He’s made friends at the complex. There’s an ongoing chess tournament in his building, and so far, nobody’s been able to beat him.
But the biggest surprise of all came from Riley and Melanie Ambrose. They started dating after they ran into each other at the hospital. Last June, they got married. I’m happy for my brother-in-law, and pleased to have Mel as a sister, especially now that she’s apologized to Tom for all the dreadful things she believed about him.
As for Tom and me, we’re doing okay. It took almost losing each other for us to realize just how much we meant to each other. We were in family counseling for a while, all four of us, but after Davy was born, we graduated. Having a stable family has been good for the girls. Taylor’s now more open and accepting of people, and Sadie finally stopped having nightmares. For both of the girls, life is good.
We don’t talk much about that night. We decided it was more healthy to put it behind us and move forward with our lives. But I did ask Tom, one evening when we were curled up together on the couch, how it was he found me that night.
“It was the GPS system,” he said. “The one you couldn’t see the reason for. The one that, when I waxed rhapsodic over it, you just rolled your eyes and left the room.”
“Enough,” I said. “Leave me a little dignity.” So that’s my story. My new beginning didn’t go quite the way I thought it would when I married Tom. Like most things in life, the ending to my story—or maybe I should call it the beginning—has a bittersweet component, a sharp edge to remind me that my current state of contentment was bought at great cost. I lost my baby, nearly lost my husband, and came very close to losing my life. That’s a heavy weight to carry around. But Tom and I both hope it’s made us better, stronger persons. The one lesson I know we both learned from all this is that you should never take for granted the people you love. Tell them you love them. Show them, every day, in a hundred different ways, how much you care. Because you never know when the unthinkable might happen.
Life is precious. Treat it that way.
That’s what Tom and I are doing.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-2483-8
DIE BEFORE I WAKE
Copyright © 2008 by Laurie Breton.
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