Kat gave me one final hearty hug and smiled through watery eyes.
“Her heart may have given out, Emersyn, but it was so full of love at the end. She loved you and your brother more than I could ever tell you.”
Her words struck a chord in my chest. Kat and I had known two very different versions of my mother.
But I believed what she said.
Love was complicated. Messy, chaotic, and sometimes excruciatingly painful. My mother struggled with experiencing it and expressing it her entire life. Until the end with Kat when she began messaging or calling every other day to tell me how much she loved me and how proud she was of what an incredible woman I’d become.
“I know,” I choked out. “I know she loved us. Ethan knows too.” Ethan had left earlier with my father and Deb. “I am grateful that you found your way back to one another. I only wish you’d had more time.”
Kat nodded. “We made the most of it. That’s what mattered. They don’t call it once in a lifetime love for nothing.”
She gave me a coral colored lipstick kiss on the cheek, her gold bangles jingling on her wrists as she hugged me, then asked James to help her carry the flowers to her car.
Maybe it was her words or maybe it was being back in North Carolina, but Aiden’s face kept flashing in the back of my mind.
During my first year in California, we sent the occasional teasing text or short E-mail to stay in touch but the time between them grew longer until I couldn’t remember whose turn it was to respond.
At least two years had passed since I’d had any contact with him. But he snuck into my mind more often than I cared to admit.
It was naive of me to expect him to be here, but I had allowed my heart to hope.
Drew wiped my face. Either for the lipstick smudges or the tears, I wasn’t sure.
“He’s in Canada, darling,” he said gently. “Otherwise I’m certain he’d have come to pay his respects and offer his condolences.”
My eyes flashed to his with questions in them. He rolled his.
“You’ve been looking for him all night. He’s not much for social media but he plays for Detroit now and they’re in Canada. I thought about messaging him through his team’s fan page but I figured you’d rather I didn’t interfere. Plus some intern is probably the only one who sees those messages anyways.”
“It’s ridiculous. We haven’t talked in years. I don’t know why I expected him to show.”
Shaking my head at my own foolishness, I turned and gathered my purse and the photo album of my mother’s Kat said she’d wanted me to have. Dad had grabbed Ethan’s earlier when they left.
“Hey,” Drew said, coming to stand beside me. “He was your first love and you’re still holding on to hope that maybe one day you’ll find each other again. It’s romantic. Not ridiculous in the least.”
Hope. Like Aiden had said. I’d never had great luck with it.
“It’s childish and I need to grow up and let it go.”
He shook his head. “You need to live your life, yes. As in date, fall in love many more times, and make mistakes. But he holds a piece of your heart and I’m fairly certain you still carry a piece of his. Nothing wrong with that.”
I had dated. Or at least, I’d gone a few dates. But so far all I’d met were guys in my age range who didn’t ever want the party to end. Or other artists who disappeared into their work the same way I did, making it impossible to maintain a relationship when our creative spurts hit a different times.
I’d still never experienced anything like what I’d felt with Aiden. Part of me feared it was too much for anyone else to live up to.
When James returned, they asked me to join them for dinner and drinks but I declined. I needed to decompress.
Once I was alone in my car, the fancy black BMW SUV Deb and my Dad had given me for my college graduation to haul my materials in, I opened the album my mother had left for me.
Flipping through it I saw pictures of her pregnant with me, pictures of me and her and Dad when I was a baby and then a toddler. Next came my awkward elementary and middle school pictures followed by a few high school dance pictures and silly candids of me and Ethan and some with Drew in them.
The last photo on the final page was of me, her, Kat, Ethan, my dad, and Deb at my art school graduation.
Below it she wrote,Love: In all its forms.
In the interior of the back cover was an inscription. Reading it caused my vision to blur with tears.
