Page 111 of Happy After All

I can do it and not stay in the same place. I don’t have to leave her behind entirely to find happiness. That’s been the lesson of the last few weeks. I’m learning how to be. This new version of myself, not a fake one. Not one who was born the day I walked into Rancho Encanto. Not the woman I was in LA either, or the girl I was in Bakersfield.

I know what it costs to hope now. To strive for happiness. It is so much heavier, but I imagine when I was younger. When I hadn’t lost anything. I’ve been afraid to imagine my future. Now I’m not. Someday I’ll be like Alice. I’ll look at a young woman, and I’ll know. I’ll have the right words for her. Maybe that’s the only gift I have right now. The hope that someday I will be able to do for someone else what Alice did for me. I’ll take that hope.

That healing. It makes sense in this moment. This village I’ve created.

Part of me aches, knowing I do still hope I can have that fairy-tale happy ending.

But part of me feels like it can rest. Becausethisis a happy ending. If it’s all I ever have, it’s a pretty damned good life.

A good world.

I dragged myself here. Wounded. Bleeding. Exhausted.

I’ve been afraid to start this new chapter. I’ve let the page stay blank for far too long. I was scared of what it would look like to start writing Amelia again. This changed version of me who won’t be able tokeep the subtext of grief out of this new chapter. Maybe out of all the chapters after.

I feel different about it now. I feel an acceptance of it. More than that, I feel ready to start. To see where it takes me, how it changes me, who I become.

My life doesn’t have to be a blank page.

It’s time for me to start writing my own story.

Chapter Twenty-Five

I don’t go to Nathan’s room that night, and he doesn’t come to mine. I think he understands that I need time. Time to go over my realizations, time to come to some new conclusions.

When that man walked into my motel almost three years ago, I thought he was a wreck.

I thought I was living in some kind of accepted space. I was in the after of a painful experience, but I knew it, and I was moving forward.

I was wrong.

I’m just as much of a wreck as he is.

I find a strange sort of comfort in that.

I’m a wreck, but I’m ready to be less of one. I’m ready to make some changes.

The next morning I send him a text, and he’s at my door with coffee twenty minutes later.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I sit with that for a moment. “I am. I ... I’m better, I think. Better than I’ve been for a while. Who knew, I just needed to ... talk about it.”

I know it isn’t that simple. It isn’t just talking about it. It’s actually sitting in the wisdom of other women. It’s being in that community.

“You know, I think I understand why women got accused of witchcraft so often,” I say.

“Really?”

“Yes. Because our wisdom is powerful. It upends the rules. Changes how you see things. About life, about yourself. At least, that’s what happened to me last night.”

“I’m definitely not going to argue with you about the wisdom of women.”

He looks like he wants to say something more, but he doesn’t. I don’t push him, even though I want to.

“So,” I say. “I have kind of a wild idea.”

“What is that?”

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