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I don’t turn any music on while I drive to Ma and Dad’s house, instead, I relish in the silence. Today isn’t a day for music, it isn’t a day to be happy. It’s a day of sadness, of heartbreak.
I drive up the road that leads to their house, the house that is full of memories of Emmy. Of happy times, times of laughter. But it’s not those times that I think about, all I can see is her ghost everywhere and it’s too much, it has been since the day that she left me.
“Charlie,” Ma calls when I step out of the SUV, opening her arms wide as I make my way up the steps to her house.
“Hey, Ma,” I say, wrapping my arms around her and breathing in deep. She smells like vanilla and pies. It’s comforting and that puts me at ease a little.
“Son,” Dad says, wrapping his arms around me once I let Ma go.
His chocolate brown eyes, the same as mine, shine with unshed tears. It wasn’t just me that lost Emmy that day, we all did.
“Old man.” I smirk, pulling away.
“Huh, I ain’t no old man, I’m in my prime.” He pats his growing stomach and I look down and shake my head.
“You been at Ma’s pies again?”
“You know it,” he chuckles.
We all head into the house and straight into the kitchen where Ma pulls the pot off the stove and starts to add herbs to it.
“Smells good,” I comment, sitting on one of the stools at the counter.
Ma looks at me, a sad smile on her face and clears her throat. Things are stilted and I know that it’s my fault. I hardly see them anymore; I just can’t handle being in this house, not when she surrounds me here. It’s too much.
Ma places plates in front of me and Dad and we eat, again in silence. I can’t formulate anything, my brain to mouth function has stopped working, so I sit here and keep shoveling food into my mouth, not looking up from the plate.
My eyes flick to the clock on the wall, wondering how long I’ll have to stay before it’s a sufficient amount of time without being rude.
My skin itches and my feet tap against the floor, wanting to walk out of here.
“How’s work going, son?”
“Good,” I answer Dad, looking at him briefly and then back down at my plate.
I drop the fork on the plate, the clunking sound echoing throughout the room before I steeple my hands in front of me. My eyes move to the windows that look out onto the fields and my stomach drops. I haven’t been out there for so long, maybe it’s time that I took the plunge and went there, without her.
I push the stool back with my legs and stand up, shuffling my feet as I shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans.
“I’m gonna.” I try to clear the lump from my throat, but when it doesn’t work I tilt my head to the windows.
They know what I’m going to do, where I’m going to go.
I make my way out of the house and I don’t move my eyes off the fields that are on the back of the property as I walk toward them. Once I get to the edge, I stop for a second, knowing that once I step onto them, there’s no going back. The memories will flood me and I won’t be able to stop them, but it’s time; time I took the bull by the horns and did this.
My boots sink into the grass that is waist high as I walk across the fields, the sun shining in the distance and blinding me.
A sob bubbles up as I get closer to the spot, our spot. I walk another fourteen steps before I’m there, the place that she loved the most.
I shove my hands on my hips and look out at the endless blue sky. My mind reeling back to the last time we were here.
“I read this theory once,” her soft voice whispers.
“Yeah?” I turn onto my side and watch her as she lies back and stares up at the dark sky.
“It was something like, ‘when you die, your soul floats up to the sky and becomes a star.’”
I chuckle at her and intertwine my hand with hers, bringing it up to my lips and placing a kiss on her knuckles.
