Just for This Year

Chapter Forty-One

Sunday
April 13th

Lila wasn't sure what led her back to her birth parent's gravesite.

Maybe it was the fact that during her session today, she told her therapist that she was having dreams of different lives with different people, and she didn't know what to make of it. She wasn't sure if that was something she wanted... deep down. It brought on immense guilt to even think of a different life than the one with her family now. But it wasn't something she could just turn off.

The twins had both been benefiting greatly from therapy. Neither were in that dark place that they were in a few months ago anymore. But that didn't mean they didn't have those days. Lila still found her mind spiraling into places she didn't want to go to, and she was sure that Sam had the same. They talked about it sometimes with each other, but both still were fiercely protective over the other, and neither wanted cause one of their bad days.

She sat down in front of their graves, staring at them blankly. She fiddled with the grass below her, trying to wrap her head around the fact that they were right below her but she would never see them. Of course, she had looked up their names, but she didn't find much at all. They were ghosts even when they were alive. There wasn't much about them anywhere, and that haunted her for a while. She had been working through it in her sessions, and she was making her peace with it.

"I never really know where to start when I come here," Lila admitted as she let out a deep breath. "It feels weird to talk to people I don't know... and gravestones. Not like you can answer me."

She tilted her head, rubbing her neck uncomfortably. "I've been having these dreams. Different people in every one. But they're all you... or they're supposed to be you. You're never the same, and it's kind of messing with my head. It's so weird to think about the life I never had. Because that life died before you did, you never even gave it a chance."

Part of the reason she was there was to say goodbye to that life. She was here to bury that life with them. To lock it in a coffin and put it deep in the ground. She couldn't cling onto something she never had. It was making it hard to live in the life she had. It wasn't fair to herself to keep fantasizing about something she would never have.

"I don't know why you did what you did. And... I never will, I don't think. But part of me is grateful. Because now I have Sam. I have Scarlett and Cole... Nate and Allison... I have my mom, and I had my dad," Lila went on in a shaky voice, lifting her hand to her mouth as she felt herself get choked up. She closed her eyes briefly to collect herself, biting the inside of her cheek. "I don't know what kind of life I could've had with you. But I know I wouldn't trade this one for anything. So, I owe you a thank you, I guess."

She leaned forward, brushing the tips of her fingers along the gravestone before reaching the middle of it. She pressed her palm against it and let her eyes flutter shut. "I hope one day we'll be able to meet, and then maybe... then you'll be ready to know me."

After a few moments of sitting there, Lila pushed herself to her feet. She let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding, and it felt as if something left her. Her feet moved of their own accord, making her way back to her car. There was a life she would never know, but she would never give this one up for anything. She had too much here to ever consider wanting another one.

In a few weeks from now, they would be graduating high school. It felt surreal to think about, but the end of their childhood was soon approaching. They would be going their separate ways to college soon, and she would be on her own. A new chapter of her life was ahead of her, and she couldn't enter that if she was clinging onto a past that she was never a part of.

Lila said goodbye to the mother she never had. She said goodbye to the father she never knew. She said goodbye to the life she never lived, because it was never really hers to begin with.

She would keep moving forward.