3. Christopher
Islip the black jacket over my white shirt, pulling out the cuffs. The pressure in the middle of my chest is tighter than it’s ever been in my life. My eyes burn since I’ve only slept maybe four hours in the past three days. Each time they blinked, it took all my energy to open them back up.
Stepping out of my closet, I find my father sitting on my bed, dressed in a suit similar to mine. His hand outstretched by his side, his eyes watch me as I tighten my tie, making it feel like it’s choking me. “Hey,” he mumbles, “how are you doing?”
“Does it matter?” I answer honestly. “I’m not the one who is going to bury my husband, father, or son today.” It’s been two days since the showdown with Koda, two days since she told me to get the fuck out of her house. Two days since we’ve said anything to each other. I’ve been in contact with Eddie, who filled me in on the plans for the funeral.
“No, but you are burying someone you called a brother,” he reminds me, and all I can do is stare at him. You knew, and you did nothing. Koda’s words repeatedly played in my head for the past two days. She was not wrong. I knew he was up to no good. Knew he was not himself. I knew, but did I do anything? No. I went away on vacation with my family as he died on his fucking couch, leaving his wife to find him. Anger creeps up, and I wish he was still alive so I could beat his fucking ass.
“I’ll be fine.” I ignore the way he’s looking at me. “We have to be at the funeral home soon.” I turn away from him to walk out of my bedroom. When I get downstairs, I find my house full of my family. All my uncles and aunts have descended to come and stand with me, and most of my cousins are here. Stone stands by the front door next to Dylan. “You guys don’t have to all come.” I look around at all the eyes looking at me. My mother stands in the hallway, wearing a black dress and holding a white tissue. Gabriella and Abigail are beside her, and a few of my aunts behind her.
“We’re going with you,” my father declares, looking around the room and getting a chin nod from Uncle Matthew. “If you need us.”
“I’m not the one who needs anything.” My voice goes higher than I want it to go, and my fists ball at my sides. “His wife and kids, who have to live without him, need…” I shake my head. “I’m going to take my own car.”
“I’ll drive,” Stone says quickly, blocking the door, and I don’t even bother answering him. Instead, I just walk out into the warm, sunny day and look at the sky, wishing today to be over.
We arrive at the funeral home at the same time as a black sedan with tinted windows pulls up. The media has already lined up across the street, making my hands ball into fists. “Can they do that?” I ask my uncle Matthew, who stands behind me. “Like, can’t they respect privacy?”
“Them standing across the street is them respecting their privacy,” he states. “Like it or not, it’s a public street. Anyone can stand wherever they want.”
I shake my head and look over at the SUV. Koda gets out wearing a black skirt with a matching jacket and black shades cover her eyes. Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail as she holds Rain’s and Luna’s hands, both of them dressed in black. Rain looks down at her feet while Luna smiles at Koda. My heart, or whatever is left of my heart, in that second is gone.
“I think you should go.” My father slaps a hand on my shoulder. “The team is lining up.” He motions with his chin to my teammates lining up on the side of the open doors.
I take a deep breath. “Here,” Stone says, taking off his black sunglasses and handing them to me, “take these.”
My hand shakes as I reach up and take them out of his hand. I put them on and walk over to the team. Hugs are exchanged, and a couple of words are also expressed before Eddie walks over to us. I don’t know what he says because I block out everything as I look into the funeral home and see Koda sitting in a chair with Rain next to her and Luna on her lap. Her hand holds one of Rain’s while she has one on Luna’s leg. With her glasses on, I can’t see her eyes, but I see the tears streaked down her face. I can see the tip of her nose is pink, and I can see her trying not to shake while crying.
We get in line as we walk into the funeral home to give our condolences. Eddie stands next to his wife, right next to Rain, who stands next to Luna, who is glued to her mother’s side. Koda’s parents are on her other side. “Uncle Chrissy,” Luna says the minute she sees me. “You have a candy?” She leans in and whispers. After every game, Benji and I used to walk out of the locker room together, and I always had candy in my pocket for her. “In there.” She points at the right pocket where I always kept them.
“Yeah, girlie.” I smile at her through the tears running down my face but that are hidden behind the glasses I’m thankful I’m wearing. I reach into the pocket and take out two. “You share with your sister,” I tell her, and she grabs both of them from my palm.
Rain smiles at me as she takes one from her sister, and I look at Koda, neither of us saying anything before I reach out and hug her. Her body is stiff as she lifts a hand to my back. “Thank you for coming,” she says through her tears, and all I can do is nod. She doesn’t want me here. I know this, but I’m thankful she doesn’t make it known to everyone around me.
Today is one of the worst days of my life, carrying his coffin out of the funeral home to the hearse that will take him to the cemetery, all while hating him for what he did. The knot in my stomach just gets bigger and bigger. The tightness in my chest makes it harder and harder to breathe.
With my head hanging down and my hand going to my neck to loosen the tie, I walk to my car with Stone, my father, Dylan, and my uncles Matthew and Max. Everyone else is probably at my house. “Are you going to the house?” Stone asks softly.
“I don’t know,” I tell him, looking over to see Koda getting into the SUV with the girls. “There’s not much more to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” my father says. “You just have to be there. He would do it for you.”
“I guess he would,” I mumble instead of shouting “I wouldn’t fucking put my family through that.”
“We’ll drop you off and then just text me when you’re ready,” Stone says. “Your own personal Uber driver.” I chuckle at his joke, getting into the car.
“How long before this day is over?” I ask softly as we drive toward Benji’s house.
“Just a few more hours to go,” he replies just as soft. “Tomorrow will be better.”
“Tomorrow will be better,” I repeat the words, “or it can be a whole lot worse.”
We pull up to the house, where cars are lined up and down the street. People walk in all dressed in black with their heads down. “Do you want me to come in with you?” All I can do is shake my head. “Okay, well, you let me know if you need me, and I’ll be right over.”
My hand reaches out to grab the door handle. “Thank you.” My voice is thick.
“No need to thank me.” He slaps my shoulder. “It’s what we do.”
I open the door, stepping out and closing it before anything else is said. Walking up the path, I spot a couple of the teammates with their wives, who just nod at me. Everyone is probably waiting until they can get the fuck out of here. Walking into the house, I have to zigzag through people. It’s jam-packed, people chatting with each other like we just didn’t bury Benji.
I look around before I step outside, seeing the kids running around. I spot Rain and Luna being chased by two older boys, who, from what I remember, are Koda’s nephews. They come to the games a couple of times a year. I pull out a chair and sit outside, my eyes on the girls, making sure they are all right. I don’t know how long we stay out here. All I know is they went from playing tag to hide-and-seek to racing to playing in the tree house. The sun is starting to go down, the sky turning a bright orange before it turns purple.
Eddie walks out, then pulls out the chair beside me. “The kids should be getting ready for bed.” I don’t know what to say to that. “Everyone is almost gone.”
“Do you need me to do anything?” I look over at him, and the anguish is written all over his face. He buried a son today, and he has to keep it together to help his daughter-in-law and grandkids.
“Nah,” he says, “caterers are clearing up as we speak.”
“Where is Koda?” I ask, not even sure why I’m asking. The last time I was here, she was telling me to get the fuck out.
“I think she went downstairs,” he replies. “She said she needed a minute.” He gets to his feet then. “Okay, kids, time for a bath.” He claps his hands together as the kids moan about not being tired. They follow him inside, and I get to my feet, pushing the chair under the table before heading inside.
The caterers are in the kitchen cleaning up, with some service people drying things. I’m about to take my phone out of my pocket and text Stone, but instead, my feet move toward the closed basement door.
Turning the handle and quietly closing the door behind me, I walk down the stairs. The lights are on, and as I get to the last step, I see her. Koda. This time, she’s sitting on the couch with her head back, looking at the ceiling. One hand is on her lap, the other on the armrest as she holds a glass with amber liquid inside. I don’t say anything to her, but she must sense she isn’t alone because she looks over at me. “I was—” I start to say but then stop when the tears pour down her face.
“Is everyone gone?” she asks, and I nod. “He had this big fanfare.” She laughs bitterly. “The headlines are all saying how horrible and tragic it is that he’s gone. Someone even wrote he had an aneurysm. Wait until they find out he died of a fucking overdose.” I look at her. “He was cheating on me,” she whispers, the words draining everything from my body. “I mean, I don’t know if you call it cheating since I don’t think it was really him.” My feet feel like they are superglued to the floor, as she brings the glass up to her mouth and takes a sip. “I kept sitting here trying to pinpoint the day it all started to change.” She looks at me, shaking her head.
“For the past two days, I’ve been racking my brain, wondering when it fucking changed, and I can’t for the life of me figure out the exact date. He started acting differently at first. It should have been my first clue. Falling asleep at the table, in the middle of the meal. Then he would be irritated at times. I thought it was his knee acting up and he was trying to pretend it was okay. Thought he was pushing himself too much at training. Told him that his body would heal on its own, and the more he pushed, the longer it would take.” The tears fall over her eyelids and she looks like she’s in another world as she tells me this story.
“Then I started finding little plastic baggies here and there. In his pants pockets, in his luggage. I thought, well, that’s strange, if the doctor gave him a prescription, shouldn’t it be in a bottle? As the weeks went on, he changed more and more. When he was on the road, the phone calls would be few and far between.” She shrugs. “Then when he was home, he started hanging around with these people I’d never seen before in my life. They’d come over unexpectedly, and he would leave and return a couple of hours later. It would take fifteen minutes before he was out, and nothing I could do would wake him up. He fell asleep once while Luna was in the bath, and he was supposed to be watching her. Fuck, she was in the bath.” She shakes her head, the tears flowing nonstop.
“We fought that night when he finally woke up, still on the bathroom floor. It was after three o’clock in the morning. He was passed out for nine fucking hours while I waited for him to wake up.” The knots in my stomach now feel like they’re tearing through. “He said he was sorry and it wouldn’t happen again. He was fine for four days.” She spins the glass in her hand. “Then he came home one Saturday night, shirt on backward. When he took it off, he had marks on his chest. Marks I did not leave. Marks someone else made.” I was wrong before. If I thought today was hard, I was wrong. This right here, this listening to the hell she has been living, this has to be something that will forever be engraved on my soul. “Told me to lay off him. Everyone does it. I was a cold stuck-up bitch.” She looks at me then, the pain written on her face.
“Koda.” I take a step toward her. “He loved you more than life,” I tell her. “You know he did. You and the girls were his life.”
“Maybe once he did,” she says calmly. “After that day, he didn’t even try to hide he was with other women. He would be okay for a couple of hours during the day. The rest were him off doing whatever it was that he fucking did.” She inhales. “He would wake up and stumble around the fucking house until he went to the bathroom, and about forty minutes later, he was in tip-top shape until he was so tired he had to nap again.” She leans forward, putting the glass on the table in front of her. “I should have left.” Her voice quivers. “What kind of mother lets her kids stay around a drug addict?”
My feet move without my head knowing what is going to happen. I sit next to her, putting my hand around her shoulder. “Don’t you fucking say another word.”
“The day before he died, I found pills again on the coffee table. At this point, they were literally all over the fucking place. At least when he was on the road—” Her body shakes in my arms. “I picked them up and put them in the garbage disposal. What the fuck would have happened if Luna or Rain thought they were candy?” She looks up at me. “I was giving him until this weekend, and then I was going to leave him.” She shocks the shit out of me. “I was going to tell his father everything. I was going to fucking tell everyone everything.” She looks at me. “But you guys all knew, and no one did anything to save him.” The minute she says those words, I think I’m going to throw up.
“You guys just watched him kill himself.” She closes her eyes and sobs in my arms. I lean back on the couch, her tears seeping through my jacket and then through my shirt. So many fucking tears. I never knew someone could cry that much. As the sobs start to drift off, her body gets heavier next to me, and when I look down, I see she’s sleeping. I put my cheek on the top of her head, my own tears running down my face. I don’t move from the couch for what feels like an eternity. When I hear footsteps coming down the steps, I look over to see Eddie there. I hold my finger to my mouth to tell him to keep quiet.
“You should bring her upstairs,” he whispers. “She’s probably out.”
I move as gently as I can, tucking my arm under her legs and getting up. Holding her in my arms, I walk up the steps softly, going to her bedroom and laying her down in her bed. I kiss her on her forehead before turning and leaving the room.
I don’t say anything to anyone. Instead, I walk out the front door, closing it softly behind me. You guys watched him kill himself. Her words hit me in the stomach. I take a couple of steps before two things happen to me at the same time. My stomach lets go of everything it was holding in and I throw up all over the side of the driveway. Then my knees buckle, and I crash to the ground. Car doors being slammed shut make me look up, and there I see it. My family waits for me. “I’ve got him,” my father says, walking to me, but he’s never alone because my uncles are two steps behind him. Stone waits at the car for me. “Let’s get you home.”