Page 45 of Runaway
The words sounded ridiculous outside my brain but were terrifying inside it. Grandma didn't laugh, and I didn't pull them back.
Nonsensical or not, they were exactly how I felt.
Happiness meant misery.
“Oh.” She breathed the word, as if it were delicate glass. With it came a new tone of understanding. “You are afraid to be happy. You're right. I can see it.”
I nodded, then realized that was absurd because she couldn't see it. Tears streamed down my cheeks again and I wiped them free, unable to respond a second time. Across the way, a mournful bird call released from the bushes. The echo of it seemed to ricochet through my chest.
“That makes sense, Stell.” Her words were calm, factually stated, but still filled with compassion. “They were happy. You were happy. Then it was all taken away from you and you had to start over. Maybe you associated happiness with loss in your mind because you don't want to go through it a second time.”
My nostrils flared as I sucked in another breath, but failed to speak again. Instead, a little sob peeped out of me.
“Is that why you live so softly?” Grandma asked. “You've lived and breathed your job for a while. You stopped talking about your favorite movies. You just seemed to . . . fade into the machinations of your life. Like you hid from something. It's why I've nagged you to get married for so long,” she tacked on with a wry laugh. “I've been able to tell that you haven't been happy for a long time, but I couldn't put a finger on why.”
Hearing those words from her made me visibly wince. How could something be so obvious to everyone else, but not to me?
“Why didn't you say something?” I cried. “Why didn't you ask?”
“I didn't realize it until this moment, honey. I'm sorry.”
“No, it's not your fault. I'm sorry, Grandma. I just . . . I'm sad that I've lived the last four or five years trying to hide from something as silly as happiness. I mean . . .”
I trailed away, unable to articulate just how strange it sounded, even to my own ears. Yet how right I knew it to be.
She fell quiet, and I was glad for a moment to pull my ragged thoughts back together. A headache had started to collect behind my eyes and I felt emotionally wrought after the last two days. Exhausted, but better.
“I'm sad for you too, Stell. But now you know, and that means you can choose something better. Every day is another chance, isn't it? You make it what you want it to be. Dreams don't happen. Dreams aremade.”
The bright words struck a deep chord within. A chord that had been dissonant for years and suddenly came back into harmony when I realized she was right. I had been hiding behind an understandable, but powerful, subterranean fear that I could lose everything all over again. The rocking of my five-year-old world had ripples that still reached me today, as an adult. But they didn't have to frighten me anymore.
Hadn't my worst fears just happened anyway? Hadn't I lost my apartment, my job, my clients, and for the time being, any supposed friends?
And yet here I stood.
Alive.
Alive andwell. Happiness wasn't out of my reach after a great loss. In fact, I was doing better than I would have ever thought. More joyful than I had been before.
That meant something.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Anytime, my love,” she said. “Are you going to be all right?”
Pounding headache notwithstanding, I felt more unburdened than I had in years. Like the clearing of a storm.
“Better now than ever,” I said in a throaty response. Life had taken away so much of what I cared about again but had given me a second chance. A new start. Now, I had the insight I needed to choose to be happy and not be afraid.
After a few more minutes of checking on her, her Bunco club, her stocks, and feeling reassured that nothing out of the usual had come into her world—namely Joshua—I ended the call with a deep-seated relief. My thoughts whirled around each other, but this time in a good way. Cleansing. Removing the debris of the past.
It forced me to stare at the future in a way I normally never thought about. The future would come and I'd be in it. That had always been the extent of my thoughts.
But now I couldmakethat future.
I lay back on the pier, my freezing toes back in the water, and I closed my eyes to enjoy the sweet taste of fall sunshine. A languid half-sleep slipped over me until the slow, gentle tread of shoes on the pier interrupted the silence. Then the rustle of fabric and a weight settled next to me.
When I opened my eyes, Mark sat next to me. He leaned back on his hands and stared out at the lake. His profile was silhouetted against a perfect sky.
