PRESENT DAY
I don’t go home. From Britt’s house, I bike off, the rose charm on my handlebars tapping against the grips with each push forward. The streets are silent this late, and the countdown is almost down to one day. This is almost tomorrow’s problem, her leaving.
My hair flies out of its loose ponytail, and my denim jacket is caught in the wind, but I keep going, one destination on my mind. Past verandas and beach houses and this town I call home.
It takes half an hour, it takes all my breath, but I wind up along the sandy shore at Britt and my cove. Guiding my bike the rest of the way in a walk, I slip between the rock faces and inhale the salt of the sea.
Sitting on the cold, wet ground, I tug off my shoes, toss them aside. They hit the rock and land in a pile as I slip into the ocean. I let the water consume me, overwhelm me, become me. With each backstroke I imagine these shallow waves absorbing all this and bringing it back to the sea, into something vaster and greater than me.
Just yesterday with Britt is under the surface every time I dive, every time I close my eyes to keep the sting out of them. And yesterday morphs into last year which morphs into the year before in a whirlwind of what we had. The memories are too much, too many, and I surface to a faint ping from my phone. For one foolish second, I wish on every star it’s Britt, summoned by the reminiscence, saying to come back, saying to come talk. It’s not.
It’s a notification from Instagram:
“Direct Message from @thesaraellis”
She actually . . .
Fingers pruned and frantic, shaking so hard my touch ID can’t unlock it, I open Instagram. Britt’s latest picture is at the top of my feed. It’s from this afternoon with her and Amy and Sophie standing in front of her car. The caption says summer lovin’.
I click on my inbox instead, and there it is, a message from Sara Ellis—the pianist of Fate’s Travelers, now a solo artist with more followers than the other still-living members of the band combined. She actually replied.
Today, 7:39 p.m.
@thesaraellis: Mia. Wow, I haven’t heard that name in a while. You know, Tori was visiting my tour when she decided on it? She was sitting in my dressing room, doing my makeup and chatting about your town, talking about this woman she wanted to name you for. She was seven months pregnant, waddling around, and she insisted on driving up to see my show. Your dad was out of town, so Mateo and Edie went down to get her (Edie and I lived together for a while before M proposed to me, and she and Tori moved in together).
I love that she left you a hunt. I still remember the day she died. The world lost a light that day. She was music, fully and completely. We respected, admired, and supported each other, and you know what? For all the pain her passing caused, I am so glad I met her, that she was part of my life. That’s the funny thing about loss, you know? You wish you’d never had to feel a hurt that deep, but you *knew* that person and you wouldn’t have had it any other way. For however long they were there, they meant something, and that is forever. That’s what that word means. At least in my experience. I’m sure your grandmothers feel the same. I wrote a song about it. It’s dedicated to her: Field of Roses, if you ever want to hear another story from her friend.
As far as the music goes, I can’t help you there. It’s such an individualized experience. I know I was scared out of my mind the first day I drove up to Music City. I was still scared when Fate’s Travelers took off. I was the first to leave the band, and that may have been the most terrifying moment of my life, but I’m glad I was part of it. I’m glad I knew them too. And I’m glad I left. Your mother was the picture-perfect country star that the music world wanted, and I grew tired of working twice as hard to be seen in a band I started. So I set out on my own, because I was young and passionate and aching to be heard for me. I loved Edie, your mother, and Mateo, and I loved the music. It was time for it to become mine again. I needed some space to take that back. Mateo found me again first, of course. Tori and I drifted in and out of each other’s circles and then crashed together once more. And escaping Edie was like escaping quicksand. That girl slept on my couch for a solid year between gigs.
Long story short, I found my music. Your mother found hers. Is yours worth chasing? You’re the only one who can decide that. She can pave the path, but she can’t guide you down it. I can tell you this, but I can’t tell you what to do. I know she’s gone, but her story isn’t over. She didn’t end the day she died.
And I can tell you, for the record, that the Tori Rose I knew never did linger long in regrets. Did she have them? Sure. We all do. Did I? Yes. But not about the music. Did Patrick? Edie? Mateo? Absolutely. So fucking many. But never about each other. And Tori’s regrets? Trust me, they were never about you.
xo Sara
My heart skips a beat as I read the last words of her message. I pull myself onto the rock and sink down. She says her story isn’t over, she says she didn’t regret me. How does this make sense with how the hunt ended?
Unless the hunt isn’t over. Unless there’s more to find.
Dazed and searching for the perfect response, I pull up the song Sara wrote on YouTube, greeted by its thirty-seven million views. There’s no music video. The backdrop is of pink roses, and there are no lyrics, just windchimes and humming and the piano, strong and melancholic, hopeful in all the hopelessness, quieting where you’d expect her to crescendo and vice versa. Everything unexpected.
As the evening air nips my cheeks, I play it again.
I scroll down to the comments.
RIP a legend
She will be missed
Beautiful, Sara.
</3 goodbye
These people missed her, these people saw her. And Sara’s tribute carried that on for these seven minutes before they forever split ways. Maybe everyone remembers her differently, maybe her story continues every time she’s remembered past her death. Maybe, in that way, her life never truly ended.
I stumble over to where my shoes landed, humming along to the tune. And when I lean down to pick them up, water slips from my collarbone to the ground, landing on a set of initials that in all my times here I’d never looked for, never seen.
TR was here.