Steel My Soul ✓

39 | Lilies and Baby's-breath

C H A N C E Y

My letters were missing.

It had been two months since I gathered the courage to leave my letters on her gravestone. They'd been collecting dust, alone in the sun with the occasional bouquets every so often. I didn't visit as regularly at first. It was too hard, but then I continued writing the letters and leaving them at her grave was some kind of therapy.

I had written the first six letters before she'd passed away. They were stored somewhere Mrs Maxwell didn't let me know. I assumed they were buried with Indigo, and she didn't want me to get upset over it, so she didn't mention it.

Now, I'd formulated approximately over thirty letters, including the one I'd just finished writing. My hands still trembled when I wrote them. Sometimes, the letters were all over the place, messy and unreadable. Other times, I was calm when I wrote them - a numb kind of calm. Those were the neatest letters.

But they were all gone from their spot as I came to a stop before her grave.

"I hope you don't mind," Mrs Maxwell's voice greeted me as she caught up to where I stood.

My eyebrows furrowed as I frowned at her with confusion. She smiled softly, her face more filled with colour than it had been in weeks. I knew it was because she was finally getting a chance to see me alone. She'd been meaning to talk with me since Indigo died, but I wasn't ready to. I still wasn't, yet this woman was as persistent as her daughter.

"I don't read them, but I've been storing them someplace special," Indigo's mother told me with a wider grin on her face. "Not with her, where I assume you guessed are the other letters."

She stopped beside me, her warm eyes staring at Indigo's name engraved into the gravestone. They twinkled in the sun with tears. It would be that way for years - tearing up at anything that reminded us of her.

I hadn't teared up in a while, though. I wasn't sure why, but I thought I had cried every tear I had left to give.

"I've made a memorial of her room," Mrs Maxwell chuckled. "You'd know that if you'd visited."

I gulped nervously as she turned to face me. Her eyes, dammit. They were too similar that it tore my heart right open.

"It's okay, though. Your mum sees me every day. I ask how you've been, and she tells me the same every time. Getting there. That's what she says. One day at a time. But that's not the truth, is it?" Her voice gentled, sobered.

I couldn't hold her gaze for too long. It hurt less to look at Indigo's name on the stone in front of me. Her birth and death date were embedded into my skull as I focused on the numerals.

"Falling apart after something like this is normal, you know?" She nudged my arm with her elbow, and I stiffened. "I made that personal memorial for my late husband, too. It broke me to move his stuff to her room, but after I did, I sat on the floor for hours at a time and let it all out. Might sound crazy, but it felt like a hug when I'd shed all those tears."

My eyes landed on the white lilies and baby's-breath that decorated my best friend's grave. My girlfriend, my soulmate. I prayed she was at peace and waiting for me to go home to her. Most days, I wanted to will myself to wither away. But my support system refused to let me go too far off the deep end.

"Lilies associate with purity and youth," Mrs Maxwell stated when she saw where I was looking. "All the good ones leave early."

"Someone has to leave first," I whispered before gulping down the sharp lump in my throat.

"The only cure for grief is to grieve," She whispered back, staring at my side profile, waiting for me to acknowledge her. "We'll get there eventually, Chancey."

I bit the inside of my cheek and willed myself to nod.

"Did you have lunch today?"

No. I hadn't eaten in a while. But I didn't want her to worry.

"Yeah."

"Chancey."

I sighed, finally turning to look at her eyes again.

"Did you eat today?"

"No," I breathed shakily.

"Have lunch with me today," Mrs Maxwell ordered.

I opened my mouth to decline. She didn't let me.

"Please," Her plea was enough to get me to agree.

And then I had lunch with her every day from that day forward. 

letter 39 

Today was the first time I skipped lunch with your mum. 

It's been three years since you died, and it still hurts when I think about you. 

But today I'm hurting extra because I'm positive your mum hates me. I don't know how to even write it down on paper. Would you be mad, too? I was mad at myself at first. 

It happened years ago, months after you died, and then a year after. Honestly, maybe it all started when you were alive. That sounds so confusing, and I understand that, but I also want you to understand that you'll always hold a special place in my heart. 

For as long as I breathe, you will always be in my heart, and you'll be with me wherever I go. 

So I hope you'd be okay with me loving someone else. Not as much as you yet, and we both understand that. But I think I might marry her. 

___________________

a/n: the time line of the letters are a bit messy and don't correlate to the time the actual chapter takes place. sorry if that's confusing lol, but ask if you have questions and I shall try my best to answer them!

epilogue is next !