The Beautiful Truth

// 46

It was a 90-minute flight. OK, an hour and 45 minutes gate-to-gate. But everyone I was traveling with was passed out cold. Sure, it had been a late night last night, but I was running strong—I was the only one of us who had stopped at the airport Starbucks before leaving SLC for OAK.

Next to me, Barton was dead to the world, resting his head against the cabin frame beside the window. Across the aisle from us, Seth was sprawled across his empty row. The rest of the plane was packed, but knowing him, he'd bought three seats just for that reason. The flight attendants hadn't bothered him since the fasten seatbelt light went off and he laid down...except to throw semi-irritated glances at him when he'd start snoring—very loudly—on occasion. Micki and Alex were behind us, leaned over on each other, fast asleep, holding hands.

I was wired. It seemed that extra espresso shot was serving its intended purpose. With no one to talk to, I reached for my bag, conveniently located under my seat. I'd grabbed it from my suitcase before checking it, but I couldn't remember what I'd packed in there. I hadn't opened it since I packed it up back in Oklahoma, the night before I left for Utah.

Where I'd been expecting to find an old magazine, or maybe a book rattling around with the standard gum and toothbrush, I instead found a battered manila envelope. I pulled it out and considered it momentarily, unsure of its contents. I frowned, feeling the creases between my eyes. I stuffed my bag back under my seat.

The envelope looked older than me. The arms were missing from the aluminum clasp that should have been holding down the limp, coffee-stained flap. Carefully, I pulled out the pages inside, expecting them to be in as bad of shape as their container.

Not so.

On top of a stack of typed pages, there was a note. A note in very familiar handwriting.

Sawyer,

I'm sorry I couldn't get this out of my mouth when you asked the other night. I hope this explains. I'm sorry I waited so long to tell you about all this. I have no excuse for keeping it from you other than my own weakness. This may change how you see me, but please know this: I love you more than everything else in my life combined. You—not my writing—are the most important gift God has ever given me.

Dad

I lifted the note, paperclipped to the first page to reveal whatever it was my dad had held inside for so long—presumably for my whole life.

The End of It All – Epilogue

Kerry Fitzgerald

© August 1990, rev. January 1997

I read the cover sheet three times. In August 1990, I was nine months old. January 1997 was two months after my mom had left us. I blinked.

Epilogue?

There was no published epilogue for The End of It All. If there had been, we would have spent a month dissecting it, too. We'd spent two classes on the prologue—which was all of two, very foreboding paragraphs that didn't even fill a whole page. This thing, the epilogue I now held, was more than thirty pages.

In his dreams, Barton reached over and picked up my hand. I looked at him, hoping desperately he'd woken up so I could show this to him, then I laughed at myself. He was sound asleep, peaceful as ever.

With a deep breath, I removed my dad's note, along with the cover page, and started to read.

At least that's how it should have ended.

I struggled to remember the last lines of the book.

And with that smile, I knew my life, as I knew it, was over. But if this was the end of it all, why did I feel like we had only just begun?