Page 76 of Promise Me This

Suddenly the woman Leo has become, the more reserved one who holds herself back from the joys of life we used to take for ourselves unabashedly, makes perfect sense to me. She’s a moon without a planet to pull her close. She’s had to rebuild her world from scratch, alone.

“What can I do?” I ask. Niamh looks from me to Mam, trying to ascertain what exactly she’s missed. Mam holds my gaze steadily, but the corners of her mouth turn down.

“I overheard her talking to her mother last night.” She squeezes Niamh close, strategically covering her ears in the process. “There were talks of plane tickets.”

My heart sinks all the way to my feet. “I can’t lose her again.”

Mam nods, her eyes sparking for the first time since she arrived. “Then don’t.”

“But how?” I plead. “If she wants to leave, I can’t stop her.”

She lets Niamh loose after planting a sloppy kiss on her cheek, which my daughter promptly wipes off. “Can we get takeaway?” Niamh asks.

Mam smiles down at her. “Sure, love. Go hop in the car; I’ll be there in a second.”

“Yay!” Niamh cries, spinning around and making a beeline for the car.

“If she wants to leave,” Mam says, drawing my attention back to her, “then you’re right, you can’t stop her.” She steps forward and grasps each of my shoulders, our eyes nearly level with her standing while I’m still seated. “But you can give her a reason not to go.”

I swallow thickly and nod because I don’t trust myself to speak. Mam returns the gesture before following after Niamh, leaving me to figure out how to be something I’ve never quite mastered: someone worth staying for.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Leona

It’s amazing how neatly a life can fit into a suitcase. All my clothes, toiletries, and miscellaneous items have stretched the bag to its limits, but it finally zips when I put my back into it. Glancing around the room, which I’ve stripped of its linens for washing, it’s like the past month and a half never happened. I’ll go and some weary traveler will take my place here, and the universe will slowly heal the laceration of my brief presence.

The thought of yet again crashing my parents’ empty nest leaves my bones heavy. Maybe I’ll get a job at a hotel nearby running their housekeeping services. I’ve been surprised to discover I like the manual labor and the logistics of timing it perfectly. I could rent my own place. Make a meager but mostly painless life for myself.

Just as I’m about to leave the converted attic space, my gaze catches on the floral cover of Poppy’s journal. My heart lurches. How could I have almost forgotten it? I scoop it up and go to place it in one of the exterior pockets of my suitcase, only to find there’s no room left.

I sit down on top of my suitcase and start thumbing through the pages. The letters date back almost a decade, starting on the first anniversary of Poppy’s passing. Buried under the grief and crawling toward graduation, I turned to writing to her as a way to off-load some of the pain. It helped. Infinitesimally at first, but more with each honest word I was able to lay out on paper.

The journal is nearly full. I hadn’t noticed until now, but there are only a handful of blank pages left at the end of the book. It breaks me at the same time that it balms a hidden wound, like I’m running out of time to talk to her while also realizing I’ve done what I needed to do in telling her story. There’s not much more that needs to be said.

I flip to the first entry and stare at the scrawled words of a shattered mother trying to come to terms with an unfathomable loss. The memory is as fresh to me today as it was the first time I wrote it down.

My Darling Poppy,

I’ve never imagined myself dying quietly, slipping into the night without a word edgewise. In my head I’ll get a chance to put up a fight. I’ll battle an illness to the brutal end, or I’ll be caught in the crosshairs of a shooting and die shielding innocents with my body. I’ll be sprawled out on the pavement after a car crash, tracing my goodbyes into the asphalt. It’s not that I hope for it; it’s just that it’s all I’ve ever been able to imagine. Death wouldn’t be this thing that happened to me. I’d be an active participant.

But you, my darling girl, had no such plans. That night, you kept me up kicking just as hard as any other night. Over the past year I’ve tried to convince myself that there was some detectable difference, some measurable withdrawal. But there wasn’t any; I know it in my soul. You gave it your all, like you had your whole life, and then sometime between falling asleep at 1 a.m. and rolling down my waistband for the ultrasound tech that morning, you slipped away. Quietly. Unannounced. Our favorite tech just looked at me and I knew. I knew you were gone.

They prepared for the delivery right away. I called my mom. I don’t know what she told Dad or what he thought was going on, but she came. And then she settled in beside me with that ironclad strength that only women have, and she helped her daughter do the hardest thing she’d ever have to do.

When you were born, the room, which had previously been a cacophony of machines whirring and nurses giving orders, fell completely silent. Even the monitors stopped beeping. We all refrained from breathing, to leave more oxygen for you. But you were already gone when they laid you on my chest, sweet girl. You were perfect, and perfectly still. And oh, how I loved you.

I clamp the journal shut. I can’t read anymore. It’s real enough for me in my own memories; I don’t need the reminder to see the scene clear as day.

As my hand grazes over the floral cover, I realize that I’m not the one I’ve been writing this for all along. I know Poppy. I know every second of her existence down to the very heartbeat, because it is so intrinsically intertwined with mine. But Callum doesn’t, because I didn’t let him.

There are sad memories here, but there are happy ones, too. There are stories of the first time I felt her move, the first time she got the hiccups. There are fantasies about what we’d be doing now, as a family. Everything I could never bring myself to tell him is written here, and it’s time for me to let it go. To show him all the parts of our daughter I love so that he can love her, too.

I tuck the journal under my arm and drag my suitcase toward the stairs, not chancing another look over my shoulder at the beautiful attic room that finally gave me back my life.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I remove it to see Padraig’s reply come through.

Leona

---