Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Jack
It happened on a Thursday.
We'd been finding our rhythm, Lily and I. That's what I'd been telling myself, anyway—that we were getting somewhere, that the distance between us was closing in the small ways that mattered.
She'd started leaving Gerald on the kitchen counter while she ate instead of keeping him in her lap.
She'd started talking about school unprompted, little things, Noah's latest performance and what Mrs. Alvarez had said about her weather project.
She'd started laughing more—not often, and not easily, but it was there, that laugh, surfacing when she least expected it. Sometimes when I least expected it too.
She still went quiet sometimes. It was a stillness that came over her when something caught her off guard: a smell, a song, a random Tuesday that looked too much like whatever Tuesdays used to look like.
I'd learned not to push. To just be there, in the room, available.
It was the only thing I knew how to do and I'd had to trust that it was enough.
Most days it felt like enough.
And then Thursday.
I heard her at two in the morning. Not the usual small movements, or the soft creak of her mattress as she turned. This was different. A sound I hadn't heard before, low and building, like something trying to get out.
I was in her room before I was fully awake.
She was sitting up in bed with her hands pressed over her ears and her eyes open but not seeing anything in the room.
Seeing something else entirely. Her face was twisted into a shape I’d never seen, and she was making a sound that wasn't quite a cry and wasn't quite a scream. It was the sound of something breaking.
And she was saying it over and over, a low, desperate prayer.
Mommy. Mommy. Mommy.
"Lily." I crouched at the side of the bed, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Lily, hey. I’m here. It’s Uncle Jack."
She didn't hear me. Her eyes were open and she wasn't there.
Mommy. Mommy.
"It's okay." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I've got you. I'm right here."
Nothing. The word kept coming, that same word, over and over, each one landing somewhere in my chest I didn't have a name for.
Her hands pressed harder over her ears and she rocked slightly, still calling for the person who wasn't going to come.
Who was never going to come. Who I could not be and could not replace and could not bring back no matter what I did or how long I stayed or how hard I held on.
Mommy.
I did the only thing I could think of. I sat on the bed next to her and put my arms around her and held on.
She fought it at first. Her whole body went rigid, pushing back against something I couldn't see. I held on. I didn't say anything. I just stayed there with my arms around her in the dark and let her fight whatever she was fighting and didn't let go.
It went on for a long time.
The word didn't stop. It changed shape. Sometimes desperate, sometimes just a word she was saying because it was the only word left, sometimes so quiet I had to strain to hear it. I held her through all of it.
I didn't tell her it was okay. I didn't tell her anything. There was nothing to say. Her mother was dead and she was five years old and the word kept coming. I sat in the dark and took it.
An hour in she was still going. Not with the same intensity; the terror had softened into something more like pure exhaustion, a child crying because she couldn't stop rather than because the fear was still acute.
But she wouldn't settle. Every time I thought she was going under, she'd surface again.
She'd whisper that word again, and we'd be back at it.
I faced the clock. Two fifty-eight.
I looked at Lily, at her face against my chest, at the way she was holding my shirt like if she let go something worse would happen.
I picked up my phone with my free hand.
It was wrong to call at this hour. I knew that. But I was three hours into a dark bedroom with a grieving five year old who wouldn't stop calling for her mother. I was out of road, and there was only one person I could think of who might know what to do.
I typed with one thumb, slowly, trying not to move the arm she was holding.
I need help. Lily's been having a nightmare for hours. She won't settle. She keeps calling for Cassie. I don't know what to do.
I stared at the message. Nearly deleted it.
Sent it.
Thirty seconds. Then:
I'm on my way.