Nightfall ✓

Epilogue

• epilogue •

I apply the brakes. The car comes to a not-so-smooth stop in front of the school gates. I drum my fingers on the wheel and turn to him. "Well, here we are."

"You're a horrible driver. I'll drive much better than you when I get my license," he says. I laugh.

The parking lot is crowded. There are lots of kids everywhere, and suddenly, I remember my own first day of high school.

He doesn't move. "I'm nervous."

I smile. "I know you are. But there's nothing to worry about, you know. High school isn't that tough."

"It is tough, mom. Kids bully each other. What if people bully me and everyone thinks I'm a freak, and no one talks to me?"

"Do you think you're a freak?"

He thinks about it, then shakes his head.

"Good, because that's what matters."

"But what if I have no friends and no girl likes me?"

"Your father was bullied in high school, did you know that?"

"No," he says slowly, stretching out the word.

"He always stood up for himself and never let the bullies get to him because he knew who he was. He had your uncle Zack. He had other people who talked to him. And he had me. I fell in love with him, instead of running away." I smile and reach out to stroke his fluffy brown hair. "So if kids bully you, you're going to fight back."

He still looks nervous. I bend towards him to kiss his cheek. "Really, Dylan, there's nothing to worry about. If you ask me, well, high school was the best time of my life. You'll make friends. Go. Don't worry."

"No."

I sigh and look at him. "What exactly are you worried about?" I hear the bell ring, and I see the parking lot slowly emptying, the crowd thinning, but I don't tell Dylan to hurry up and leave.

"I'm worried about everything. There are three kinds of kids in high school, the popular people, the nerds, and the nothings, and I'm afraid of being a nothing."

"Dylan — " I take his hand and squeeze softly, " — I was a 'nothing'. I was pretty and I had a boyfriend and I got good grades and I was friendly, so I wasn't a nerd, but I wasn't popular either because I wasn't too pretty, I hadn't had too many boyfriends, and my grades were good and I was awkward. So I was 'nothing'."

I give him some time to digest all this.

"But if you ask me, I think that's the best thing to be, because you don't have to pretend to be someone else like you have to when you're popular, and you're not ignored by people like you are when you're a nerd. You can still enjoy when you're nothing. You have friends. You have a family. There's nothing to worry about, love, trust me."

He thinks about it for some time. The parking lot is totally empty. He leans over and kisses my cheek. "You're the best, mom." He opens the door, but stops suddenly. "Can Alex come over after school?"

"Sure."

He grins and runs toward the building at full speed. I remember something suddenly and stick my head out of the window. "Oh, and Dylan?" I call.

He stops and turns around. "Yeah?"

"I love you."

He frowns. "Me too, mom, now stop annoying me." He opens the double doors of the building and dashes in. I'm smiling.

I lean back in my seat, and I'm thinking about him, then his grey eyes, then Liam. Time really can heal almost anything. When I think about him now, I don't curl up into a ball and start crying. It's more like a huge void in my chest, a constantly aching ache. Looking at Dylan makes it better.

I still haven't let go of him. When Dylan was little, he asked where dad was, and I would say that he'd gone somewhere far far away and when he returned he would bring lots of chocolates and toys with him. That kept him happy. He sat near the door sometimes, waiting for Liam to come home like a soldier coming home from war, but he never did. It broke my heart. I wondered if telling him the truth at such a tender age would be a wise thing to do. And then Dylan grew up, and realized that his father wasn't coming back, and he let go, but I didn't. I believed him when he said that souls find their way back to each other and that one day I would look into the eyes of someone and recognize him there.

I'm still waiting, because I'm afraid that if I do accept he's not coming back, the void would become so huge that it would swallow me whole.

I sigh. Backing the car, I start driving towards home, the dead leaves and gravel crunching under the tyres.

∞