Everlasting Light

by Shey Stahl

  I began to realize the ones who put on a front were struggling the most.

  I knew one thing, if she could survive, so could I. It was for that reason I started going to therapy.

  Not only did I have the burden of feeling like I had done something wrong to Dixie, I now had the guilt of walking out on Beau because I thought it was best for us.

  I needed help, and from a professional.

  During my first session with Dr. Tori, she handed me a notebook at the end.

  “What’s this for?”

  Her kind eyes shifted to mine. “When my daughter passed away, I found it comforting to write her letters. Anything to get the pain out.”

  Feeling the canvas outside of the notebook, the corners of my mouth lifted at the memory of a tent and a boy. And then it was immediately replaced with pain. “Like write something to Dixie?”

  “Yes.” Dr. Tori stood, handing me a tissue when she noticed the tear rolling down my cheek.

  “About what?”

  “Write about anything. Give your pain an outlet.”

  Dr. Tori said my pain?

  Or did she mean my regrets?

  I let her die.

  I pushed away the only man I’ll ever love.

  WRITE MY pain.

  My therapist said it’d help to write down the pain inside. Give it an outlet, a reason for haunting me in the first place.

  What if I was haunting myself?

  She wanted me to write down everything I was feeling from the pain to the guilt. Maybe then I could live with myself and be at peace with what happened.

  I wanted to remember every detail about Dixie from the softness of her skin to those precious pink cheeks and tiny features. I wanted to remember every memory like it was yesterday, a chance to relive the only moments I had with her.

  I had this pain, this unbearable guilt I carried around with me, and the only way to get rid of it was to write about it and give it an outlet. A reason for holding me captive. I never wanted to give the pain power; I wanted to let go of it.

  At first, I wasn’t sure I wanted to relive any of it, or feel that heartache that had been drowning me, but once I started, the act of putting the words on the paper became therapeutic.

  When I was six years old, I learned to ride my bike without training wheels. I fell and skinned my knee; I had a scar to remind me for weeks of what that pain felt like.

  To this day, I still remember falling because not only did I have a scar to show for it, but something about that spring morning was memorable. Couldn’t tell you why.

  When Dixie passed away, my heart was broken so severely I would more than likely remember it forever, despite not being able to see that scar. This pain was so deep it was in my blood and bones, aching every day with no cure in sight. I never thought I could move on from it.

  In reality, I didn’t want to. I wanted to remember my tiny piece of perfection I had for the moments we were able to hold her.

  But writing provided me a certain amount of closure.

  At night, when I was lying in bed staring up at the ceiling with my pen in hand, attempting to write that first letter to her, it was then Beau’s memory, his touch, the way he made me feel burned through me like thousands of stars dusting the night’s sky. Everywhere I looked, he was there, reminding me of what I let go.

  Him.

  Us.

  And in many ways, her.

  Dixie Mae,

  I don’t know what to say to you, baby girl. I’m surprised I can even write to you, let alone allow your memory to occupy my mind for so long, because it hurts so badly when it does.

  Dr. Tori thinks that writing to you can heal me, help me deal with the pain. She gave me the idea of writing my story down, the exciting, yet sometimes painful parts from when I met your daddy to losing you.

  How can I write down those things when I never got to finish telling your story?

  I guess, in some ways, your story never having an ending is perfect because your memory is never-ending with me.

  It feels wrong that you’re gone, and so is your daddy.

  I pushed him away when I didn’t think I could love him the way he needed to be loved. He had a life going for him, and I couldn’t get over you in order to see him in front of me.

  Somedays, the ache of you and him being gone feels numbing.

  Somedays, I sit on the floor and I cry for not seeing the warning signs and maybe going to the doctor sooner.

  Somedays, I cry for letting your daddy walk out of my life.

  I’ll never get to hear your story, baby girl. But I can tell you my story, how I met your daddy and how much he influenced my life, and, sadly, where it ended for us.

  Maybe that’s something you’ll want to know.

  Some would say I never had the chance to get to know you, so why does this hurt so much.

  It hurts because I carried you inside me every minute of your life, and inside my heart for every minute after.

  That’s my explanation of it.

  Just because I never had the chance to see you with your eyes open, this still hurts and I still love you with unending. Just because my pain isn’t justified to them, doesn’t mean I don’t love you.

  So I guess where this all began is the way to start.

  My love for your daddy started back when I was fourteen. It seems so silly how infatuated I was with him, and how little I really knew about who he was.

  It started with a wink. Isn’t that how all good love stories begin? With a wink?

  Years later, I fell into his life where the red clay danced along the water’s edge and bursts of light rained down on us.

  It was a night when the heat couldn’t be escaped. As he whispered against my sun-kissed summer-sweet skin, “Baby, look up and get lost in that everlasting light,” it was easy to believe it would last forever.

  He gave me light that night.

  He gave me everlasting light.

  “What are you writing?” I nearly jumped out of my skin to see Blaine had let herself inside my apartment and was standing over me, her long brown hair fell neatly over her shoulder.

  “Oh, I, uh…” My voice failed for a moment. Clearing my throat, I tried again. “Well, Dr. Tori had the idea that I should write to Dixie.”

  “That’s sweet. What are you writing then?”

  “About Beau.” My eyes dropped to the pink tinted paper. “About her daddy.”

  Blaine smiled, rubbing my back, as if she would do anything to help me heal. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I was going to put it on her grave for her.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  As I finished the letter, detailing what it was Beau meant to me, I finally understood how Beau could lose himself in writing songs. Here I started around noon and it was nearing dusk.

  For a moment, I imagined him clearly sitting at the kitchen table, biting his thumb and bouncing his knee as he wrote from the heart.

  Taking the letter with me, I went to see Dixie. I did exactly what I said I would. I left it with her, knowing she could help me.

  Gently placing the letter on her gravestone, I left it there for her. “I miss you, sweet baby.”

  THE NEXT morning, I wanted to give her some fresh flowers, so I went back before work to find the letter gone. More than likely it blew away with the wind, but when I looked around and didn’t see anything on the ground, crazy enough, I imagined, for some strange reason, she had something to do with it being gone.

  What the hell, where’d it go?

  I searched the grounds on my hands and knees and then stood, staring at her headstone with the words, Dixie Mae Ryland.

  Did Beau take it?

  No, he’s on the road.

  What if God reached down here and took it for her? Or she flew with her little baby angel wings and snatched it to read?

  I wanted to know she was still with me, and I constantly found myself talking to her like she was with me.

  I felt crazy for bel
ieving she had the letter, that somehow it’d gotten to Heaven, but was it so crazy to believe that?

  Tipping my head back, I stared at the goddamn ceiling, again. It seemed to be what I did a lot now. Stare.

  I felt, in many ways, lonely again. If that was what these emotions were.

  Helpless. There was another emotion I felt.

  Guilty. Another one.

  Useless? Yep. Been there.

  Confused? Always.

  Another shot to drown the pain.

  All right, another bottle.

  No matter how many shots I took, I couldn’t get her out of my head.

  I kept the memories hidden, afraid of them.

  Afraid to let myself feel them. It was like I filed them in a category of do not touch.

  Only now—when I was drinking—the door was wide open.

  Every minute of every day, I thought of Bentley and what it was I did so wrong.

  She was always on my mind, there, giving me something to write.

  I knew turning to drinking was a horrible idea, but so was falling in love with a woman like Bentley Schow. And I did that pretty fucking effortlessly.

  Bentley was a beautiful misery I liked to torture myself with. I couldn’t touch her, or even breathe her name now because of the pain I felt with just one touch, one glimpse into the pulsations she sent my heart into. Just the words passing through my lips, which used to worship her, wrecked me.

  I wanted so badly to make her happy.

  I wanted to be enough.

  I wanted her to understand how that first night might as well have been my last.

  I wanted to hold her.

  I wanted to make those midnight eyes see the brightest of days.

  I wanted to make her a mother and wrap my arms around the both of them and promise forever, together.

  I sent Bentley messages constantly. All I wanted her to do was reply. Give me some kind of indication that she was okay.

  Was that really too much to ask for?

  Please don’t get over me, over us, say this is so. Give me something.

  Those were the messages I sent her. Only she gave me nothing.

  Staring at the bottle, the moonlight flickering into my room, wishing it wasn’t my answer, and knowing this pain wouldn’t let up until I had the pen pressed to the paper and my blood was bourbon.

  When my mind wandered, I was given her memory.

  And then I would immediately be reminded of what I had been denied. Our lives together.

  Bringing the bottle to my lips, I knew one thing above all the rest. I was searching for a day when this wouldn’t suffocate me. For now, I was dying inside with the idea that I’d lost what made me feel whole.

  In a lot of ways, I was…merely nothing. I was anything she held me hostage to.

  It was that night, with the guitar in my lap and my head full, I wrote the beginning of another song.

  Hide the sun

  Give me the rain

  To see you it’d be worth the pain

  I don’t think I can explain

  But I wish I had a gun

  I scribbled that line out knowing that wasn’t wise, and then took another shot, slamming the bottle down on my nightstand. Sending another song crumbled up to the floor, I looked up and realized I hadn’t left this apartment in days. Surrounded by empty takeout boxes and wadded up paper all over the room.

  There was a hole in the wall where I threw a baseball at it. Another in the door when I couldn’t control my temper and threw my phone at it.

  They were all reminders that I was nowhere near the man Bentley needed and maybe it was for the best she left.

  I look in the mirror

  And all I see is a man nowhere close to who he wants to be

  I’m finding out now how it feels to be waitin’ on me

  To be waitin’ on a stubborn hard-headed quick-tempered slow to sorry

  ‘cause he’s too proud to ever admit he’s wrong

  Setting the pen down, I brought the bourbon to my lips. “I can’t believe this shit.”

  I was angry that she never considered how I felt or what I wanted.

  Nights like this, I tried to hate her.

  Only I couldn’t, ever.

  Not someone like Bentley.

  Lying back on the bed, my head hit an envelope and a note from Miles: Dude, check your mail every once in a while, and while you’re at it, clean this shit up!

  The envelope was a letter, I assumed from Blaine. I opened it immediately, thinking only the worst news came in the form of a letter or text messages these days.

  Folded around pages of pink paper was a white card from Blaine.

  My thumb ran over the textured paper and the words, some smeared from tears.

  I gasped when I read the opening words.

  What was this? My mind and heart were racing, scanning the words.

  Flipping through the pages, my head spun, trying to understand what is was Blaine sent me.

  The further I read, the more I understood Bentley had written a letter to Dixie. A tear I couldn’t hold back fell slowly down my cheeks while reading her pain, a pain she would never tell me about, no matter how many times I begged her.

  After I read the letter, I was confused with everything. I wanted to drive to Mountain Brook and demand answers. And then I wanted to call Blaine and ask her why she sent it to me of all people. Was she trying to hurt me?

  Why couldn’t Bentley talk to me about it?

  Drawing in a heavy breath, I looked at the letter again, my fingers running over the words, Love Mommy.

  Maybe it went back to how I could pour myself into my music and express the deepest pain imaginable, but couldn’t unless I was hiding behind the lyrics of a song.

  She was hiding this, finding ways to give herself some closure. I was proud of her, the feeling swelling in my chest as a smile tugged at my lips.

  I couldn’t understand what Blaine had meant though. Help her heal.

  How could I do that? How could a broken heart heal another?

  People say twins have a special bond. I agree. Blaine knew me better than anyone, and she also knew by giving me those letters containing Bentley’s pain, she knew eventually I’d know what to do with them, even if I didn’t right then.

  Scrubbing my hands over my face, I set the letter by my guitar and walked into the living room. Reaching inside the liquor cabinet, I removed another bottle.

  The bourbon didn’t even have flavor anymore and neither did its effects.

  Nothing did. All I wanted was the relief it gave, but I couldn’t even get that anymore.

  That night I finally realized what I was doing, living my life in a memory of what we had; it hit me like a punch to the gut. She was doing the exact same thing.

  She still wanted me.

  The sun had set, a reminder of the lake days with Bentley, and I sat on the balcony outside my apartment in Nashville, slow-sipping and wanting to understand what it was I was feeling after reading that.

  I had no answer and was thankful for the darkness around me, the dead of night. Mostly because if I had it my way, it’d be dark all the time.

  It was a night when the heat couldn’t be escaped. As he whispered against my sun-kissed summer-sweet skin, “Baby, look up and get lost in that everlasting light,” it was easy to believe it would last forever.

  And then, as I stared up at the silver specs of light, I felt judged.

  I felt like I’d given up, just like Bentley had.

  Setting the bottle aside, I went back inside and read the entire letter again.

  Help her heal.

  Help her?

  How?

  I called Blaine, I had to understand what she meant by that note.

  She answered on the first ring. “You finally got the letter?”

  “Blaine…what is this?”

  She sighed, heavily. “It’s Bentley. She’s writing to the baby. Something her quaky doctor told her to do. So I stole it from Dixie’s gra
ve and gave it to you, hoping you could help.”

  I was silent, unable to understand, probably since I’d been drinking so much lately but I always did my best writing drunk.

  “I just…I wish she could see that me and her together would help her. Not writing letters to her.”

  “She can’t, Beau. She can’t just yet. But maybe this could help. If you know…I know it’s a lot to ask that you hold on, or the burden on you right now, but I knew you’d know what to do. I’m worried about her. She’s not eating, she cries so much.”

  Fuck, those words hurt my chest so goddamn bad. It felt like someone punched my heart.

  Did I know what to do?

  No, I didn’t.

  My blurry stare dropped to the sheet music crumpled in front of me and what I did have right in front of me.

  Music.

  Maybe I could make her see through that?

  “How is she…” my voice cracked around the words, “I mean, other than crying all the time?”

  What was I asking? My throat when dry. What if she was seeing someone?

  Blaine knew what I was asking. “Beau, I’m lucky if I can get her to eat dinner let alone seeing anyone.”

  Not that I wanted her to be starving herself, but I was strangely satisfied she hadn’t moved on.

  It was the most hope I’d held in a long time.

  “I HAVE the final track for the album.”

  I started working on the song after I hung up with Blaine and around four that morning, I had the chorus and the bridge done and was laying down sheet music for it. Now all I had to do was get it recorded. I envisioned the song like an acoustic raw version. Just me and my guitar, pouring myself and her into one beautiful melody, our pain, together.

  I didn’t want anything fancy, much like Bentley. She was simple in that way and if this song could convince her of what I felt, and that I was still here for her, then it needed to be this way.

  “Beau,” David, my manager, gave me a disappointed look. “We’ve already pushed the album once, we just can’t. You and Payton will record ‘Summer of 17’ next week.”

  “No,” I mumbled, standing against the wall. “I’m not doing a fuckin’ duet with her. It’s my album and I say what track is the final one. I’m not asking to push the release date, I’m asking to add ‘Everlasting Light.’”