One Small Step | ✔

Epilogue

"I can't believe
it's already
May,"
Soren says, stretching.

He should be in
university right now.
But he's not because of
his choice before.

He's in
our grade now.
We're finishing
our senior year.

We're sitting atop the cliff,
where I first met
Roman,
near where I first met Roman.

The sun is bright,
the sky absolutely cloudless.
There are eagles soaring
just above us.

Roman's arm is around me
and
I'm leaning
into him.

Soren and Dru
are in the same position.
In the months since the wedding,
we're almost always together.

After Jean left that day,
I relived how I lived
after Adam and Carina's
deaths.

I realized
I hadn't
lived
at all.

With the help
of my brothers,
of my boyfriend
of my friends,

I've learned
how to live.
How to smile
through the pain.

Dara gave birth
to baby Carina
a month ago.
Carina Cassidy Bay.

She's beautiful
with her tiny toes
and tiny fingers.
Her blue eyes are just like Carina's.

Only with one difference.
They're clouded over.
Baby Carina is
blind.

But we're determined
to not
let that
change anything.

She may not ever be able
to see the physical beauty of the world,
but she will know the beauty of life.
I'll make sure of it.

Dara named me the godmother
and in that moment I knew,
the grief I feel for my sister
will not stop me from my niece.

It's been a year since
Carina's death
and though I cry,
I smile.

Smiles and tears
coexist
quite naturally
if you let them.

It took me a while
to take that first step
forward,
that one small step.

Tate's words shocked me
but Jean's words made me
see through the grief
and I began to live. Truly live.

After all,
my dad's done it
and people say
old people are the hardest to change.

Dad would argue that he's not
sixty yet.
Until then, he wasn't officially old.
But he's a grandfather.

Ambrose is a father himself now.
He's been woken up every night
be Carina's crying, but nothing
will stop him from going to comfort her.

Jacob is in and out of this town,
he's busy with his own life,
making amends to all the people
he's wronged with his attitude.

And let me tell you,
there's more than
I care
to count.

And Tate,
well, he's figuring out
life too. He's realized,
math just isn't his passion.

Roman's been accepted
at his dream university.
He's going to study
psychology, just like Ambrose.

Soren is going
to study science,
in hopes of being
like his father.

Meanwhile,
Dru is studying
law.
She wants to be a lawyer.

Me,
I've discovered
I'm not good with words or numbers.
I'm not good with feelings.

Eighteen years
and I still don't know
who I am.
But what I do know is this,