Aftermath

27

"What are your parents doing for Christmas?" Matthew shrugged his shoulders beside her on the couch not taking his eyes off the movie they were watching. "Have you talked to them recently?" Cal pushed. He shook his head. She looked forward again at the TV, but for some reason, she couldn't drop it.

"Where are they living now?" 

"What's with the sudden obsession with my parents, can you not just watch the movie?" Matthew snapped, pushing up from the couch and walking into the kitchen. She remained glued to her spot. She was aware it was a touchy subject for him, but that knowledge did little to calm the panic rising in her.

Cal was determined to give him his space. She knew she pushed and wanted to respect that he was upset. Her palms pressed firmly against her thighs. A low hum crescendoed in her ears, but she remained in her spot on the couch, counting tiles on the entryway floor.

When she couldn't stand it anymore, she stood and walked into the kitchen after him. He has a glass in his hand, it was empty now, but the remnants of dark liquid rimmed the inside of the glass. Calpurnia pressed her back against the trim of the doorway across the room from him. For a while, no one spoke. He didn't meet her eyes, hers searched for his. She felt like she was going to explode before he finally said anything.

"I haven't spoken to them since the first time I came back." He stopped, turned around to the sink, and placed his glass in the bottom. "The last time we talked, I told them I was planning to come to see you while I was here and they blew up at me." He was gripping the edges of the sink so hard his knuckles were white. "They said awful, untrue things about you. So I told them I had no interest in sharing my life with them if they were going to say such ugly things about someone I love. Someone they love." His voice caught but he only paused for a moment before he spoke again. "I didn't want you to know, because it isn't true and I would do anything to protect you from people trying to hurt you and they are. They don't mean it, but they needed someone to blame and grief has messed them up so bad." A sudden sob escaped his lips, and she watched as his shoulders trembled. "I was so angry at them that day, Callie, you don't deserve the punishment they are giving you, you got hurt too."

Cal crossed the kitchen then and pressed her lips to his back. He didn't move, so she took his wrists in her hands and pulled them until both of their arms wrapped around him. She pressed her cheek into his shirt and squeezed as tightly as she could until his breathing returned to normal, and his cries quieted.

"Look at me," she said gently nudging him to turn around and face her, when he did, she lifted up onto her tiptoes and laid a hand on either side of his face. "It's okay now," she spoke softly and kissed beneath his left eye then his right.

"It's not your fault" Matthew murmured grabbing her and crushing her into him "it's not your fault, it's not your fault, it's not your fault." His words were muddled by her hair where his mouth spoke them.

"I know Mattie. I know" she whispered, reaching behind her back to latch a hand around his wrist and run her thumb over his pulse. "Shh, it's okay. I know" she reassured.

Calpurnia coaxed him from the kitchen back to the living room couch where he curled around her until she couldn't tell where her limbs ended and he began. Matthew's hands grazed her skin gently as he lay against her chest.

"I want them to know how sorry I am." She announced in the silence between them. "It's so much more complicated than who is to blame if anyone." Silence lapsed again, the only sounds filling the room were that of their breaths. Matthew's eyes had grown heavy and Cal watched as he stopped fighting them to stay open. Her body was stiff from lack of movement, but both of them remained still and silent.

When Matthew had gone to sleep, and Cal had tired of laying quietly next to him, she got up in search of paper and pen. If she couldn't sleep, she was going to do something useful. She sat in the kitchen lit only by the dim overhead bulbs from the oven.

...

John and Abbey

I haven't been able to conjure up the right words to say to you for the last 4 years and I don't know that I have them now either. Truthfully, I didn't possess the courage to look you in the eyes and grieve alongside you. It felt incomparable. It still does. For that, I am so sorry. I will never understand why it happened. But, what I do know, is that she was the best person I have ever met.

From the first time I met her, I knew that was it for me. I'd never had a friend who loved me the same way. Her love was so well rounded, it covered everything, forever, all the time. I never intended to hurt her, I hope you know that.

Your family was the greatest thing that I will ever have. I can't imagine I hid it well, that my own wasn't the best. But you welcomed me so warmly, and held me so tight I never felt out of place. You don't know how much it meant to me. How much better I am because of it.

Loving all of you was inevitable. Loving Matthew was inescapable. Believe me, I tried incredibly hard to make him stop, to stop myself from it. The first time he told me we were in middle school, and I slapped him. I made him promise to never tell her, he kept it. He sees something in me I will never know, but trust me Mattie will stop at nothing to make me believe it to be true.

I'll never know why Matthew had to love me. Or why I had to love him. I will never know why Rowan had to go. But what I will know, is that I was loved so fully by her, by you two, that I don't need those answers to survive. Even if I never experience that love again, I know that I was loved more deeply than I will ever deserve. So for that, I want to thank you. Because unknowingly, you gave me the greatest life I could ever imagine, and I can only hope your daughter felt the same about my love for her.

Love, Cal

...

"There you are." He groaned from beside her and slid his hand across the bed until his fingers could wrap around her forearm lightly. "Did you work it out?"

"Work what out, Mattie?" Her gaze traveled from his lightly furrowed brow, down his back, over the curve of his butt to his legs, sprawled just slightly, his ankles hooked over the end of the bed.

"Whatever you were sorting through up here." He tapped her forehead lightly with his fingertips but kept his eyes closed. "Usually you just need some time alone to figure it out." A secret smile spread across her lips.

"You know what," Cal scooched closer and lifted his outstretched arm just enough to slide under it, "I did."

"Care to share?" He asked as she pulled his leg to hook over her torso and cage her in.

"Full of questions, aren't you," she whispered laughing lightly when his fingers tickled her cheek on their way to her hair.

"You love me." His fingers stilled in her hair.

"Of course, I love you, Callie," he started to move but she held him in place.

"Not a question, a statement," he stopped straining against her hold, "I have been trying, for as long as I can remember, to find a reason to make you not love me." She let him move this time so she could see his face. So he could see hers. "And I can't make you stop, because you love me." Matthew swiped a tear from the corner of her eye before it could fall.

"Devastatingly so."