Page 170 of Score
“Of course.” She makes an impatient sound like that’s self-evident. “It’s not about loving them. It’s hard, Monk. Sometimes it’s so hard to just be inthis world and it can be such a volatile existence. Do I do that to someone else knowing the risks?”
“If your parents hadn’t had you, if you didn’t exist, my life would be duller, less full, a shadow of what it is with you in it.”
“If I didn’t exist, you’d find someone else.”
“The fact that I don’t even want to consider life without you tells me God didn’t make a mistake.”
“Oh, so you feeling religious,” she teases, glancing up to catch my eye, “being in your mama’s house?”
“I always interrogate my beliefs,” I answer seriously. “I think some of us spend our whole time on earth figuring that shit out, but I do believe there is a God and I believe He sent us to each other. If you are the only good thing He ever did in my life, it’s enough for me to believe.”
Tears gather at the corners of her eyes and then fall, a cascade of emotion coming off her in waves.
“But be sure, Vee.” I swipe my thumb over the tears. “Please don’t do this because you think I need it. Would I love it? Yeah. Like I would love to grab that Tony Award and complete my EGOT, but would my life as an artist, as a musician, be any less meaningful if it never happens? No. I’m doing what I was put on Earth to do, and I’m with the person I was put here to love.”
“I know that. I believe that, but I think…” She bites into the pillowy softness of her bottom lip. “I’d have to talk to my doctors.”
“Of course,” I say, not allowing the hope to take over my face.
“And I’d want to talk to my therapist, and we’d have to monitor my hormones and be super-vigilant about my moods.”
“For sure.” I nod and lift my brows, like we’re not having a conversation I never thought was even a possibility. “Super-vigilant.”
“But I think I’d like to try,” she says, searching my eyes. “Would you want that?”
I tuck her head back into the crook of my neck so she won’t see the tears I can’t seem to hold back. If she changes her mind, I don’t want her to think I’d be crushed or to regret bringing this up.
“Yeah, Vee. I’d want that with you.”
She tips her head back and watches me for a moment, dragging her knuckle through the tears cresting at the corners of my eyes. She smiles and blinks away tears of her own.
“So wanna try?”
“If that’s what you want,” I manage, struggling to suppress the geyser of emotion trying to force its way to the surface.
“You’re what I want,” she whispers, leaning up to kiss me.
“As long as it’s with you,” I agree, kissing her and tasting our mingled tears on her lips. “Everything with you.”
EPILOGUE 2
Verity
Two More Years Later
I haven’t been back here since the day we buried them.
I face my parents’ graves and stare at the headstones marking the short span of their lives. I’m thirty-seven years old, and they barely made it into their thirties before they died. I’m glad I visited in spring when life is breaking through the ground around them. When the air is redolent with the familiar scent of honeysuckle and everything feels reborn.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come.” I sniff, annoyed that I’ve been here all of twenty seconds and the waterworks have already begun. “It was hard to face you both.”
I swallow and swipe at my wet cheeks.
“Especially you, Daddy,” I whisper.
I sink to my haunches and lay the flowers I brought between their graves.
“Picked these myself,” I say. “Remember Aunt Roz’s garden? She’s still got it. It’s bigger now. Aunt Grace has a greener thumb. Shoot, you remember Grace, right? I know everybody liked to pretend they were justroommates.”
