The Art of Inheriting Secrets

by Barbara O'Neal

My grief, still so raw only a month after her death, dug its fingers into my lungs.

The lake of grief in my chest sloshed a little.

After the previous hard months, my soul and body were tired.

but I just hung there, between moments, peering into the fathomless darkness of his eyes.

“Gardening is a competitive sport around here.”

“‘I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.’

I held the phone in my hand, wondering how long it would take to understand that she was actually dead, how long it would be until my heart wasn’t broken anew twenty times a day.

I had no time for grief today. Not that grief ever seemed to care.

feeling as if I might actually die myself from the weight of my sorrow.

but I was calm again, the grief stuffed back into a safe place. I ached over the fresh new cut of losing the earl, but the rawness of my mother was hidden carefully away.

I slept a solid eleven hours, falling far away into the other lands where the sleep spirits knitted me back together.