"I love you. With all my heart. To the end of the ocean and back."
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FEATURED BY @StoriesUndiscovered
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Missy is a promising student of art, drawing wherever she goes. She is just as talented as quiet and she seems too indifferent to care...
My conversation with Evie bothered me. It ate through my brain like a worm. But I've learned. In silence, it hurt so much more. Thinking perhaps she was right. Thinking perhaps that I am stuck in the past when everything bad happened. But only a little whisper, only a scream... helped. It was as if you put the wind in the vase like Odysseus and released all the winds, all the pain and every breath of air filled with tears.
I turned to Owen.
Do I live in the past?
His answer was instant... which was concerning.
I don't think you live at all, he said.
Perhaps, I shrugged.
Perhaps.
Now it was Owen who turned to me with scrunched eyebrows and curiosity mixed with worry in his eyes.
Why are you asking?
Evie. She started to talk about the future... and how I am stuck in the past... and I didn't know what to tell her.
Owen wasn't surprised Evie was the centre of my thoughts once again and scowled thoughtfully.
Well...what would you like to do in the future?
I shrugged like every time mom asked me what I wanted from college.
I plan on studying and then maybe teaching art.
Not plan. Dream.
I chuckled.
Evie said the same thing.
Well?
I paused.
I'd like to be an artist. Not only sell my art. But make people understand what I am seeing because it is the only way I know how.
Well, why wouldn't you say that?
I think you know the answer to that, Owen.
Letting her go is not the end of the world, he said foolishly.
I scoffed and perhaps that was the only answer he needed.
My world would stop when if she did not exist in my heart. Until the end of times. However, I did not know, the end of times was nearing.
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I did not know what Evie was planning for us. But I knew she was excited about it and how could I deny her joy when she smiled at me like that?
She was driving us away from our hometown, in a direction I'd never been to. She was humming a song under her breath. It was the Humoresque. She had this tint to her cheeks, and she was glowing with warm light. The winter darkness crept up on us soon enough, but Evie didn't seem to mind. Every time she drove my car it seemed so very strange. She seemed more at peace than I did.
Missy?
Yes?
Why have you stopped coming to church?
Her sudden question caught me off guard. Even when we were kids... she never questioned it. And I have always assumed she knew. But now that it had turned out she didn't, there was a part of me which did not want to tell her.
Because the church was a time when my family was together, I told her, it was my belief, I said.
Coming every Sunday... meant I still believed. But my faith died early on. Despite my efforts to keep it. Despite needing it the most.
She did not ask what I wanted to believe. Because she knew.
Have I ever told you, I admire you, I asked her, even through hardships... you had that belief. I envy you.
She is a human of belief but a creature of beauty. I think there is something brave about that. Evie stopped the car in the middle of the forest, looking at the dark trees. I didn't think she heard my confession. I felt a pang of rejection before she beamed and turned to me.
Let's resurrect your belief, Missy.
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