Summer Ever After

I picked up Maddie from her charter flight at the airport earlier and we ride in together with Vinnie at the wheel. The service is large and attended by many colleagues and even a handful of obvious clients. Abby and her father sit in the front. She is flanked by her father and Everest, two men who couldn’t be more different, but who are obviously pillars of strength for her. The douche-canoe Lucas sit in the back with some tittering blonde girl hanging onto his arm.

“Son, why don’t we swap seats?” I look up from my seat to see Everest standing in front of me, blocking my view of Abby. The priest is making his way to the front and I feel Maddie patting my hand to get my attention.

“Go on, Roman. She needs you.” At their conspiratorial nod, I slip past Everest, who grips my arms in his gentle strength.

“Leah told me you would come back. That girl was never wrong.” Everest smiles a watery smile and we nod as he pushes me forward. I slide into the seat next to Abby. She doesn’t look at me and I don’t press for her acknowledgement. It’s far from the time and place to hash this out.

“Welcome.” The priest nods. I’m only half listening to anything he has to say because the sound of my heartbeat is thumping louder than his voice. He pauses and leads a verse from the bible, which I had long forgotten in my heathenism and rebellion from God myself after my own parents’ death, that he regains my full attention.

“Abigail asked me for this passage specifically as she felt it spoke true to Leah’s strength during this, the darkest of time for the Holliday family to revisit. It is from the Corinthians 4:16-18.” The priest pauses, and to my shock, Abby stands and walks on smooth legs to the podium. Her face is pale, but her gaze is focused on a small book resting on the podium. I thought the priest would read the passage, but it looks like Hollywood is breaking the shackles of silence.

“Thank you for being here today with us to share in the celebration of my sister’s life, though it was cut short for reasons we cannot grasp, particularly after the loss of our mother. Leah w

as quickly called home to God and I believe her strength was needed there for a higher purpose. As Father Paul said, this passage is from Corinthians.”

Abby clears her throat delicately and I watch her look up from her notes, scanning the crowd. Her eyes meet mine and she begins. Her eyes never leave mine, and I swear her moving lips don’t match the words coming from her.

“That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen.”

Not once did she look down to her notes, not once did her gaze falter or stray. I feel the lump in my throat grow as her voice cracks once on the last line.

“For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.”

Abby is talking about our love. Hollywood hasn’t gone anywhere, even when I had to walk away and figure my own shit out. Damn complicated woman. I swallow a dry knot in my throat, nodding to her.

She finishes her speech and returns to the seat next to me as we listen to Father Paul finish the rest of the eulogy. Before I can utter a single word, her hand grabs mine, squeezing it hard. Yeah. We’re still good, and the weight finally lifts from my chest so I can breathe again.

ABIGAIL

The pain of losing my sister seems strangely nothing compared to the loss of Roman. Yes, I loved my sister even as difficult as our relationship had become as teenagers and then as adults. I learned to love her more in our journey to understand each other better during the last few weeks of her life. But Roman is still physically here, and despite the hurt we’ve done to each other and the secret I kept from him, I never loved him less.

Getting up in front of those attending Leah’s funeral is tough, but feeling the emotional space between Roman and me…well, that has me clinging to the edge. I speak the words that give me closure on Leah’s interrupted life and remind me I’m irresponsibly letting mine pass me by. Leah was good at pointing out my faults in none to many words. I feel her gaze boring into my back from the sky above in the bright sunlight, telling me to get my shit figured out. She definitely has the universe going to bat for me.

Looking into the crowd, first at my dad, then Everest and Maddie, until my gaze rests solely on Roman—my rock from the first day he came to my door with my luggage in Gold Beach. No matter how much I put this man off, he came back. Our eyes lock and I don’t need to look down at the book to read my selected passage.

I say my peace and go back to where we are seated. I do the only thing that feels natural and grab Roman’s hand, squeezing it until he squeezes me back. I slowly lean into him and he puts his arm around me, holding me tight. From the shelter of his embrace, I watch my dad rub an aged hand over his face and push back tears. I let my other hand go to him, and while our relationship isn’t solid, we have something, and I’d like to think that’s a start.

Chapter Twenty-four

ABIGAIL

We’ve come back to Gold Beach, Roman and I, to make peace with the last few months and figure out the logistics or where we will settle down. Today, Roman convinced me to get up early and go running with him on the beach. I can’t say I really loved running the way he does but it’s so hard to tell him no when he gets excited like this. Sometimes I swear he’s worse than Bella the dog. Bella runs up and down the beach nipping the salty waves, her tail wagging.

Our iPod are synced and the music plays Semisonic’s “Closing Time.” Looking over, Roman smiles at me and mouths, “What?” while shrugging his broad shoulders. I’m hungry again after our early breakfast. Roman has been insisting we eat vegan now. I was totally cool with that until I caught him sneaking bites of a skirt steak and shrimp from Bonnie’s café under the deck of his dad’s house…now our house.

My dad still lives in LA, alone. No matter how much coaxing I tried, he prefers the city and his law firm. Coming to Gold Beach would probably send him over the edge right now. Dad eventually fired Lucas after one to many fuck-ups. When Roman found out Lucas had made a pass for me…well, let’s just say Lucas was sporting a colorful face the next day that no amount of foundation was going to cover up.

I stayed only long enough to finish my case with Oscar Campbell before giving my resignation. Mr. Campbell was convicted of his DUI in California and lost his license with a hefty fine. Once he made his statement to the District Attorney, he was extradited to Oregon. I recused myself from his case and set him up with a new lawyer familiar with Oregon laws around vehicular manslaughter. He wants to be accountable and clear his conscious. I just want Roman to feel secure I will never lie or keep a secret from him again.

Through the lawyerly grapevine, we learned Mr. Campbell has agreed to be a spokesperson through the prison, talking to teens about the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse when operating a vehicle. Roman doesn’t say much, but I know he visited Mr. Campbell and made a family impact statement to the Oregon DA, which lessened Mr. Campbell’s sentence.

Everest, my mentor, has been supportive from the beginning. When I told him I was leaving Dad’s practice and taking some time to figure things out, he told me to go and bore the brunt of telling my dad. Everest has even visited Roman and me several times, spending the weekends in Maddie’s cottage. He says it’s nice and peaceful and the perfect place to catch up on briefs. We’re pretty sure Everest and Maddie are seeing each other, but neither has fessed up yet besides the coy smiles we catch them sneaking at dinners.

Two weeks earlier, Roman and I decided to throw caution to the wind and get married quietly. We didn’t need anything flashy or big. We had everyone we loved right there with us. I had suggested Vegas, but Roman got his friend to loan us his big yacht again. I didn’t have my mother or my sister there with me, but Roman had sent Maddie to my suite with a necklace made of sea glass and seashells from Gold Beach. It was stunning and everything I could have ever dreamed of.

After the ceremony, we spread Leah’s ashes over the ocean tearfully. Dad had given me a packet of test results he’d kept from when Leah and I were kids. Some years ago, he spent gobs of money seeing if we had the genetic markers for the breast cancer gene. I didn’t want to know. Roman, of course, wanted me to look. We might have spent an evening wrestling over the packet getting neither of us anywhere. I promised to get checked yearly if Roman would drop the subject. I didn’t want to live my life beholden to papers and tests and results that meant nothing right now.

We burned those too and sent them overboard.