I stroke her face as tears fall down my own. I crouch down and look at her.
“Because this can’t be the end, Iz. Because we’re supposed to grow old together, and raise our children together, and move to some awful retirement community in Florida together. You can’t leave me yet. They tell me you already have, though. You’ve already left.” I grip the edge of the table as I say it. I shudder, sobbing into nothing. I need her. I need her here to comfort me, but she’s not. She’s not here anymore. “What about Bria? How am I supposed to tell her that her two favorite people are gone?” My voice breaks, and I continue to cry over her lifeless body.
“I need you, Iz.” I’m sobbing now, and I’m struggling to breathe. I can feel the panic start to bubble inside me, because I know this is real. It’s not a dream, and she’s really gone. But she’s my number one. I don’t know life without her. “I love you.”
I don’t stop telling her that I love her. I say it over and over until my voice is hoarse and I feel Frank leading me out of the room.
“You daughter is awake,” he says quietly. “You need to talk to her.” I don’t miss the fact that he uses the word daughter instead of her name. My daughter. It’s just her and me now. My breathing hitches in my throat. I’ve barely formed the words in my mind, and now I need to utter the words to my daughter. How?
“For Bria,” he reminds me. I walk out, and I quickly wipe my face with the sleeve of my shirt. I don’t want her to see me cry. Not yet. Not now.
For Bria.
I compose myself as best as I can, and my little angel looks at me inquisitively.
“Mommy’s gone,” I whisper, squatting down to her level. I feel my lips quiver.
“When will she be back?” she asks innocently, her toddler voice piercing my heart.
“She’s not coming back,” I say, struggling. “Matthias went with her.” I bow my head down and weep.
She runs into my arms as she wails, obviously aware that whatever transpired tonight was very serious and that her mother and brother are very much gone.
“Are you going?” she asks, her voice muffled in my shirt.
“No, baby girl. It’s just you and me now. We have to take care of each other. Okay?” My voice breaks again, and I cry into my three-year-old daughter’s shoulder.
“Okay, Daddy,” she whimpers, clutching me tightly.
I see the family of four from the waiting room pass by us slowly, casting sympathetic looks our way. I stare up at them, and I smile, though it’s more like a grimace.
Because even though we got the brunt end of the 50/50 deal, at least only one family has to suffer right now.
I just wish it wasn’t ours.
One.
Evianna
- June 2014 -
I jerk my head up just as a crumpled piece of paper hits my head. Great. I fell asleep in the library again. I check my watch. Eleven p.m. I intended to pull an all-nighter, but this is the second time in an hour that I’ve fallen asleep in my seat. My body is clearly telling me to go home. The two people seated across from me—a couple, it looks like—are giggling as I look around, confused. I can only assume they were behind the paper bomb. It astounds me how immature underclassmen can be.
I pack up my computer and my book—Wuthering Heights. I shove it irritably into my canvas backpack. That book and I are officially at war. I am collecting supplemental research on my thesis topic, and Wuthering Heights is proving to be harder to work into my topic—“The Function of a ‘Happily Ever After’ in Romanticism and Victorian British Literature”—than I previously thought.
I spent months researching British Lit and the subsequent love stories told by Austen, Lord Byron, Charlotte Bront?, etc., and I practically wrote a book on the ways love stories and their subsequent happily ever afters impact readers in a positive way. I love love. I’m not afraid to admit it. My favorite book of all time is Pride and Prejudice. Is there a better love story out there?