Chapter 25
NASH
“Wow, you rolled out the red carpet for me. Christmas dishes for dinner tonight?” Sadie traces the edge of her soup bowl.
“It’s a special occasion.” Jay smiles. “You’re finally back home where you belong.”
A coded statement from my father-in-law, but I keep my thoughts to myself.
Sadie’s eyes skip to me like she heard it too. “I know everyone says it’s been a long time since I’ve been home, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.”
“Too long.” Lynette holds the pan of cinnamon rolls in front of me, offering up seconds.
“No, thanks. I’m stuffed. That meal was delicious.”
Sadie tilts her head to the empty chair across from her. “Where’s Tate? He’s usually good for third and fourths. I thought he would be here or at least call to talk to me by now.”
Annie’s chair scrapes the wood floor as she stands. “I’m tired. I think I’ll head upstairs.”
“So soon?” Sadie’s eyes follow her.
“Yep.” Annie keeps walking, not looking back.
“What was that about?”
Jay and Lynette exchange glances, and I know what’s coming, what made Annie hurry and leave the dinner table. Jay told me earlier they would address the Tate situation after dinner. I wish I could save Sadie from this moment, from experiencing the pain all over again.
“Sadie, we need to talk to you about something,” her dad begins. “We’ve just been waiting for the right time to tell you.”
Creases slowly form across her forehead. “Okay.”
Lynette grabs Jay’s hand, giving him the strength to start.
“A few months into your internship, we found out that Tate was addicted to pain medication. It was an addiction that he’d been hiding from all of us for almost eight years. Something that started after his football injury in high school.”
Lines deepen as Sadie’s brows drop, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“We found out about his addiction because he’d been stealing money from us and using it to buy Oxycontin.”
She bites her bottom lip nervously, and all I want to do is reach out and take her hand, but I can’t—not yet, at least.
“So we got him help, right?” Her eyes move back and forth between her parents, looking for answers. “Right?”
“We wanted to, but everything blew up when we caught him stealing, and we all said things we shouldn’t have. Tate ended up leaving that night,” Jay’s voice cracks with emotion.
“Where did he go?” Panic tears through Sadie as she tries to keep up.
“At the time, we didn’t know, but he drove to Syracuse and bought more painkillers from a dealer on the street. But the pills he had weren’t just Oxycontin. They were laced with fentanyl.”
“No.” She shakes her head, visibly upset.
“Tate didn’t know,” Lynette defends her son. “They looked the same. He didn’t know.”
Jay draws in a breath, fortifying himself for the final blow. “We got a call the next morning that Tate had passed away on his friend's couch. He’d overdosed.”
We all silently wait for Sadie to react, ready to pick up the shattered pieces as best we can.
A single tear falls down her cheek. “Was it suicide? Did he leave a note?”
“No. Tate’s friend said they didn’t know they’d bought fentanyl.” Lynette’s shoulders lift. “It was just an accident.”
“I want to see his grave,” she says after a few seconds of it all sinking in.
“Honey, it’s so cold out,” Lynette tries to convince her.
“I want to see it.”
“We can go tomorrow,” Jay offers.
“Are you really not going to take me to his grave?” She pounds the table with her fists. Dishes clatter at the sudden movement.
“I’ll drive you.” I place my hand on her shoulder as I stand. “Let me get your coat and a few blankets.”
Sadie pulls in a ragged breath, numbly sitting at the table.
Jay stands too, following me out of the kitchen to the stairs. “Nash, you’re not going to start up all that nonsense again about tough love and it being our fault that Tate’s gone, are you?”
“I was never the one who thought that.”
“I know, but I’m sure all these years, you didn’t help defend us to Sadie.”
“The last thing I want is to drive a wedge between you guys. She can draw her own conclusions about Tate’s death, but it won’t come from me and never has.”
I don’t wait for his response. I run up the stairs, gathering enough warm stuff from Sadie’s closet to keep her outside for as long as she needs.
I help put her coat, hat, and gloves on while she stands unmoving. The ride to the cemetery is silent. I rush around the car to open her door and help her out. Then I lean back down to grab a few blankets. The only other time I was here was at Tate’s funeral. I hate that I’m back under similar circumstances.
Slowly, I lead Sadie to his headstone. The moonlight illuminates his name, making the nightmare more real. I lay down a couple of blankets over the skiff of snow, and she falls to her knees, blankly staring at his memorial.
I expected tears and anger and all the emotions I’ve talked her through over the last few years, but this time around is different. She’s different, and I don’t know how to help ease this new version of her grief.
After thirty minutes, she stands, gently touching the edge of his tombstone. “We can go now.” Smoke puffs out as the words escape her mouth.
My arm wraps around her shoulder, gently leading her back to the car. Her parents are by the door when we get home.
“Sadie?” Lynette starts. “Are you?—”
“I can’t talk about it.” She shakes her head, walking past them.
I follow her up the stairs, but when we get to her room, she shuts the door, blocking me out. In the safety of her room, the tears come. From my spot outside her bedroom, I hear the gut-wrenching sounds of my wife falling apart.
It’s agony in its purest form.
I try the handle, needing to get to her, to comfort her, but the door is locked. My head presses against the wood as I listen to her muffled cries.
All I can do is wait outside until she trusts me enough to hold her pain. Slowly, I slide to the ground, leaning against the wall. It’s there in her parents’ dark hallway, in the middle of Skaneateles, New York, that I allow myself to fall apart too.
SADIE
Tate is gone.
It took most of the week lying in bed for the reality of that to sink in.
I’m mourning the loss of my brother while mourning the loss of my life, and it just feels so heavy, like a crushing weight I can’t avoid.
My mom, Annie, and Nash rotate, bringing me food and sitting beside me. This week has been a blur of depression at a level I’ve never experienced before. At least, I don’t think I have, but maybe it was like this the first time I found out about Tate.
I sit on my bed, hugging my knees to my chest with my head pressed against the cold window. So far, my day has consisted of watching snow flurries swirl from the sky onto the lake. Even the soft knock on my bedroom door doesn’t break my focus.
Nash enters. He walks to the nightstand beside my bed, placing a steaming cup of hot cocoa on the coaster. I don’t even acknowledge his presence, just keep looking out the window.
“I brought you something you might like.” He sits on the edge of the mattress. “If I were in your position, I would want to see this, but now I’m second-guessing everything. It’s stupid.”
His back-and-forth nerves are enough to pull my attention away from the snow flurries. My eyes flick to him and the phone in his hands.
“I have a link to Tate’s funeral. I thought you might want to watch it. Get some closure like people usually get in normal situations.”
The pounding in my heart shows how scared I am, but I take the device from his hands anyway.
His lips press into one of his sad smiles. I’m getting used to that one. I’ve seen it the most. “I’ll just be in the other room if you need anything.”
The door shuts behind him.
I’m all alone, free to come undone.
Sometimes, the best way to get through the pain is to feel it, so I sink into my bed and push the link.
A picture of Tate flashes on the screen—the one I took at the derby a few years ago. He looks happy, and my heart breaks, thinking about everything he hid behind the facade.
The camera pans the room as the funeral procession begins walking down the church aisle. I smile at the large crowd there to pay their respects. Of course Tate would have standing room only at his funeral.
Rows of white flowers fill the front of the church—he loved white flowers, said they were the most perfect. Every detail of his funeral was beautiful, and seeing that somehow eases my grief. Nash was right. Experiencing Tate’s funeral again does bring a small measure of closure.
When all the talks and tributes are done, the crowd stands as the family follows his casket out to the cemetery. The camera pans the room again, and that’s when I see a familiar face, wiping tears off his face.
I grab my chest, where my heart aches with a discomfort I can’t quite name.
Nash came to Tate’s funeral.
It couldn’t have been more than a month and a half into my internship, but there he was, six hundred miles away from Chicago, supporting a woman he barely knew.
Something about that kind of loyalty touches my soul.
And for the first time since I woke up from my coma, I understand, at least a little bit, why I fell in love with Nash.