the table. “You promise?”
I nodded. “I promise.”
“I miss her.” Tears welled in his eyes and I quickly blinked back my own. One of us had to at least pretend to be strong.
“Oh, sweetheart, I miss her, too.” I wished again that she were there to offer some helpful piece of insight or her mama’s wisdom that would make sense out of her not being there.
“Can we go visit her? There’re some pretty flowers she planted in the garden, and I want to bring them to her.”
I sat back in my chair, relieved to have some plan of action. “Absolutely. We can go whenever you want—but let’s wait until the storm blows over, all right?”
He nodded. We hadn’t been back to the cemetery since the funeral, where I’d worn the red dress, and Owen his little-man suit, and Loralee had looked beautiful in her pink suit and with her hair teased and sprayed big around her head just like she wanted. Gibbes had laughed when I’d explained why, and somehow the sound didn’t seem out of place at Loralee’s funeral.