I shut the door to cottage for the last time. The lock clicking behind me symbolizes the end to my life with Sheridan, the world I built with her in our little haven. With a sigh and a few tears, I take a step from the porch. I’m shaking terribly; my hands quiver from the strain the simple act of leaving this place is having. We’ve emptied the cottage, we being my family. I’ve take all our good memories…

The music that played on our date…

The pictures of us enjoying each other’s company…

The compact that I found on the dresser…

Everything that I knew meant something to us. It will be locked in the treasure chest at home with the wedding gown she wore for but a few hours. The rest will be locked away in the cottage, remaining just as she last touched it: a shrine to the woman gone away.

I fought them every inch of the way for a while, using every ounce of my strength to tell them that she would return, that my Sheridan hadn’t died in the warm waters off of Bermuda. I was convinced she would return, positive that one morning I would wake up to those beautiful blue eyes staring back at me. But she won’t and I’m stupid for thinking she ever would. I’m tired of fighting, tired of hurting and my heart can’t bear to hold on to her anymore.

So I’m letting go, turning away the pain and the despair I feel to just set her soul free. Perhaps then I can grieve without feeling my heart tear into shreds. Perhaps then I can love her without mourning her…

The fight is gone; the pain has won…

And now I’m empty.

I look back into the windows for a moment, the fading sun casting shadows on the floor while the evening star appears alone overhead. The black distortions dance and play as the sun sparkles in through the panes of glass. They seem almost mocking; their enjoyment something I haven’t felt since I lost her all those months ago. Months! Has it been so long since I’ve kissed her lips? Tasted the sweet nectar of her kisses? Touched the soft, milky white flesh of her body? Caressed her? Held her?

Told her I loved her?

Heard her proclaim her love in return?

It seems so short and yet so long as my heart yearns for her…cries for her.

I find myself growing angry at the shadows, hating them for their enjoyment, their dances. And yet they seem to come to life, forming two bodies dancing the tango in perfect time, bodies flowing together as they twirl and dip, moving around the floor in a gentle breeze…

Almost like Sheridan and I did all those years ago at Mama’s party…

So much wasted time.

And sadly those shadows seem to turn into something more. Now they are the shadows of what might have been. Children laughing and singing around a Christmas tree, Sheridan caressing her swollen abdomen that is rounded by our child. I can almost see every moment of our lives flashing in the darkened shadows of the cottage. Everything from the day I bring her home as my wife to the last moment we share together…

Everything…

And when a chilling gust of wind blows, it sends them all away. Gone just as easily as they came…

Just like Sheridan and her love.

I walk alone down the steep incline of Raven Hill, not looking back at the shadows or the cottage, closing my eyes temporarily against the unbearable pain in my chest. The pain of a heart that’s shattered so completely it can never be sewn back together. Each little piece feels like a razor blade in my chest, slowly causing flesh wounds to the rest of my body and tearing me apart until I think I’m going to collapse. The break is beyond repair, nothing can mend what’s been done and that alone hurts enough to make it worse.

Theresa and Mama believe I’ll move on, that someone will magically glue the pieces together again and mend my broken heart like a doctor can mend a broken bone. I wish it were that easy. That somewhere there was a phone number to dial and a man you could call to mend the heart that’s been broken.

I tried God, I even begged him to return my Sheridan to me to no avail. I’ve prayed like I did when I was younger, believed from the bottom of my soul to get nothing in return. I lit a damn candle!

The streetlights come on as a second star appears in the sky, the two separated by a mighty distance in a sad resemblance of my love life. It’s almost as if I were one star and the other Sheridan, separated by a vast distance of navy blue to never reunite again. Perhaps it is as we once were, she in Paris and I in America. Or what it was before we connected, she believing a lie and I protecting my family. Or maybe it’s a symbol of what we have now, my body here without her and she in Heaven with my heart. It’s devastating to think of it that way, further pressing the fact that I’m alone and shall never hold her again. I am trying to look past it, to look into the future…

But that seems so unclear. I haven’t a clue where to go now, not an inkling where this road leads. I know that my life will be empty, that I will be alone for all eternity. But what exactly does that mean for me? Where do I go? Do I stay here in Harmony and live out my days watching my siblings enjoy their love? Do I stay with Mama, continue to support her and aid her in her hope? Feed her lies that one day my father and brother, that bastard, shall return and grace us with their presence and some lame excuse as to where they’ve been? What? What do I do?

And why bother?

I need someone to fix my broken heart, someone to take away the pain…

I need Sheridan.

I walk so far so fast that I barely realize where I am. I’ve made it to town and am standing before the Youth Center. Sheridan and I spent a lot of time there once the drug cartel was caught. We would go and visit the children, see how things were running under the new director. It was our refuge from boredom; the place Sheridan and I would go when we felt like sharing our love with someone that needed us.

I enter the main room, still having my key from my work here a year ago. I walk right into the gym, looking around the dimly lit room where Sheridan and I shared a tango and a basketball tournament. I chuckle in remembrance of the time she saw me naked in the locker rooms or when she fell on me playing basketball. She was so easy to get to back then; so fun despite the fact I loathed her for being a Crane…

Or perhaps it was that I loathed myself for falling in love with her, for letting her get through the wall I had worked so hard to put up and maintain.

I sink onto a nearby bleacher, my head falling into my hands. I remember all too well what it was like to be in love with her here, to feel her love radiating from her stunning smile when she would look away from the child she was helping to cast me a look. I can still feel the love, the heat, the desire and passion that she caused just by looking at me…

By blowing me a kiss or giving me that smile…

But now it’s empty…

Stark and cold, completely hollow like the heart in my chest. I can hear the echo of my own breathing and can’t bear to sit here any longer. I get up and leave, the sound of my shoes reverberating off the walls of the gym. My walk becomes a jog…

Then a sprint…

And finally I run…

Tears blur my vision, roll down my cheeks as I run through the barren wharf, my shoes clunking on the planks as I run over the rotting wood. I keep going, not even bothering to wipe the tears from my cheeks. Allowing the crystal drops to fall onto my shirt and jacket unhindered. I keep running, no direction in mind, until I collapse at the very spot we met jogging all those years ago. I fall into the sand onto my knees. The ocean air is cold, the sounds around me distorted by my pain and I pull at my hair in attempt to soothe the aching in my chest.

I know these tears won’t bring Sheridan back, won’t reincarnate the soul I have lost. I have her ashes at home! They reside in my house as if she were truly there! I know I shall NEVER see Sheridan again and the pain is driving me mad! Driving me over the brink of despair and into the blackened depths of loneliness.

Sheridan shall only return in the next life…

Shall only be in my arms when we reunite in Heaven.

I look above and find one of the stars has fallen. My hands fall from my head and I shift to stare at the empty space where the star once was.

“Sheridan?” I whisper unsurely. I don’t know what possesses me to do it. “Come back,” I add sadly. It’s almost as if that star, the one I thought represented her, is telling me that she’s truly gone. The last hope I have is ripped painfully from my body and the tears begin again.

I unsteadily stand and walk slowly back to my house, all the time thinking about the star that has fallen from the heavens. Why would the universe be so cruel? Why would it take away my last hope for seeing my fiancée again?

Even in all my confusion and pain I become angry. I can’t believe I allowed myself to have hope again. Did I learn nothing? Didn’t I see that she wasn’t coming back? Haven’t I finally admitted that to myself?

To my family?

To everyone that questioned my sanity because of my pain?!

I feel rage!

I feel hate!

And still I feel hollow! I feel incomplete without her, almost as if Sheridan had the soul that belonged in my body. I told Mama I could feel her, that I would know if she were truly gone because I would feel it in my heart. But my heart is numb and the love that was in my heart is gone without her. I can’t feel anything anymore.

Oddly, my mind goes back to the thoughts of someone that could fix what ails me…

And I laugh, mirthlessly, but still I laugh.

I am still directionless, still hurting and I can barely see what is ahead, but I’m laughing madly and I know that whatever grip on reality I had has slipped from my feeble grasp.

Sheridan’s gone and she isn’t coming back…

I return home, straight to my room. Whatever is happening outside I ignore. Whatever problems the rest of the world has, they can’t be as terrible as mine. I don’t care, I don’t hope and I don’t love. Nothing can get inside the shell I have become and when there is a knock on my door some time later, I don’t even reply. I stare at the ceiling, looking for an answer and only seeing her face in my mind’s eye.

Or am I really seeing her?

I can’t tell; reality is nothing to me anymore. Life has no meaning and moving on isn’t an option. I want to burn her letter, to watch the words my Sheridan wrote so painstakingly the night before our wedding burn in the flames I create in the hearth. I want to watch the blue ink blaze in the fires, the words of her love and her willingness to see me happy disappearing as if they were never written…

Never read.

Gone…

Gone like her.

My mind is chaos, my body confusion and every breath I take causes them to rage against each other sending my senses into overdrive. The proud man has fallen to the charms of a siren and the siren is gone. I have nothing to live for…

My world has ended while the rest still turns…

And shall without me…

I greedily gulp down the remaining water in my glass, the prescription bottle falling from my hand as my head floats with more and more images of my Sheridan. I can feel myself swimming in oblivion, sounds fading, colors blurring as the pain finally dulls. They prescribed them when I stopped sleeping, hoping to help me through a rough time. Told me to only take one, never more than two…

I took twelve…

Or was it thirteen?

Who cares? Who can count when the stars are shinning brightly in the bedroom? My eyes grow heavy…

Heavier…

Heavier…

Until I can barely keep them open and finally they fall shut and everything ends. I can feel my soul slipping away from my body, floating above the home it once had. Somewhere in the distance, she sounds so far away, I can hear Mama screaming for me to wake up, praying that the Lord spare her son.

Doesn’t she know prayer doesn’t work? That there is no man to give back what’s been taken away? No one can return us to the beginning of the story once a chapter has been written. There is no going back, only forward…

I selected my path.

Her begging becomes screams. She calls to Miguel…to Theresa…to the Heavens. Her pleas are unanswered as I watch her sob over the broken body of the man I once was…

The remaining pills scattered around the room, the bottle clutched in her hand as she unsteadily dials a phone number…

Perhaps there is a man…

A flash of white light and it’s all gone…

I’ve let go of my ties. There isn’t a happily ever after…

There isn’t even a ‘the end…’

And there certainly isn’t a man…