Everyone had their own interpretation of the fair weather.
“Farmer’s Almanac predicted it,” said Sal.
“El Niño is bringing crazy climate changes,” argued Wes.
“It’s not spring, it’s just a warm spell,” said Paulie. “It’ll snow again before the month ends.”
Turned out, he was wrong.
In my back garden, purple and pink tulips and yellow daffodils nosed their way up through the hard soil and I was able to lay down a dark, earthy mulch earlier than usual. The kids and I went to the garden shop and picked out a beautiful cherry tree sapling that would burst into bloom with cascading pink flowers each spring. We found a place in the sun and took turns digging a deep hole to plant the roots that already looked strong and healthy.
Then I got down on my knees and carefully placed the tiny mahogany box with Penny’s ashes into the soil. On top of the little box, I set her favorite chew toy, the green squeaky alligator.
We stood in silence for a moment and I knew we were all talking to Pen, and to the universe. I held the tree and the kids filled in the hole until the sapling stood straight upright. Ian attached a small rope to make sure it didn’t bend in the wind. But I knew it would grow to be the strongest tree in my yard, the most resilient. The most precious, because it came from Penny.
We had been her whole life. Start to finish. Our home was her home. It was a life cut far too short and that would always be very difficult to accept. But we had loved her, all of us, we would love her forever, and wherever she was, in the wind, or the grass or the sky, she would also love us forever, all of us imprinted permanently on each other’s hearts.
“This is for you Mom,” Ian said, holding out a small jewelry box. Inside was a silver locket with simple filigree around the edges.
“Open it,” Maddy said.
I pried it open with my fingernails. Inside, tucked behind a bit of glass, was a tiny lock of brown hair, unmistakably Penny’s.
Madison helped me put it on and then we all cried some more, this time not completely overwhelmed with sorrow—this time with memories, this time with love.
87
“Postcard from Dad,” Ian announced a few weeks later as I was having tea. “You may want to read this one.”
On the cover was a photo of an old-fashioned airplane. Adam was in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where the Wright brothers were first in flight.
It wasn’t a place I’d have had any interest at all in visiting. I was glad he was there himself. Or with someone else by now, I thought, realizing I’d let go of the raging resentment plaguing me for months after he’d left.
It was addressed to Ian.
“Read the message,” Ian said.
“Please tell your mom it was a shock to hear about Penny, and I can only imagine how awful it must be for her. Penny had a personality all her own, feisty, loving, intuitive, and smart, very much like your mother. Take care of her, Ian, and tell Madison to do the same. I will always remember Pen as the little fluffball who never left Mom’s side, her constant companion.”
Ian put his arms around me as I wiped away tears.
We put the postcard on the fridge for Madison to see.
April marked the one-year anniversary of Bryan’s move south. He and Sarah were living together, and he was working for a chain of retail stores, designing their sets and window displays, traveling from store to store which gave him a good sense of freedom. His Jack-o’-lantern business was booming; he had enough orders to be busy all the way through till Halloween.
They took Ben to the ocean every Saturday and Sunday; Bry was teaching him to body surf, even though he was only five.
Madison and Billy celebrated their six-month anniversary with a wild rapids raft trip in the Adirondacks.
Ian, permanently off Tinder as he’d always threatened, was focusing more on his studies and waiting for the right woman to find him. He brought his books to the Starbucks in Ashton to study, just to get out of the house. When he took a break and looked up, there was often a girl or two smiling at him. He’d found the more he ignored them, the more women showed interest in him.
“Had I known, I would’ve done this all along,” Ian said thoughtfully.
I was delighted for both of my kids. They deserved it.
One Sunday afternoon in the late-April sun, Lucy and I were sitting out front watching cars go by—not waiting for anything, just sitting—when I heard Lily singing before she even came around the corner on her scooter. She was wearing a blue dress and had a dandelion tucked behind her ear.
“Hi Jessie!” called out a taller, lankier Lily. “I missed you.”
It had been a long winter with only a couple of visits from Lily.
“You got another dog!” Lily said happily. “Wait, where’s Penny?”
“Honey, Penny went to heaven a little while ago,” I said gently.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” said a tall man standing a couple of steps behind Lily. “If this is a bad time, we can—”
“Not at all,” I said, feeling my heart thud faster. I tried to stop myself from flat-out staring. He had wild blond hair and was wearing a broken-in pair of Levi’s. He had deep green eyes with flecks of gold like the inside of marbles, as if the sun was shining behind them.
“I’m Sawyer,” he said. “Sawyer Canton, Lily’s grandfather.”
I regained some of my composure. “You look too young to be—”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” he said lazily. He took a step toward me and held out his hand. “And you are?”
“Jessica—” I got up out of the chair so fast it fell over backwards. “Jessica Gabriel.”
I took his hand, and his eyes crinkled with deep smile lines at me.
“Good to meet you, Jessie.”
I’ve always liked it when people call me Jessie right away. It’s a good sign.
Lucy had bounded off my lap and into Lily’s arms, and then they were both squealing and rolling around on the grass near the sidewalk.
“Looks like they’re going to be a while,” I said to Sawyer. “Would you like to sit down for a bit?”
I cursed myself for sounding so formal, but his hand had been warm and he’d had that firm grip that meant he was confident and he was still staring at me, his head slightly tilted as if trying to remember whether we’d met before.
I tried to look graceful as I upended my tipped-over chair.
“I’d love that, Jessie.”
And so we sat and rocked, almost in unison, for what I felt could be a very long time.
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Cari Scribner of Ballston Spa, New York, has been a journalist and a freelance feature writer for more than twenty years. With topics ranging from travel to trends and from breaking news to family life, her work has been published in many outlets, including The Daily Gazette, The Saratogian, Times Union, and more. Her short/flash fiction has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Corium, Drunk Monkeys Fiction Southeast, Fiction Southeast, Flash Frontier, Gravel, Litro, New World Writing, Nottingham Review, and Vending Machine Press. She lives with her two dogs, Lucy and Miloh, while her three grown children live nearby. A Girl Like You is Scribner’s first novel.
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