“That day we looked at the stars and you wouldn’t stop staring at me? I thought I had something on my face the whole time.”
He shook his head and laughed. “No, I was just imagining our future together.”
“Oh? And is it everything you imagined it would be?”
“No, it’s way more than that, without a doubt.”
I shook my head, amazed at how visibly he wore his heart on his sleeve. He was unashamed and unafraid of expressing his love for me, of being corny and open. He was honest, and he was all mine, just like I was his.
We belonged to each other. And I knew how that sounded to some people. How could I belong to someone and how could he belong to be when we weren’t property to own? That’s what some would say, believe me I had heard it at some point.
Well, the answer to that was simple. We had willingly given our hearts to each other, swapping them really, and since the heart was our main source of living, in a way, we really did belong to the other.
“Hey, mom, what’s going on?” I answered on the third ring. I had been in the apartment all day trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life while Lio was at work. He was an assistant coach with the football team at the local community college, and he also practiced sports medicine. He was multitalented, that man of mine.
“Can you come to the house right now?” Her voice sounded panicked.
“Yeah, of course, is everything okay?” I asked, worried.
“Yes, everything is going to be fine, I just really need you to come to the house,” she said even more urgently than before.
“Okay, okay, I’m on my way now.”
I hung up the phone, jumped in the car, and raced over to the house. Every worst case scenario popped in and out of my head but I pushed them all away. Claire had said everything would be okay, not that it was, which meant that something definitely was wrong.
I just needed to get there. Whatever she had to tell me, I knew it couldn’t be good.
It took a lot longer than it should have, but once I got there, I hopped out of the car and practically ran inside the house.
“Claire?” I called out, searching for her in every room I passed. I alternated between Claire and mom more often than I should but it was more out of habit than anything else.
She wasn’t in any of those, and just as I was going to call her again, I heard voices inside the living room.
“Claire?” I asked as I walked into the room. I released a sigh of relief at her fully intact body. “Thank goodness you’re okay, I was worried. What was so crucial that you needed me to come over right away?”
Her eyes nervously skirted from me to the other side of the room. I looked at her in confusion, raising my eyebrows and hoping she would say something. She stayed silent, looking down at her hands as they shook in her lap.
“What’s wrong, mom?” I asked, taking a step further into the room.
Her body slowly began to shake and her eyes pooled with tears. She shook her head apologetically, and her mouth moved but no sound other than a gasp came out.
I looked around the room for something to console her with when my eyes landed on a man and a woman much older than Claire. They looked at me with wide eyes, their own tears evident on their wet faces.
“Who are you?” I asked, but as soon as the question left my mouth, my mind pieced together who they were.
My stomach dropped, my heart sank, and my soul collapsed. It was surprising that I was even standing upright.
I reached out and gripped the side of the doorframe, holding myself up.
I needed to hear her say it before I acted. “Claire?”
“Those are your grandparents,” she said with a broken voice. “My parents.”
I shook my head and willed myself to be strong, to be present.
This couldn’t be possible, I never thought it would happen. I wasn’t prepared for it.
I vaguely remembered Claire saying that she was going to look for them but that was years ago. I didn’t even think it would be possible.
I closed my eyes and counted backward from ten, calming myself down long enough to be rational. They obviously weren’t going to break the ice, so that meant that I needed to.
“How? I mean, where?” I stopped myself and took a deep breath, releasing it as I spoke. “I don’t know where to begin other than I’m shocked and confused. How did you find them?”
“They found me,” Claire said simply. “Or us. They found us.”
I leaned against the wall and sank until I was sitting on the floor, along with my jaw that had dropped the second I saw them sitting in the room.
I looked up at them again, and memories of them with Penelope played throughout my mind. Every dream resurfacing as if they had happened yesterday and not years before.
They looked the same, if not a bit older and a lot tired.
I closed my eyes and tried to push the memories, Penelope’s memories, away. It had been a long time since I had been inside her world, and I didn’t want to be there, I wanted to stay present in my own. But our two worlds had collided, and if I wanted to make it out in one piece, I needed to face them with strength. There was no room for fear.
There’s no room for fear, Everly. You are who you are and that won’t change.
Simple words of encouragement had helped in dire situations before, and I hoped they would benefit me now.
I opened my eyes and ignored the playback of memories, focusing on the world in front of me. They might have collided but I could handle it. I would handle it.
“I never thought I would ever see you both,” I said, my voice cutting through the silence like a knife through a rock.
The tension was still there, but it was less silent than before.
“We’ve been looking for you, for both of you,” the woman spoke.
I jolted back from the familiarity of it.
Breathe, Everly, focus on who you are now.
“After all these years, we finally found you through an old family friend. Claire had made some calls and our friend let us know,” the man said.
I blinked back tears and forced the hot, heavy lump in my throat to fade.
It was all too much, too soon. I never thought I would be forced to live through this, to live in one world while the people from Penelope’s spoke to me without knowing who I really was—no, who I used to be. They had no idea of the memories I had of them, moments that they themselves probably remembered very little of.
I took a deep breath and choked back on a sob.
It was okay.
It was going to be okay.
I was going to push through this without giving into the onslaught of emotions that were doing their best to break me.
I blinked away the tears and focused on the people in front of me.
Claire shook like the leaf. She looked more worried and afraid than I had ever seen her be before. But why? That was the real mystery.
“Why do you all look like you’ve seen a ghost?” I asked, my eyes roaming over their shaken features.
“They just told me some news, something I had been wrong about,” Claire said, her voice breaking over every word. “I wouldn’t have left had I known.”
She addressed her parents on that last part, and her face crumbled from whatever it was she was feeling in that moment.
“What had you been wrong about?” I asked, but when I realized she was too hurt to respond, I turned toward her parents. “What has she been wrong about?”
Mr. and Mrs. Davis shared a look, but they both continued to say nothing.
I stood up, anger replacing the shock from seeing them both for the first time. I didn’t understand why they were all acting strange or why they weren't speaking up like the adults they were supposed to be.
“Would one of you just come out and say it?” I practically yelled, frustration getting the best of me. “What is so horrible that Claire is over here shaking and you two look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
The silence
somehow grew louder and the tension thickened.
“Well?” I pushed.
“Claire just found out,” Mr. Davis said, his voice catching on the last word. He cleared his throat. “She just found out that Shawn survived the accident that she thought they both died in.”
“I don’t understand.” It was all I could say.
Shawn had died. I had seen it with my own two eyes.
Didn’t I?
No. His voice had faded but I had never physically seen him because I blacked out myself.
But if that was true, then—oh. My. God.
“They were found shortly after the crash by a policeman cruising the roads since they weren’t safe because of the rain,” he said, pausing as his eyes drifted somewhere far away, a memory that he probably hadn’t visited since it happened. “They were in bad shape, and the people in the other car had barely survived it also.”
I stared at him, waiting for him to go on, words and thoughts ceasing to exist as I waited for more news, news that I thought I would never hear.
“Penelope was in a coma.” My heart stopped beating when he mentioned Penelope. “Penny and her husband, Shawn, were badly hurt but the doctors were optimistic. We all held onto hope and waited for God to make his decision.”
“His decision?” I asked numbly.
“He would never take someone unless He needed them with Him, unless their purpose here had been fulfilled.”
He spoke of God as if he truly believed, and it was something I wanted so badly to believe in. That something more was out there. How could I not? I had lived two lives. Someone bigger than me had to be responsible for that. I wished, anyway.
We were all entitled to our own beliefs and whatever helped guide us through this life, whether it was God, the earth, or the living, then so be it. Who was anyone to tell someone else what was right or wrong? The truth was we all knew nothing, only as much as the next person, and even then it was speculation and forms of history that had been rewritten along the way.
The future was uncertain but the only way to learn the truth was by living through it.
That was all I was trying to do—live.
“Penelope never woke from her coma, and it wasn’t until a few days later that Shawn had woken up from his,” he said slowly. His words were pained as he relived through his loss. Mrs. Davis reached over and wrapped her hands over his. “He was distraught and angry, and until this day I’m not sure he has ever fully recovered.”
“I should have never left,” Claire said, softly speaking up from her side of the room. “I should have stayed and been there for you both, and Shawn. My God. I had no idea. I never even thought to check, I just assumed he wouldn’t have made it without Penny. They were destined to be together. I don’t even know how he survived without her, I can’t imagine what he must have felt. I just disconnected from everyone and everything from that part of my life and continued on with my life. I’m so sorry.”
I swiped at the never-ending stream of tears rolling down my cheeks and stayed focused on the conversation in front of me. I needed to hear this, needed to know the full story of what had happened after Penelope moved on. I thought I knew the whole story but I was wrong, so very wrong.
“You did what was best for you and your daughter,” Claire’s mother reassured her. “Your father and I weren’t in the right mindset to be fully supportive of you, physically or emotionally. And Shawn was hurting, I wouldn’t have wanted you to witness that. He needed to grieve on his own, and he eventually did.”
“How is he now?” Claire asked. “Is he still in Los Angeles?”
“He came with us to Oregon for a little while but he went back home to be with his family,” she said with a small smile. “Last I heard he was still there.”
“Is he happy?” I asked, surprised at myself for being brave enough to seek the answer to that question.
I walked over and sat beside Claire on the couch, clutching her trembling hand in my own.
“I think so,” Claire’s mom said, nodding her head. “He remarried a few years after Penelope moved on. She’s a wonderful woman, we’ve met her a few times. He’ll bring her and the kids when he visits sometimes.”
“He visits?”
Claire asked at the same time that I asked, “He has kids?”
My heart didn’t know whether to swell with pride or break from loss.
“Yes, he visits maybe twice a year. He has three kids, two girls and one boy.” She sounded proud. “He named his youngest daughter Grace after Penelope, using her middle name.”
I broke down. My heart crumbled into a million tiny pieces and my body shook with uncontrolled pain at the reminder that Shawn was alive, that he had a family, and that Penelope wasn’t a part of his life.
That last part I must have said out loud because Claire’s mom sympathetically said, “She’s with him every single day, in every part of him. He still wears his wedding ring from her on a chain around his neck and as far as I know has never taken it off.”
“How old is he now?” I quickly asked, mentally calculating his age in my head.
“I believe he’s forty-eight now? He just had a birthday not too long ago, but he looks good for his age. Handsome and fit, I like to think Penelope Grace would be proud of the way he has taken care of himself.”
“Good, that’s good,” I mumbled quietly.
“It is,” she said fondly. “For a while we weren’t sure if he was going to survive without her, we worried, but he’s happy, and it wasn’t easy but he never let his pain dictate his life. He always said it wasn’t what Penny would have wanted, and he knew she was somewhere watching over him, so he let time heal his heart and continued his life.”
“Is that why you all looked so shaken when I walked into the room?” I asked, pushing through the pain traveling throughout my whole being.
“They had just told me about Shawn when you walked in,” Claire said to me. “They had no idea I thought he moved on along with Penny.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Are you okay, Everly?” Claire asked, concerned.
“Yes, just processing this new information.”
“Well, would you like to properly meet your grandparents?” Claire asked with a nervous smile.
I nodded, numb, and stood up with Claire to meet the people who had loved Penelope fiercely. I bit my tongue, holding back the parts of me that wanted to tell them about her, about who I was, but they wouldn’t understand, no one would. Penelope would always be a part of me, but she wasn’t who I was—I was Everly.
You’re Everly Hope Davis, and it’s okay to miss her sometimes.
The her being Penelope. I did miss her, the glimpses of her I had gotten through her memories. We were similar in some ways but different in most. I was my own person and Penelope was no longer my silhouette. She hadn’t been for a long time, and I had accepted that. Having her parents here, so close and in person, was overwhelming, but I could get through it.
I had Lio. I had my own life. And I was exceptionally happy.
So, I conversed with Mr. and Mrs. Davis—my grandparents–like I knew nothing about them, which wasn’t a lie. I didn’t know them, I only knew the version of them that Penny saw through her eyes.
Claire’s hand never left mine, and she never left my side. We were supporting one another, and I realized at the end of it all how badly I wanted them to stay in my life, to stay in Claire’s. We were a family on our own but they were our family too, and talking to them had opened up a place in my heart that I assumed would always be empty. They were an added bonus, an extra bit of light that I knew, even after the short meeting, would always guide me home.
I’ve said this before, but some people say that home is where your heart is, and my home was with the people in that room and Lio. My home was more than I ever imagined it could be.
I breathed in the words from a poem I had written a while back, their words ringing more true than the moment I wrote them.
They say
home is where your heart is,
Home is where you find yourself something to believe in
I always thought I’d make it on my own
But you lead me home.
“So, Shawn is alive?” Lio asked, a little hesitant.
I had just finished filling him in on the day’s events and with each new piece of information I shared with him his face lost a little bit of its color.
“Yeah, alive and well, apparently extremely happy with a wife and kids,” I said frantically, my words barely keeping up with the thoughts playing out in my mind.
“How do you feel about all of that?” He asked, and I couldn’t help but notice the sadness that entered his usually lively brown eyes.
“I feel a lot of things, it’s hard to just pin point one emotion,” I told him honestly. “I’m mostly confused, I guess. I didn’t know he had survived the crash.”
“You mentioned that Claire wanted to go see him, is that something you would want to do too?”
I could tell he was nervous about asking that question, but I wasn’t sure why. His hands kept clenching and unclenching at his sides and his jaw ticked every other second that I didn’t respond.
“I’m not sure, Lio, I mean, he was an important part of Penelope’s life.” I tried to explain.
“But you aren’t Penelope!” He yelled, walking to the other side of the room and running his hands over his face in frustration.
“I know that, Lio.” My voice hardened.
“Do you? Because for someone who claims to be her own person, you sure do cling to the memory of Penelope a lot.”
“That isn’t fair. I’ve been trying, I’ve let her go.”
“I know you want to think that, Ever, but you haven’t,” he said slowly. “If you did then you wouldn’t have brought the journal with your dreams, or her memories or whatever, into our new home. You’re holding onto her, and I really don’t understand why.”
“I feel guilty, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”
He stared at me silent and unmoving.
“I am living this incredible life, and she didn’t even have the chance to live out hers,” I said, tears blurring my vision for the second time that day. “I’m surrounded by her family every single day and today I met her parents and learned that her husband is still alive. It’s a lot to take in, Lio, and I feel bad about it. I know it isn’t my fault, but I can’t help it. I’m so, so happy with you. I love you, and I love being Everly, but this guilt that I didn’t know existed until today is eating me alive.”
This Life Isn't Mine Page 17
