Chapter 19

There was more. But Lily had stopped reading. Her so serious solemn face fell backwards, seized, and flattened for the count.

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"What does this mean, 'I’m still here'?"

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Does it mean Alex would stay with her family even as she affirmed and welcomed Lily back into her life? Does it mean she would move in with Lily, bringing her dishes and winter boots? Does it mean she would cry out when they touched in the deepest corners but would still shudder afterwards from the stern catholic guilt of loving a woman in this way?
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At this moment Lily,--always logical, practical, steady-- witnessed a sudden overwhelming impossible flash in front of her. It was exactly like those yellow lightening zigzags you see in the comic strips: a massive bolt thundering down from her ceiling, there in solid form, right in front of her.

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Could it ever be that she and Alex would be together? Would they deal with her illness together-- sleep together, eat together, watch the seven o’clock Wheel together? . Would they do everything they could to make amends, if that were possible, with Mike? And Max? Would Andy and Amy remember her? Would they hate her? Would they still laugh when she sang her John Denver songs? Would they still ask her to make bacon and eggs topped with her Uncle John’s famous salsa sauce?
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Would she and Alex hold on to each other tight and true this time, and in the darkness, just as Letterman began his monologue, they would find the safe haven they could not find before, even when it was right in front of them?
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Then another zigzag flash, this one equally forceful and startling: Alex would die. She would return and Lily’s life would be ecstatic and whole and just as quickly she would die. She would return and still be guilt-ridden and just as quickly she would die. Or she would try, try so earnestly as she had done for the three years before the end, but she would fail, whimpering by night and wringing by day, respectively begging Mike and Jesus Christ to forgive her and take her back.
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Lily threw up in her own version of the small waste basket beside her bed. And then she put Alex’s letter back in the top right hand drawer of her dresser. She purposely tucked it under her favorite knee-highs, and she patted it slowly and gently before she shut the drawer and walked away. She would be sufficiently composed before she read about the ending her soul mate was proposing.