CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD
I took an extra pill after the panic attack.
Just one.
Just enough to take the edge off and let my body finally give out.
We decided not to tell my dad it was happening again.
He has enough going on right now.
And I already have so much to feel guilty about that adding one more thing to the pile felt wrong.
The pile is very tall right now.
Structurally unstable.
We’re not adding to it.
· · ·
I wake up to Cassian sitting on the edge of my bed looking annoyingly awake and well-rested.
“Morning, sleepyhead.”
“Hi.” I pull the covers over my face. “Don’t look at me. I’m too embarrassed.”
“You literally cry all the time,” he says. “I’ve seen you cry at a commercial.”
“It was a very emotional commercial.”
“It was for paper towels.”
“The dad was proud of his daughter —”
He rips the covers off.
All of them.
In one motion.
My entire naked body exposed to the morning air like some kind of ambush.
And my pill bottle, sitting on the nightstand, suddenly looking at me with so much judgment.
Rude. I grab it and shove it in the drawer.
Then I throw myself at him.
Fully.
Completely naked.
Like a deranged flying monkey with nothing to lose.
We wrestle.
Me: naked.
Him: pajamas.
Neither of us: thinking clearly.
I become aware of two things simultaneously.
One: I am winning.
Two: the door is open.
My dad passes by in the hallway on his way to the kitchen.
He does not stop.
He does not look directly at us.
He simply keeps walking with the specific dignity of a man choosing not to process what he just saw.
“NOT A SEX THING,” I yell after him.
There is no response.
The reasons to kill myself are just adding up every day.
I lock the door.
Should have done that first.
Noted for next time.
Every time.
Forever.
I sit back on the bed and look at Cassian, who is trying very hard not to laugh and failing completely.
“Not a word,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face said something.”
He puts his face in neutral.
“So,” I say, with as much dignity as a naked person can manage. “What’s the plan for today?”
He looks at me for a moment.
Serious underneath the amusement.
Like he’s been thinking about this.
· · ·
“I think we should go see her,” he says.
I know what he means.
I sit with it for a second.
And then I nod.
Because he always knows.
He has always known before I do.
I’ve been carrying this guilt like a stone in my chest and he saw it yesterday in the garden and now here we are.
He always knew me better than I knew myself.
· · ·
I get dressed.
Go out to the garden.
Choose the daisies carefully — her favorite colors, the ones she always pointed out, the ones she was most proud of — and start putting together a small bouquet.
Cassian appears next to me and attempts to help.
I watch him crumple three stems in approximately thirty seconds.
“Thank you,” I say. “That’s so helpful.”
“I’m helping.”
“You’re destroying.”
“But I’m cute.”
I take the flowers back.
He lets me.
He’s pouting.
He really is so cute.
It’s honestly a problem.
Eleven years and he’s still the most annoyingly beautiful person I’ve ever seen and he knows it and uses it to get away with things.
I let him.
Every time.
I always will.
· · ·
The drive is quiet in the good way.
His hand finding mine on the center console.
The radio low.
Neither of us needing to fill it.
· · ·
The funeral feels like something that happened to someone else.
The wake too.
I was barely present through any of it.
Existing in that soft blurry place the extra pills made.
Going through motions.
Shaking hands.
Accepting hugs from people whose names I didn’t register.
I don’t think I said goodbye.
Not really.
Not in any way that counted.
Maybe that’s what’s been sitting on my chest.
This unsaid thing.
· · ·
We park.
Cassian waits by the car without being asked.
I carry the daisies.
I spend an hour at her grave.
I tell her everything.
I tell her about Cassian.
About the window and the worst night and him still being there in the morning and what that meant.
She knew about him — she always knew about him — but I tell her anyway.
I tell her I’m in love.
I tell her I’m happy in a way I didn’t know I was allowed to be.
I tell her my dad tends her garden every morning.
That the daisies are still going.
That he talks to her sometimes when he thinks no one can hear.
That he’s still the same man she married even without her there to remind him.
I tell her she should really use whatever ghost powers she has to teach him to cook.
Because it’s getting dire.
She would’ve laughed at that.
But I’m so serious.
· · ·
I tell her I’m sorry for not being present enough when she was here.
For all the mornings I was somewhere in my own head instead of in the kitchen with her.
For the granola bar and the good and walking out the door.
I tell her I see her everywhere.
In the garden.
In every corner of the house.
In the way my dad smiles when something catches him off guard.
In the way Cassian is gentle with me.
The same specific gentleness she taught him.
The way he shows up when things are bad and doesn’t say anything and just stays.
He learned that here.
From her.
From all of us.
· · ·
She’s still here.
In everything she left behind.
I tell her I love her.
That I’ll take care of dad.
That I’ll go to college and be everything she knew I could be.
That I’ll be happy.
That I’ll try to be happy not just when it’s easy but when it isn’t.
That I’ll keep the window open.
I leave the daisies.
Walk back to the car.
Cassian is leaning against the passenger side.
He doesn’t ask how it went.
He just opens his arms.
I walk directly into them.
And then I kiss him.
Full and grateful and completely snot-filled because I’ve been crying for an hour and I am nothing if not consistent.
He makes a noise of mild protest.
Kisses me back anyway.
“Disgusting,” he says against my mouth.
“You love me,” I say.
“Unfortunately,” he says.
I laugh.
· · ·
I feel okay.
I actually, genuinely, in a way that isn’t medication or distraction or denial — feel okay.
Not fixed.
Not healed.
But okay.
Like something that had been wound too tight has finally let out a little slack.
Like I can finally get some air in.
Like I said goodbye.
We get home and I find my dad in the kitchen.
Making dinner.
Staring at a pot of something like it’s personally wronged him.
· · ·
“Dad.”
He turns.
And I just —
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ve been — I know I’ve been somewhere else. I know I left you with everything and I just disappeared into my own —”
“Ro.”
“I’m sorry. You deserved better than that. She would’ve wanted me to be here with you and I just —”
“Rowan.”
He crosses the kitchen.
Pulls me in the way he has my entire life.
Both arms.
All the way.
· · ·
“I wanted you to be happy,” he says into my hair. “That’s all I’ve wanted. I hated watching the light go out of your eyes.
I would have done anything to give it back.”
I hold on.
“How you got through it is not for anyone to judge,” he says. “Not even you.”
I don’t say anything.
“She would’ve pushed Cassian through that window herself,” he adds.
I laugh into his shoulder.
He laughs too.
The kitchen fills with it.
We abandon whatever was happening on the stove.
Cassian quietly turns off the burner.
Nobody acknowledges this.
We end up in the movie room.
· · ·
All three of us.
My dad picks something —
some action movie from the nineties that my mom always pretended to hate and secretly loved — and we pile onto the couch.
My dad in the middle.
Me on one side.
Cassian on the other.
The blanket.
Her blanket.
The soft one.
Spread across all three of us.
· · ·
Three-way snuggle.
With my dad.
I never thought I’d say those words but here we are.
The movie starts.
My dad steals the popcorn.
Cassian takes it back.
My dad steals it again.
I watch both of them.
· · ·
This.
This is what she built.
This specific thing — three people on a couch with her blanket and her movie room and her popcorn bowl — is what she made room for.
She always made room.
I pull the blanket up.
And let myself be held by all of it.
It feels like she’s here laughing with us too.