Chapter 39 Sloane
SLOANE
Idon’t remember taking my shoes off.
I remember the sound they made when they hit the floor, and then everything after that turns into a smear of black fabric and casseroles and hands touching my arm like they think grief is something you can rub away if you do it gently enough.
I remember smiling.
Not because I wanted to. Because my face did it on autopilot, because people kept saying things like, “He was so proud of you,” and “He’s not in pain anymore,” and “What a fighter,” and my body kept nodding along like we were all talking about the weather.
Like Pops wasn’t the center of my entire universe.
Like he wasn’t…gone.
I held it together all day.
I held it together when I stood in the church and felt the air press against my throat so hard I thought I might choke.
I held it together when they said his name like it belonged in the past tense.
I held it together when I watched Cameron’s jaw clench like he was white-knuckling his way through every second.
I held it together when people hugged me and cried into my shoulder, like I was the stable thing they could cling to.
I held it together at the graveside.
That part is hazy, the sun too bright, the grass too green, the sky too blue in that California way that feels cruel. The wind barely moved. The world didn’t even have the decency to look like it was mourning.
I remember the sound of dirt.
Not the first shovel. I didn’t stay for that. I couldn’t.
But there’s a sound that comes after—heavy and dull and inevitable—and it sits somewhere deep in my chest now like a stone I swallowed by accident and can’t dislodge.
I held it together during the car ride back, my hands folded in my lap, like if I gave them permission to move, I’d come undone in a way I couldn’t put back together.
And then we came back to the house.
My house.
His house.
Our house.
Only it isn’t, not really. It’s just walls and rooms and a hallway that still smells faintly like the soap hospice used and a bedroom door that stays shut because I can’t open it—because if I open it and he’s not there, something in me will snap clean in two.
People filled the living room like a tide.
Neighbors and old friends and teammates and parents of kids Pops coached a decade ago. People I didn’t even know who spoke his name like they had a claim to him too.
They brought food. They brought flowers. They brought stories.
They stayed too long.
Or maybe time just stopped being linear the second I heard Cameron’s voice on the phone, and everything after that is punishment.
I stood in the kitchen and thanked people.
I accepted hugs.
I listened to “He was a good man” repeated so many times it started sounding like a chant.
Good man. Good man. Good man.
As if goodness can protect you.
As if cancer cares what kind of man you are.
There were moments when my eyes landed on something small and ordinary—the coffee mug by the sink, the basket of clean towels on the counter, Pops’s favorite chair in the corner—and my stomach dropped like I’d missed a step on the stairs.
Because those things still exist.
But he doesn’t.
And that makes no sense.
My brain keeps trying to rewrite reality.
It keeps waiting for a door to open down the hall. For his voice to call out “kiddo?” in that half-tired, half-amused tone like he caught me overthinking again.
It keeps expecting a text.
A knock.
A cough.
Anything.
But grief is not a movie where the dead come back in the third act.
Grief is just…a suffocating silence where someone used to be.
I don’t cry.
Not in front of them.
Not in front of anyone.
My body has decided tears are too dangerous. Like if I start, I won’t stop, and there’s still too much to do. There are still people in my house, eating from paper plates, talking about my dad as if he’s an anecdote instead of the axis my life spun around.
So I stay upright.
I stay polite.
I keep my voice steady.
I do the thing Pops taught me without ever saying it out loud: handle it.
I don’t look at the clock because I can’t bear to see how the day keeps moving.
I don’t look at Cameron too long because if I see the way he’s holding himself together with tape and teeth, I’ll break just from watching him.
And I don’t look at Logan for more than a second at a time because Logan looks at me like he’s trying to memorize me in case I disappear too.
He stays close without touching.
Like he’s learned the shape of my boundaries in the last eleven days, and he’s respecting them the way you respect a wound.
Every so often, he asks if I need anything—water, food, air—and every time I say no, because if I need something, it means I’m human, and if I’m human, I might fall apart.
So I say no.
Because no is easy.
Because no keeps the floor under me.
Eventually, the crowd thins.
Someone takes the last casserole dish and promises to return my Tupperware. Someone hugs me again and whispers, “Call me if you need anything,” and I nod like I’m capable of calling anyone for anything ever again.
The front door closes.
And then—quiet.
Not the earlier quiet, but the morning-before-the-funeral quiet.
This is a different kind.
This is the quiet that happens when the world stops visiting.
When you’re left with the fact that life is still yours to live, even though you don’t want it.
I stand in the living room and stare at nothing.
Cameron is by the window, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched like the weight of the day finally landed all at once. He looks older than he did two weeks ago. Older than he did a year ago. Like grief moved into his bones and rearranged the furniture.
Logan is in the kitchen, rinsing plates that don’t need to be rinsed, cleaning because his hands need something to do besides shake.
I can hear the water running.
It’s too normal.
Everything is too normal.
I inhale.
The air tastes like flowers and food and the faintest trace of Pops’s cologne that’s still trapped in the couch cushions.
My throat closes.
I swallow hard, forcing it open again.
I look at them—my brother, my…Logan—and the words come out before I can stop them.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
Cameron turns toward me immediately. His eyes look glassy, but his voice stays careful. “You okay?”
I almost laugh.
Instead, I nod. “Yeah.”
The lie doesn’t even hurt anymore. It’s just what I say to keep people from trying to fix me.
Logan’s hands stop moving in the sink. He doesn’t turn around right away, like he’s giving me dignity.
Then his voice, low. “Do you want me to…?”
He doesn’t finish.
Do you want me to sit outside the door? Do you want me to stay? Do you want me to hold you? Do you want me to leave?
Too many options. Too much emotion.
I shake my head once. “I’m fine.”
There it is again.
Automatic.
Cameron nods like he believes me because he needs to believe me.
Logan goes still in that way he does when he wants to argue and refuses.
I turn and walk down the hallway.
Each step feels like it belongs to someone else.
My bedroom door is open. My bed is made. The black dress I wore today hangs over the chair like a dead thing.
I don’t look at it.
I keep moving.
The bathroom is at the end of the hall, the one I share with Logan—the one that still has his toothbrush in the holder and my hair ties on the counter and Pops’s extra-strength ibuprofen in the cabinet because he always got headaches long before the tumor made them mean something.
I shut the door.
Lock it.
My hands are steady.
My chest is not.
I turn the shower on.
The pipes groan for a second, then the water starts cold and sharp, splashing against porcelain. I adjust it, watching the steam begin to rise like breath.
I stand there with my fingers on the faucet until the water is hot enough to feel like punishment.
Then I step out of the rest of my clothes like I’m stripping off a costume.
Black knee-highs. Black bra. Black underwear.
I fold them neatly because my brain still thinks neatness can control chaos.
Then I step into the shower.
The water hits my shoulders, hot and heavy, and for a second, it steals my breath.
It should feel comforting.
It doesn’t.
It feels like being under something relentless.
I tilt my face up into it, letting it run over my closed eyes, down my cheeks.
And my body finally—finally—lets go.
It starts as a sound I don’t recognize.
A broken inhale.
A hitch.
Then another.
Then my throat opens, and grief pours out of me like it’s been waiting behind my teeth all day, clawing for a way out.
A sob rips through my chest so hard my knees buckle.
I reach for the wall, fingers sliding against wet tile, and then I’m down—sitting on the shower floor with water hammering my back, arms wrapped around my stomach like I can hold myself together if I squeeze hard enough.
It doesn’t work.
Nothing works.
I cry like I’ve been holding my breath for eleven days.
Like I’ve been choking on every “I’m sorry” and every “He was such a good man” and every “Call me if you need anything.”
Like I’ve been swallowing the sound of a shovel hitting dirt.
Like I’ve been swallowing the image of a casket.
Like I’ve been swallowing Pops’s last “I love you” until it turned into a knife.
My mouth opens, and a sound comes out that doesn’t sound human.
It’s raw.
It’s ugly.
It’s the kind of grief you don’t see in public.
The kind you can’t perform.
“I don’t want this,” I gasp, words breaking apart as soon as they leave me. “I don’t want—Pops, I don’t—”
His name shatters me.
Because saying it doesn’t bring him back.
Because nothing brings him back.
I press my forehead to my knees and sob so hard my ribs ache, like my body is trying to expel something poisonous.
The water keeps running.
The steam keeps rising.
The world keeps moving outside this locked door.
And I sit on the shower floor and finally let myself admit the truth I’ve been refusing since 4:54 a.m. that Thursday morning.
He’s not coming home.
And neither am I.
Not to the version of my life where Pops exists.
Not ever again.