With Everything I Won't Let This Go

I was in the clouds again. I knew why I was there this time. I looked around for Loryn, finding it hard to see through the light mist. I opened my mouth to speak but nothing would come out.

She appeared.

"Hello, Laurie," she whispered mournfully.

I had the sudden urge to call her mom, but I held it back because she wasn't my mom. But I did hug her. I burst into tears, afraid of the fact I might have died, but more so afraid of the fact I might have to stay alive. I wanted to be with Loryn; she seemed the only thing I knew that was real, even though I knew she was only a figment of my imagination.

Yet everyone acted like she was real. She'd been alive at some point, and Frank, Gerard and Mikey had known her. How could I have conjured a real person into my imagination, when I'd never even met her?

"Frank told you, then?" she asked.

Because I still couldn't speak, I just nodded. She came and kissed my forehead, holding me gently. I cried again, soaking her flowing white dress, but not soaking it at all. This was my version of Heaven; Loryn remained perfect.

"Not everything... he never told you who I was," she added.

I nodded again, more solemnly this time. She sighed, stroking my hair gently as she seemed to think things over. I began to hope she was contemplating telling me, but she didn't say anything. When she did, it was irrelevant.

"You have to go home now, honey," she whispered, her voice fading along with her image.

"No!" I finally managed to shout, but it was too late.

Everything was gone.

I woke up to voices around me. A ceiling was over my head - an unfamiliar one, but a ceiling as good as any. I shivered; my eyes went to the window, but it was closed. I looked down and saw thick blankets covering me, and I felt a tube down my throat. I resisted the urge to gag, with great difficulty.

A shaking hand had a hold of my own; a warm hand, making mine cold by default. I shivered again, and Frank looked around. He looked so worried, so heartbroken, that I thought I was going to cry.

"I should have told you. You should have been with me. We should have been a family..." he whispered, his face screwing up as he turned away to try and hide his crying.

I just lay there. I couldn't nod because the tube would aggravate my throat. I couldn't speak because of the tube constricting my tongue and the rest of my mouth. All I could do was squeeze his hand. I lifted my hand and made a slight writing movement with my left hand. So Frank gave me paper and a pen.

'I saw Loryn again,' I wrote.

He nodded. "I know."

'Tell me about her. No secrets.'

Frank hesitated for a bit, biting his lip as he contemplated. Sixteen years worth of secrets, and he was still willing to hold them back. I could have been dying and he wouldn't have told me. But, to my surprise - which I couldn't show - he nodded.

'Start at the beginning. How do you know her?' I wrote.

He sighed, visibly going backwards in his memory to whatever day it was that he met her, for whatever reason. It looked like it was painful for him, but I really needed to know. She'd told me I needed to know.

"We, uhm..." His voice cracked, so he cleared his throat. "We met in a bar. It was the best night of my life. I fell in love with her instantly." He paused as his voice cracked once more.

So he was in love with Loryn. No wonder.

"We, uh, were together for about two years. I only found out in the end that she'd been with Gerard when she was younger. Mikey had loved her too. Can't blame them; she was a beautiful person, inside and out. You definitely got that..."

I raised an eyebrow quizzically. I got my auntie's personality?

"She uhm, she had this best friend, and she was with Mikey. You're named after her, that's where the Cariad and Leigh come from in your name.

Anyway, everyone was happy. I mean, yeah, we all went through a bad time as a group. A kind of, bar bet gone wrong heh... Nearly lost her then," he added in a whisper, looking at the floor as his eyes filled up.

He wiped his eyes and nose on his sleeve, determined to finish now he'd started.

"She'd had a hard life, but I suppose I made her happy. She told me, in a letter I found just after she died.

She got pregnant. We were over the moon. Everything went great, we knew it was a little girl and everything..."

A girl?

"Cariad was pregnant too, but... Well, Loryn went into labor while us guys were at band practice, so Cariad drove her to hospital. Cariad began fussing over Loryn, and lost control of the car..."

His voice broke again. It got hard again. I put my hand on his to tell him it was okay, but he shook his head. He was determined to tell me everything.

"Cariad died, but was brought back to life... they got her baby out before she died again, but it was just a bunch of cells... So yeah, Mikey has a daughter your age. Alicia was a surrogate; that's how they met and fell in love.

Loryn survived the crash. But she was in a really bad way, and she was so skinny considering having a baby inside. She died after giving birth to our... daughter..."

He broke down. He couldn't do it anymore.

I put my hand back on top of his, and he took it, squeezing it tightly. From the panic and asthma attacks, and all the drugs they were pumping into me, and all the information now buzzing around my head, I couldn't add it up like I normally would be able to.

'I'm confused,' I simply wrote.

Frank read it, sighing.

"I'm your father... and Loryn's your mother..." he whispered.

***
Erryn and Frank stood at the foot of the grave. Grass had started to grow, and a few dasies and dandilions were poking their heads through the soil and patchy grass. The flowers they'd placed beneath the headstone a week ago were already wilted. A one-year old wriggled to be free in Erryn's arms, reaching her arms out for Frank.

Erryn handed him the baby. He couldn't help but smile and feel his heart break at the same time. He saw her in the baby's face. The child smiled a toothless and wide smile at him, tugging gently at his hair. The baby was at the age where permanent playing was needed.

"Hey Loryn," Frank whispered to the grave, sitting the baby in his hands so she could see the grave. "Laurie's one today. She's a little menace, haha..." He paused, sighing. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry she's not mine and I'm sorry she probably won't ever know... It just hurts..." he whispered.

He was comforted by Erryn, who put her hand on his back between his shoulder blades, and rubbed it slightly. He smiled round at her, just small, and turned his daughter back to face him. She smiled widely at him, then got the aura of concentration as she felt about his face with her tiny, pudgy, little baby hands.

"I love you, baby girl," he said to her, proud and strong.

He meant every word. He held the baby to him and kissed the top of her head, where the red hair was quite longer than when she was born. Frank held Laurie in his arms all the walk home; she fell asleep holding onto his finger. She made his heart break and melt at the same time.

"You keep her away from boys," Frank smiled to Erryn, as he handed her gently back over.

"You can count on it, I'm doing the same for Ellie," she replied, also smiling.

Their smiles were forced. Not because they didn't get along - they got on brilliantly, always had, but something had snapped a little when Frank had given up his only child to his sister-in-law - but because they were both hurting. Frank had lost the love of his life, and Erryn had lost her baby sister.

They were close because of their mutual pain. They had a bond like no other; Frank could show up any time of the day and take Laurie out or just play around with her for an hour or so.

Joshua and Ellie had always been told that Laurie was their sister, that she was just a really early baby. Neither of them considered the age gap enough to even realize they were being lied to. James was happy for Erryn to have a friend who understood a little how she was feeling. He never got jealous; he knew Erryn loved him as much as he loved her, and he knew Frank would take a long time to be emotionally stable enough for any form of love-giving apart from to his daughter. So James and Frank got on well.

When Laurie got old enough to speak and to realize her surroundings, Frank and Erryn stopped taking her to her mothers' grave. Erryn didn't want to have to tell Laurie because it was her dads job, and Frank didn't want to have an excuse to tell her.

Sometimes Frank and Erryn would leave Laurie with James and go to the graveyard together. Erryn needed to see her; she was burried between Mom and Dad - Laurie and Zach. Erryn had no family left now. All of her energy was put into her own family that she'd created.

Frank needed to see Loryn. Whether it was a quick visit to just place flowers at the foot of the headstone, or hours and hours of talking, crying and silence, Frank visited every chance he got. He couldn't get used to the fact he'd let go of his two girls.

Laurie, unlike her mother, was alive.