The Other Side: Growing Pains

40. Paradise Cove Beach Café (Part 2)

SJ's POV

"Ms. Johnson?" I question after I swallow my food. "What are you doing here?"

Honestly, this is not how I envisioned us meeting again. Especially after hearing about how she acted, while I was in the hospital.

"I had to come here and speak to you and your family face-to-face," she answers as she sits next to my mom in the dining booth.

"I'm sorry—-," I say and she reaches across and covers my hand with hers until I'm quiet.

"Nope! That's not why I'm here, SJ." she says sweetly and my face questions her before my mouth does. "I owe you and your family an apology."

"What?" I ask curiously.

"I could write a book on the mistakes I've made in the past couple of months. And the biggest one was the way I acted at the hospital." She hesitates.

"He knows," my stepmom says and I nod. "And I forgive you. My family has forgiven you. There's no manuscript on how a mother should grieve the loss of her child."

My eyes tear up as I sit in silence and Ms. Johnson does the same for a second.

"Good! Then this will make things much easier when I say Milan would've wanted me treat you and your entire family better than I did that day." She adds.

"I would never intentionally hurt your daughter, Ms. Johnson." I insist and she comforts me with a hand rub.

"I know baby. I knew it the day of the accident too. But a part of me thought finding someone to blame would make me feel better. And I was wrong."

"There are no rules for grieving and time becomes insignificant in so many ways now," Austin chimes in as if he's taken notes from a therapist.

Ms. Johnson and my mother agree as she pulls a few things out of her oversized bag.

"Which leads me to the biggest reason I'm here," she says and my heart starts to flutter at the sight of a little green diary with a tiny lock that I've seen countless times before.

"Milan's diary?" I question and she smiles.

"Two things were apparent after opening this diary," she says as she slides me a small key. "My baby was an amazing writer. And she loved her some you."

"I can't—-," I respond as I realize she wants me to have the diary. "This was sacred."

I watch her push open the tiny lock with her finger and flip to a page near the back. It's like she's read it a hundred times already.

"I'm giving this diary to SJ on his sixteenth birthday," she mocks her daughter's voice and the table laughs as she reads. "And it might seem corny, but I'm giving him favorite teddy bear too."

I smile with tears falling down my cheeks, before she closes the diary and pulls out a brown teddy bear with a big red heart. 

"I remember that!" I say as tears consume me.

Austin smiles as he happily reaches to press the red heart. "I love you!"

My mom sobs at the sound of Milan's fourth grade voice. And I remember the exact day she got that bear.

"She got that two days before—- Valentine's Day." I say hesitantly and Ms. Johnson smiles. "She thought her biological dad may come to see her and she wanted to have a gift for him."

"He never did show up," she answers. "But in the diary, it says you still made her Valentine's Day special."

I bask in the memory of our fourth grade V-day dance that year where we had our first dance.