Page 10 of David's Love

“I’m here for work.”

“That’s what she said. Anyway, I wanted to call you and ask you how your schedule looks.”

“Uh… My schedule just got busier.”

“I thought so.”

She seems at peace with it, but I know Miranda. She is one of the most attentive, courteous, selfless people I’ve ever known.

She always puts everybody else before herself.

“Don’t worry. I’ll make time for you.”

A pause ensues.

“The anniversary of her death is coming soon,” she says.

A pang of guilt zips through me.

All these years, I’ve never needed a reminder about Anna’s death.

Yet, in the past months, that particular thought has never surfaced in my head.

It’s not like I haven’t thought about her. It’s just that, for once, she and I were no longer at war.

It must be that I have finally accepted that the way our story spun out of control and destroyed our lives before whisking her away was how things were meant to be.

She seems quiet, too.

Still present in the back of my mind, she’s no longer grieving, hiding, trying to convince me she has done the right thing.

And that makes me believe that she, perhaps, regretted everything, although she never dared to confess and give me closure.

She might’ve done it if her time on this earth weren’t so short.

So many words we could’ve said to each other remained unspoken.

So many answers could’ve ended the annoying questions instead of being scattered in the wind.

We’ve been at odds for so long, with me stuck in this reality and her sailing into eternity behind the shimmering veil.

We couldn’t see eye to eye for a while before we found a way to live with one another, as I was captive to this dimension, and she became a ghost.

And then things started to improve.

Julie has changed a lot for us, although it felt like Anna's ghost had been reluctant to the idea of me taking care of her daughter.

Miranda, on the other hand, considered it a blessing.

And Julie?

Well, Julie has just been Julie.

She inherited some of her mother’s stubbornness, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

Forgetting about Anna’s death anniversary is a first.

And it isn’t like I forgot the date.

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