44. Mateo
MATEO
“Where is Ems’ mom?” Crew asks from his car seat. My eyes float to the rearview mirror, watching my son examine his hot pink cast as he waits for my answer.
How do you explain death to a four-year-old? Until now, there’s been no reason to.
My parents died before Crew was even a thought, same with Talia’s.
Pepper is probably going to live forever just to spite me.
Death has never been a topic we had to broach.
Until now.
We pull into Emerson’s apartment complex, and I pull my car into an empty spot.
After coming here yesterday, I’m still trying to make sense of everything.
The last twenty-four hours feel like a blur of panic, relief, guilt, and heartbreak, all tangled together so tightly I can't separate one from the other.
I don't know how long we sat on her couch after I found her. Time stopped feeling real the second she opened that door.
All I know is that I held her for what felt like hours, my arms wrapped around her while she buried her face in my shoulder. I was almost afraid to let go, afraid that if I loosened my grip for even a second, she'd disappear again.
It took a long time before she finally lifted her head. And when she did, every bit of anger I'd been carrying dissolved.
Because I had been angry.
The second Jack asked how she was doing, my mind went straight to the worst possible places. First, I thought something had happened to her. Then, when that fear started to fade, I convinced myself of something else entirely—that she was perfectly fine and simply didn't want me around anymore.
By the time I got to her apartment, I'd worked myself into a state.
I pictured finding her curled up on the couch reading a book or watching T.V.
, completely unbothered by the fact that we'd gone days without seeing each other.
I convinced myself she didn't care. Convinced myself she wouldn't even want to know that Crew had broken his arm.
But if I'm being honest, I think part of me rushed over there because I knew none of that was true.
No matter what was happening between us, I knew she'd want to know about Crew.
Whether she was mad at me for something I did.
Whether she needed space.
Whether she was done with me completely.
I knew she'd want to know.
Then she opened the door, and I realized how wrong I'd been.
She was standing there in a ratty tank top and a pair of underwear, one sock hanging halfway off her foot. Her hair was so matted it took nearly an hour to brush through later. The apartment behind her looked abandoned.
The realization hit me so hard it knocked every other thought out of my head.
I stayed with her for the rest of the day.
I sat on the bathroom floor while she brushed her teeth.
Made sure she drank water. Ordered food and watched her force herself to eat a few bites.
We barely talked. Most of the time we just moved through one small task after another, neither of us acknowledging how much effort it seemed to take.
The entire time, I couldn't stop thinking that I should have known.
I should have pushed harder when she told me she was sick.
I should have shown up.
I should have recognized that something wasn't right.
Maybe that's not fair. Maybe there wasn't any way for me to know how bad things had gotten.
But knowing that doesn't stop the guilt.
And when she came out of the bathroom, her cheeks flushed from the shower and a towel wrapped around her chest, it felt like looking at a version of the woman I love that I'd never seen before.
Not because she looked different.
Because she looked fragile.
And there is nothing more terrifying than seeing someone you love hurting in a way you can't fix.
Then she asked if I would go with her to see her mom. I was halfway through changing the sheets on her bed. For a second, I thought my knees might actually give out.
She wouldn't look at me when she asked. Her eyes stayed fixed on the floor, her shoulders drawn inward like she was trying to make herself smaller. Her voice shook so badly I almost missed the question entirely.
It was such a simple thing.
Will you come with me?
But I could tell how much it cost her to ask.
How vulnerable she felt standing there.
I told her yes before she could take back the words.
She fell asleep curled against my side, her head resting on my chest, and I spent most of the night staring at the ceiling.
I kept thinking about all the ways I wanted to help her grieve. Help her heal. Help her carry some of the weight she's been dragging around alone for years.
Every thought led me back to the same conclusion.
I can't do those things for her.
I can't force her to process any of this.
I can't make her heal.
I can't save her from it.
The only thing I can do is be there when she's ready to take the next step herself.
And asking to visit her mom today feels like exactly that.
A step.
Maybe a small one. Maybe a painful one.
But a step forward all the same.
I didn't want to leave her this morning, but she insisted. Practically pushed me out the door and told me to go home, shower, and put on clean clothes.
A few hours later, Talia dropped Crew off, and you'd never know he'd spent yesterday in the emergency room.
He's already back to being himself, proudly showing off his cast to anyone willing to look at it. The kid has somehow turned a broken arm into the most exciting thing that's ever happened to him.
Kids are resilient like that.
And as I glance towards Emerson’s apartment and then at Crew through the rearview mirror, I find myself hoping she's more resilient than she realizes, too.
I unbuckle my seatbelt and turn around in my seat. “Remember when we talked about how some things get hurt and heal?” I ask Crew.
He nods immediately, holding up his cast. “Like my arm.”
“Exactly. But sometimes people get very, very old, or very, very sick, and their bodies stop working.”
His brow furrows, and he looks out his window. “Like a car?”
I huff out a laugh. “Kind of like a car.”
Crew considers this. “Can the doctor fix them? Like how the doctor fixed my arm?”
The question hits me like a gut-punch. “Not always, buddy.”
“Oh.”
He looks down at his cast for a moment.
“So the doctors couldn’t fix Ems’ mom?”
I shake my head. “No, buddy. They couldn’t.”
He sniffles, wiping at his eyes with his hand. “So where is she?”
I pause, not sure I understand his question. “What do you mean?”
“Where do people go when the doctors can’t fix them?”
It takes me a minute to find the right answer, searching for an answer a four-year-old can understand.
“Well, different people believe different things.
Some people think they go to a place called Heaven.
Some people think they're somewhere peaceful. Nobody knows for sure. But no matter where they are, there are still places we can go to feel close to them. Special places.”
Crew thinks about that for a long time.
“Is that where we’re going today? The special place?”
The knot in my chest tightens. “Yeah, buddy. That’s where we’re going today.”
He nods like that's an acceptable answer as he glances towards Emerson's building.
“Can I go give her a hug?”
My throat tightens. I look up at the dark windows of her apartment. “I think she’d really like that.”
Here
Emerson
Coming down now xx
“Ems!” Crew squeals when he sees Emerson walk through the parking lot. She’s wearing a long satin skirt and an old Cross My Heart T-shirt that she cropped. It’s one I didn’t know she had, but the woman is full of surprises—I should just get used to it at this point.
Her dark hair is pulled back in a low bun at the nape of her neck, her bangs long enough to be tucked behind her ears, held with two barrettes clasped just above her ears.
She doesn’t have any makeup on, and I can see the way her eyes are still swollen and red-rimmed.
As she gets closer, she sees Crew waving at her through the window. Her face instantly lights up at the same time her eyes water.
She’s so fucking beautiful.
She opens Crew’s car door, and his arms instantly wrap around her neck, his body straining against the buckle of his car seat to get to her. She hugs him tightly against her before leaning back to look at him.
“That’s a pretty snazzy cast you got there, champ,” she says, a smile on her face as she quickly wipes a tear from the corner of her eye.
“I picked a pink one!” Crew holds up his cast between them. “And look!” he points to a few scribbles. “Mommy signed it. Daddy signed it. And a bunch of people signed it.”
Emerson takes Crew’s arm in his hand, examining all the Sharpie signatures.
Her lips part, and her eyes go to me.
“They all came to the hospital when they heard the news,” I answer before she can ask the question. Jack, Rumi, Ava, and Anderson all rushed over. Since I was with Jack when I got Talia’s call, I figured he was the one who let everyone know.
“I think it was Ava who said I’m stuck with them all now,” I say with a laugh, and I’m so happy she has friends like the ones she does—ones who welcomed me and Crew into their little found family so seamlessly.
“I charged my phone, but I haven’t looked at all their messages yet,” Emerson admits. She reaches through the open back door, brushing a lock of hair out of Crew’s eyes before tapping him lightly on the nose. He lets out a giggle, immediately distracted by his cast again.
A small smile tugs at her mouth, but it fades almost as quickly as it appears.
She closes the door and rounds the front of the car before sliding into the passenger seat beside me.
“It feels impossible to do right now,” she says quietly, pulling the door shut. Her purse slips from her shoulder into her lap as she digs through it for her phone. “But I know they’re worried.”
I reach across the center console and place a hand on her thigh, and her movements still. Her eyes lift to mine.
“Don’t worry about that right now,” I tell her.
I leave out the part where I already called everyone.
Rumi. Jack. Ava. Anderson. Talia too. I told them enough to ease their minds, but the rest isn't my story to share.
When Emerson is ready, she'll tell them herself. “They’re ready and waiting for you when you are.”
The grip she has on her phone loosens.
Her eyes go glassy again, emotion swimming to the surface.
Without looking away, she covers my hand with hers, holding tightly.
For a moment, neither of us says anything.
The car settles into silence around us, broken only by the faint sound of Crew humming to himself in the back seat.
“Are you ready to go?” I ask softly.
Emerson takes a deep breath, her shoulders rising before slowly falling again.
Then she nods. “Yeah,” she whispers. “I think so.”