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The moment when Maeve said someone else’s name felt like losing Brandon all over again. It felt like some part of me was dying all over again.
“Maybe it did work.” Tessa’s voice pulls me back from the edge I crawled toward.
“What if the locket did bring you what you need and what you need isn’t Brandon. What if what you need is to face that Brandon’s gone? Or to forgive yourself for being the one to survive.”
Hearing Maeve’s words in Tessa’s voice is a firecracker exploding beneath my rib cage.
She turns to me, her expression fierce. “Something has changed in you these last few weeks. You’re going out, you’re working less. I haven’t seen you so bright and happy in a long time. But we both know it wasn’t Maeve who made that happen. It was you. And whatever you’ve been doing, that’s what you need to do. Every day. Even if it’s hard. I’ll be there every step of the way.”
I swallow against the barbs in my throat. My eyes fill with tears again. “I have been happier.”
My heart twists. “Even admitting that feels like a betrayal. How can I feel joy or happiness or love when Brandon can’t?”
“It’s not a betrayal. It’s moving forward. No one is telling you that you have to forget Brandon. I loved him, too, and I never want to forget him. But you didn’t die, Hope. You lived, and it’s okay to live. Not because you owe it to Brandon. You don’t. You don’t owe it to Brandon. You don’t owe it to me, to Mom, to anyone. You owe it to yourself.”
The truth of her words cracks open something I didn’t even know was tightly nailed shut inside my heart.
“I don’t know how.”
Tessa exhales a teary laugh. “Oh, I have some ideas. Starting with that closet you call a bedroom and ending with Will.”
My teeth scrape my lower lip. A feeling that’s become all too familiar rises up inside me. “Will’s not an ending, though, Tessa. He’s just a fling.”
“Is that what you want?”
A lump climbs up my throat, and I nod. “He’s not here forever.”
“You’re allowed to believe in a happy ending,” she says, as if reading my mind.
“I’m working on that.”
We have so long still to go to heal our relationship, but it’s a start. A step forward.
Tessa nudges me with her shoulder. “I owe you for planning Noah’s party, by the way. You and Will made a good impression on the baker. He’s throwing in a few dozen red velvet cupcakes.”
My chest fills with a laugh and a sob. “That was all Will. He worked some magic on that snooty baker. He might want to be a writer, but he was born to be in the hospitality industry.”
Tessa smiles warmly. “You sound like you when you talk about him. Brandon would want that.”
For the first time, her words don’t grate on me.
Tessa and I sit for a while longer in silence before she checks the time. Her nail polish matches mine. “I should go. Emma has soccer in a few hours, and I’m sure neither she nor Noah have any idea where her cleats are.” She rolls her eyes, but the expression is marked by love. Tessa wouldn’t give up any of it for the world.
With all my heart, I hope she never has to. I hope the randomness and cruelty of the universe pass over her.
Of course, there’s no way to ensure that. Bad things happen. The more people you let in, the more you can lose.
30
WILL
“I see you’ve made a friend,” Maeve says, appearing from behind the veil of mist twining through her garden. Above her, a purple-black sky slowly dissolves into pinks and oranges. “Icarus likes you.”
“He’s a needy little thing,” I tell her, looking down at the bluebird that has been perched on my armrest since before sunrise, keeping vigil right alongside me.
For nothing, as it turns out. Hope never returned to Maeve’s.
“Here. You must be exhausted.” She climbs the steps up her porch and extends a black mug with white lettering that readsLIVINGMYBESTLIFE!
