TWENTY-FIVE
Rip
I checked my watch again and then looked out the window. Colby still wasn’t home with Ben. Things had been going so much better lately—hell, who was I kidding? Things had gone from a nightmare to perfection, making me wonder why I had been so hard on her to begin with. I’d let my own fears get the best of me, with her, with us, with everything.
Having a family was fucking terrifying, like giving up your heart every day and watching it walk out the door without protection. Add a girl you loved on top of two kids and I suddenly realized why so many parents were a hot mess. Warmth spread throughout my chest as I looked at Colby’s shoes by the door.
Pink Nikes that used to drive me insane now made me smile and wonder why I was such a prick before. I mean, I knew why I had been a prick, it was to keep the one person whom I knew I wanted, who would challenge me and scare me. Out.
It was easier, wasn’t it?
To walk through a carefully planned life where I didn’t have to worry about serious relationships, love, things that could be taken away from me just like my parents had been, just like Brooks and Monica.
With a sigh I walked by the family picture of Monica, Brooks, and the kids.
It was the first time I was able to really look at the photo without getting angry, without feeling sorry for myself, without asking the universe why.
I could have sworn in that moment, as my sister smiled down at me, that she’d known. She had actually known that one day I’d be standing there staring at her photo and saying thank you.
Thank you for Colby.
Thank you for the kids.
Thank you for giving me the family I’ve always wanted but never dreamed I would have. And certainly never wanted to get this way.
I missed my sister and Brooks so much, but I wanted to believe they were watching over us. I wanted to believe what Colby told the kids. I wanted to believe that Monica and Brooks were looking down on us, wishing us well, thanking us.
I turned and eyed the picture that Viera had drawn, with her parents as angels.
I wanted to believe that there was more after death, that there was life, there was hope.
And that they watched us with annoyance as we stumbled around this darkness, this new life, and went, Get it together, guys.
“When you see a butterfly, think of me,” Monica said with tears in her eyes on her wedding day, referencing our little agreement from when we were kids. “Butterflies mean that the world is shifting, by a simple flap of their wings they create ripples in the universe.” She turned to me, her smile wide. “I’m not saying that anything will ever happen to me, but you need to know—I will always be by your side, ride or die, your little sister, forever. Regardless of my marriage or what happens in my future, know that I’m with you. It’s us against the world. And if you ever doubt it, I’m manifesting this right now.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “You’ll know because you’ll see a blue butterfly, all right?”
“Do I still get to be yellow?” I asked.
She laughed. “You remember.”
“Always,” I said. “How could I forget?”
She held out her pinkie to me. “So it’s still a deal?”
“It’s still a deal, baby sis.”
I snorted because how ridiculous and whimsical could she still be? But also, I wanted in that moment to think that maybe there was hope, maybe our parents were looking down on us, maybe there was an afterlife where things were perfect. Where they weren’t hard or sad.
As I took her pinkie in mine, I agreed, but I also doubted in my heart after so much loss in our lives.
Walking her down the aisle was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, and stupidly enough, just as we got to the minister—a butterfly flew overhead, as if to mock me or just prove her right.
I shook away the sad memory and walked by the kitchen window, then froze.
A blue butterfly was just outside the kitchen window, sitting on a flower, its wings flapping slowly.
My throat felt tight as I watched.
Within seconds it was gone.