SWEET NOTHINGS - S. LILLIS

epilogue [1]

oakley jane fischer passed away in mid june, peacefully in her sleep, just how she had hoped it would be. the doctors said it must have been painless and easy, and really that's all they could have wished for the young girl. she was buried on a sunny day, where the birds sang for her and the red haired girl who wept into her hands. sophia lillis had always thought oakley looked pretty in black, but not like this. no, never like this. grace fischer had stood at the foot of her grave, unable to speak as stranger after stranger whispered their condolences into the biting wind. she had gone home afterwards, and hadn't had the heart to leave since. however, there was one place in the house she hadn't been- she had let her room sit unperturbed for two months, not wanting to have to go in and face the reality that she was really gone. however, on august 26th, the day that was supposed to be her daughter's nineteenth birthday, she finally gathered her thoughts and her courage and stepped into her daughter's room for the first time since she had gone. everything was eerily as it should be. the bed was made, and the curtains were drawn open so that four even squares of light washed over the hardwood flooring. but it was so empty. there was no music, no smell of paint lingering in the air, no giggling from her and sophia through the walls. it was as if the girl had never been. grace carefully sat on the bed, drinking in her surroundings with tempered sadness. the tears she held back were almost as bitter as the beer she had poured down the sink in a flurry of anger two nights before. her clouded brown eyes caught sight of the leather bound journal she had bought for oakley for her thirteenth birthday. she smiled fondly as she remembered the look on her face when she had received it, the beautiful innocence that lit up her eyes and taken over her features. she picked up the book and held it in her hands, trying to steady her heartbeat as she stroked the worn leather spine softly, as if it would fall apart at her touch. she carefully opened the book, and felt the first tear slip down her face as she read her daughter's loopy handwriting, reading the words she wrote about her love, her life, and her steady decline over the past year. for the first time, she saw the world through her daughters eyes, and not from her own dizzy point of view. by the time she had finished, grace was unable to think, blinded by tears and consumed by her sadness. she had never meant to cause pain to her daughter, and she felt guilty that she hadn't even been around enough to witness the young girl falling in love for the first-and last-time. what pained her most was that, when she really thought about it, there wasn't much to think about at all. her memories with her own daughter were but a mere handful, focused in the younger days where life seemed so much simpler. it was all too much. or maybe not enough. and as the world caved in around her, there grace sat, flooded by tears, surrounded by the memories of the teenage daughter she never really knew.