Page 58 of Dear Ripley

“Grief is one of the most challenging and complicated emotional experiences any of us has in our lives. People want it to resolve and go away quickly, but that’s not how it works. There are good days and bad days, good years and bad years, and, while things get better as time goes on because you learn to grow around your grief, grief seldom leaves us completely. It changes us, changes how we see the world and interact with it, and the events that cause us grief have monumental impacts on us. Still experiencing grief years later doesn’t mean you failed at grieving or moving on, it means you were a person who experienced something that hurt and changed you deeply.”

I’d cried a lot in therapy. As the tears came again in earnest, I was at least able to acknowledge I was no longer ashamed when they did. Maybe the grief hadn’t gone away, but maybe Genevieve was right, I had been growing around it all along, and that wasn’t nothing.

After a moment, I sniffled and cleared my throat. “We’ve been talking to each other, actually.”

A hint of surprise flickered across her face. “You and Alicia have been talking to each other?”

I nodded, wiping the back of my hand across my face, gathering the tears. “Yeah. Well, kind of. We’re… writing letters to each other. I think?”

“You don’t sound sure?”

“Oh, well, it’s just… it started out kind of accidentally as the world’s worst apology note when we ran into each other.” I was looking forward to getting into that because, even now, I couldn’t believe Alicia.

“And now?” she prompted, quickly scribbling something in her notes.

“We each replied a couple of times. She left me with another reply last night at the restaurant and, if I reply, I guess we’re… what? Pen pals?”

“And how are you feeling about that?”

I took a deep breath. “Scared. Hopeful, maybe? I don’t know. I’m sure it doesn’t really mean anything.”

“Do you think you want to reply?”

“Yes,” I said without needing to consider. I knew I did. From the minute she’d placed the envelope down beside me, I’d known I wanted to. “I’m just not sure it’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” It wasn’t judgment. It was just Genevieve figuring out what I was thinking. It had been helpful when I’d figured that out in therapy, too—that a question didn’t mean judgment. Sometimes, it really was just a quest for more information.

“Because it’s Alicia, and it’s all of this.” I gestured around me helplessly, some vague reference to the whole session, to the grief and the love and the history between us. “And because I’m scared.” I laughed. “But isn’t it always that way with Alicia?”

“It might be, but fear isn’t always a bad thing.”

Fear and love and longing and foolish, foolish hope. Sometimes, the things we wanted most—the things we needed—were the things that scared us. We just had to figure out whether they were worth facing the fears for. And nothing worth having ever came easily.

Chapter 19

Alicia

Iwatched Joel across the dining room table. Despite the chaos of being back, and everything that was—or was not—happening with Ripley, being around my family and the home I grew up in, just felt right. There was something easy about shutting out the rest of the world when it was just us, in the house. There was something especially familiar about it just being me and Joel for dinner, eating frozen pizza and spaghetti from a can because it made him happy. Still.

When our parents went out on date nights, it had been fairly standard for me to watch Joel, and we’d always eat frozen pizza or shaped spaghetti. Now, he didn’t need looking after, and he could eat more these days, but his tastes hadn’t changed.

Or, maybe they had, and he was simply feeling nostalgic too.

I couldn't fault him for it. My whole life right now was some weird nostalgia trip. And it was nice to relive those things together. I hadn’t been around him enough over the last eight years. We’d stayed in very regular contact, but you didn’t realize how much you missed something as simple as frozen pizza with your brother until you were doing it again and wished you had his teenage years back to do it over and over again.

Plus, oddly—and in a way I was never going to admit to anyone I needed to respect me—canned spaghetti shapes and pizza were a delightful combination.

The doorbell rang, interrupting Joel telling me about a concert he was hoping to get tickets to, and he sat up, looking around, almost like a startled and excited little puppy. I was glad I hadn’t missed all of his youthful hope and optimism.

He grinned at me. “I’ll get the door. You get the ice cream and the popcorn.”

I laughed as he bolted down the hallway. That was our other tradition—a movie, ice cream, and popcorn. When he’d been little, his eyes were often bigger than his belly, and he’d make it through a handful of popcorn and the kid-sized serving of ice cream he’d complained about before he was rolling around on the floor, talking about being so full his belly was going to explode. I imagined he could stomach a little more food this time.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” I heard him ask the person at the door, his voice full of nervous excitement.

For half a second, I wondered who it was. Even if the person had taken a fraction longer to reply, I was sure Joel’s tone would have let me figure it out.

“Delivery for the lady of the house,” a deep voice replied smoothly.

---