I only wished I could be there for her.
She'd spent the rest of the night upstairs with Sophie, and that morning she was subdued, making eye contact with me only once, the force of her sadness nearly bringing me to my knees.
Sophie never left her alone with me, not even for a second.
There was so much to say, but I had to bide my time, give her space, let her breathe. If I pushed too soon, I'd lose her forever. She might have already been lost to me.
I could hear the murmur of their conversation up in Dad's room as they packed away his things, and I recounted every moment I'd spent with her since I'd come home, all the years I'd spent so many miles away with her on my mind, wondering what if. I thought about that night, the night he died. I thought about the need my soul had for her, and she gave herself willingly, as she always did. Because she was unfailingly kind, even at great personal cost, simply because she loved with all of her.
I only wanted to be whole enough to give myself to her. For so long, I'd been in pieces, and in my darkest hour, she'd been my only light. But I'd laid waste to the gift she'd given me before I'd told her what it meant to me.
The kitchen — and the rest of the house — was spotless before long, and Ben was at Lou's again as he spent all the time with her that he could before he left. I'd walked the equivalent of the length of Manhattan in the time since I'd stepped off the airplane, and now that I'd found my bearings, I didn't want to run anymore. But being downstairs in the house, all alone, in the quiet … Dad's absence was loud, deafening.
I decided to read and made my way up the stairs, not able to sit in the library. That room was almost more his than his room. But when I heard the sound of my name as I approached his room, I paused.
Elliot and Sophie sat by the window, the light streaming in around them, illuminating them, leaving them with halos of sunshine. Boxes surrounded them as they worked through a pile of his clothes.
"Wade and I got this for Dad for Christmas a few years ago," Sophie said, running her hand over the front of a sweater that lay in her lap. She sighed. "It's so hard to choose what to keep and what to donate. Almost everything here has sentimental value."
Elliot didn't respond right away, but finally said, "It's okay if it's too soon. We can put all of this away and go for ice cream instead. Or whiskey."
That elicited a chuckle from Sophie. "Both sound nice. But I've got to do this. I haven't been able to stop thinking about his things in here, just waiting to be sorted through."
"All right." She looked around. "Well, let's say you can keep ten things. Fifteen, if you really need to push it, so if it's not important enough to make the top ten, it goes in the donate pile."
"Thank God you're here, Elliot." Sophie shook her head. "It's silly to love a sweater in place of a person."
Elliot reached for another sweater and held it up. "Oh, I don't think it's silly at all. Especially this. You can put it on when it's cold, and it'll keep you warm. He would have appreciated that."
Another sigh from Sophie, heavy and sad. "Can I ask you something?"
"Anything."
"Do you think that there's an end to love?"
Elliot considered for a second.
"What I mean is," Sophie continued, "the longer someone's gone, do you think the love … diminishes? Is there a limit to its length?"
Elliot laid the sweater in a heap in her lap, her hands buried somewhere inside of it. "I think that every day the answer to that question is different. Some days the loss is as fresh as the day the love left. Some days, you can breathe, not think of it for a stretch, sometimes just for an hour or a few minutes, sometimes for days. Sometimes you'll go a day or a week without breathing once because the loss is suffocating. It takes different faces: anger, hurt, longing. Sometimes it's bittersweet joy, because for a moment, you had it all. I want to tell you the pain gets easier, but it doesn't. You only learn to bear it. But there's comfort in knowing you loved and were loved in return, even though it's no consolation. Only a truth you carry around with you forever."
Sophie sniffled, and Elliot leaned in to hold her.
"There is no length to love; it's infinite. It lives in you always. Hold on to it."
"But it hurts," she sobbed.
"That's how you know it was real."
I leaned against the wall without the strength to stand on my own for a long moment, and I pressed my forehead to the cool surface, eyes closed. Those words — her words — were meant for me, not my father. They were about me, an echo of what I felt, what I'd felt every day since the day I left.
And now, now that I knew what I stood to lose forever, what was in my grasp, I felt the truth of it, of her, of my heart. I heard my father telling me to live. And for the first time in seven years, I knew exactly what to do.
25
To survive
Inch by inch,
Second by second,
Pulling yourself from the wreckage,
Leaving it behind you
To survive.
* * *
M. White
* * *
Elliot
The afternoon was up and down as we worked slowly through Rick's things. Sophie and I vacillated between reminiscing and laughing to bearing the pain of our loss and the tears that always seemed to follow. Wade had stayed away, thankfully. I was too bruised, too worn to take any more. He'd tapped me dry.
Charlie had texted me that morning to ask if I'd come by the house at some point, promising me that my family was nowhere near. So after we'd finished for the day, I left for home, not sure what I'd find.
The only sound in the house were the sounds of the kids playing and the rumble of Charlie's voice. I smiled when I heard him laugh, thankful for even a small show of happiness after everything he'd been through.