Page 64 of It's Always Been You
Gabe climbs out of the car, and I watch him walk slowly up to his parents’ graves. He stops and takes them in—the tidy grass, the fresh flowers. He brushes a hand over the top of each stone before he crouches down and runs his fingers over their names, the dates they died. He stays like that for a long time, sitting back on his heels, facing the graves.
I can’t see his face, so I don’t know if he’s talking or just sitting in silence, but I can tell the moment everything changes. Gabe’s shoulders fall first, then he rolls forward onto his knees. He has a hand flat on each stone, and his head drops down. His back starts to shake.
I don’t have to be next to him to know he’s crying. I can see it. Feel it. My heart aches right along with his. He asked for some time alone and I gave it to him, but every instinct I have is telling me to go to him. Be with him. Help him through this the way I couldn’t the first time. The first time he asked me to leave, and I did. This time all he’s done is ask me to stay. To be here with him. And I have. I can’t be anywhere but where he is. My heart and my brain and the part of me that has always belonged to him simply won’t allow it.
Decision made, I push open the door and get out of the car.
Gabe
The spring breeze is cool on my face as I approach my parents’ graves.
Parents. Graves.
Even ten years later, the words sound wrong in my head. I wonder if I’ll ever be used to it.
The graves are neat. Tidy. There are fresh flowers—the purple tulips my mom loved—and I wonder if maybe my sisters have already been here. They both flew in this morning, and I know they were planning on coming at some point. Ames asked me if I wanted to come with her, but I said no. I wasn’t even sure I would have the courage to come until I was sitting in that dressing room with Molly.
Without her, I wouldn’t have.
Stepping forward, I brush a hand over the top of each grave, feeling the stone warmed from the sun. I kneel down, running my fingers over my parents’ names. The dates they were born and the dates they died. I’ve never been able to hold their date of death in my head. Every year on the anniversary of their deaths, one of my sisters has to remind me of it.
I sit back on my heels and stare at the stones. I don’t know how long I stay like that, and I don’t know how I know, but I’m confident that I’ll never forget that date ever again.
There is a bubble of emotion in my chest that started forming as soon as I asked Molly to come here with me. Or maybe it’s been there, unnoticed, for years. That suddenly seems possible. The closer we got to the cemetery, the bigger it grew, and now that we’re here, it sits so heavily my breaths are shallow and my heart pounds against it. My eyes burn.
I don’t know what to do here. How to be. How to make it okay that I’ve lived a decade of my life without all of my most important people. How to be grateful that I had such good parents and so angry that I lost them and that, in the losing of them, I lost so much more.
I’ve done the best I could. Raised my sisters. Built my company. Healed in all the ways I knew how. But sitting here, I’m cracked wide open, and I wonder if I’ve done any healing at all. This is why I’ve never come here.
Liv once told me that when she’s here, she talks to my parents. Tells them about her life. For lack of anything else to do, I decide to give that a try.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.”
The words come in a raspy whisper, and they’re the only ones I manage before the bubble bursts. Tears fill my eyes and roll down my cheeks as I lean forward onto my knees, splaying a hand over each of my parents’ headstones. Sobs wrack my body. I don’t even know what I’m crying for. Nothing. Everything. All at once.
For the twenty-two year old who lost his foundation. For my sisters, who lost theirs. For my parents, for all the life that they didn’t get to live. For the ten years I spent avoiding this place. For Molly. For the love of my life, who should have spent the last decade by my side but couldn’t because I broke us. Because I was broken.
And as if just thinking her name conjures her, she’s there.
Molly sits down and guides me back so I’m seated next to her instead of on my knees, my shoulders still shaking with quiet sobs. She wraps an arm around my waist and puts a hand on my cheek, turning me to face her. Her eyes are full of patience and understanding, and something else I’m too sad and exhausted to name. She kisses the side of my head and guides me down so I’m leaning against her. She holds onto me with both arms while I cry out ten years of grief onto her pretty floral dress.
She whispers words to me.
I’m here.
You’re safe.
I’ve got you.
Let it out.
It feels right, somehow, that Molly is here with me, like this. Like the reason I’ve stayed away all these years is because the first time I came back, I needed it to be with her. We’re on theprecipice of something. I can feel it, and I know she does too. I think maybe to move forward, we needed to look back first.
When I’ve finally cried myself dry, I sit up, turning so I can face Molly, picking up one of her hands and pressing a kiss to her knuckles, closing my eyes as my lips graze her skin.
“Thank you for being here. For knowing when I needed you to come.”
She smiles, reaching out and brushing some hair off my forehead. “It might have been ten years, but it looks like I still know what you need.”
