Take Care, Sara

twisting the silver-banded ring with the lone diamond it. Around and around it went over her bony left-handed ring finger too small for the ring to properly fit on anymore. Remembering the wedding proposal brought a fleeting smile to her lips. He’d put the ring around a single red rose and presented it to her with an achingly honest speech.
    The walls were ivory and bare, but she still saw the framed photographs that used to grace the walls; their first picture taken together; the engagement photo; Christmas; their wedding. A photograph of them making silly faces at the camera. They had been too painful to look at them, day after day; mocking her. Reminding her of what she’d lost. Sara had taken them down and put them in a box and in the garage they now resided.
    Her eyes landed on the pale green recliner that had been his. He‘d complained about the girly color at first, but it hadn‘t been long before it was his favorite place to sit. Sara ran a trembling hand along the back of it, leaning down to sniff its scent. Pain, sharp and immobilizing, shot through her. It didn’t smell like him anymore. When had his scent disappeared? It was one more thing she’d lost of him, and the knowledge was too much to bear.
    Sara grabbed the blanket from the couch and climbed onto the recliner, pretending his arms were around her holding her close. She curled into a ball, huddled beneath the cover, and wept until she fell into a fitful sleep.
    The nightmares began with a flourish, as they did almost every night. Her mind replayed the otherworldliness of it; how it had started in slow-motion and still somehow ended before she knew what had happened. In Sara’s mind she saw the smile that had mutated to horror, the instant pain, the smell of blood, and the heat; the screech of heavy metal crashing and the eerie silence that had followed.
    Sara awoke screaming, tangled in the blanket. She struggled to free herself, to sit upright. Covered in sweat and shaking, her heart slammed against her chest. And of course, there were the tears. They streamed down her cheeks, warm and unwanted, and dropped onto her lap. Sara covered her face with her hands and rocked forward and backward, trying to remove the images from her mind. She would cut them out if she could.
    A kaleidoscope of that final moment with him raced through her brain. His smile she loved, the striking blue of his eyes, warm with love and happiness; his hand on her shoulder. Sara squeezed her eyes shut, but it didn’t block the remembrance of his grip tightening painfully, and then jerking away, as though something wrenched him from her. The shouts ripped from his lips. The fear on his face. But not for him; for her. Always for her.
    She found it strange the way she remembered it all; as though she had watched it from afar and her eyes had seen him and nothing else. Nothing but him had registered. Which made it that much more terrible. Because that’s what she remembered, what she relived, every single day.
    Him.
    In fine detail.
    Dying.
    ***
    “You have to move on.”
    Sara looked at her clasped hands. “I can’t.”
    “You have to. It’s not a matter of can or will; it’s have to.”
    “He’ll come back.”
    “He won’t.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “I do.”
    Sara pressed her lips together and watched her fingers go white in her lap. “This is all a dream.”
    “This is reality. He’s gone, you’re not. Live, Sara.”
    “He’s not gone, not really.”
    “Yes. He is.”
    She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling. “No.”
    “He wouldn’t want this.”
    The tears, her ever-present companion, showed themselves. “I know,” she whispered.
    “It’s been over a year.”
    Her eyelids slowly closed against the pain those words evoked. One year. Had it been so long? Had it been so short?
    “I know.”
    “Sara.”
    She stopped rocking in her chair, and then wondered how long she’d been rocking without knowing it.
    “Sara.”
    Her eyes opened. Sara jumped to her feet and looked around the room. It was empty. Her house was empty, like it should be, like it always was. She frowned and rubbed her forehead. It pounded. Her hands shook. It was happening again. Not again. She was losing her mind; she had to be losing her mind. There was no one there. On top of everything else, she was mad. But if she was insane, she wouldn’t realize it, right? So maybe she was okay.
    The phone rang and she jumped. Sara grabbed it from the wall.
    Please be