Page 86 of Jagged Line Paradise

Yet I don’t know if I can truly accept it. My soul is still shattered by my past and my heart struggles to hold the pieces together. I can’t let him fall for me and want me when I’m so broken because that will only hurt him in the end. I can’t hurt him. It would hurt me, too.

I need to heal. I need to find peace. I need to accept the things that have happened and figure out how to be the woman he thinks I am. I have to pull myself together and find a way to be worthy of him so he never wants to leave me again. Because I know I won’t make it if he leaves me again.

But how do I provethat I can move forward?

How do I become thewoman I might have been if I hadn’t beenthe Canyon Carver’s last surviving victim?

Before my mind can clamber through a solution, two words float across my mind.

Find happy.

One of the monitors beeps wildly.

Nurses rush in.

And within minutes, my mother has fallen into a final slumber from which she’ll never wake.

Chapter 22

Avalon

IT WAS QUICK.

My mother’s death snuck up on her while she slept. She was drugged up and pain free, and the way she went was peaceful, at least.

Even Dr. Wells was surprised by how quickly she had passed. He told us it was a good thing she went when she did because she didn’t have to suffer longer than necessary, though I’d argue that she had suffered for a long damn time.

It’s been a week since she died. I think.

Maybe two weeks?

I don’t really know how to describe what I’m feeling.

Everyone keeps asking if I’m okay, and I’m realizing that I don’t even know what that means anymore.

Have I ever beenokay?

Andrés taps my shoulder, towering over me from where I sit on the floor of my mother’s room in the back of the trailer, boxing up items from her closet to donate. I guess my phone is ringing, but I didn’t notice until he tapped my shoulder. He holds out my cell phone and I look up at him. I don’t want to answer it. I’m just so damn tired. The funeral was a few days ago, and I just want this mess to be done with.

Am I a bad person?

I just want the calls and well wishes to end.

Am Ia bad person?

I just want to move on from this prison I’ve felt trapped in with my suffering, struggling mother.

Am I a bad person?

Andrés huffs and answers the call for me, putting it on speakerphone. He’s been here for me, every day, dealing with my lost and broken pieces. I’ve struggled with the choice to mend myself back together or fall into the black corner in my mind, tangling myself in the spiders’ webs of depression. He’s been a saint and I don’t feel like I deserve him.

“Avalon Briar’s phone,” he says as I turn back to my pile of trinkets from the back of my mom’s closet.

“Yes, is Ms. Briar available?” asks a male voice.

“She’s present,” Andrés says, wiggling his eyebrows at me and holding out the phone insistently.

I sigh. “I’m here.”

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