Page 107 of The Sun
“I love you,” Elias said as he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and placed it to his lips. The flint to the lighter caught, and I watched the flames dance over his face as he lit the smoke.
As wrong as it felt to think about in light of the tragedy we were all drowning in, I couldn’t help but think how much I loved him. “I love you, too.”
His eyes narrowed when he blew the smoke out. “I might as well. . .” he mumbled before dragging himself off the porch and to his truck. The interior light turned on, and Elias leaned across to open the glovebox. I tried to focus on him when he shut the door and started up the path, because focusing on him didn’t hurt. He threw his cigarette out on his way back up the steps. The swing bounced under his weight when he sat next to me.
“I’ve struggled with this,” he said, “because I don’t want to put any more on you.”
My heart seized, my already confused mind spiraling into the darkest of places.
Elias bit at his lip, then exhaled. “But at this point, I don’t know if it’ll do you good or send you over the edge. The day your dad. . .” he swallowed those awful words, then handed me a Polaroid, backside up. “I went to talk to him, and he asked me to give you this.”
I felt my brows pinch together when I flipped the picture over, and any bit of strength I had clung to fled from my body in a bitter sob.
The picture was off-center and faded, but it was perfect. The soft pinks and deep reds of the sunset behind the near silhouette of my father holding me in front of the expansive ocean—it was a snapshot of life when I still innocently believed my father was invincible and when I was still his baby girl.
A heart is hard to capture, but that polaroid did just that.
Elias pressed his forehead to mine. “He knew you loved him, Sunny. Please stop worrying about that. He knew.”
I choked on my next breath, placing my hand over my struggling heart. I don’t remember what the last words I said to my father where, but I remember that I thought I hated him the last time I saw him, and that’s something I don’t know that I’ll ever get over.
Love hard.Forgive fast. That’s what my father’s death taught me.
41
Sunny
August 2000
Our last day in Fort Morgan was the first day it hadn’t rained in over a month.
That had to be an omen.
Elias, Daisy, and I sat shoulder to shoulder at the tideline. Elias on one side, Daisy on the other while Brandon stood in front of us, staring out at the ocean. The four of us had survived whatever adolescence was. All the heartbreak and drama, the lies and the hate, and the chaos of trying to find our way—all the unimportant things in life that, at one point, seemed so incredibly important.
And I had survived my father’s death, only because I had no choice.
That summer, I decided death wasn’t half as cruel to the people it took as it was to those left behind to find their way through the heartache.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving me here to rot,” Daisy said, taking a broken piece of shell and tossing it into the rolling waves.
I nudged her. “I’m not leaving you here to rot. We’ll come back.”
“You better come back for the baby shower. I had high hopes you’d be in charge of the music selection. Mother’s gonna to try to play gospel music. I just know it.”
“That’s gotta be sacrilegious or something, playing gospel at the baby shower of an unwed preacher’s kid,” Elias laughed, and Daisy shot him a menacing glare.
“True.” Brandon threw over his shoulder.
Daisy huffed. “If she plays gospel music, I swear, I won’t be in your wedding.”
“That’s a lie.”
“She’s got a few years to come around, Sunny. Don’t let her guilt you into being a DJ,” Elias said.
We’d decided to wait until after college to get married because we knew that’s what my father would have wanted.
Brandon turned away from the water and took a seat on the sand beside us. “Was it just me or did graduation seem anticlimactic?”
