He continued to hold her, and it was a peace that filled him with the contact. After a long silence he sensed her asleep against him, her breathing even, steady, and he liked that she trusted him, and that he felt the comfort to trust her with the darkest part of his life. She was his world, his life now, and there wasn’t going to be anyone or anything, not even his nightmares, that would stop him from loving this woman.
Chapter Fourteen
Larson pulled up to the cemetery that was about a half hour away from where he currently lived. After all the shit that had happened he’d moved out of that house he’d shared with Melanie, but couldn’t bring himself to leave Absinthe. He loved this city, had grown up here, and a part of him had felt leaving would have been like he didn’t care. But that changed, and although he was moving on with Tasha, he also wanted to stay here and create a new life with her.
He got out of his truck, but turned and grabbed the flowers he’d brought for Melanie’s grave off the passenger’s seat. The cemetery was small, intimate, and most of the residents of Absinthe weren’t buried here. This was an older plot of land, with generations of families that were buried beside each other.
Melanie’s mother and father were laid to rest here, and this had been her wish before she passed and they’d talked about the grim stuff. But he was glad he could give her this one last request. As he made his way around the headstones, past the large trees that provided shade to the numerous gravesites around him, he finally stopped in front of hers.
There were dried flowers tipped over in the plastic vase, but he hadn’t brought them. He hadn’t been to her site in a while. There were people, a social community in Absinthe made up of elderly women that brought flowers to the gravesites. It was a nice gesture, but also very sad.
The headstone was a marker for death, a reminder that life was not infinite.
He sat down, braced his knees on the hard ground, and set the bouquet of flowers right in front of her headstone. In the beginning he’d come here every day, let his anger and sadness morph into one, and had cried his rage out. But he was ready to move on, and that was why he’d come here today, why he’d told himself that he couldn’t live in the past any longer.
Melanie Elizabeth Ireland
Beloved and cherished Wife, Daughter, and Sister
The dates below her name were also damn depressing. She’d been so young, so damn young that she’d had her whole life ahead of her. He traced the engraving, breathed out, and finally relaxed.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been by. It’s been a long time, Melanie, and I’ve held in a lot of rage these past years.” He heard a chirp right above him, looked into the tree, and saw a brightly colored bird staring down at him. It chirped again before flying off. He looked at the headstone again. “It’s time for me to go, to move on.” A gust of wind whistled past him, rustling the tree branches and sending a chill through his spine despite the heat. Tilting his head to the sky, he watched the clouds move slowly above him.
It had taken him all this time to realize that he didn’t have to feel these kinds of emotions, that if the right person came along he could start over. “I’ve met someone, a woman that I think you’d like.” He smiled as he thought of Tasha. “She’s sweet and kind, and I love her, Mel. Dammit, I love her so much.” There had been a part of him, in the beginning when he first felt things for Tasha that had him experiencing guilt. “I feel so happy with her. She makes the pain and darkness go away, and I want to have a life with her.”
He breathed out once more, looked around the cemetery that seemed so calm right at this moment, and smiled. Melanie would have wanted him to move on, to find happiness again. They had certainly talked about it during their marriage, and if he’d died before she had then he’d want her to find someone that made her feel whole again.
“This is goodbye, but I will never forget.”
She wouldn’t have wanted him to keep the pain inside until it ate at him from the inside out. And he was going to start finally allowing himself to let the light in, to let the light that Tasha brought with her inside of his heart. Because he knew that she was the one person, the only person that had brought him back from the ledge.
****
One year later
Larson stared at Tasha as she cursed. She was cooking for him, and although she said she wasn’t best chef, he knew that no matter what she made—or burnt, he’d love every bite. She looked over her shoulder and gave him a sympathetic smile.
“I didn’t think it was possible, but I burnt the spaghetti.” She turned fully around and held up the pot with the noodle. Taking the ladle in her hand, she scooped up a large chunk of the spaghetti, and he saw that it must have stuck to the bottom because it looked hard and was black. She tossed the pan on the stove, breathed out, then winced and held her stomach.