And it’s been the best three years of my life. Even though I'm now edging into my mid-forties at forty-five, I feel as young as ever. Her love and light keep me alive, but I would never fucking say those corny words aloud. Instead, I make sure she knows it by doing and giving as much as I can all the time.
She appears in the hallway, a beautiful broad smile on her face.
“How was work?” she asks as I drop the flowers onto the side table and pull her into my arms. She always wraps her legs around my waist, even just in our hello hug, and I fuckin’ love it.
We kiss, and I can taste her evening coffee on her lips, and I like it. I lower her to the ground and grab the flowers, presenting them to her.
“Happy birthday,” I tell her. She nods to the table in the living room, where six dozen other daisies rest in miscellaneous vases.
“You are spoiling me,” she beams, and even though Goldie has gotten away from the superficial lifestyle, she led while under Constance’s puppeteering, I know she loves the flowers. It’s the gesture. Knowing she’s on my mind all the time is something she will never take for granted because that’s who she is.
I shoot her a wink. “Want your gift?”
She claps her hands together like an eager child on Christmas, nodding. “Yes, yes, yes!”
I tip my head forward, reaching back to tug my shirt off at the neck. Immediately her eyes go to the red, freshly inked skin over my heart. I didn’t put a cotton bandage on it just for this moment right here.
Her eyes fill with tears as she dusts her fingertips over her name. “Oh my god,” she breathes, looking up at me. I kiss her cheeks where the tears fall.
“Baby, why are you emotional? You think it’s a big deal for me to get my wife’s name tattooed over my heart?” I reach for her throat and bring her beautiful, pouty mouth to mine. We kiss, and when we part, her bottom lip is wobbly.
“Hey, what’s the matter?”
“I did something on a whim, and I thought at the time it was smart and even a little romantic, but now as I’m about to tell you, I’m really scared I made a mistake, and I regret not talking to you about it first,” she bawls, wiping her eyes frantically in an effort to stop her own tears.
“What?” I grab her hands and stop her from wiping. I search the insides of her wrists. “You get an Atticus tattoo somewhere, and it turned out bad?” I ask.
When she doesn’t even flinch at my joke, I rest my hands on the sides of her shoulders and smooth my thumbs along her skin. “Hey, whatever you did, it’s going to be okay. You’re thinkin’ about how you probably shoulda talked to me before, and that’s good. You know there’s nothing you can do that will make me so upset with you that you should be crying on your birthday eve.”
I push her shining, soft hair off her face and wait for her to catch her breath. Eventually, she does and looks up at me. She removes my hand from her shoulder and brings it to my heart, placing it flush there.
With a steadying breath, she says, “you know the money I got from the Brutes a few years ago?”
I roll my eyes. “No, I forgot about the 1.5 million dollar check on our fridge.”
Her nerves soften with my teasing. With a soft smile, she says, “I did something with it.”
I’m confused. We talked about that money a handful of times. I gave her options on what she could do with it, we talked about investing it in the stock market, or even using it to scoop up some rental properties here in Oakcreek since we have a loose connection to a real estate investor in town. But we never came to a conclusion and while I want Goldie to spend every penny of that money to make herself happy, I always worried that spending it would be a trigger to that night, reminding her of everything that happened.
“Are you okay? Did cashin’ it make you feel shit again?” I pull her into me but she pushes back, her eyes filling with excitement.
“Not at all,” she says, reaching into her back pocket. She retrieves a piece of paper, folded, and hands it to me. I eye her with suspicion as I unfold it slowly.
My eyes are slow crawling over the words, not because I’m not a strong reader, but because… I almost can’t believe it. A knot of emotion clogs my throat and the back of my eyes get hot and wet. “Baby girl,” I say, my voice all smoke and rasp from all the emotion I’m staving off.
“What do you think?” she asks, sliding her hands around my wrists as I hold the paper and continue to read and reread it.
The Meredith Winters Scholarship Foundation.
The Meredith Winters Scholarship Foundation was organized in 2022 to memorialize Oakcreek resident Meredith Winters, who committed suicide to escape torment of her bullies at school. The Foundation awards 15 scholarships for $1,500 to $5,500 apiece for college-bound high school seniors who’ve started anti-bullying efforts in their school or community.
I let the tears fall, because she took her trauma and mine, and made something fuckin’ beautiful. Something full of hope and light and goodness. And god dammit, I’ve never been so fuckin’ touched. Or felt so loved.
“Don’t cry,” she whispers softly, smoothing her fingers over her name inked into my flesh. “I love you, and I love your family. And I know I would’ve loved Mere, too. Let’s keep her alive with this program, let’s make sure everyone remembers her name.”
“Thank you,” I say, knowing those two words aren’t big enough, but they’re all I have.
“I couldn’t think of a better way to spend it,” she says with a smile that makes my chest ache. “We’ll spend our lives running it together.”
“Mom and Dad–”
She swallows. “We’ll tell them the truth, together, first. And it will be hard. But then we’ll tell them about the scholarship foundation. And it will be okay.”
I nod. “Happy birthday. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, Goldie, and I want you to know it.”
She wipes away the rest of my tears without mentioning it. “Oh I know it.” With a wink, she adds, “that goes both ways, you know.”
I set the paper down next to me and wrap my arms around my wife as tightly as I can.
“Oh I know it.”