Most of All You: A Love Story(87)

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My life became a steady schedule of work at the nail salon and work on the stone figurine. I spent most weekends up until dawn piecing the girl together, going over my life, my hurts, all the places my own heart had crumbled away to dust.

It was exhausting and it was hard, but I kept at it, buoyed by the representation of my work: the art that had been Gabriel’s hope so many years ago. And in this way, it was as if he were there with me. I wasn’t completely alone. In fact, despite how much it hurt, in some ways the nights I spent bent over my desk provided my greatest comfort.

You can’t fix me, I’d told Gabriel once. And I’d been right. I needed to fix myself. And he had loved me enough to make me believe it was possible. That I was worth fixing.

Fall turned to winter and the days grew shorter; the trees outside my window, bare skeletons.

I celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas with Lien Mai and her family, bringing Kayla as my date. The gatherings were filled with the same Vietnamese chatter that kept a smile on my face, and I felt both a pained yearning as I wondered what Gabriel was doing, and a warm togetherness and affection for my new friends.

A few days after Christmas, I checked my mailbox after having neglected doing so for about a week, and I was surprised to find what looked like a Christmas card with George’s return address in the corner. With shaking fingers, I ripped it open and read the short note he’d included.

Dear Ellie,

I hope you’re spending Christmas in a way that brings peace to your heart. We miss you around here. Chloe came for Christmas and is spending two weeks with us—she misses you, too. I think about you a lot, Ellie girl, and hope you’re doing well.

Love, George





I’d read the card as I climbed my steps from the mailbox and grasped it to my chest, squeezing my eyes shut against the tears, then sitting down on the top step to catch my breath. God, I missed them all so much in that moment, I didn’t know if I’d survive it. Chloe came for Christmas. A knife sliced through my heart. Surely she was there for Gabriel. Her work on the paper must be done, or if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t need two weeks of Gabriel providing more information. No, her visit must be of a personal nature.

I let the tears flow, hurting so badly inside it felt like a piercing of my soul. But I had to accept that Gabriel and Chloe might be together now. I’d wished it for him. I’d given him the room to explore his own heart.

Will you come back?

I need you to go on as if I won’t.

I sat there for a moment as my tears dried in the frigid wind, looking down at the parking lot. There were still a few spots of snow that hadn’t melted from the mild storm we’d had the week before. I caught sight of something purple and tilted my head in wonderment, squinting to try and make out what it was, but it was too far away.

I walked down the steps and squatted in the snow, sucking in a breath at what I saw. It was a purple flower growing through the frost. “How in the world?” I murmured, running a finger over one soft petal.

Gratitude isn’t a Band-Aid, Ellie. You still have to experience your feelings to work through them. Gratitude is meant to make it bearable. Sometimes gratitude gets you through the day, and sometimes it just gets you from one moment to the next.

I heard his words as if they were being whispered in my mind and closed my eyes to stop more tears from coming. After a moment I looked back at the flower, taking comfort in the moment, finding thankfulness and hope in one delicate flower that had somehow found a way to bloom, even through the dark, icy cold.

On New Year’s Eve, I drank too much champagne with Kayla as we watched the ball drop on TV. I almost called Gabriel, but forced myself not to. I pictured him kissing Chloe as the clock struck midnight and cried so hard Kayla asked me if she should call an ambulance. That made me laugh through my tears, and then I cried some more and laughed some more and fell into an exhausted sleep.

On January third, Lien Mai delivered a healthy baby boy, and I visited her at the hospital with a “bouquet” of blue balloons. I sat in a chair by her bed and took the small bundle into my arms and looked into the perfect round face of James Allen Nguyen and fell instantly and completely in love.

“You have own baby someday,” Lien said. “You can no have mine.” And then she laughed, a knowing gleam in her eyes as she grinned at me holding her baby boy.

I laughed, too, and then he grasped my finger and I sucked in a breath. “Oh, look, Lien, he disagrees.”

Lien laughed. “Okay, we share him.”

And in a way we did. After a two-week maternity leave, Lien brought James to the shop two days a week from nine until noon when her mother would pick him up. James slept in his car seat in the back office where it was well-ventilated, and if it was slow and Lien was busy, I’d sit back there and feed him his bottle, gazing down into his beautifully slanted eyes, and smoothing the inky black hair from his forehead. And I loved him so much it hurt.

I thought about a lot of things there, too, in the quiet as I provided sustenance to my friend’s baby. It seemed love did that for me—brought everything inside me to the surface so I could examine it all slowly and carefully, casting out that which I was ready to, and saving the rest for those dark nights when I pieced together Lady Eloise.

I thought about whether I wanted to find out what had become of my father and decided that, no, I didn’t need to know. He was a small missing part in the rebuilding of my heart, and I felt at peace that that was the way it should be. I’d hoped so hard for his love, longed for his acceptance, but he hadn’t been able to give it. And I knew now, believed, that that was because of him, not because of me.