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Teresa Delacruz lives a very, very long life. She technically outlives everyone from back in Brooklyn, save Bronte's daughter Jacobina, even though Steve and James (technically) never really died, even though (technically) Steve's gone now, even though she couldn't really explain it if she tried to. And God knows that she's been trying to wrap her head around everything for years.
In the years after James and The War, while everything was falling apart, Teresa built her life back together. She fell in love again, with people and protests and peace and love and all the power to all the people, and it was good. She wrote about all of this, on every scrap of paper that she could find. Teresa filled diaries upon diaries with her work and her life. Teresa made a vow to never leave anything unsaid ever again. She might even still be writing to James. Her kids (and Connie, who eventually becomes her closest confidante and friend) tell her to publish it all; to be remembered for all her Great Achievements and to cement a legacy that already exists.
There were a lot of Great Achievements that Teresa is very proud of, don't get her wrong. She harbours a particular fondness for Marches On Important Places: On Washington for Jobs and Freedom, On Washington for Peace in Vietnam, On the National Mall for Operation Dewey Canyon, On the Pentagon for PAM, a couple handfuls of ACT UP movements On New York and beyond, etc., and she continued marching even when she couldn't walk anymore. She was published for a few of these Great Achievements too, with opinion pieces and articles she wrote for papers and publications across the country while working at about a million temp jobs until she settled as a secretary for a civil rights conglomerate in the city.
She met her husband, Ike Dela Cruz (a similarity that they bonded over) at one of these protests. He was a vet, from the Korean War, but he fought for the Philippines before he immigrated to New York. Same side, different uniform. They met at a rally at the tailend of 1953, a month after Ike landed at Ellis Island to expand the GI Bill to include people, veterans, that weren't white men. They married a year later and had their first son: Tino James Delacruz. They kept Teresa's spelling. And then, at the height of the Vietnam war, a friend of a friend died and left behind a son: Grant. Teresa and Ike adopted him officially in 1964. TJ went on to have three kids, daughters, with his wife Sofia: Jenna, Vanesa, and Caitlin, and Grant had two kids with his wife Lea: Pamela and William.
Ike passed at the turn of the century. May 18th, 2000. He was 81. It was lung cancer, even though they'd both kicked the smoking habit ten years before. Some things just can't be left behind.
And even the people who left you behind can come back.
At 96, Teresa died during those five years that the world seemed to be ending. It was peaceful, if that makes you feel better. She was surrounded by the half of her family who hadn't disappeared: TJ, Lea, Will, Jacobina and her family, and Jenna's son, Henry. They found boxes of her personal archive. There were pictures and forms and annotated books and journals and obituaries. It was her entire life. Jacobina was the one that eventually went through it all.
It was Jacobina, too, that told James about Teresa when he'd come back. He'd seen her once, before he'd gone to Wakanda, but he couldn't go and talk to her. He wasn't ready, and now there are so many words left unsaid and unwritten and unshared. He imagined it sometimes, too, their reunion – both if he'd come home in 1945 and today.
It would be a surprise that he came home. James wouldn't even have told Rebecca until he was safely on American soil. There were too many stories about what happened between a promised leave and getting to your front door. It's a story that James knows too well after what happened with Will.
He would get flowers, first, and walk up to his, their, apartment building and knock on the door. Teresa would be in the middle of something, she always was, and she would open the door mid-sentence or with half her hair done and freeze.
"Jamie?" she'd ask, her voice shaking. She'd throw her arms around him and he would drop the flowers. And they'd be together. They'd be two bodies becoming one again, and they would be okay because she loves him and he loves her and they are home.
But James has to remind himself that he found home in a man after her, and that's okay, too. The woman working the Starbucks cash register looks like Teresa. Everyone everywhere looks like the people he left behind.
Except Jacobina. Time has not been kind to the young girl he last saw in Brooklyn.
"James Barnes," she says, walking towards him with a metal cane. She never lost her accent. "You look good for your age."
He stands at the table, always the gentleman. Years of brainwashing can't kick old habits. "Jacobina."
"A hug for an old friend?"
James hesitates, but Jacobina is as pushy as always, albeit a lifetime older. She pulls him in and then he waits for her to pull back. No sudden movements. Jacobina sits down first and James follows.
"She wrote down and kept everything," says Jacobina. She has nothing else to talk to James about besides Teresa. Her girlhood infatuation with him is long gone. She married, too, a few years before Teresa did. Her husband is still alive. They retired in the city. "Took me weeks to get through it all. A lot about you. Letters, phone calls she transcribed, birthday cards. I barely remember it. Mama said that, when you died, they sent back everything. All the letters she wrote. All the notes she made. You'd been keeping them too?"
"You have them?"
"Most of them are in storage. I'll give you a key. Here, though, this one's from the year you, well, you know. She had a lot to say to you, if you want to read it," says Jacobina. She fishes an old leather-bound journal out of her bag and hands it to him.
James is at a loss for words. He recognizes it, of course. It was the first birthday gift he ever gave Teresa. He thanks Jacobina and she makes him promise to stay in touch. Maybe he will. Meet the family. He's already met Vanesa. He's seen the outcome of the life that Teresa lived without him.
Later, he opens the journal on his fire escape, his chest bare to the cold nighttime air. It starts with words scribbled on the back of a hymn: Te amo, Jamie. I guess that's what I want to say the most to you...
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AHH so i accidentally deleted this chapter!, as well as Part 3. After life?, which is SO sad! i did still have a draft of this saved – thank god!
thanks for coming along on this journey with me for the 100th time. teresa has & always will be a very core part of who i am on this app and as an author, and i am eternally grateful for the role you've all played.
charlotte burke's story continues in forget-me-nots, which is on my profile @belowdecks.
