Hell on Heels(64)

“That was my big brother. He was charming and kind.” I found my parents again; they were both crying now. Leighton had her arms around both of them. “And I loved him more than anything else on this earth.”

There was barely a whisper in the audience as I spoke.

“That is why we are here tonight. We are here in honour of the memory of my brother, Henry Jon Smith, my angel with no halo and one wing in the fire, who lost the life he loved so much to his addiction.” I picked up the folded paper from the top of the podium.

“So, tonight, I ask all of you to light one of these lanterns and help me say goodbye to Henry.” My hands shook as the tears continued to flow, but Kevin appeared at my side. He lit the fire and handed my lantern back to me. “Let us all take a moment to honour the lives we’ve lost to the battle of addiction.”

I waited as the crowd lit their lanterns and a sea of images began to play on the screen behind me.

Over the last few months, we asked those whom had lost loved ones to addiction to send us a photo, and we would honour them here, tonight.

I’d asked my parents to prepare this part of the slideshow in hopes they too would be able to find a way to heal.

“It’s time to let go now, Charlie bear,” Henry whispered in my mind.

“I love you, Henry,” I said into the microphone. “Goodbye.”

I lifted my lantern in the air and it began to float into the night sky.

“I love you, Charlie bear. My heaven is here with you always.”

I cried.

I cried on this podium, on this stage, in front of hundreds of people, as I said goodbye to my brother.

I let go.

I was no longer the woman whose brother had died.

I was no longer the woman whose first love had left her.

Those were things that happened to me, but they didn’t belong to who I was.

I, Charleston Smith, was a lot of things. I was messy. I was sometimes poorly tempered. I was someone who believed you could still wear white after Labor Day. I was successful. I was someone who still thought a good horror movie could fix a bad day. I was a woman, and I was loved. The important thing was, I was not defined by any of those one things on their own. I was defined by the collective whole of the things I believed in.

I was no longer the woman who needed saving.

I was by no means healed in completion, but I was a woman willing to save herself.

I was a woman who believed she deserved to give herself her best shot at life.

Looking up, I watched as the sky filled with white lanterns. I watched as hundreds of people said goodbye.

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

My eyes moved over the crowd and I marveled at the three men I’d invited here tonight.

Beau.

Maverick.

Dean.

They were in such stark contrast to one another. Light, dark, and somewhere in between. Sometimes, I wondered if their reflection wasn’t an exact duality of Heaven and Hell. Angels and demons. The sinner hired to protect the saint. My three perfectly rounded out by a mortal man whose sins hardly made him a saint, but whose heart did not plague him a sinner.

How could I ever choose?

The smaller part of me, still broken and na?ve, wanted to never choose, wanted to love each of them, but the larger part of me that had begun to heal knew now that there was only one.

As I admired them all one last time, the saint, the sinner, and the mortal, I imagined the woman I’d be with each of them.

She would be great, because I was great, but I had chosen.

The gambler in me was finally ready to double down on my heart.

As we rounded the completion of the lantern ceremony, I found it was ironic where life takes us. The things that break us eventually make us whole again.

I watched the waiter approach him, delivering the note I’d written earlier today. It asked him to meet me under the canopy after the speech.

Where I would tell him I had chosen him.

I was healing—not healed, but healing—and I was ready to share that, with him.

Kevin cued my return to the podium to conclude my speech. “It would be my wish for each and every one of you tonight to find peace in the letting go of your loved ones, but also to find a newfound determination to aid in the prevention of this loss.”

The crowd fell quiet again as I spoke.

“Let us exhaust ourselves, ensuring that we suffer no more casualties to the war of addiction.”

Applause ensued, and now my voice spoke over it.

“Thank you for joining us tonight at our fifth annual Halo Foundation Gala.”

Then, I was done.

Kevin kissed my cheek and whispered, “You did good, babe.”

I did good.

I left him to wrap up information on our sponsors and the different ways people could assist the foundation, disappearing through the white backdrop of the stage again.

“That was amazing, Char.” Tom hugged me.

“You were…wow.” Tina wrapped her arms around my shoulders.

“We’re really proud of you.” Emma put her thin arms around all of us.

I enveloped their warmth. “Thank you for everything, and Emma?”

She looked at me.

“The lanterns were beautiful.”

She beamed.

We stood like that for a second, listening as Kevin spoke, and then I smiled. “I’m sorry, but I have somewhere I have to be.”