A Season of Firsts

Epilogue

After December 31st

CLEO

I think God gave Daniel to me as a gift.

In the blur that followed Emma's leaving this world, he was always there. Hugging me. Murmuring words of comfort to me. Holding my hand. Talking to me even when I refused to respond.

I had lost a sister, and the scar it had left was ugly. But in that same year I gained someone who meant a great deal to me.
Normally grief pulls people apart and sets up walls between them. I'm glad normal doesn't always happen. Instead of leaving me when I was angry with everyone and sorrowful about everything, Daniel stayed. He stuck with me. He was the one who noticed when I didn't want to eat and forced me to. He was the one who called me every night just to make sure I was okay. He was the one who took me to the park and told me to draw, months after Emma died.

It was on a sunny summer Sunday afternoon that I finally knew I'd be fine. Daniel took me to the place where I'd laid my heart bare to him. He handed me my drawing pad, something I hadn't touched in a long time.

"Draw." He ordered.

"Draw what?" I asked. I didn't want to draw. I hadn't drawn since December the thirty first and I didn't plan to anytime soon.

It was like I felt that if Emma was dead, the beautiful, kind Emma that I had loved, then the drawing that I had used to love as well could die too. For all I cared.

"Draw a squirrel, a leaf. I don't know, Cleo. It's your magic, not mine. You have a way of looking at the world and then managing to capture the beauty that is there using just a pencil and some paper," he told me.

I looked at him for a long time. Eventually I threw my drawing pad away from me and sat down on the grass, folding my arms like a little kid. He fetched it and came to sit opposite me. He placed it in front of me, then pulled away one of my hands to splay it against his own, like the scene from Tarzan where Jane and Tarzan sit on a tree together.

Then I realized. It was true, it was real that Emma was never coming back. But Daniel was here, right in front of me, breathing, golden skin glowing, green eyes piercing, his hand pressed against my own.
He was real too. And this was the reality I wanted to focus on.
So I picked up my pencil and I sketched.

I haven't stopped since.

"I knew you had it in you," Daniel had grinned at me.

I smiled at him. "Thank you for finding it for me."

He'd looked away, almost as if he was shy. "It was worth it. Just to see that look in your eyes again. I missed that sparkle."

Later that day, on the way home, we kissed. It was an innocent, quick kiss. But it was full of promise.

~ ~ ~

AIDEN

Emma's family wasn't mad at me for having those last few moments with Emma, as I had thought they would be. They were just sad. So bitterly sad that it made me even sadder than I already was.

Cleo stopped speaking for a few days. She wouldn't say a word to anyone and her eyes were always red from crying. But the day after the funeral, she finally spoke again. She was sitting with Daniel, Carpenter and I on the Rayburns' front porch. It was silent, until, suddenly, she just started listing all the things she knew Emma had loved. Summer, mountain air, blueberry muffins, Meg's cookies, whoever Meg is, giving Eddie frights, play wrestling Carpenter, teasing Cleo, singing along to country music, something Emma had never told me she liked, dressing up, swimming. She talked about how Emma hated white chocolate, and told us that she had secretly owned a Barnie mug. Then both Carpenter and Daniel joined in as well. Carpenter mentioned how she used to come to his room when she got scared at night when she was a little girl. Daniel said that he couldn't quite forget the one time at the age of nine, when he dropped his ice cream and she gave him hers.