The Ways in Which I Die (COMPLETED)

EPILOGUE

The house in Palawan works wonders, and for the first time in his life, Anthony experiences the true meaning of being relaxed. The air is fresh and pure, and no dark memories creep in the shadows like they did in the city. Here it’s all fresh and new and the wind and water seem to chase his nightmares away. Some nights he skips bed altogether and sleeps on the hammock strung between two trees outside. More often than not Summer joins him and they rest together under the stars listening to the small waves of the lake lap the shore and wind rustle the leaves of the trees above their heads. Anthony’s nightmares fade to distant memories, only sometimes, rarely, presenting themselves in their bloody horrors, but when he wakes he knows he’s safe and very far from the pain of his past.

“Anthony?” Summer says from where she has her head rested against his chest.

“Hmm?” Anthony replies looking up at the sky.

“I love you,” she says softly and tilts her head up just enough to kiss his chin.

“I love you too, Sam.” He leans his head forward and kisses the top of her head.

She smiles as she sits up and slides her fingers through his hair as she returns his kiss. He can feel her fingers brush against the scars hidden under his hair, but he doesn’t mind, just like he doesn’t mind when she traces her fingers over the scar on his chest. There’s something calming about how gentle her touch is around his old wounds.

Anthony looks up into her warm blue gaze. He’s in love with her. Nothing will ever change that and he doesn’t want anything to ever change that. He wants to spend the rest of his life with this woman who somehow managed to save him from the demons dragging him under.

“Summer Herron” he says. He can feel himself smiling ear to ear as he sits up more.

“Yeah?” the twinkle in her eyes tells him she already knows what he’s going to say. He’s not sure how, but she definitely knows.

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” Summer says, tears welling in her eyes. “Yes, I’ll marry you!”

Anthony’s heart skips a beat but in a good way as she presses her lips against his yet again. Anthony silently thanks his mother for her gift. When it had first happened he’d hated it and wished he’d just died instead. But now, now he’s truly grateful for his second chance, and his third chance, and his fourth chance. He’s grateful for the heart beating in his chest. He’s grateful for the gift of love his mother gave, the gift he now gets to give to Summer.

 
FOUR YEARS LATER

AUTUMN

Autumn frowns as she discovers she’s finished coloring the last blank page in her sketchbook. Just to be on the safe side she decides to flip through it one last time just to double check.

With no great surprise, she finds no blank pages of paper, so she gathers her markers and goes off in search of her father who is very good at finding her things to do.

“Daddy!” Autumn calls as she walks confidently into the living room.

“What do you need sweetie?” he asks looking up from his book.

“I’m bored. I used all my paper,” she explains, eyeing the book in his hands. It has lots of paper in it. She can tell.

“Do you wanna come sit on my lap and I’ll read to you?” her dad offers.

“Can’t I just use a paper out of your book to draw on?”

He chuckles a little and much to Autumn’s disappointment he shakes his head. “Not this book, no. this is a book for reading, not drawing.”

“How can you tell?” Autumn asks inquisitively. All books are meant to have pretty pictures in them, and she draws the prettiest pictures. Both her mommy and her daddy told her that.

“Come here and I’ll show you,” he replies beckoning to her. Autumn doesn’t turn down the opportunity to sit with him. She runs over and climbs into his lap, making sure to keep a firm grip on the markers in her hands.

“It looks like I can draw on it,” Autumn points out as she looks at the book. There’s black print on the pages, but she can definitely work around that.

“See how there are words on the pages? That means the book is all used up and shouldn’t draw in it.”

“But I can draw in it.”

Her dad sighs. “Yes, technically you can do the physical act of drawing in it, but you shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” Autumn demands.

Her dad thinks for a minute. “Well, think about it like this, would you want someone coming along and drawing all over your art?”

“No,” Autumn says firmly. 

“So this book has someone’s art in it so you shouldn’t draw all over it.”

“But it’s just black blobs.”

“Black blobs with meaning,” her father corrects.

“But I still don’t have anything to draw on,” Autumn whines.

“What if I read to you instead of you drawing? We can go get you some new paper tomorrow, yeah?”

Autumn sighs with disappointment. “Fine.”

She very quickly loses interest in the story her dad is reading. It’s a lot of big words she doesn’t understand yet, so she turns her attention to the blank canvas that is her dad’s arm and the odd light slightly elevated line of skin running a good way up his forearm.

It looks a little out of place against the darker skin around it. She decides to fix it. She takes a cap off her green marker and runs it along the long mark, thinking it will make a lovely flower stem. She quickly adds a few little leaves on the sides of it before finally drawing the head of a sunflower at the top with her yellow and brown markers. It’s not until she’s almost done making blue squiggles around it for the sky that she realizes her dad is no longer reading. He’s watching her with an unreadable expression.

“What are you doing kiddo?” He asks slowly as she puts the cap back on her blue marker. There’s a quiver in his voice that she’s never heard before.

“It looked kinda weird, so I decided to make it pretty,” Autumn explains. “Isn’t it pretty now?”

A smile spreads across her dad’s face. “Yes Autumn, it’s beautiful. You made it very pretty. Thank you.”

 
~~~~~

ANTHONY

Anthony decides as he looks at his child’s picture drawn over the scar on his arm that it is indeed beautiful. The scar shouldn’t be there, and it’s horrible how it got there, but its current existence is a gift. Like all the scars on his body, it’s a sign that he survived, and now it’s a sunflower too

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