A Heart of Time (28 page)

He’s beaming and he’s got a bottle of Jack in his hand. “Just one shot since I wasn’t allowed to throw you a bachelor party. It’ll loosen up your nerves.”

“I’m not nervous, though.”

“Oh, well, it’s still necessary,” he says, shoving the bottle into my chest.

“You’re supposed to be my best man, not my worst influence,” I laugh.

“Dude, I’m a master at being both.”
This he is
. Finally, something we can agree on.

Even though Charlotte was okay with sleeping beside me last night, she isn’t okay with me seeing her before it’s time for the ceremony so AJ and I are taking the girls and heading to the gardens.

“I’ll meet you there,” Charlotte says, leaning around the corner, blowing me a kiss.

“Whatever,” I say, giving her a quick wink.

With laughter floating through the hallway, I hear Mom calling Charlotte so she can help her finish getting ready.

“Ready, ladies?” AJ says to Olive and Lana, who are both draped in white knee-length dresses, complete with flowers in their hair.

They’re spinning around in circles, making their dresses fly high, and the excitement bursting from them is something I will always remember about today.

Giggles fill the truck as we make the short drive over to the gardens, finding the lot empty except for one car.
Just how I like it
.

AJ and I escort the girls down the steps, making our way up to the tree. Olive runs ahead and wraps her arms around the trunk. “Good morning, Mommy.” She cups her hand around her mouth and presses it against the bark. “Daddy is finally happy and it’s the best day of my life. Thank you for watching over him.”

Her words make my chest shudder so I take a deep breath and look up into the clear blue sky, repeating Olive’s words silently on my own.

We continue walking down an unfamiliar path, one that isn’t marked well, one that looks untraveled, but I was told it leads to the place where Olive’s key works. Ari’s dad shared the big secret with me—what lies on the other side of the gated door—and it’s where Charlotte and I should begin our united lives. So that is what we’re doing.

The path comes to an end and we walk up to a wooden gated door between thickly settled trees. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before and it’s amazing.

“Go ahead, Olive. I know you’ve been waiting for this.” Olive takes the key from her little, white clutch purse that Charlotte bought for her and slowly places it into the tarnished lock.

With hemming and hawing, the door creaks open, revealing a large enclosed garden full of blue jasmines and white hydrangeas, with a small, narrow cobblestone path down the center that leads up to a white gazebo. A sign perched in front of the gazebo reads, “Olive’s Secret Garden.” The look on her face is one I wish Ari could see as a thank you for the most incredible gift she could have given.

Olive spins around, looking in every corner before she lies down in a patch of flowers. “It’s like Mom is here, everywhere,” she says. “This is the most amazing place; it must be like heaven.”

I lie down next to her, pulling her into my side. “She’s always around you, Olive. She’s always with us.”

We’re in dress clothes and we’re lying on the ground, and nothing has ever felt so right.

No, wait.
Now
, nothing has ever felt so right. Charlotte, in her beautiful dress, lies down beside me and Lana joins us, as well. We look ridiculous but I know now, looking back up into the sky, that Ellie and Ari are watching us. I have to believe they planned this.

“Should I just pronounce you husband and wife?” Ari’s dad asks, walking in through the gate. When I told him Charlotte and I had decided to get married, which was more than three days ago, he asked me to give him two months and informed me that he was a wedding officiate. I didn’t know why he needed so long, but a garden isn’t built in a day, I do know that much.

“Please,” Charlotte says, twisting her head, bringing her nose close to mine. Her eyes are glimmering under her lashes and her lips are glossed, reflecting the flowers around us. I’m in love with this woman. I am completely head-over-heels in love with her and it feels right—it feels perfect and complete.

Ari’s dad spouts off a few lines before commencing our marriage and the connection of our new family.

Never in a million years did I foresee my life going in this direction, being with someone other than Ellie, lying in a meadow of blue jasmines while joining my life with Charlotte.

Life is like the center of a blooming flower with each petal lifting over time, slowly exposing our hearts and souls as the motion of life circles around us. I can’t change it and I can’t stop it but I can watch and take in the beauty of it all. I definitely took the road less traveled, and my God, has it made all the difference.

Robert Frost, you are a brilliant man
.

EPILOGUE

- TEN YEARS LATER -

It’s eight in
the morning on a Saturday and I sort of figured I would be the only one awake in the house but the sudden onset of wrestling noises in the basement has me wondering who might be up. Maybe Jasmine got down there again. She has a thing for the musky darkness in her old age. For another moment, I continue to listen for more hints and at the same time Charlotte comes down the stairs, groggy and still half asleep. “What’s the look for?” she asks, kissing me quickly before grabbing a coffee mug.

“Do you hear that?” I ask.

Charlotte stops to listen. “Oh yeah, I think Olive was looking for something last night and she’s probably down there continuing the search.”

“What was she looking for?” I ask.

“She didn’t say. You know her, when she’s trying to figure something out, it’s best not to ask questions.” I laugh at her explanation. So true. It’s something we have all learned well throughout her teenage years. “Has Ashley woken up yet? She has a soccer game at eleven and I almost forgot,” Charlotte says.

“Crap, no. I forgot, too. Let me go down and see what’s going on with Olive and then I’ll go take our little princess to soccer. You said you needed to go check on some things at the office, right?”

“Yeah, I want to make sure the new updates were completed by the developers last night,” she says.

“You got it, my big famous CEO,” I say, pulling her down to my lap.

“Very funny,” she grins. “Oh, and in case you didn’t get the memo, your little princess is nine now and will have no part in you calling her a princess. You can thank me for the warning later.”

Girls.
“I’ll just thank you now and get it over with,” I say, pressing my lips up against her neck.

“Ugh, gross,” Ashley says, pointing her finger into her mouth. “Get a room.” Yep. I do not miss this age.

“Excuse me, Princess Ashley,” I tease.

“Oh my God, Dad, get a grip. I’m nine,” Ashley says, flipping her auburn hair behind her shoulders.

“Good morning to you, too,” I grin at her.

Placing my coffee mug down on the kitchen table, I jog down the wooden steps, finding only the corner light on near the back part of the stairs.

“Olive, what are you doing down here?” I ask as I find her rummaging through an old box.

She collapses with frustration, throwing her hands down by her hips. “Ugh, I was looking for a purse to bring with me tonight and I thought maybe Mom would have had something cute I could use.” I see now that she’s rummaging through one of Ellie’s boxes of clothes. I wonder how often she does this, considering this is the first I’ve seen her doing it. She definitely looks as if she’s done this before.

“Oh,” I say. “Honestly, I don’t know if any of her purses are in there. I didn’t really have the heart to go through her stuff and separate it. I just knew I couldn’t get rid of it.”

She ignores what I say and continues digging around. “I’ve seen it in here before,” she says. I guess that answers my question of whether or not she has searched through Ellie’s items in the past.

“What does it look like?”

“I don’t know, it’s black and—ah, I think I got it.” She pulls out a small black bag with a gold chevron pattern embroidered into the leather. I remember now, it was the last thing Ellie grabbed on the way out the door when she went into labor. I remember questioning why she would need a purse while giving birth but I assumed it’s one of those questions a man just shouldn’t ask a woman.

“I’m glad you found it. I’m sure she would have loved to know you were bringing it to your prom tonight.” Olive stands up, her head now up to my shoulder.
When did she get this tall? This beautiful.
Her long, blonde curls are a mess and she’s still in her PJs, looking somewhat like a young girl and somewhat like a girl on the verge of womanhood. “You’re up pretty early, thinking about a purse,” I tell her.

“I’m just excited for tonight and a little nervous since Lana isn’t here to go with me.” This whole year has been a difficult transition for Olive with Lana off at her freshman year at college—a preview of what I will go through next year when my little girl leaves me. Lana does come home once a month or so but Olive misses her like crazy and doesn’t do much to conceal her true feelings on the matter. Teenage hormones are a warning I wish someone...anyone could have given me.

“You’re going to have a great time tonight. I promise,” I tell her.

Olive inspects the purse and unzips it to look inside. She sweeps her hand around inside as a weird look flickers through her eyes. There shouldn’t be anything in there since I had to remove Ellie’s wallet when we were at the hospital, and I don’t remember anything being left inside. Olive pulls her hand out of the purse and a note is pinched between her fingers. “What’s this?”

I take the note from her hand and unfold it as fast as I can, finding that it unfolds six times before opening up into a full-size sheet of notebook paper.

“Can you hit the main light?” I ask Olive.

My heart is already aching and I can’t make out any of the words in the dark. But as the light illuminates the room, the writing becomes clear.

“Is it from Mom?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say, breathlessly.
After all these years, this woman still knows how to steal my every breath.

“Read it out loud.” Olive’s arms wrap around me and her head rests on my arm as I begin to read.

My Hunter,

Okay, so, I don’t know when you’ll see this note and I’m actually kind of hoping you never do because if you do, it’ll mean something has happened to me and I’m probably not with you anymore. It will also mean you’re going to be pretty upset with me when you find out some of the secrets I have kept from you, considering I knew something horrible was going to happen and decided to keep it from you. It really does sound worse than it is. I think.

Before I tell you any more, though, I need you to know how much I love you. From the first day of school when you took my hand and walked me onto the bus and dried my tears as I waved good-bye to my parents, to the second day of school when you had to do the same thing, and actually, every single day the entire first year of school. By June of that year, I kind of knew you would forever be my best friend and it’s nice to know that my six-year-old-self was right.

Life without you wouldn’t make sense. Growing up with the man you want to spend your life with isn’t something every girl is lucky enough to experience. But I was lucky. So very lucky—the kind of lucky a girl gets when a guy drags his girl into a garden at night and carves her name into a tree with his.

I suppose this would have been easier if I had told you that my chances of surviving past the age of twenty-five were unlikely. I could have told you all of the things I wanted to tell you—like, please don’t stop living your life because I’m gone, and I hope you find a second chance at true love, even if you don’t know the woman for twenty years first.

The moment I found out about the aneurysm after our car accident, I was left with two paths to take: I could tell you I wasn’t going to make it or I could keep it from you and pretend like everything was going to be okay. Most people might have chosen the more honest route but I couldn’t fathom the idea of telling you what my expected outcome was. You would have spent every day worrying about me, caring for me, acting like I were a piece of breakable glass. You would have married me—I know that, but you would never have wanted a child with me if I told you that the one detail in our lives could be the most likely event to cause the aneurysm to rupture.

You know me; I am scared of blood, cuts, bruises, broken bones, illnesses, and germs, which became sort of ironic when the doctor told me my prognosis. From that point on, nothing seemed to scare me anymore. If I fell and hit my head, that could have been the end. But I overcame those silly odds and we did get pregnant and I’m about to give birth to our daughter. I know it sounds terrible to keep this from you and then possibly leave you to care for our child as a single parent, but I’ve thought this through. For years, actually. I wanted to leave you with a part of me. You can’t spend twenty five years with someone and then have nothing to show for it. I considered the fact that you might not agree with this theory but I also think I know you pretty well and you would want some part of me to hang onto because I would want the same if the tables were turned.

I’m sure you will be surprised when you find out I chose to donate my heart, but I can’t really see why I shouldn’t. A woman I know was dying and I told her if I died before her, I want her to have the part of me that is still alive. She told me the odds are against her when it came to a donor because of her rare blood type—the same blood type I happen to have. That one sign told me it is the right thing to do. I know you don’t know this woman or who I’m talking about since I never mentioned her...it was because she knew my truth and you don’t. And yes, I realize as I’m writing this how unfair that sounds, but again, it is only because I didn’t want to hurt you for longer than you would already be forced to feel pain for. You got to enjoy the years we had together without each day being overshadowed by worry and fear of when something might happen to me, and that makes me happy. My parents don’t even know and they don’t need to. It would hurt them too much to know I kept this from them.

I’ve left notes for our daughter in her baby book, which I hope she will read as she gets older. I hope she looks like me and acts like you. I hope she’s kind like both of us and loves everything and everyone. If she has my crazy, curly hair, tell her I’m sorry. If she has your intense sky-blue eyes, tell her she’s lucky. If she ever asks about me, tell her I’ll be listening and she can talk to me whenever she wants. I will always be your angel and hers. I don’t exactly know how it all works up there in the big blue but if my heart can live on, so can my soul.

Don’t let yourself go like you tend to do when you’re upset about something. Don’t shut people out. Let your parents help you, let AJ be the uncle he was born to be, and ignore my parents when they blame you for my death because I’m already sure they will. Most importantly, don’t you dare blame yourself for the way my life has gone. I know you took the blame for that car accident even though it was not remotely close to being your fault; therefore, I’m sure the Hunter I love and know is currently blaming himself for my death. It is not your fault. This was my path...it just ended sooner than yours.

You know that poem by Robert Frost? The Road Not Taken? I used to teach it to my students, not because it was written by a famous poet but because of the meaning behind it. The meaning, though, depends on how the reader comprehends it. Some will say we have no choices in life. Others will say we do. I personally think we have a little of both. I didn’t have a choice on whether you stepped into my life when we were children. I didn’t have a choice when I fell in love with you. I did, however, have a choice when you asked me to marry you and when we decided to have a baby. Maybe they weren’t choices others would have decided on the same way but I went in the direction I thought I should go, and while both paths would have eventually led to the same end point, I’m glad I traveled down the path I chose because I wouldn’t change a thing.

Remember this as you go through life: sometimes we have choices and other times we don’t. It’s the times that we do when you should always consider the path that might be less traveled by—it might just make all of the difference. Live on the edge, Hunt, live like there’s no tomorrow and you won’t ever have regrets. Trust me.

Forever yours,

Your Heart—Ellie