Chapter Twenty-Three
H e felt like he might be sick.
Acid churned in his gut. Emotion gathering in his throat made it difficult for him to breathe.
His brother was trying to keep his shit together, but Jake looked about as ghastly as Billy felt.
What the fuck was happening?
And what was Dad thinking about leaving a note like that?
It was too much information and nowhere near enough.
“Text them again.”
“I just did.” Billy glanced at his phone. “No one’s answering.”
It had to be Mom. He and Jake knew that. But what could it be? Did she take a fall? Have another stroke? Or worse, was she…
Anything but that. Please, don’t let it be that .
Dark clouds and the Tetons loomed ahead. And Billy couldn’t help but wonder if everything that was happening was all his fault.
Jake turned south on 89, and the angry skies opened, unleashing a torrential downpour. Water cascaded down the glass in sheets. The wipers couldn’t keep up with it.
“Fuck, come on.” Forced to slow down, his brother slammed his fist into the steering wheel.
They had to hurry, but the closer they got, the more he didn’t want to get there.
The rain had slowed to an annoying drizzle when they reached Jackson. It was just enough to need the wipers on to clear it, but not enough to keep them from squeaking on the glass. Jake pulled into the parking lot next to Justin’s Porsche and, shaking on the inside, Billy tried to take a deep breath.
“It’s gonna be okay.” Jake rested his hand on his.
“You don’t know that.”
And he squeezed it. “Yes, I do.”
“What if…” Billy couldn’t even say it.
“Whatever it is, we’ll get through it together.” Then he let his hand go. “It’s gonna be okay.”
The automatic doors opened. Justin paced in the waiting room as he had only a month before. With his hands clasped behind his neck, he stared down at his shoes wearing tracks in the puke-green carpet.
Jake got to him first. “Is it Mom? How is she?”
“I don’t know.” His fingers plowed through his hair and he hitched his thumb toward the double doors. “Victor carried her in there and I haven’t seen either of them since.”
“What happened?” he asked.
“She said she had a terrible headache and asked me to get her some aspirin. When I came back with it, she was asleep.” Justin’s head shook, a faraway look in his eyes. “But I couldn’t get her to wake up.”
What does that mean? Billy glanced at Jake for an answer, not finding one.
“I was only gone for a minute.” Justin sighed and sat in a chair. “I called your Dad. Then you. He said we couldn’t wait. I’m sorry.”
“Do you think it’s another stroke?” Jake took a seat beside him.
“Maybe.” He lifted a shoulder, staring at the floor again. “I don’t know. I’m a painter, not a doctor.”
Chrissakes, you gotta know something .
Billy got down on his haunches in front of him. “Did Dad say anything?”
“No, he just held her, whispering to her, running his fingers through her hair, all the way here.”
“What do we do?” he asked his brother.
“We wait.”
Every minute seemed like an hour. An hour felt like an eternity. They didn’t bother with shitty vending machine coffee. Nobody spoke. No one looked at their phone.
“You know what they say, no news is good news. Your mama’s gonna be just fine.”
Billy held onto that thought. It repeated in his head over and over again.
Mid-afternoon, the sun peeked out of the clouds and the double doors finally opened.
His eyes red and glassy, Victor sat in a chair across from them. “They’re taking your mom upstairs now.”
“Can we see her?”
His elbows on his knees, his father leaned forward. “Yes, but we need to talk first.”
Billy tried to swallow past the lump forming in his throat. “Did she have a stroke?”
Jake asked, “Is she okay?”
“Your mom had a cerebral hemorrhage,” he said, using his doctor’s voice. Maybe it was the only way he knew how. “Her blood pressure caused an artery in her brain to weaken and bulge like an inflated balloon—it’s called an aneurysm, and it ruptured.”
“Can they fix it?” But he already knew the answer. His father’s golden eyes brimmed with tears.
He took his hand. “No, son, they can’t.”
Beside him, Justin wept.
“What do we do, then?”
Victor closed his eyes, and the tears spilled down his face.
“Say goodbye.”
The Lakota don’t have a word for goodbye. Instead, they say ‘toksa ake’ which means I’ll see you again. And they were the words that Billy whispered when they lowered her into the ground.
Long after the grave was filled with dirt and the flowers were laid on top, the four of them stood there in silence, too numbed by grief to move.
Victor gazed up at the three-headed peak, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what, my love?”
“The mountain.” His father held onto Justin’s arm. “Carrie used to say if you listen closely, you can hear it hum.”
“We need to go now, Vic. Everyone is waiting in the hall.” Patting the hand on his arm, Justin turned him away from the grave. “Come on. We can come back tomorrow.”
Toksa ake, Mama. Forgive me. I love you.
The luncheon after the funeral was a blur. Like a fuzzy dream. Billy ate the food, but couldn’t taste it. Emily sat with him and Jake, squeezing his hand. He squeezed hers back, but he couldn’t feel it.
He wanted to cry or scream. Something. Anything. But nothing would come out.
Then, he came out of the restroom to find Arien waiting just outside the door. Maybe it was the way she looked up at him with her sad, hazel eyes, her wound nearly as fresh as his own, that had him putting his arms around her. Whatever it was, the floodgates opened.
“Oh, Billy, I know what you’re feeling.” Her voice cracking, she rubbed his back while he wept. “And I know sorry doesn’t help much, but I am.”
He couldn’t say how long they stayed like that. But his eyes burned. Billy opened them to see Tanner, Kellan, and Jake right there behind her. Fitting, since the five of them were all in the same fucked up club.
“It’s all my fault.”
Arien lifted his chin. “What’s your fault, babe?”
“That she’s dead.”
Jake must’ve told them what he said.
Justin sat him on the sofa. His brother poured a glass of whiskey and put it in his hand.
Billy chanced a glance at his father as he swallowed it, but he didn’t say a word.
Not at first, anyway.
“Talk to me, son.” He sounded broken. “Tell me what’s goin’ on in your head?”
“I broke the rules.” Billy finished the whiskey and set down the glass. “Mama died because of me. It’s my punishment.”
“Is that what you think?” Cocking his head, Victor scoffed. “Just because you kissed Emily before your birthday that the earth took your mother?”
“I did more than kiss her.”
“I don’t care if you fucked her.”
“Victor.” With a hand on his thigh, Justin calmed him.
“Billy, I want you to listen to me.” His father sat beside him and held onto his shoulders. “Her death was not a consequence of anything you might’ve done.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do know that.” Insistent, he raised his voice and then softened it. “We discovered the aneurysm on her CT scan when she had the stroke, but unfortunately, because of its location, surgical repair wasn’t an option.” He glanced over at Justin. “All we could do was try to keep her pressure down and hope…”
“Are you saying you knew there was a ticking time bomb in her head?”
His eyes filling, he nodded. “Yes.”
“Did she?”
And he shook his head. “No, son.”
“She didn’t need to know.” Justin confirmed he knew all along, too. “What good would it have done?”
The fuck?
He wasn’t sure how to feel besides sad. Relieved that he wasn’t cursed? Pissed they kept it from him? Would he have done anything differently had he known?
“Everything you’re feeling is normal, Billy.” Justin put his arms around him. “You and your brother just lost the woman who loved you even before you were born. Your father lost his wife. I lost my sister. We’re all second-guessing ourselves here. What if I had done this or hadn’t done that? I should have said this…I shouldn’t have gotten angry. The shit just keeps running through your head. Believe me, I know.”
“It’s called grieving, son.” His dad had one arm around him and Justin, and the other around Jake. “She loved the two of you more than anything in this world. Even me. And that’s how it’s supposed to be. Now, it’s your turn to pass that love on to Emily and your children, so that one day, they can do the same.”
“It’s true, you know,” Justin said, his head resting on Billy’s shoulder.
“What is?”
“Love is timeless, and it’s forever.” His fingers slipped into his father’s hair. “It truly never dies.”