Chapter 11 #2
In desperation, I spin. “Mr. Harrison,” I start recklessly, feeling like Zach on that damn rock wall.
Reaching for handholds I can’t grasp. What should I say to his grieving father?
Should I…say Zach’s ghost is here? Would he just think I’m pranking him, trying to hurt him? Or I’m some wannabe witchy girl?
Fuck. I don’t know how to talk to parents. Not even my own. I’m no good at this. Zach looks miserable next to me. I want to help—I just don’t know how.
“I don’t think you understand,” Mr. Harrison replies. Yeah, no shit. Desperate impatience lingers on the edges of his weariness. “I can’t. It’s…it’s like…” He stares off, facing the store counter like he’s searching for words somewhere in the middle distance.
“Like he’s just in the next room,” Sawyer finishes his sentence.
I look behind me. So does Mr. Harrison.
I’d forgotten Sawyer was here. He pulls his eyes from the wall of hammers, meeting Zach’s father’s gaze.
“Right?” Sawyer prompts. His straight, serious mouth belies the compassion in his eyes.
Grief and condolence in one. “When you’re alone, it feels like he isn’t gone,” he continues.
“Whoever you’ve lost, you feel like you’ll just see them later.
They’re just not here right now. You’ll pick them up from work or meet them for dinner.
Or you’ll just walk into the next room, and there they’ll be. ”
He looks down. His breathing shudders.
“But there is no next room,” Sawyer says, talking to the ground or what’s buried beneath. “The place they’ve gone feels like it should be right there. Like it’s so close. But it never is. Wherever you look, they’re never there. Instead, it’s like they’re just in the next room, forever.”
When he lifts his eyes, they’re shining. So, I find, are Mr. Harrison’s.
“Do I know you?” he asks. “Are you one of Zach’s friends?”
“Not exactly,” Sawyer says.
Zach’s father hesitates. He looks like he doesn’t want to stay, doesn’t want to continue speaking with us, but he no longer wants to leave.
“I couldn’t talk about my Kennedy for a while, either,” Sawyer continues. “I lost my fiancée five years ago. I tried not to talk about her. I still can’t, really.”
With every word from Sawyer, the doors that closed in Zach’s dad’s eyes start to slowly open.
“I’m sorry for your loss. Really, I am. You’re too young for it,” he replies. The defensiveness in his voice is gone.
Of course. Sawyer knows how to talk to the grieving. He’s one of them. If this is hard for him, it’s a challenge he faces every day.
He steps up beside me, where Zach was.
“I don’t think any age makes it better,” Sawyer says. “I have one regret, though. I wish I talked about her more with the people who knew her. I’m…so afraid of losing her for good,” he admits.
I say nothing. Only I know exactly what he means. Well, and Zach and Kennedy, if she’s here. Sawyer is terrified of Kennedy moving on for good, of how powerful his grief will become when her mysterious tether to our world is gone.
“I’m afraid I’ve forgotten so much about her life already.
I’ll wake up in the middle of the night wondering if I’ll always remember the way her hair smelled or what the backs of her knees looked like or the sound of her sneezes.
” His voice wavers just a little. He continues, courage and compassion in one.
“I scour my phone for every photo, every video, hoping for forever proof of these pieces of her I took for granted. If I’d shared more with the people who knew her in the days after she’d passed, I might have helped preserve their memories,” he says. “They might have helped preserve mine.”
My heart cracks open for Sawyer. Finally, I understand just how vast the ocean of his grief is. Of course he wants to hold on to Kennedy’s ghost.
And finally, I recognize how noble and self-sacrificial it is, how much a sign it is of Sawyer’s love that he’s willing to help her move on in order to save her from nothingness.
I don’t know if I could do the same. No, I know I couldn’t. I don’t imagine many people could.
Sawyer…might be unlike anyone I’ve ever known.
Tears have begun streaming now down Mr. Harrison’s cheeks. Boyish, like his son’s. “His thumbs,” he says suddenly. “It sounds so silly, but I can’t picture them. I taught him how to hold a hammer, and I can’t remember what his thumbs looked like.”
Zach has rematerialized near the shelf of hammers. He gazes down, examining his hands, quiet pain riven through his expression. He wants to talk to his dad, to show him the shape of his thumbs. But he can’t.
I’m not the one on Zach’s rock wall. He is. No matter how he reaches out, he can never make contact. Except to me.
Or…through me.
I can do this, I remind myself firmly. I have to do this. Sawyer didn’t need to come therapize grief with Zach’s father, either. But he showed up.
“His thumbnails were large and square. Short,” I say, staring at the translucent hands only I can see. “And he had that small scar on the left one. Like a perfect crescent.”
Zach’s father looks to me. His eyes go distant. The glimmer of memory enters them, the picture of Zach’s hands returning, and he starts to smile.
Sawyer and I wait while something settles over Mr. Harrison.
I catch Sawyer’s eye, and in that moment, I’m grateful.
I came here nervous and afraid to confront Zach’s father’s grief.
Now I’m glad I have. Even if I didn’t have a ghost to exorcise, I’m glad I got the chance to help this stranger remember his loved one.
Mr. Harrison’s gaze clears, returning to us once more.
“Why don’t I pour you both a cup of coffee in back,” he says, “and tell you about my son.”