Prologue
Deacon walked slowly up to Rayna's gravestone. As always, he felt his breath catch in his throat and the pressure behind his eyes from the tears. He laid the arrangement of daisies against the cool marble and he noticed his hand was shaking. He walked back and sat on the bench that overlooked her grave. It was a chilly day. It was overcast and the weather reports were predicting snow before the day was over. He leaned forward, thinking she would like the snow and how it made everything look clean and new.
He breathed in, trying to hold back the despair that threatened to reduce him to sobs. It had been five years since she'd been gone. In some ways it felt like forever and in other ways it felt like it had only been yesterday. He still felt the overwhelming sadness the anniversary always brought and the sense of unreality at the loss. He could still feel the incredible swings of emotions during that twenty-four hours before she died. The initial elation, then the nagging sense that something wasn't right after she'd told him she'd seen her mom. He'd tried to stay positive, listening to the doctors, but then it had all gone downhill so quickly. He kept wanting to slow things down but everything seemed to accelerate to its ultimate heartbreaking end in that hospital room.
Sometimes he thought he'd heard keys jingling and he'd turn towards the door, thinking she was coming in, but it was just his imagination. Sometimes he drove past the building that had been Highway 65 when he was on his way somewhere else. The label was long gone, but the building was still vacant and the Highway 65 sign was still there. He'd think for a second that she was sitting in her office, at her desk, and that any minute she'd shut down her computer and walk out the door. But, of course, she never did. Every time he saw a woman with long, reddish-blonde hair his heart would start pounding and his mouth would go dry. But, of course, it was never her.
There were times he thought he'd sensed her in the room. Scarlett would tell him that she was always watching over him and he wondered about that sometimes. He shifted on the bench, bringing himself back to the present.
This had become his ritual, every year on the anniversary of her death, when he would come and sit with her and give her an accounting of the year. How he was doing, how Maddie and Daphne were doing. What had happened in their lives without her. He came every week, because he still couldn't quite let her go, but this was the time when he would stay a while and tell her how he had fulfilled his promise to her. In her last lucid moment, she'd asked him to promise her that he would be strong, and this was his time to tell her all the ways he'd done that.
He rubbed his hands together and then blew on them. He turned up his collar against the chilly breeze. He couldn't decide if the tears trailing down his cheeks were his grief or the chill in the air, but he suspected it was both. Every other day but this one, he kept moving forward. This was the day to look back, on the year just passed, as well as the positive memories, the important times in their life together.
He wiped his eyes and breathed in deeply, then smiled. "Hey, baby. I'm here," he said. "Thinking about you, like I do every day." He breathed out. "We're doing good." He cleared his throat. "You know, somebody told me that one day we'd wake up and we'd start to have more good days than bad. That we'd always miss you but that we'd finally start to heal. I think we have. We won't ever be the same, but we're learning how to live with it, a little more, every day." He felt the tears again and he struggled to keep them at bay. "We will miss you forever, Ray, but we'll always be grateful for the time we had with you." He lifted his fingers to his lips and then held them out towards the gravestone. "I will always love you, Rayna," he said, his voice not much louder than a whisper. "Forever and always." He let the tears roll down his face then as his chest tightened around the grief and the pain.
After a bit, he breathed in and dried his eyes once again. He forced himself to smile. "So let me tell you how we been doing this year," he started.
A/N: Someone asked me to write this, so hopefully I will do justice to their idea. There will be five chapters to follow, one for each anniversary.