Reflecting
Jackson goes home feeling very, very tired. He leaves the papers in the car, not believing what his mother did, but not surprised either. He closes the door and slides to the floor, like a rag doll whose strings snapped.
"It has been a long couple of months, a long couple of years really... And it has all been for nothing..." He says to himself, thinking about how upset Catherine was when he started dating Maggie.
How they had worked through the marriage papers together, and she had asked to keep some of the originals, giving him copies so she could look through them and how she had dragged her feet when he asked for them.
"I should have seen this coming. Was I too busy with Harriet and April, too content, in my thinking, she needed me to be able to do anything legally?" He asks himself, making a face as he starts to feel dizzy and nauseous from over-thinking.
He holds his aching head as from when he walked out of his mothers' house. He has been struggling to keep a grasp on reality, while his heart only wants to attach him to dreams.
Wishful thinking and the truth wage war within him.
"What court of law would allow this anyway?" He mumbles to himself and starts to rock his body, bringing some much-needed comfort with the rocking and a reality check with his words.
He keeps one hand on his head and touches his chest with the other as they both ache.
In the next instant, a memory of April helping him in Montana comes forth. They were happy after the surgery as they had worked together, and the outcome had been a successful operation on a seemingly impossible situation.
He remembers looking down at her and smiling when she had accompanied him to his room.
Memories that don't allow him to push back. Come to the forefront. "Why didn't you say something before her wedding?" He carries on mumbling, remembering how he prayed at April's bedside.
He sobs, thinking about how he watched her marrying someone else.
"Aaaaaahhh." He screams, warding off the pain of that memory, an unnecessary pain now.
Everything in his life weighing in on him, he puts his head on the floor and folds himself in half. Finding comfort in the cold-pressed on his cheek.
"Work, death, Samuel, my... my wife." He gives a humorless laugh.
"My wife could still be my wife." He chuckles, unable to shake off the chuckle and tears coming at the same time.
"Am I supposed to feel Joy at knowing I never truly lost her or sorrow at the wasted years? This year alone, I could have had my family with me! God! What am I supposed to do with this now?"
He asks, looking up for solutions. When no answer comes, he doesn't say anything for a while. Allowing the tears and chuckles to run their course, they vibrate throughout his whole body. When they finally die down, they leave him to his thoughts again.
Not wanting to think about reality anymore, he instead lets himself dream, dreaming about the day before their wedding day and how they had held hands and ran out of the barn together.
After the divorce, the scene had been running on rewind in his head. Signifying how the day had come undone. Now he lets the day play out from that moment as it had with smiles on their faces and the future before them.
The day that Harriet was born flashes before him. That was when he truly realized Aprils strength. Jackson had known she was strong before, but that day he saw her anew.
His heart had been filled with the joy of having not one but two strong females in his life as he held his baby's tiny body in his arms for the first time.
The memories bring a smile to his lips.
Opting to pretend that all that matters now is that his wife is still his wife, and he has a baby girl by her and that everything else can wait. He lets himself dream.
Later his eyes droop while he listens to the drip, drip, drip of water dripping somewhere in the house, and at the same time the sun sets, indicating the end of a day, his eyes also close, ending his very long day.
Hope builds in his heart. He sleeps with the smile still on his lips. After everything that happened today, he comes to only one conclusion. "My wife is still my wife, and we have a daughter together." He says, and it brings him peace and pleasant dreams of reunited families and love coming back in one's life.
The darkness slowly fades away. The sun glows bright, its light almost blinding him. It envelopes him in a warm glow that fills his heart with hope.
Jackson has the most peaceful sleep he has ever had. He has no care in the world. Not about the past, future, or even the present, but the joy of knowing April is still his wife.
