It looked like the wheels of justice, although slow to turn, were at least moving in the right direction.

++++

To Tessa, the days seemed to last forever, but the weeks seemed to fly by.

She read a lot. She sat with her mom a lot. Sometimes she skipped school and just walked around New York City, thinking about what it would be like to live without the one person who’d always loved her.

Patrick tried to help. She could tell he was doing his best. One day, he gave her a book by a French detective.

“It’s his memoirs,” he said. “A friend of mine bought it for me. I want you to have it.”

She eyed it. “Is it any good?”

“It’s interesting. It’s not always easy to tell what’s fact and what’s fiction in it.”

“Sorta like life?”

“Maybe, yeah.”

“I don’t want to take it from you.”

“It’s okay, really. I’ve read it. And with your interest in solving mysteries, I thought you’d enjoy it. You’re more of a bibliophile than I am, anyway. It’s yours.”

He took her out driving more. Sometimes they talked when he did. Mostly they were quiet, but it wasn’t a lonely sort of quiet. It was more like the kind you have when you’re with a friend.

++++

For Christie, seeing Pat with Tessa was enough to take away some of the sting of what was happening.

They were going to be okay.

As long as they were there for each other, things were going to be alright.

In the final days, Pat made up more tongue twisters for her—one every day, and she relished all of them—even if they weren’t all that tough to say.

He never could seem to get them right.

It made her smile.

The two of them tried to add to their list of favorite memories, and the top three continued to change as each day passed.

85

With February came her death.

At first, you don’t believe it.

You think that at any moment she’ll suddenly materialize, walking in from the other room, carrying a load of laundry that needs to be done, and she’ll smile in that quiet, flirty way of hers and say, Hey, you. What are you up to?

But no.

She doesn’t appear.

She’s gone.

The death of your true love brings the cruelest of all miseries because it cannot be healed, not ever. Not really. Time might loosen its grip, but nothing can untwine the love that you have for that person when she passes away.

Passes away.

Dies.

I wanted a resurrection, something to remind me of her grace and beauty. But no resurrection came.

I cried deep and long. That’s how all of this ended. That’s what happened when the cancer won.

++++

The first few weeks were the hardest.