Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
The funeral had been a blur—a church packed with people I barely remembered seeing. Hundreds of mourners: business associates, investors, employees. I’d stood at the front in a black dress, accepting condolences from faces that swam together like watercolors in rain.
Arthur Vance had given the eulogy.
I remembered that part with sharp, bitter clarity. Arthur, who’d spoken with Marco maybe a dozen times in the eight months since we’d brought him onto the board. Arthur, who called him “a visionary” and “a dear friend” while his wife Helen dabbed at dry eyes with a handkerchief.
Michael had held me upright at the cemetery when my legs gave out. And then... nothing. Just the endless, hollow days that followed.
Now it was a week after the funeral. Three weeks since Aspen. Three weeks since my world shattered.
The doorbell rang. I pulled the pillow over my head, hoping whoever it was would give up and go away.
“I’ll get it,” Michael called from somewhere downstairs.
I rolled onto my side, staring at the empty space next to me. I imagined Marco’s pillow still carried the shape of him, the faint dip where his head had rested, though I knew that was only my mind filling in what I wanted to see.
The sheets had been washed multiple times since I came back from Aspen.
The pillowcase changed. Any physical trace of him was long gone, yet I couldn’t bring myself to sleep in the center of the bed.
Every night, I curled on my side, one hand stretched across the cool expanse of the mattress, as if I might wake to find him there again. Warm and solid and real.
The morning light slanted through the curtains, illuminating dust motes that drifted like tiny ghosts.
I watched them dance, thinking how Marco used to wake before me, propped on one elbow, just watching me sleep.
What are you doing? I’d murmur, still half-dreaming.
Memorizing you, he’d say, tracing a finger down my cheek. How beautiful you are.
I pressed my face into his pillow, searching for any lingering scent of him. But there was nothing. Just the clean, empty smell of laundry detergent.
There was a soft knock on the bedroom door. “Tess?” Michael again. “It’s almost ten.”
I closed my eyes, pretending I hadn’t heard. But Michael knew me too well to be fooled. The door creaked open, and I felt the mattress dip as he sat on the edge of the bed. He didn’t say anything at first, just sat there.
“The kids are asking for you,” he said, his voice gentle. “Rome tried to make breakfast for everyone. It’s all over the kitchen floor.”
Guilt cut through the fog. They needed me, and here I was, hiding in bed like a coward. I’d been doing the bare minimum—making sure they were fed, dressed, alive—but nothing more. I was a ghost in my home, drifting through rooms without fully inhabiting them.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” I mumbled, my voice hoarse from disuse.
Michael’s hand found my shoulder, squeezed once—the same way he used to when we were kids and I’d had a nightmare. No words needed, just I’m here. Then he stood and left, pulling the door almost closed behind him but not quite. Never quite.
Michael and Shelly had absorbed themselves into our household.
They’d created a rhythm I couldn’t have managed on my own.
Michael handled the mornings, coaxing all the kids out of bed, finding matching shoes, and making sure backpacks were ready for school.
Shelly took afternoons. Yesterday I’d found her in the laundry room, folding tiny socks into perfect pairs, Paris sitting on the dryer telling her an elaborate story about a princess who could turn invisible.
Shelly had been listening as if it were the most important story in the world, nodding in all the right places, while matching each sock to its mate.
“Your mama’s lucky to have you,” she’d told Paris. “You’re being so brave.”
I’d stood in the doorway, unable to speak, unable to thank her. Didn’t have words big enough.
The kids were all processing their father’s death in their own ways.
Austin had retreated, spending most of his time reading.
Rome had become a whirlwind of motion—running, climbing, breaking things—as if he could outrun the pain.
Paris spoke her grief in brutal, honest declarations: “Daddy’s dead and he’s not coming back,” stated as fact at the grocery store to anyone who would listen.
And Aspen, my baby at two years old, had simply gone quiet.
She painted and drew, but rarely spoke anymore, her big eyes watching everything.
With effort, I pushed myself upright. My body felt wrong—lighter, weaker, as if grief had hollowed me out. I pulled on the first clothes I found: sweatpants and one of Marco’s old Stanford sweatshirts, the fabric soft and worn.
I brushed my teeth, and when I finally looked up, I barely recognized the woman staring back. Pale, shadowed eyes, hair that no longer shone. I looked like someone half-erased.
The hallway was dark as I moved toward the sounds of kids. The kitchen was worse than I’d imagined.
Cereal all over the floor, a sugary carpet of misplaced enthusiasm. Milk pooled on the counter and dripped onto the floor in a steady plop, plop, plop.
It was a six-kid disaster zone.
At the sink, my seven-year-old, Rome, stood on a chair, “washing” a bowl. He was being “helped” by his six-year-old cousin, Fury, who was gleefully using a spoon to conduct a splash war against the running water. More water was hitting the floor than the sink.
“It’s a flood!” Fury shrieked, whacking the water again.
On the floor, my five-year-old, Paris, was using a paper towel to push the milk puddle around, creating abstract, milky swirls. Beside her, eight-year-old Blaze—already so much like my brother—was earnestly trying to build a dam with spilled Cheerios to stop the milk’s advance.
“We need more, Paris!” Blaze commanded. “It’s breaching the grout!”
The only island of calm was Aspen, sitting at the table, lining up the remaining dry Cheerios on her placemat, creating orderly circles in a world that was anything but.
Austin, my oldest at eight, was nowhere to be seen.
“Good morning,” I said. The words felt formal. Good morning, babies. Good morning, my loves. When had I lost that warmth?
Rome spun around, nearly falling off the chair. “Mom! I made breakfast!”
His face was so hopeful, so desperate for approval, that something cracked inside me. Marco would have scooped him up, booming: “Look at you, being such a big help!” even as he surveyed the disaster.
“I see that,” I said. “That was very... thoughtful.”
“It’s a big mess,” Paris announced, ever the truth-teller. “Rome spilled everything.”
“I did not!” Rome protested, his face crumbling. “The milk carton was too heavy! And Fury ‘helped’!”
Fury just beamed, holding his spoon up like a trophy. “I’m a helper!”
“We can clean it up together,” I said, trying hard not to step into the crunch. “Where’s Austin?”
“In Dad’s office,” Paris said, still pushing the milk with her now-sodden paper towel. “He goes there every morning after you don’t come down for breakfast.”
The words sent a sharp pang through my chest. After you don’t come down for breakfast. A new normal I had created without even realizing it. I swallowed against the lump in my throat.
“I’ll go get him,” I said. “Rome, please get down from that chair. Paris, that paper towel is done. Let’s find the mop. Blaze... the dam looks great, but let’s get the dustpan.”
Next, I moved through the house, my bare feet silent on the hardwood floors.
Marco’s home office door was ajar. I hadn’t been in there since the funeral.
It was too much of him. Through the gap, I could see Austin in the large leather chair, his small frame dwarfed by its size.
He was spinning slowly, around and around, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. The chair squeaked with each rotation.
“Austin?”
He stopped spinning, his eyes finding mine. Marco’s eyes. That same intense, assessing gaze. “Hi, Mom.”
“What are you doing in here, sweetheart?”
He shrugged, a small, defeated gesture that broke my heart. “Just thinking.”
“About what?” I stepped into the room, fighting the urge to flee from the scent of Marco, the stacks of his books, the coffee mug still on the desk. Colombian dark roast, two sugars, splash of cream.
“Dad,” Austin said simply. “And the company.”
I sank into the visitor’s chair, the one molded to my shape from a thousand late-night conversations. “The company?”
“Yeah.” He started spinning again, slowly. “I was thinking about who’s going to run it now that Dad’s gone.”
The question caught me off guard. My eight-year-old was contemplating corporate succession while I could barely remember to brush my teeth. But of course, he was. Austin had Marco’s mind for systems. Even grief, for him, needed to be organized.
Before I could answer, the landline on the desk rang, a sound so jarring I flinched. I picked it up on muscle memory. “Hello?”
“Theresa, it’s Arthur. Arthur Vance.”
I closed my eyes. “Arthur. What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said, his voice carrying a note of professional concern. “How are you holding up?”
“We’re managing,” I said, the standard lie. I’m drowning. I wake up every morning and forget for three seconds he’s gone, and then it’s like losing him all over again.
“I was hoping I might stop by,” Arthur continued. “I have some papers... and Helen has made a casserole.”
Another one. The freezer was already a fortress of pitying casseroles. “That’s not necessary...”
“I insist. Say, around three this afternoon?”
Too tired to argue, I agreed. Austin watched me, his eyes serious. When I hung up, he asked, “Was that Mr. Vance?”
“Yes, he’s coming by this afternoon.”
Austin’s face darkened. “Why?”
“To bring some papers, he said. And another casserole.”
“Oh.” Austin looked down at his small hands. “I heard Dad tell Mom-Mom that Mr. Vance was a shark in a suit.”