of getting to raise Elijah with you makes me happy. And I know before we made love for the first time, I told you I’d regret it, but I’ve never been more wrong. I didn’t regret it that night, and I don’t regret it now. I’m confident that I’ll never spend a single second of my life regretting you.”
I lift up on my toes and kiss him softly on the lips. “I love you, Jonah. So much.” I slip around him and walk to my house. When I open my front door, I glance back, and Jonah is standing in the driveway, smiling at me.
It’s a beautiful thing.
I close the door, and for the first time in my entire life, my corners are beginning to feel like they’re filling up. Jonah already fills all the parts of my life that always felt so empty with Chris.
And I’m proud of Clara and the woman she’s turning into. It was a bumpy ride to get here, but she’s had a tougher road than most kids her age. My sense of pride as her mother has returned.
I’m still not quite sure what I want to be or what career I want to go into, but the last couple of months of figuring it out have been exciting to me. Getting a job and going back to college is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but for some reason I’ve always felt it was too late. It’s not, though. I’m a work in progress. Maybe I always will be. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel like a final draft, and I’m not sure I want to. The search for myself is becoming my favorite part of my new journey.
I recall what I wrote on my birthday board: Find your passion. Maybe I don’t have just one passion. Maybe I have several, and I’ve just never made myself and my wants a priority. The idea that I have the rest of my life to figure myself out is exciting. There are so many things I want to try, whether they work out or not. I think finding my passion is my passion.
After Jonah leaves and Clara goes to bed, I go to my room and pull out all the letters from Jenny that Chris kept locked away in his toolbox. Since the day I found out the truth, so many questions have gone through my head. I used to think I needed the answers, but I no longer need them. I know that I loved the best versions of Jenny and Chris. But they fell in love with the worst versions of each other—the versions capable of betrayal and lies.
I’m always going to have memories of them because they were a huge part of my life. But these letters are not my memories of them. They aren’t ones I want to know or keep in any capacity.
One by one, I rip them into tiny shreds without reading them.
I’m content with the direction in which my life is headed, and I know if I obsess over the past, that obsession will only serve to anchor me in a place I am more than ready to move on from.
I toss all the torn pieces of their history into my bathroom trash can. When I look up, I’m met with my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
I’m starting to look happy again. Truly happy.
It’s a beautiful thing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CLARA
A few months later
I walk to the back of the living room and slip my hand inside Miller’s. We’re both nervous. We’ve worked so hard on this film, and I really want Jonah to like it.
My mother turns out the lights and takes a seat on the couch next to Lexie and Efren. Jonah is seated at the edge of the love seat, anticipating the video more than any of them.
We decided in the end to make a mockumentary. There was way too much seriousness in our lives when we started this film, so I really wanted something fun for a change.
Our time limit for the entire thing is just a few minutes, so it was harder than we thought to execute something with a beginning, middle, and end in such a short amount of time, but I’m hoping we pulled it off. We just don’t know if anyone else will appreciate the humor in it.
Miller looks at me, and I can see the nervous energy in him. We smile at each other when the film begins to play.