Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
Then Will gives the smallest nod. The kind of acknowledgment that carries more than agreement, something like a promise folded into the movement.
Dad watches him for another breath, and something in his face loosens. The tightness that has lived there for weeks, months, softens by degrees. His shoulders sink fractionally deeper into the pillows. His mouth settles into a line that is not quite a smile but is no longer an effort.
I feel it through his hand first—the tension easing out of his fingers.
His breathing shifts. Each inhale comes slower than the last, the gaps between them stretching until the room feels too big and too close all at once.
I tighten my grip instinctively, my thumb tracing the familiar ridge of his knuckle.
“I pulled out Grandma’s recipe book you gave me,” I tell him, because silence feels too much like giving up.
“I spent half the afternoon trying to figure out her handwriting again. I’m still convinced she wrote half of it in code. ”
His eyelids flicker a faint response… enough to keep going. “I made sourdough last Sunday,” I continue softly. “Burned the first loaf. You would have pretended it was perfect anyway. You always did.”
The machines mark time for us with the soft, patient rhythm of numbers blinking, air moving, and something mechanical deciding when to speak.
“The kitchen still smells like you on Sunday mornings,” I hear myself say, and my voice sounds strange to my own ears, thinner than it should be, stretched over something fragile.
I clear my throat without meaning to. “Coffee first. Always too strong, then flour, and then that awful radio station you insist is educational.”
I watch his chest rise.
It takes longer than it used to.
Fuck it feels like watching a tide go out.
My mind keeps trying to remember details as if that will make this manageable. The faint line between his brows. The way the lamplight catches in the silver at his temples. The texture of his skin beneath my thumb, familiar and suddenly terrifyingly finite.
Another breath comes.
Further apart.
“The mine’s okay,” I say, and I force steadiness into the words like I’m bracing a door against weather.
“They’re taking care of it. Sin’s already stepped in.
Ghost’s done half the work you would’ve done yourself.
You… you made sure of that. You always made sure.
” My fingers tighten around his before I can stop them, as though grip equals gravity and gravity equals staying.
“You made sure I’d never have to hold anything alone. ”
A low, internal realization that this is exactly what I am about to do.
Hold it.
All of it.
His chest rises again and falls again, each breath weaker than the one before it, like the world is slowly fading out around him, piece by piece.
I become acutely aware of Will at the edge of the room. Not because he moves, but because he doesn’t. Because he holds still like someone who understands that presence is sometimes the only offering that matters. His line is solid, a fixed point in a universe that has begun to slip sideways.
My voice keeps going because stopping feels like surrender. “I haven’t signed the lease in the bakery yet,” I tell him, my thumb brushing over the back of his hand as if I can keep him anchored here if I just don’t stop touching him. “I keep saying I will, but I keep finding reasons not to.”
I swallow, the words catching and then pushing through anyway. “The front area gets the best light in the morning,” I add, softer now. “You’d like it. Comes in through the front windows, hits the counter just right. Makes everything look… better than it is.”
My fingers tighten around his. “I still burn the first loaf,” I say, a small breath of a laugh that doesn’t quite make it all the way out.
“Every time, you’d think I’d learn, but I don’t.
I get distracted and…” My voice wavers, then steadies.
“There’s flour everywhere, all the time,” I continue, because I have to.
“It settles over everything. Even the things you don’t want it to.
Makes it all look softer and perhaps forgivable. ”
I shift a little closer. “I think you’d like it,” I murmur. “I think you’d sit by the window and pretend you weren’t watching me work, but you would be.”
I keep talking.
Like there is time.
His hand changes in mine.
Not abruptly.
Not enough to stop me.
Just… less.
The pressure eases, slow and gradual, the strength of him unwinding beneath my fingers like something being carefully, deliberately released.
I tighten my grip and keep going.
“Yeah,” I whisper, nodding slightly like he’s answered me. “I’ll sign it. I will. I just… I wanted to make sure it was right first. You know how I am.”
My thumb presses into his hand, like I can press the life back into it. “And I’ll get better at the bread,” I add, softer now. “I will. I’ll stop burning it… eventually.”
The machines shift.
I hear it distantly.
A change in rhythm.
A hesitation.
And then…
A long, steady tone stretches out behind me.
Flat.
Unbroken.
It fills the room, but it doesn’t feel like it belongs to this moment. It sits at the edge of everything, distant white noise.
Irrelevant.
Because his hand…
His hand is still in mine, but it isn’t holding me anymore.
The weight is different.
The presence is different.
The world shifts around it, quiet and absolute.
I feel it.
The exact second he’s gone.
“I’ll…” My voice catches, but I push through it anyway. “I’ll show you when it’s done, okay?”
The tone keeps going.
Endless.
Meaningless.
“I’ll bring you the first proper loaf,” I whisper, leaning in slightly, my forehead almost brushing his hand. “The one I don’t burn.”
The room is still.
Everything is still.
Except that fucking sound.
Except the absence of him.
“I’ve got it,” I say softly. “You can stop worrying now.”
My fingers curl tighter around his, holding on to something that has already slipped beyond reach.
“I’ve got it, Daddy.”
I sit there with his hand in mine and breathe because breathing is the only thing my body remembers how to do.
The room seems to expand and contract at once, holding every version of him that has ever existed here.
Sunday mornings. Coffee rings on the table.
Dirt under his nails. The low hum of his voice, explaining something complicated as if it were simple.
The weight of his love remains in the air, a beam that will not collapse just because the man who built it has stepped away.
For a long time, I stay exactly where I am.
Because leaving this moment feels like leaving him.
And I am not ready to do that yet.
Will crosses the room. He sits beside me on the edge of the bed and puts his arm around me. I lean into him, and I let myself be held.
He doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t try to make it better.
He stays, which is the only thing that was ever needed, and the only thing he has ever been.
I don’t cry right away.
I sit with my father’s hand in mine, and I breathe, letting the reality of it settle into me like water into dry ground, slow and thorough, reaching every part.
“Will,” I whisper.
He clings to me tighter, and I sink into him. “I know, baby… I know.” He gently kisses the top of my head. Holding me so tight, I feel like I might pop. But honestly, I am thankful for that right now. It’s the only thing letting me know that this is real.
My eyes fog, glazing over as I sit, staring at my father.
I don’t even know how long we’ve been sitting here for.
Just… staring.
Until Will exhales and leans down to look me in the eyes. “Mills, we need to call people.”
My bottom lip begins to tremble, and the tears finally find their way through the shock, sliding down my cheeks.
He brings his thumb up, wiping them away. “C’mon, let’s go out into the living room. I’ll make the calls.”
“I don’t want to leave him,” I say.
“He’s not going anywhere right now, but I want you where I can see you while I make these calls... please?” His eyes narrow on me like he is genuinely concerned, and that shifts something inside me.
I glance back at my dad, a man who was so strong all his life, reduced to this. I sniff back, wiping my face, and on shaky legs, I stand, reaching out for Will’s hand, and he weakly smiles, walking me out to the living room.
I move to Dad’s armchair, sitting down in it, surrounding myself with him as Will sits beside me on the sofa and begins making calls.
It’s all white noise, and time blends.
I stare at nothing, hear nothing, see nothing. I don’t even really register when the funeral home attendants arrive. Though some part of me registers that they are here.
Two of them, kind and unhurried, handling everything with a gentleness I won’t be able to put into words for a long time.
There are forms and calls, and the careful work of the world reasserting its procedures, and I let Will manage most of it because he is capable and calm, and because my father would have approved of someone taking the practical weight off my hands tonight.
At some point, during the space between the funeral attendants leaving and the first gray light of morning coming through the curtains, I walk to my father’s desk.
I don’t know why I do it then, in that specific moment.
Maybe because I have been in this house long enough to know where he puts the things that matter.
The desk is neat, the way it has always been, the way Dad has always kept the spaces where he works.
There is a card on the center of it, propped against the small lamp, with my name on the front in his handwriting.
I stand there holding it for a long time before I open it.