What Remains (19 page)

People throw around phrases without thinking all the time. They say they're having a change of heart when they're really just changing their minds. I mean, there are only around 2,200 transplants done in the US each year, so there aren't a lot of people who know what it really feels like to change your heart.

Then there are people who say that they've learned something “by heart.” But really they've just used their brain to memorize it.

And I know for a fact that you can't really steal someone's heart. You can't just break them in two and take it. They have to open up their chest and give it to you willingly.

A few of the phrases make more sense to me. Absence can really make the heart grow fonder, but I think it's better to show how much you like someone while they're still around. I think Spencer has finally clued in to that.

And we all know how you can carelessly break someone's heart.

Some people really do seem to wear their heart on their sleeve. I guess I fall into that category.

I watch Ally and Spencer standi
ng together under the rain of flower petals, and Lizzie's heart—mine now—feels so full that I don't know how my body can contain it.

It won't always be easy and that's okay. Maybe everyone learns this lesson in a different way, maybe all friendships need to be tested and changed so you know that they still mean something.

I lean down and pick up a smooth stone and lay it on Lizzie's headstone and smile. Whoever said “follow your heart” got it right.

Acknowledgments

Writing might be a solitary pursuit, but publishing takes a village. To Dana Allison Levy, Stephanie Cardel, and Carmen Erickson, who were always there to add their voices to the village of
What Remains
, THANK YOU, and LOVE, and ALL GOOD THINGS.

Immense thanks, also, to:

Levi Buchanan, Leah O'Brien Bernini, Cara West Aston, Suzanne Kamata, and Chris Tower, for reading and answering all of my crazy writer questions.

Robert L. Galloway Jr., PhD, for making sure my
medical questions got to the people who could answer them.

Charlotte Rains Dixon, for the best five minutes of brainstorming imaginable. I owe you.

Beth Hull and AdriAnne Strickland, for stepping in at the thirteenth hour to save me from tripping over my own feet.

Tessa Gratton, who gave a wanna-be author just the right amount of encouragement and advice to see it through. I hope that someday I can inspire someone the way you inspired me.

The illustrious Andrew Smith and Matthew MacNish,
for putting me through query letter boot camp and rewarding
me with some amazing bourbon recommendations when I finally got it right.

The entire crew of SCBWI-MidSouth, particularly Courtney Stevens, David Arnold, Kristin Tubb, Rae Ann Parker, Alisha Klapheke, Ashley Schwartau, and Ashley Blake. You guys manage to make the business of publishing feel like the warmth of community. And to Parnassus Books and Stephanie Appell, for always supporting local writers.

Melissa Jeglinski, for finding a seed of this book in Authoress's Baker's Dozen contest and allowing it to make her cry in her office, and Beth Phelan, for being a sane voice in a crazy industry.

My editor, Brian Farrey-Latz, for a great debate and a wombat that was just too good to discard, and to Sandy Sullivan, Mallory Hayes, and the gang at Flux, particularly the art department who made my dreams come true and then turned around and did it again.

To Joe, who believed in ghosts and who haunts the Cave scenes of this book. I suspect you lurk somewhere in the Dungeon waiting for unsuspecting theater majors to lure you out.

Also, as
What Remains
is ultimately a love story of friendship, I'd be remiss not to mention my Kala­mazoo College friends to whom this book is dedicated, as well as my father, Harold Baker, and his amazing “brothers,” Don David and Ed Kohl. You prove, every day, that friends are what make the world go round.

And to John and Keira, with love.

About the Author

Helene Dunbar is the author of
These Gentle Wounds
(Flux, 2014) and
What Remains
(Flux, 2015). Over the years, she's worked as a drama critic, journalist, and marketing manager, and has written on topics as diverse as Irish music, court cases, theater, and Native American tribes. She lives in Nashville with her husband and daughter, and exists on a steady diet of readers' tears.