Page 1 of My Sweetest Agony

1

IVY

Most little girls dream about their wedding day.

The stunning white lacy dress.

The beautiful, fragrant flowers.

The poignant music.

The magical walk down the aisle.

To the perfect man standing at the altar.

The exchange of vows that mean love will last forever.

They certainly don’t dream about saying “I do” to an anonymous driver in a uniform when he asks if you accept delivery of your fiancé’s ashes.

They don’t sign for and receive a cardboard box containing everything left of their soulmate with trembling hands.

Their tears aren’t of soul-crushing agony.

Those little girls have a dream.

I am living a nightmare.

Lightning streaks across the pitch-black sky, splitting it open the same way my heart has been and casting a bright light across the dark patio where I stand frozen in place—just like I have been since Drew died.

The delivery driver turns and races back down the walkway to his truck through the driving rain that has continued all evening and has only seemed to increase since I opened the door. Almost as if the storm senses the tempest raging inside me and wants to match its ferocity.

Rolling thunder moves through me in a catastrophic wave, rattling my ribcage and drawing out the sob I managed to contain while that poor man stood here and handed Drew over to me, knowing what this box contains.

He knew what he was delivering. I could see it in his eyes—the apology, the pity, the sorry written all over the way he looked at me when I opened the door. But he couldn’t understand the painful irony of delivering what I hold in my hands today.

Yesterday, I might have been able to handle it.

Tomorrow, it could have been bearable.

Literally any other day but today…

When I should be having my first dance with my husband at our reception right now, surrounded by our friends and family. When I should be the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life at this exact moment, instead of lost in a black abyss of agony. When my entire future is supposed to be spread out before me and wide open to a thousand magical things with Drew as my partner and by my side. When he should be carrying me across this threshold as his wife…

Instead, I’m carrying this cardboard box that holds all my hopes and dreams and trying not to fall apart completely out here while the storm violently reminds me of the reasons I know I will.

Because there are too many unanswered questions.

So many things that don’t make any sense.

I stare up at the seething sky—bright flashes, booming thunder, an angry deluge soaking the yard and street beyond it. To some, it might feel like a cleansing rain. It might wash away the surface layers of dirt, nourish the grass and flowers—and under normal circumstances, I would see it that way and relish it—but not tonight.

Tonight, all I see is my despair.

Each streak of lightning illuminates the billow of black clouds when all I want is some enlightenment about how it came to this.

How? How? How?

Another sob slips from my lips, this one swallowed by another crack of thunder, this one so close it shakes the ground and vibrates through my bare feet.