Page 5 of Never Too Late

“Yes, true.” She nodded. “But, tell me, did you go through bargaining? Huh? Because I know for a fact you did while you stood in front of him.”

“Don’t!” I whispered, trying to pull away.

“Did you go through anger? Huh?” When I didn’t say anything, she broke the brief silence. “I know you did that too. You broke all the frames in my house when you threw the pictures of him and pulled the ones from the walls.”

The tears that gathered in my eyes made the image of her blurry.

“Darling, you’re so lost to grieving, you’re not even aware that you went through all the stages and it’s time to get out.”

As the room came into focus, I forgot all about Maggie and her treatment or Nathaniel and his demand of talking to him. That was because I saw the room I was in, the one that used to be mine, hadn’t changed at all. Everything was as I left it.

It was decorated in pink and white. The white curtains touched the log that my grandmother and I dragged back to the house and carved it to be a table on which I could put knick-knacks. It stood right next to the arch floor mirror that was leaning on the wall in the corner.

I could still see her rumbling when I asked her to give it to me one day I found it in the garage. But she grumbled while wearing a smile.

I looked at my knees and a baby pink comforter that was over them came in focus.

“Shit,” I whispered in a broken voice.

“Sophie?” Michelle called my name, but I couldn’t answer her.

I was never going to have any of it back. I was never going to listen to her telling about the good old days, or admitting of the trouble she and Mrs. McConnell were in since those two were always in some kind of trouble. I was never going to feel her yanking my head to her face and peppering my forehead with kisses. I was never going to listen to her while she lectured me on how I should live my life and not lose myself in work.

I was never going to have her back.

And then my eyes fell to that picture. The one from the hall.

The one of my parents. And right next to it, on the top of the dresser stood one of her. In it, she was looking up, a big smile on her face, her hands under her chin. She was younger in it, around fifty years old. It was a few years before I came to live with her and she was carefree because all that was hers was living and breathing and it was her turn to have fun. After I came to live in Hopeful, she was still having fun, but there were shadows that she couldn’t hide in her eyes.

Still, she was the most exquisite woman that I knew.

And I would never have her back.

“Fuck,” I gasped.

“Sophie.” I could vaguely hear Michelle calling my name but I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

I pulled my knees up and hugged my legs with my arms. My forehead hit the top of my knees and I broke down.

I gave in to the grief and I cried for her.

I cried for Evelyn Moore and all I lost when I lost her three days ago.

2

Sophie

“So you can understand how this concerns me,” Mrs. McConnell gave a slight nod in my direction, clearly satisfied that I listened to her half an hour explanation of why she needed to see me, immediately.

We were in my new office.

It was three weeks after the funeral.

Three weeks full of panicked phone calls from Michelle and Dr. Amos, Nathaniel (those I ignored, so I didn’t know if they were panicked or just him being his normal self and demanding I forgave him for his “slip-up”), and satisfied ones from Dr. Ashley, Director of Denver Health, in which she promised everything under the sun if I would just sign on the dotted line.

After crying in my old bedroom while vaguely listening to Michelle calling my name over and over, I apologized and before she could say a word, I hung up.

I wandered to the house, my grandmother’s words of how I should start living ringing in my ears. After two days of hearing them, I realized she was right. There was more to life than burying yourself in work and chasing that high that next big surgery gets you.