“We should get home… so Mom doesn’t worry.”
A quick swipe at her cheeks and she smiled and stood. “Right, sorry, yeah, so your mom doesn’t worry.”
I grabbed her phone, ignoring her protests, and clicked through the tweets that had spread so many horrible rumors about us, my expression tense. “This won’t last forever; it’s just because I’m me and you…” I eyed her up and down. “You’re you.”
She flinched as if slapped but nodded her head like a good girl.
Like a girl who did what she needed to in order to survive when all she wanted was to be the girl that was held so she could do more than that.
So she could thrive.
Chapter Sixteen
“The truth that I have been seeking—this truth is death. Yet death is also a seeker. Forever seeking me. So—we have met at last. And I am prepared. I am at peace.”— Bruce Lee
Chase
The Past: Six Months After Claire’s Funeral
My son was my life.
My kids were my soul; they balanced me.
Focused me.
They made the blood staining my hands worth it. Nobody had ever told me that it was easier to kill than to parent.
Easier to shoot someone first, ask questions later, than watch my son as his heart broke outside of his chest over and over again.
He was stumbling back into the kitchen, slightly drunk, but at least he wasn’t wailing.
The wailing is what got me.
What got me those nights after Annie left.
When he said Claire had visited… said goodbye to him as if she was an angel in heaven, when I compared her more to a succubus who took over souls. I couldn’t help it.
I wasn’t a selfish little shit anymore.
So when my son hurt… I hurt. When he cried… I cried. When he felt like killing something, I wanted to provide the volunteers.
Annie had called earlier and said she was doing good, and I knew it was the smartest thing I could have done. Give them space. Because even though I saw what they couldn’t, they would destroy whatever good pieces that still existed before either of them stopped hurting.
So sending her away was a kindness when I knew it hurt Ash more than he’d admit, bothered him that he was hurt by it more than he’d ever say out loud.
Because he was my son.
I still remembered hating Luc.
Despising her light.
Because it reminded me that I was in the dark, rocking in a corner, holding a bottle of Jack, and screaming until my voice was hoarse, just begging God to answer my pleas.
To kill me too.
“Ash.” I leaned forward as he came into the kitchen, dropped his key fob and wallet onto the counter, and then jerkily pulled out a chair. “Good night?”
Dirt covered his shoes.
His hands shook as he ran fingertips through his overly long whiskey-colored hair. A smudge of mud had attached itself to the right side of his cheek, and I knew the answer before he even said it.
He’d lied again.
Said he was going to hang out with Junior.
“You go to her grave again?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he croaked. “The flowers Dad, they were gone, so I just figured, I figured.” His lips pressed into a thin line. “I failed her in life, I failed her so fucking bad, and I can’t even keep fucking flowers on her grave?”
Could he hear the sound of my heart breaking right along with his as my breathing slowed to a near stop? Throat burning, I tried to swallow back the anger that was so often intertwined with the sadness.
I reached for him and pulled him into my arms, not caring that he was fighting me, beating at my back, yelling at me to let him go.
I held him, and I repeated his truth over and over again. “You’re good, Ash. You’re so good. You’re an incredible son. Friend. Brother. You are enough in this life and in the next, flowers or no flowers. You’re no failure.”
“I am.” His voice cracked. “I can’t feel her anymore. I can’t feel her, and then I keep having dreams about our fights, about the times in the end when I questioned her loyalty. I did that. I pushed her.”
I sighed. I didn’t have the answers. But I had my son.
So I held him.
“I feel guilty when it doesn’t hurt as much as it did.” He shuddered. “And then I hate myself for slicing open the wounds that already tried to heal, only to bleed again, only to feel again because of the guilt.”
“Moving on.” I sighed. “Sometimes means allowing those wounds to heal for good, Ash. And if you can’t do that, then you’ll always be stuck in this place, where it’s your best friend’s birthday, and you’re falling asleep by yourself on Claire’s grave.” I pushed him a bit then. “It’s not the flowers that keep bothering you, is it Ash?”