Delicate

by K. L. Cottrell

  Here and now, what Beckett has said is another thing that tugs hard at the heartstrings.

  If Cliff can see Theo, yes, he’s full of pride and happiness just like we are.

  Probably also laughing at how his best friend didn’t care whatsoever about how he looked jumping around to catch blown kisses from her.

  He would agree with me that Beckett has never been more self-assured in his life than when something involving Theo comes up.

  Utterly fantastic.

  I don’t know if it was Beckett or I who swept the other up in a short kiss, but it has happened. We spend another second in a sweet look, then return our attention to the ceremony.

  We’re just in time to join everyone else in clapping for the next kid being called. We’ve made it a point to do that for every single student, not just Theo and her friends, so I kind of feel bad for missing the one or two who walked out right after she did. I know other people applauded, though, which is really all that matters.

  By the time the other four first-grade classes have been celebrated, clapping has put a pleasant sting in my hands. And by the time the vice principal announces where we audience members can find our students, I’m all but dancing with eagerness to get out into the sunshine.

  After navigating the crowds, we locate Theo’s class near a skinny tree close to the building. There isn’t much shade being offered, which means her tiara is glinting like a beacon.

  Beckett’s ringing voice is a beacon in its own way, just for her: “The-o-dor-a!”

  She stops talking to a girl with her arm in a cast and perks right the hell up.

  “Daddy!” she yells around, not seeing us yet. “Mommy!”

  When we come into view, she beams and gallops toward us. We kneel and catch her in a huge hug.

  “We’re so proud of you!” we say in unison.

  “Your grades are amazing!” I tack on.

  Beckett adds, “And your reading minutes! Wow, darlin’!”

  She’s still squeezing our necks, giggling. “Thank you! Can we get some chicken nuggets?”

  We laugh and extract ourselves from her. Beckett straightens her tiara while I grin at her.

  He says, “We can leave in a minute. You gotta see Grammie and Papaw and Cece first!”

  She gasps excitedly, as if she forgot they were here. In seconds, she’s away from us and swept up in my dad’s arms.

  Beckett and I are instantly in a new conversation, too, with an adult who has walked right up to us.

  “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Slater!” Theo’s teacher greets us with a smile and a wave of both hands.

  “Oh, hi!” I reply. “What a fun day, Mrs. Montgomery!”

  Beckett says, “Yeah, congratulations on making it through another year!”

  She cheerfully clasps her hands together and tosses her dark ponytail behind her shoulder. It and her yellow dress flutter in the breeze.

  “Thank you,” she says, “but I actually came over to applaud you two for something! I just have to tell you what a joy Theo has been in my class, but especially….”

  She looks around and then tugs each of us closer by an arm. Her voice lowers.

  “One of my other students is very shy and quiet, and she recently broke her arm. Of course I don’t wanna call any of these children mean—they’re still learning how to be, you know—but a couple of them are less than sweet-hearted, and they started picking on that poor girl earlier, while we were gathering up for the ceremony. And before I could intervene, I heard your daughter standing up for her. She said, ‘Hey, leave her alone. It’s not nice to make fun of people. If you do it again, you’ll have to deal with me.’”

  Beckett and I draw the same sharp breath.

  His arm closes fast around my shoulders, and mine clamp around his middle.

  Theodora stood up for someone who…?

  He asks it out loud. “She saw someone getting made fun of and she jumped in to defend them?”

  Mrs. Montgomery nods and presses a hand to her heart. “It was the kindest thing I think I’ve ever seen. I just wanna let you know how special it was, and how special she is. The world needs more people like her in it.”

  I’m not sure how long I’ve been nodding along with her.

  Also not sure how the knot of emotion in my chest hasn’t escaped me in the form of a sob.

  Beckett weakly clears his throat. Then he does it again while squeezing me to him. I know there’s a knot in his chest too.

  Because I know he’s thinking what I’m thinking.

  He’s remembering what I’m remembering: the story of Cliff dealing with a bully for him that day in ninth grade.

  “Thank you,” he tells Mrs. Montgomery. His tone is as strong as it can be with so much gripping at him. “Thank you a million times for telling us that.”

  I manage a smile and thanks of my own.

  She clearly senses that this moves us quite a lot, but she doesn’t question us. She just glances between us and smiles, too, then pats our arms.

  “Theo has been a joy,” she repeats. “I’ll miss having her around. Thank you for raising her the way you have.”

  With that, she’s gone, and the two of us are left turning into a hug.

  “Ellie,” he trembles out into my hair, “I think we’ve done a pretty good job with her so far, but that right there is…it’s Cliff, and it’s the most awesome….”

  I nod and rub swiftly at his back. “I know, Beck. God, sweetheart, I….”

  My voice gets away from me. I can feel him trying not to completely break down about this where everyone can see, and I don’t blame him. This is one of those things we could easily ugly-cry about.

  His words are a barely audible whimper. “I’m so fucking proud of her.”

  All I can say, over and over, is, “Me too.”

  And more than ever, I know Cliff really does share in that with us.

  Beckett and I hold each other for a solid minute, composing ourselves, kissing each other’s shoulders, silently soaking this up.

  The world lost Cliff’s light, but Theodora carries some of it with her.

  What a beautiful mix of the three of us she is.

  When we’ve calmed enough to pull out of our hug, we exchange sighing looks of the utmost significance.

  I reach up and gently brush my thumb back and forth over the scar on his cheek.

  He closes his eyes for a relishing moment, then captures my hand and turns a firm kiss into the palm of it. His other fingers lift to my face and stroke my hair behind my ear.

  And now, for the first time during this whole event, our smiles go calm.

  Not radiant with goofy excitement.

  Not earnest with heart-stirring emotion.

  Just calm.

  As powerful as those other moods are, there’s something equally enormous about this one. There’s power, too, in the way it feels to look at each other and acknowledge the bottom line: we’re in this incredible thing called life together.

  We’re also suddenly in a big ball of hugs from other people—it starts with Theo, and then Ceceli piles in, and then my mom, and finally my dad.

  Theo yells, “I love my family so much!”

  Beckett and I can’t keep from grinning, chuckling, laughing when my dad yells it too.

  “Grant!” my mom says through peals of her own laughter. “You are too much!”

  “Am not!”

  I cut in, “Unless you’re using the S word in front of my kid and I only find out she picked it up when she drops her pizza on the floor!”

  Our whole group bursts into laughter at that.

  Ceceli cuts in, “And then a few weeks ago, I swear she said it again when y’all came into the shop and we were out of chocolate-dipped pretzel rods!”

  The rest of us adults gasp good-naturedly.

  Theo insists, “Nuh uh! I said, ‘Damn it,’ not, ‘Are you sh—?’”

  Now we all explode into, “No, stop!” and “Oh my God!”

  But Beckett and I are al
so still cracking up.

  “Okay,” he works to get out, “cussing isn’t the end of the world, but we’re still….”

  I nod and fan at my burning cheeks. “But we’re gonna have a little talk about it at home later.”

  “We sure are!”

  “But first,” Theo cuts in, sticking her pointer finger up in the air, “chicken nuggets!”

  More laughter comes. I get squeezed by another Ceceli hug, and Beckett’s shirt collar gets fussed with by my mom, and Theo receives more compliments from my dad on her great first year of real school. Then her little friend Cleo appears, and their excited shrieks pierce the air.

  And I am happy.

  —

  I’m happy.

  The thought lived in my mind all throughout the lunch that Beckett, my parents, and I took Theo to.

  It still lives there now, as he drives just the three of us to the park. Theo has recently been learning how to ride her bicycle without the training wheels, and this day—that of her first-grade graduation—is a great day to keep at it. She’s really looking forward to it because she’s hooked on the idea of being a ‘big kid.’ Therefore, she thinks today bodes well for her.

  This is also a day that, not for the first or last time, has gotten me thinking about how my life has turned out.

  I was shattered once.

  It hurt worse than anything else I’ve ever been through, and putting the pieces back together was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

  There were so many times when it felt like I’d never really get it done. Like it was impossible.

  You know how you drop a mirror and it breaks, and a lot of the shards lying there are big, but you know good and well that there are nearly invisible pieces hiding on the floor, so small your naked eye can’t see them and you’ll definitely never be able to put them back in place?

  That’s how I felt about myself for a long time. Like I was able to put some of the big parts of me back into their places, but like so much of the rest of me was damaged beyond repair.

  I hated it.

  I hated being shattered and hated trying not to be and hated knowing that no matter how hard I did try, I’d never really be the same as I was before.

  But day by day, I…healed.

  Not into what I was before. No. That was impossible, just like I thought.

  I did heal into the new me, though.

  When we’re hurting, it so often feels like there’s nothing beautiful left in the world, but there is. And one of the beautiful things that remain is love; there is always something or someone we can love, something or someone that can love us.

  Despite how strongly it may feel like only brokenness lies ahead, it isn’t true. Recovery waits somewhere.

  Happiness waits somewhere.

  I know it’s hard to wrap the mind around that.

  I know there are so many people in the world who are stuck in the very place I was in—the place between the past and the future, between mourning and moving on, between what was and what can be.

  But they don’t have to stay stuck. They don’t have to be shattered forever.

  I’d tell them that if I could.

  I’d tell them what I’ve learned: it’s okay.

  It’s okay to give ourselves the patience and room to breathe, to grow, even if it means growing in ways we didn’t plan on. We can be kind enough to ourselves to let the world in again—to let our hearts appreciate new chances and receive new gifts and cherish new joys. Moving on after losing something precious doesn’t mean we’re selfish or cruel, or that we don’t respect the magnitude of what we’ve been through, or that we don’t miss what we’ve lost. It just means we have realized life doesn’t stop and that we’re allowed to follow where it goes.

  Seizing the opportunity to rebuild is okay.

  And so is learning to be happy again.

  “We’re here!” Theo exclaims excitedly.

  Pulled from my thoughts, I blink and look around. She’s right. We’re at the park.

  “Yay, yay, yay!” she’s saying as she unbuckles herself. Beckett is climbing out from behind the wheel, asking if she thinks she’ll finally get the hang of the bicycle this time.

  I hurry out of my seat, too, very much looking forward to seeing if she ends up with another success under her belt today.

  We’re soon set up on the section of bike path that winds through the shade of numerous trees. Her tiara has been traded in for the purple helmet that matches her elbow-and-knee pads. Beckett and I are standing on either side of where she sits on the pastel floral-print bike, making sure everything is in order.

  “Helmet is secure,” I determine after gently tipping her chin up with my fingertips.

  “Knees and elbows are safe,” he notes with gentle tugs of his own here and there.

  Theo rings the little bell perched on her right handlebar. “I think I can do it this time! I think this is the day!”

  Beckett and I grin at each other.

  She adds, “I’m ready to be a big kid!”

  He rubs affectionately at her back. “We believe in you, Theo.”

  The truth of it makes me smile even more.

  “But it’s okay if I don’t get it?” she checks.

  She must be recalling the conversations we’ve had in the past, when not reaching this goal upset her. I bend down and smack a noisy kiss to her cheek, making her giggle.

  “Yes, it’s very okay if you don’t get it,” I tell her. “Practice makes progress, and that’s what matters most. Just keep trying.”

  Beckett nods. “That’s right.”

  She nods too. “Okay.” A breath later: “Let’s go, horsie!”

  Well, I don’t know where she came up with that, but it gets us good.

  She starts inching forward, getting the tires rolling with her feet still touching the ground. Beckett shuffles along next to her, half-teasingly asking if she named the bike Horsie.

  I miss her answer; the familiar comfort of them moving down the faded asphalt together has me slipping back into my thoughts.

  I love the two of them so much.

  No one ever truly knows where they’re going in life, much less who they’re going with. Sometimes plans work out the way we expect and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes walking the ugly path is what we need to do because only our steps can kick away the dirt and reveal the gold underneath.

  Theo pauses her sluggish pace so Beckett can kneel and adjust one of her knee pads.

  After a second, he asks, “Is that better?”

  “Yes. It was not comfortable and now it is.”

  “Awesome! Daddy to the rescue!”

  She drops her head back and lets loose the new yell, “I love my daddy and my mommy!”

  Beckett and I hadn’t joined in on her and my dad’s declarations earlier outside the auditorium, but now he cups his hands around his mouth to amplify himself. “I love my girls!”

  I can’t resist following along too.

  I hold my hands to my chest and shout, “I love my husband and our daughter!”

  This whole thing tickles Theo like crazy, and her giggles are impossible not to join in with.

  Beckett turns and comes back here to me, closing the few paces between us. Through our smiles, I meet him for the kiss we both want.

  After it ends, he takes my face in his hands and presses a kiss to my forehead. He murmurs only to me, “I still love you with every bit of who I am.”

  I murmur only to him, “I still love you with everything I’ve got.”

  And as we wind each other into a hug, I believe my very soul is smiling.

  This will never get old.

  Yes, I know many people feel the way I used to feel about loving after loss: that it doesn’t count as ‘learning to live life again.’ That it couldn’t be possible or right or fair…. But now I think it just might be the biggest show of relearning how to live.

  There’s nothing wrong with keeping our hearts closed if that’s what is truly be
st for us—if we deal with our pain and feel comfortable with where we land afterward. But if it turns out that, for some reason, we feel led to open back up? If new hope whispers to us and we find we want to listen to it? There’s nothing wrong with that either.

  Acceptance is the unexpected friend of all who refuse change and cling tooth-and-nail to what used to be, because there’s no room for growth when we refuse to move.

  When something can’t grow, it can’t really live.

  Beckett and I are here to tell you that living shouldn’t be shied away from any more than it should be taken for granted.

  The days we’re given are gifts, each one a new beginning over again.

  The loves we find are powerful, each one a source of a different kind of strength.

  We all owe it to ourselves to let these things bring us the healing and happiness we deserve.

  “Okay, I’m really ready!” Theo calls to us.

  Beckett and I smile at each other, then kiss one more lingering time, then seek out each other’s hand. Our fingers knot together as we head for the little darling waiting for us to walk beside her on her latest adventure.

  “I’m ready too,” he says. “How ‘bout you, Ellie Slater?”

  How can my heart constantly swell from the beautiful things in my life and not burst out of my chest?

  “I’m ready,” I confirm with a cheerful sigh, a squeeze of his hand, a stroke at the ends of Theo’s golden-blonde hair.

  The outcome of this bicycle practice remains a mystery, just like much of the future. But no matter how many scraped knees and tears and painful days and challenges come to the three of us, the love and strength we share will prevail—somehow, it will carry us through. That has always been true, and it always will be.

  Yes, we’re ready to keep moving forward.

  So, at the nudge of the gentle breeze, we do.

  the end

  Dear Reader

  Thank you so much for going on the emotional journey that Delicate is! I hope Beckett, Noelle, and Theodora stole your heart like they did mine. Bringing their story to life was such a special experience!