She Said I Do (But She Don't) ✔

Chapter 20

It had been days since they had said their final farewell to Liam and the baby girl they named Bethany. She was laid to rest close to Ethan. Liam was a few ahead.

For neither Alice, Owen or Amy had the past days been easy.

Just like Alice had once passed through, Amy was debating a change of career. The loss she suffered was to big to face helping others with their losses. She hadn't gone to work since. She couldn't ever step into another hospital without thinking of Liam.

The day Liam was gone, Amy spent her morning asleep in preparation for her evening shift. When she awoke in the afternoon, she had seen Owen's missed calls. Immediately she had went to look for Liam to ask if his cousin or Alice had called him as well. And that was when she found Liam lying faced down on the floor of Alice's bedroom. The doctors concluded that his heart gave out all of a sudden without any prior symptom. Alice thought otherwise. Close by where she had found Liam was the teddy bear he had bought for Alice's baby. He insisted on buying her baby a gift even if he would not be there to give it to her himself. And every time Liam felt tired of fighting, he would go look at that teddy bear. To remind himself to fight. He wanted to see the princess, as he called her, playing with it. That day, Liam must have felt something that made him look at that teddy bear.

Amy hasn't gone back to their apartment in St. Johns since.

As for Owen, he had spent days staring at the lonely walls of his bedroom. Of all the losses he had suffered throughout his life, this was the absolute worse. The loneliness he felt was deafeningly. He shut himself from the world.

Until one day, he finally had the courage to get dressed in jeans and go to the office. He was welcomed with a huge loud round of applause and whistles and praises. It was the first time his employees were seeing him step foot in the building since the successful game launch.

"I haven't yet had the chance to thank you all for making this project as successful as it is." Owen addressed the gathered employees. "My partner Ethan would be proud of all of us. You and your excellent hard work gave me some happiness after all the losses I've had. I guess most of you know that the days I haven't been here, I wasn't vacationing or celebrating. I've lost my cousin and my beautiful baby daughter. And I wanted to come here and thank you and to let you know I'll be taking some time off from the office. I guess I need to grieve. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that because I haven't really took a full day off since me and Ethan started this company."

"Just stay home with your wife." One of the employees suggested.

"Unfortunately, my marriage was not as successful as our project. So I guess I need time to think about that too."

"And maybe think about a new project?" Another suggested.

"I'm a workaholic. Just because I won't be here doesn't mean I won't be thinking about work. Anyway, I'm going to start my time off now. And, as a thank you present, you may have the rest of the day off. Go home and go spend that nice well-earned bonus I just had transferred to each of your accounts."

An uproar rose as Owen saluted a goodbye wave at them and walked into his office. As he looked around, it felt like it had been a long time since he last had been there. He eyed the wall of snippets and drawings which seemed all so foreign at that moment. He stayed there until all he heard was silence.

Owen found Ryan sitting on the edge of a table waiting for him. He had been the only one left in the building.

"So, really," Ryan began, "What are you going to do in your 'time off'?"

Owen sighed. He had no idea.

"Are you really going to spend it all by your lonely self?"

And just as Ryan meant to evoke with his question, Owen remembered Alice. He wondered how she's been doing since the last time they saw each other at the funeral.