Chapter Twenty-Two #3
Once we were inside, Catalina disappeared to the kitchen to get Phoebe water.
I didn’t think Phoebe needed water, she was simply giving Catalina an excuse to breathe for a second.
I focused on other things, like the soft leather of the couch and the river rock fireplace with a mantel full of framed photos.
On the wall by the front door was a colorful, almost abstract painting of a boy with short hair and a nose ring, a space between his front teeth.
I knew, even before Dex’s expression broke at the sight of it, it was Benji.
Catalina returned with a glass, placing it in front of Phoebe. She sat on the couch across from us, folding her hands in her lap. I stared at her, half dazed that this was the same woman we’d read about in a letter. It seemed like forever ago.
“How’s work?” she asked, focusing her attention on Dex.
He shrugged. “Fine.”
“Does Mary miss me?”
He reached up to rub his neck, the corner of his mouth twitching upward. “Of course. Everyone does.”
Catalina smiled, glancing at Phoebe and me.
“You know, it’s funny. Nobody ever thought Ben should work with kids.
He had the dirtiest mouth—I once kept track of how many F-bombs he dropped in a day and it was, like, two hundred,” she told us.
Phoebe straightened at the casual mention of Benji.
Dex kept his expression painfully neutral.
“We always joked about how they should swap careers. Ben was better suited for the corporate billionaire app thing and Dex has always been great with kids…” Catalina’s smile slipped.
“I still can’t believe you stepped in like that.
I mean, I can. He loved Sequest so much and you’d do anything for him. But still.”
Dex cleared his throat, squirming in his seat. “Cat.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Her voice wobbled as she waved her hands. “I’m doing that thing where I dive into the deep shit and you’ve been here two minutes.”
Phoebe’s hands were trembling in her lap, so I reached over, holding on for dear life.
Dex’s fingers drummed the side of his cast. “There’s a lot of deep shit, Cat. It’s hard to avoid.”
She let out a sigh. “Okay, then. Rip off the Band-Aid. I know it’s not will stuff. Your mom dealt with that when she visited.”
Dex furrowed his brow. “She visited you?”
“Yes, August. Christ. Call your mom once in a while. She’s worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
He dragged a hand down his face, his shoulders drooping. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch.”
Catalina’s face softened. “From what I hear, you haven’t been in touch with anyone, so I don’t take it personally,” she said. “He’s why you’re here, right? He has to be. He’s the only one who would get you out here.”
He withdrew the letter from his pocket, the red stamp visible over the fold. Phoebe’s grip tightened against my hand. “This showed up at the apartment. I don’t know what the hell is going on with the postal service that they’re return-to-sendering a dead man’s mail, but that’s how it played out.”
Catalina stared at the letter. Her hand shook as she reached for it. I had the urge to beg her forgiveness, and from the way Phoebe’s breath shook beside me, I knew she felt the same.
“They opened it,” Dex added, maybe seeing Phoebe’s and my stricken expressions. “But if they hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
A rush of gratitude swept through me at the reassurance that he wanted us here. That we belonged here, in a way. Catalina’s shining eyes turned to Phoebe and me on the couch, holding the letter over her heart. And I knew for certain Phoebe had done the right thing when she opened it.
“Did you read it?” Catalina asked, turning to Dex.
“No,” he said quietly. He turned his cast over, studying the stickers Phoebe had pasted all over it. “From what they told me, it’s important. It… it would’ve been important if it was a fucking grocery list.”
Her lip wobbled as she turned the envelope over, handling it like it was the most precious thing. To her, it was.
“I feel like…” Catalina wiped her eyes and dried her hand on her dress before returning it to the letter.
“I feel like I should not want to read it, you know? This is the last thing. I’ll never have anything else.
And it’s going to destroy me. I know it is.
He never needed the last word unless he had something really good to say. ”
Dex shut his eyes, wincing.
“I’m going to…” Catalina stood, cradling the letter to her chest. “I have no idea. I haven’t decided yet. But make yourselves at home.”
With that, she shuffled out of the room. Dex stared after her with an expression I could only describe as haunted. I saw it nearly every time I passed a mirror, and the familiarity ached.
“Hey,” I said. “Do you guys want some privacy? It might be easier without an audience, you know?”
“I want you here,” Dex murmured without looking up. Phoebe looked between us, chewing her lip. “Cat will be grateful for the distraction. It’s fine.”
“August.” His eyes snapped to me, fingers curling into his palm. “The hard part is over. Now you need to go in there and have a real conversation with her, without us. She deserves that much.”
He stared at me, all those fractured feelings shining through.
It meant something to me, the way he’d allowed me to witness the deepest pits of his soul from the moment I discovered his name.
He meant it when he said he’d been honest with me, and if I asked him to stand under a spotlight and monologue his side of the story from beginning to end, he would.
He wanted me to know him. I already did.
“You’re right,” he said. He climbed to his feet, taking a slow breath. “Don’t leave. Please.”
“We’re here,” I promised.
“You don’t have to be.” He stared at the doorway, eyes hazy. “After this, I mean. I don’t want you to think you’re obligated to stay or forgive me. I’m not an easy person to care about. No hard feelings.”
He was gone before his words made their impact.
All this time, I’d had the thought that Dex and I were the same, and here he was repackaging the saddest thoughts I’d had about myself, dropping them at my feet, like he was damaged goods that should be cast aside.
But he wasn’t damaged to me. All those broken pieces snapped together in a mosaic masterpiece, beautiful and raw.
Left alone in Catalina’s living room, Phoebe and I didn’t look at each other, didn’t speak.
We let ourselves out, taking refuge on the porch swing.
Overhead, the sky was a crisp, cloudless blue.
The grass swayed in a warm breeze. It wasn’t our grief, but when my sister buried her face in my shoulder, choking up, it could’ve been.
By the time Dex came to find us, frogs and crickets had begun chirping in the grass, and his eyes were red.
Catalina invited us to stay for dinner so earnestly, we couldn’t say no.
We grilled and ate burgers on the cobbled patio as dragonflies zipped over our heads.
The afternoon sun was relentless, but we sat out there for hours listening to stories about Benji Dexter, the man who’d brought us together.
He was a talented artist always sporting acrylic paint on his hands.
He and Cat were friends growing up, but they didn’t fall in love until their struggling twenties, sharing a shoebox apartment outside city limits, him freshly transitioned and finding comfort in working at Sequest, her working at the library, meeting up for lunch every day on a bench equal distance between their jobs.
As a big believer in the grand gesture, he would try to one-up himself after every fight—Catalina cringed as she recounted a flash mob years after the fad died out.
They were going to get married, though they weren’t officially engaged.
It was simply a fact everyone around them knew.
But Benji lived with depression and occasionally went through phases of mania, during which he would self-destruct and push away the people close to him.
I wish I hadn’t left, Catalina said with a sad smile.
But he told me to. It sounds so stupid, now.
His death was a cosmically unfair accident on a Thursday night.
Benji had told friends that when he died, he didn’t want it to be a drag, so there was no official funeral, only a meetup at his favorite lighthouse where the people who loved him toasted to him and cried together and spread his ashes.
Gav got a mouthful of him, Dex said, cracking a smile. Ben wouldn’t have had it any other way.
It seemed strange to posthumously meet the person who shaped the last month of our lives.
Phoebe and I sat rapt through the stories, the memories, the tears shed.
Benji was a special person, his loss catastrophic.
And when Phoebe launched into a story about our dad, Catalina and Dex leaned in, hanging on every word.
We would keep them alive like this. My dad could’ve been right there, standing over my shoulder.
As the stories began to slow and the air cooled, I caught Dex’s eye over the glass-topped table.
Now that I’d been formally introduced to Benji, it felt easier to understand the wreckage he’d left behind and how it led to Dex’s inability to face his past. The bravery it took for Dex to make the choices that led him here took my breath away—he couldn’t say Benji’s name out loud, but he chose to take this trip, to sit alongside Phoebe and me in our own grief, to keep going.
He’d been fighting so hard for so long, alone.
Eventually, Phoebe and I said goodbye to Catalina, intending to give her and Dex some privacy, but he ducked his head and followed us out, everything about him weighed down by exhaustion.
I hadn’t recognized the grief for what it was, but in retrospect only the most catastrophic losses could dismantle a world the way it had for Dex, and for Phoebe and me.
It was all over him. I wished I’d looked a little bit closer.