Page 132 of Mariposa
I don’t quit. I don’t give up. I will make it back home to Violet.
No matter the obstacles we have to jump through to be together, I’ll fight them all just to get to look at her one more time. She doesn’t get to grieve me, too.
EPILOGUE
VIOLET
Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol
Awarm, summer breeze swirls into my hair as I stare at my grandmother’s charcoaled tombstone.
Grace Isla passed away a few days after Kade’s shocking return. We buried her with all her favorite things, including the blue bear and letters from Graham.
The night before my grandma passed, she had a moment of clarity. It came so abruptly, I thought I was dreaming. But when she looked at me, how she always does, with an infinite, unbreakable grandmotherly bond and a smile drawn on her pale, tired face.
It felt like taking a breath of fresh air, even though I knew the wave was coming any day.
“Are you scared of dying?” I ask her as the tears cling to my lashes.
“No,” she says confidently with no skips in her tone. “I used to be, but not anymore.”
“Grandma, if you die, I will too. I won’t ever accept it.” I grip her hand tighter, struggling to hold the sobs in my constricted chest.
“It’s a part of life. We will see each other again. Have faith. Be strong. And you do have me, you will always have me, mija, remember that.”
“I can’t believe she’s gone…” I murmur. My dry, sore eyes are completely drained from crying so much. I’ve got a soul-draining, pounding headache. I palm my lower belly as nausea creeps into my senses.
“I…I did something unforgivable,” my grandpa whispers.
“Grandpa, I’m sure it wasn’t so bad.” I quirk a brow at him, holding sympathy. I rub my hand against his back comfortingly.
“You think I don’t know my wife’s heart always belonged to someone else?”
I grow quiet as my heartbeat quickens and pulses into my ears.
“You think I didn’t know about Graham?” He coughs hoarsely. He brings a napkin to his lips and wipes his sniffles away. “She stopped getting his letters because I hid them from her.”
My brows raise.
“Grandpa!” I hiss.
“I was a jealous bastard. I wanted her to look at me the way she looked at him. I wanted her to miss me the way she missed him. I just wanted her. So I did something so selfish.”
I shift away from him, completely blindsided by his confession. He’s the reason why Graham and my grandmother thought the time and distance were driving them apart.
“She thought he forgot about her. Everyone in the diner told her to be happy because they saw what his absence was doing to her. Everyone told her she was naive for waiting for an older man. That he was probably a soldier cheating on her whilehe was away, she was losing weight, and the beautiful, bright, cheery glint in Grace’s eyes was gone. I didn’t partake in the gossip, but I did intervene. I thought it was best to make her forget him and take matters into my own hands,” he scoffs with a bitter laugh. “She got Alzheimer’s at eighty years old, and still, she thinks about him, and not me.”
I can’t help but feel bad.
“Did Grandma know?” I ask.
“Yes. After his funeral, and a month had passed, I told her what I had done,” he sobs. “I regretted it. I hated myself for it. I was an immature piece of crap, and now she had to really learn how to live her life without Graham.”
Chewing the inside of my lip, I turn my gaze towards her tombstone.
“For a whole year, she couldn’t look at me. Until one day, she showed up at my house and forgave me. Eventually, she gave me a second chance, but in the back of my mind”— he tilts his head side to side—“I wondered if every time she kissed me, it was Graham she was picturing? Was it his voice she imagined? And the final moments of her beautiful life confirmed it for me. It was always him…I was the second choice.”
I purse my lips, glancing from my grandmother’s tombstone to my hands nervously.
