AllFreeNovel
Share Us
to know I’m totally sappy, but maybe I should. In the future, when I write, maybe I’ll be a little more blunt. Maybe I’ll say, “To my mother, whom I failed.” Perhaps I’ll write, “For Alicia, who never gave up on me.”
Maybe I’ll thank my mom for always believing in me, even when it didn’t always seem that way.
“Our relationship was always hard, Mom,” I whisper, touching the stone that marks her final resting place. “It was never easy. Not for you and me, but you know that? That’s okay.”
It’s okay.
“Looking back, I can see how you were always looking out for me. I thought you didn’t like me because I reminded you of Dad, but now I think you were just trying to protect me.”
She was just trying to look after me.
“And now I know. Now I know everything you did for my family even when you didn’t have to. Now I know you looked after my mate, and you protected my son. I was selfish and wrong and just...lost...”
I don’t bother trying to stop the tears, and I definitely don’t bother wiping them away.
This is what I came here for.
This is why I came to say goodbye.
Oh, I miss my mom sometimes. I probably don’t really have that right. After all, I was the one who walked away. I was the one who said goodbye. She would have gone to the ends of the Earth for me, and I couldn’t even see it.
I wasn’t the best teenager. I definitely wasn’t the most grateful, but...
But she looked past all of that and reached out to my family.
I just wish I had the chance to thank her.
I sit by my mom’s grave for more than three hours. I tell her everything that happened to me and everything I wish I could have said when she was alive. I tell her about my books, and I tell her about all of the things I did while I was gone. I promise that I’ll do better.
I promise that I won’t let her down again.
By the time I’m finished talking to Mom, it’s nearly noon, and I realize that it’s almost time for me to meet Alicia for lunch. We’re going to get some food and talk, and we’re going to make a plan for where we’ll go from here, because Alicia and I?
We’re going to be forever.
When I came back to town, it was because I needed to clean up my mom’s estate and deal with her house.
Now?
Now everything’s changed.
I’m going to ask Alicia if she’d like to move into Mom’s place together. We can totally revamp it and remodel if she wants, but I think that’s what my Mom would have wanted. I think she’d like knowing that Alicia and Orlando are happy in her old place.
I think she’d like knowing that I took care of them.
Finally, I stand, and I stare at my mom’s resting place for just a few more minutes. Then I turn, and I walk quietly out of the cemetery.
It’s a strange feeling: coming home. Everything is the same, but at the same time, nothing is. There are all the same stores, and the same employees, and the same little houses, but there are pockets of freshness. There are new shops here and there. Sometimes there’s a new, random face. Alicia said that occasionally, they’ll get new doctors or nurses who come, work for a year, and then move on.
But for the most part, Storm Haven has been the same for just about forever.
Until now.
For me, walking through town feels like coming home. It’s different, and I know I am, too, but somehow, I get the feeling that no matter what happens next, everything is going to be just fine.
It’s going to be more than fine.
It’s going to be completely unforgettable.
