Epilogue
Penny – 15 months later
The thing about therapy is that nobody warns you how often healing looks less like an emotional breakthrough and more like being able to say, “I'm not responsible for every terrible thing that's ever happened to me,” without immediately wanting to vomit.
Progress, according to Dr. Selby.
Personally, I think progress should come with a trophy. Or at the very least, a cinnamon bun.
Still, when I stand in front of the bedroom mirror on Halloween, one year and a bit after some of the worst months of my life, and look at the woman staring back at me, I don’t flinch.
That part feels new. And good.
The dress, however, is ridiculous.
Black, tight, and short enough that if I bend over too far, I’m going to give the trick-or-treaters of Maplewood more than they bargained for.
There’s a white panel down the front that makes it technically penguin-adjacent, and a pair of black feathered cuffs at my wrists which Elle insisted were “important for flapping.” On my head is a little orange beak attached to a black headband, which looks deeply unserious with my curled blonde hair and winged eyeliner.
And on my feet are the silver heels.
I turn slightly, watching the light catch on the shoes, and something inside me settles instead of splintering.
Once, I thought luck was something I’d borrowed. A bright little spell with an expiry time, waiting for the clock to strike and prove I’d never deserved it in the first place.
Now, my clothes are strewn all around the room next to Evan’s most mornings. My mug lives next to his in the cabinet. My name is on Elle’s school paperwork under emergency contact, and there’s a smooth pebble on Evan’s nightstand beside a framed drawing of our family where everyone’s arms are too long and Gus colored like a cow.
The fear still comes sometimes. It has old roads through me. But I know the route now, and I know how to find my way back.
Therapy helped with that. So did lake breaths, and time, and Evan’s habit of saying, “Talk to me,” which was new for him, as well.
Elle’s voice carries down the hallway. “Penny! Daddy’s too big for the hallway!”
I close my eyes.
Some sentences change your life forever.
When I step out of the bedroom, I find Evan wedged sideways between the hall table and the linen closet in a giant inflatable penguin costume.
The costume is taller than he is, rounder than anything has a right to be, and powered by a tiny fan that makes a continuous whirring sound from somewhere near his left hip. His face is visible through a little opening beneath the penguin’s orange beak, and it's currently set in the flat, long-suffering expression of a man who has survived structure fires and medical emergencies, yet has been bullied into becoming a flightless bird.
Elle stands in front of him dressed as a large white egg with little orange tights, her hands planted on her hips.
“Daddy,” she instructs seriously, “you have to turn with your feet.”
“I am turning with my feet.”
“Turn them more.”
“That’s medically impossible.”
“You’re stuck.”
“I’m aware, bug.”
Gus waddles in from the living room dressed as a fish.
The costume is blue, shiny, and has tiny fins sticking out from the sides. Every few steps, he stops to glare at his own body as if the fish costume will magically transform him out of this cursed Halloween hell.
