The Deal

The Epilogue: The Falling Star

TW: death, suicide, grief

8 years later

I grow old without you, mother.

Every time the candle on my cake is snuffed out, it is your face that I am imagine waiting behind it year after year. Hopeless and pitiful, that is one wish the Universe is unable to grant.

Each rotation of the Earth brings new hardships and achievements, new cycles of sorrow and sparks of joy. Life moves through me sometimes like a gentle breeze and others like a torrential downpour.

But, you're not here to see any of it.

Harry and I move back into my childhood home, but it no longer stands as a mausoleum or haunted shrine. We breathe life back into the empty shell and make it ours: tearing down the old wallpaper and painting it a bright yellow, replacing the dusty furniture and rusted appliances, fixing broken windows and dangerous stairs. The once barren walls in our home are now filled with photos Harry has taken over the years and ones of our family that I shoved into a closet many years ago.

It doesn't hurt nearly as much to look at them now.

I also fight off the weight of my grief and finally clear out your bedroom the year after Harry moves in. It is arduous and emotional and Harry offers to help, but I don't let him. It is deeply personal to sort through all the jewelry you loved so much and books you never got a chance to read, your letters from old boyfriends and your neatly folded lingerie. Each item brings me closer to knowing you and breaks my heart a little more.

I donate most things, but I keep your last half-empty bottle of Chanel No. 5 just for myself.

And just like that, I pack your life away into three neat little boxes.

My strong desire to keep you tethered to this realm would've forced me to keep your room untouched and closed-off for the foreseeable future, but a happy surprise makes that impossible.

My belly grows large with life, two twin girls born shortly before the 17th anniversary of your death on the night of the blood moon —a symbol for healing and positive change.

And throughout the nearly 13 hours I spent in labor, all I could think about was how desperately I wanted you by my side to hold my hand and coax me through it. How desperately I wanted your guidance, wanted to see your pride, wanted to see you become a grandmother.

How desperately I wanted my mother to see me become a mother.

I enter this new role in life without you and it is like losing you all over again.

Grief is not linear, but more akin to the ebb and flow of a tide. And after giving birth to my girls, I was pulled under by the riptide. I hardly remember that first year and it shames me to think of how absent I was, how much I must have missed. Harry took a leave of absence from work to fill in when I couldn't, but he never once made me feel bad for it.

Of course, you were always hovering around me, always there... just not in the way that I needed.

The girls are three now and are made up of the best parts of Harry and I.

Juno Roux has sun-kissed hair like yours, her curls just as unkempt as Harry's and always in her face. She has his mossy eyes, but my pouty lips and Wren's dimpled chin that she subconsciously touches when she's thinking really hard.

Wren Roux has the same chestnut hair as her namesake and just as thick too. She has your stormy grey eyes, but my freckles dance across her cheeks and Harry's deep dimples sprout whenever she smiles —which is infrequent, but always dazzling.