Bree #2
Over the next hour, I helped her shower before finding one of Cazmir’s oversized shirts and a pair of lounge pants she’d be able to sleep in.
While she was in the bathroom, I stripped the guest bed she’d cried herself to sleep on earlier, replacing the damp pillowcase and wrinkled sheets with fresh linen before making another cup of chamomile tea.
It wasn’t much, but after watching my own father fall apart when we lost my mother, I’d learned grief wasn’t always about fixing what was broken.
Sometimes it was simply about making sure the person mourning remembered to eat, shower, change clothes, and lie down for a few hours, even if sleep never came.
When she finally stepped back into the room, her shoulders looked just a little lighter than they had an hour before, though the sadness in her eyes remained exactly where she’d left it.
I helped her into bed before handing her the warm mug of tea, waiting until she’d taken a few careful sips before pulling the comforter up around her shoulders.
“You’ve been taking care of everybody else.
Let somebody take care of you for a little while.
” Mrs. Valecrest looked at me over the rim of her mug before slowly setting it on the nightstand.
She reached for my hand, holding it between both of hers for several quiet moments as fresh tears gathered in her eyes.
“Elias adored you. The night y’all came over for dinner, after you left, he told me, “That young lady is good for our boy. She brings him peace.” He said he hadn’t seen Cazmir smile that much in years.”
The lump in my throat grew so large it became painful to swallow. “I never told you that because I figured one day he’d tell you himself.” She squeezed my hand a little tighter. “I’m sorry he doesn’t get that chance.”
By then, my own tears had started falling again. Not because she’d told me something I needed to hear, but because in the middle of losing the love of her life, she was still thinking about giving me a piece of him to hold onto.
I leaned over and wrapped my arms around her once more, holding her the same way she’d undoubtedly held Cazmir countless times throughout his life.
We stayed that way for a moment, neither one of us searching for words capable of making sense of something that never would.
Sometimes love wasn’t found in having the right thing to say.
Sometimes it was found in refusing to let someone grieve alone.
As I switched off the bedside lamp and pulled the bedroom door closed behind me, I realized somewhere between making tea, folding laundry, helping her shower, and listening to stories about the man she’d spent a lifetime loving, this house had started feeling less like a place I was visiting and more like a home I’d become a part of.
Nobody had asked me to step into the role. Nobody expected it of me. I simply loved Cazmir enough that loving the people who loved him became second nature.
***
The days that followed blurred together until I couldn’t remember where one ended and the next began.
As difficult as it had been for Cazmir to even step foot inside that house again, his mother had admitted the morning after Elias died that she wanted to go home.
She couldn’t explain it beyond saying she needed to be surrounded by the life they’d spent decades building together.
Every room carried a memory of her husband, every photograph hanging on the wall reminded her of another chapter they’d shared, and despite the tragedy that had unfolded there, she couldn’t imagine grieving him anywhere else.
It had been their home long before it became a crime scene, and she refused to allow the worst day of her life to erase all the beautiful years that came before it.
Neither one of us argued with her. Instead, Cazmir and I spent the better part of that afternoon doing the one thing neither of us ever imagined we’d have to do.
We worked alongside the crime scene cleaners, putting the house back together one room at a time.
Fresh paint covered the wall where blood had once dried, the furniture was rearranged exactly the way Mr. Valecrest always liked it, and every trace of violence was removed until, little by little, the house began looking like a home again.
Nothing could erase what had happened there, but at the very least his mother deserved the chance to remember the life she’d shared with her husband instead of the way she’d lost him.
Once she returned home, every morning seemed to start before the sun came up and every night ended long after everyone else had gone to bed.
Somewhere between the endless phone calls, casseroles arriving from neighbors, and the steady stream of visitors stopping by to pay their respects, grief settled into the house like another member of the family.
It never announced itself anymore. It simply lingered in every room, sitting quiet in the empty chair no one could bear to move, resting on the framed photographs spread across the dining room table, and hiding inside every conversation that eventually ended with someone whispering:
“I still can’t believe he’s gone.”
I never asked what needed to be done. Every time I noticed something falling through the cracks, I picked it up and kept moving.
One minute I was on the phone with the funeral home confirming final arrangements, and the next I was helping Mrs. Valecrest choose which photograph best captured the man she’d spent more than thirty years loving.
Some pictures showed the decorated police chief the city admired.
Others showed a younger Elias wearing blue jeans at a family barbecue with one arm wrapped proudly around a little boy sitting on his shoulders.
Every photograph told a different story, but they all had one thing in common. He was smiling.
Writing the obituary turned out to be harder than any of us expected.
How were you supposed to summarize an entire life inside a few carefully written paragraphs?
Every time Mrs. Valecrest started talking about him, she ended up crying before making it halfway through another memory, leaving Cazmir to finish her sentences while fighting tears of his own.
I eventually found myself sitting between them at the dining room table with a notebook in front of me, asking questions instead of writing facts.
Tell me about the man before the badge. What made him laugh?
What made him angry? What did he love doing when nobody was watching?
Little by little, the obituary stopped reading like the career of Chief Elias Valecrest and started sounding like the husband, father, mentor, and friend he’d spent a lifetime becoming.
The house rarely sat empty. Family members came from neighboring states, old academy classmates stopped by wearing stories instead of uniforms, and officers who’d worked under Elias for decades filled the living room sharing memories that made everyone laugh one minute and cry the next.
Every knock at the door brought another bouquet of flowers, another covered dish, another reminder of just how many lives he’d touched.
I found myself making coffee before anyone asked, reheating food people had forgotten to eat, answering the phone when Mrs. Valecrest couldn’t bring herself to speak, and reminding Cazmir to sit down long enough to finish an entire meal.
The two of them had become so consumed by everyone else’s needs that they were forgetting their own.
Most nights I slept no more than a few hours curled up on Cazmir’s couch before waking to another list of things that needed attention.
We still had to choose the music for the service, finalize flower arrangements, confirm the honor guard, meet with the pastor, and pick out the navy-blue suit Mrs. Valecrest insisted Elias would’ve wanted to wear one last time.
Through it all, Cazmir rarely complained. He just moved from one responsibility to the next with quiet determination, carrying his grief the same way he’d carried everything else in his life. With his head down and his shoulders squared, refusing to let anyone see just how heavy it really was.
It wasn’t until the evening before the funeral that the house fell quiet.
The last family member had gone home for the night, Cazmir had drifted off on the couch with paperwork still spread across his lap, and I found Mrs. Valecrest sitting alone at the kitchen table turning her wedding ring around her finger as she stared out the window into the darkness.
I poured us both another cup of tea before taking the seat beside her, neither of us feeling the need to interrupt the silence that had settled between us. After several minutes, she reached across the table and covered my hand with hers.
“You love my son.”
“I do.” She squeezed my fingers gently, her own eyes glistening beneath the kitchen light.
“So did his father.” The words stole every bit of air from my lungs. She smiled through the sadness, her gaze drifting toward the family photographs covering the kitchen counter.
“Elias used to tell me he could always tell the difference between a woman who loved our son’s potential and a woman who loved our son.” She looked back at me, tears slipping freely down her cheeks. “He knew which one you were the very first time you walked through our front door.”
I couldn’t stop crying. Not because she was giving me her approval. Because somewhere, in the middle of the worst week of all our lives, she’d given me one final gift from the man we’d all been mourning. Elias had already seen me as family long before I ever realized I’d become part of theirs.
The morning of the funeral arrived beneath an overcast Memphis sky, the kind that seemed to understand the weight of the day before any of us ever stepped outside.
The city felt as though even the traffic had chosen to move a little slower out of respect for the man we were preparing to lay to rest.