My Life in Shambles

As I get closer I see it’s her, walking fast into the forest, her gait uneven.

I follow, the bare branches scratching my face as I catch up to her quickly. I reach out and grab her arm.

“What are ye doing?” I cry out, spinning her around to face me.

The moonlight catches her tears as they fall down her face. “I can’t do this anymore!” she yells.

“Okay, okay,” I say, my hands not letting go and sliding down to her wrists where I can hold her tighter. “It’s okay. Just don’t go running off into the woods.”

She’s sobbing, looking away and my heart is breaking at the pain and anguish on her face.

“Talk to me, please. Tell me what happened.”

“Tell you?” she cries out. “You were there. You just did it. You saw. You proposed to me!”

I try to swallow but can’t. “It was just for show,” I whisper and it pains me to say it.

“I know! I know it was just for show. I know it was a lie. I know you laid it on thick so that your dad and your nan would believe you. But think about what it’s like for me to hear that, as you slipped your dead mother’s ring on my finger!”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I thought you knew this was going to happen.”

“You were going to get the ring, you never said anything about proposing to me.”

“It felt like the right thing to do,” I try to explain. “I had the ring and I saw you and I just … I just had to do it.”

“They would have believed us otherwise. You didn’t need to take it that far.”

“Well it’s not as if we’re actually engaged.”

“Right!” she yells and then clamps her lips together, nodding and looking away. “Right. We’re not.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

She shakes her head and tries to turn away from me but I won’t let go. “Why are you crying? Why are you crying, Valerie?”

Her chin starts to tremble and she closes her eyes, tears spilling down but she doesn’t say anything. She lets out a soft whimper.

Something inside me starts to soar, like when I opened that owl’s cage on a night not dissimilar to this one, and watched it take flight over the trees. Flying to freedom, in the night where it belonged.

I place my hand at her cheek, feel her cold skin. “Look at me.”

She shakes her head.

“Look at me, please,” I tell her, trying to turn her face toward me.

Finally she opens her eyes and meets mine.

I already know those brilliant blue eyes so well.

I know what she’s hiding.

She’s hiding her hurt.

I hurt her back there.

I hurt her because she thinks I didn’t mean a word that I said.

She thinks I’m playing with her heart when I’m doing anything but.

“Valerie,” I whisper to her. “Tell me you love me. Tell me you love me and I’ll tell ye I love you more.”

She frowns, blinking, mouth open.

“Tell me you love me,” I say again. “I want to hear it. You’ve already heard it from me.”

She shakes her head. “Yours was a lie.”

“And what if it wasn’t? What if I meant what I said?”

“But you didn’t.”

“And how do ye know that?”

“Because … it’s all fake.”

“No.” I shake my head. “Nothing is fake anymore. So, maybe the engagement isn’t real and I know I’m keeping things from my family, but nothing is fake. My feelings for you aren’t fake. They are very, terribly real. You are the pulse of my heart, darlin’, and my heart won’t beat without you.” I take in a deep breath, that soaring feeling intensifying as I gaze into her eyes. I smile. “I’m so in love with ye, it hurts me.”

She stares at me for a moment, her eyes searching mine in a wild race for the truth. Then her features crumble and a smile spreads across her face, because she knows. “You love me?”

“With all my heart.”

She laughs, soft and hopeful and so damn beautiful. “So everything you said …”

“Wasn’t a lie. Not even close. Couldn’t ye tell? I’m not that good an actor.”

“I didn’t know, I was too afraid to believe it. I was too afraid …”

“And are ye afraid now?”

She looks up above her at the moonlight and the skeletal branches of the trees. “I guess I should be for being out here in the woods.”

I stare at her for a moment before I kiss her. “Tell me you love me and I’ll tell you I love you more.”

She smiles against my mouth. “I love you.”

And there I go again, my heart flying out of my chest and soaring to the heavens.

“Tell me again.”

“I love you.”

I pull her into an embrace, my arms wrapped around her, my chin resting on her head. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hoots beneath the moon.

“And I love you more.”

18

Valerie

It’s a curious feeling to be undeniably and inexplicably happy amidst so much pain and grief, but that’s currently the life I’m living.

A few days ago we had our engagement party.

Colin gave Padraig the ring.

Then Padraig got down on one knee and proposed.

I figured it was for show.

I think I would have held it together enough if he had made it short and sweet but even then, I knew that the moment I would have to say yes would have been too hard. I’m not sure I could have lied in front of everyone like that. It felt like saying yes was sealing a deal and since it was all based on a lie, it felt like blasphemy to do it with that particular ring.

But he didn’t even get that far because he started to tell me all the things I wanted to hear, all the things I feel myself.

That he loved me.

And the fact that it was a lie was too much to bear.

What made it worse was the truth in his eyes, the meaning and emotion behind the words. I couldn’t tell what was real anymore and if I thought this lie could be, what else have I been fooled by?

I just couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t handle it, couldn’t lie. It wasn’t just about everyone else, it was about myself. I couldn’t lie to myself for one minute longer.

So I ran. I should have just stayed there and dealt with the charade like I’d been doing this month but this time it went against every fibre of my being. I got up and went out the door and I didn’t know where the hell I was going, just some place far away where maybe my heart would be safe.

But Padraig caught up to me in that dark woods.

He caught me and under the moonlight he told me he loved me.

And nothing will ever be the same again.

That bubbling joy that I’d kept buried inside me, well now I was free to let it expand, let it swallow me whole. I’m fucking giddy when I’m around him, I’m feeling things I had never felt with anyone before.

It’s not just that I feel I belong here.

It’s that I belong with him.

And he is my home now.

But as much as I feel like my feet aren’t even touching the ground anymore, I’m surrounded by people in pain.

We had another doctor’s appointment in Dublin, this time we went for just the day. I’m getting pretty good at driving over here so it wasn’t a problem. The doctor wanted to see how the meds were working and give Padraig the results of the test.

The doctor couldn’t say one hundred per cent because of the way MS works, how the disease is different for everyone and no two cases are alike, but the testing combined with Padraig’s worsening symptoms seemed to point to the progressive type of the disease.

This was the worst-case scenario for us. Other cases, they get to go on more or less normally and have relapses and flare-ups that come and go during various points of their life. But with progressive, it slowly but steadily gets worse. He told us that the likelihood of Padraig being bedridden in twenty years was high.

Which, of course, was something Padraig didn’t want to hear. He can barely cope with the idea of not driving or playing the game. The fact that in the future he might not have any mobility at all, shakes him to his very foundations.

He was waiting for that news, too. To tell his coach, to tell his team and the owners of the team. He hasn’t said a word about his diagnosis yet because he was hoping he could just fake it. Fake it like we’ve been faking our engagement. Pretend that everything is fine.

But you can only pretend for so long. He’s going to have to tell them the truth eventually and when he does, the whole world will know.

He’s not ready for that.

So we go on pretending.

Then there is his father. The last time he seemed better was during the engagement party. When we returned from the woods and I explained my breakdown as just being so emotionally overwhelmed (which wasn’t a lie), he kissed me on the cheek and wished us all the luck in the world.

But the next day, he didn’t even get out of bed.

And he didn’t the day after that, not even when Nan had Gail make his favorite dish, macaroni and cheddar. He wouldn’t come to dinner and he wouldn’t eat the food when they brought it to him.

It was time to hire a live-in nurse to help him with his final weeks.

She’s supposed to be coming today, something that Agnes isn’t too happy about since it means that Agnes has to move from her bedroom in the cottage to the bedroom next to mine in the B&B. But we haven’t had any guests this month at all, so I don’t see how it’s hurting anything. Actually, I get the feeling that Agnes is putting up a tough front and being grumpy over that because she hates what this means for Colin and everyone else.

Right now, I’m standing beside Padraig by the mews, watching Hooter McGavin fly from post to post. It’s what Nan calls a “soft day,” all grey and misty, not too cold either. Padraig seems in relatively good spirits and has been teaching me more about the art of falconry.