Chapter 34 #2
"She didn't make it." The words come out in pieces. "Her heart. They did everything they could. She was… at the end she was at peace, I promise, she was so at peace, she just—"
I stop.
Because my dad's hand has gone tight around mine.
He lies very still in the bed, and he stares at the ceiling, and he doesn't make a sound, and somehow that’s the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.
The silence of it. The absolute, complete stillness of a man absorbing the kind of news that restructures everything, that reaches back through decades and changes the shape of every day that came before it.
His jaw moves once.
His eyes go bright.
He doesn't look at me.
“I did everything to make her better, you did everything.” The words come out in a whisper, and all I can do is nod, because if I speak, I will cry.
“She fought for so long, now…now she’s gone.”
He just stares at the ceiling and holds my hand and breathes, and I sit on the edge of his bed and lean my forehead against his shoulder and cry quietly, and he turns his face into my hair, and we stay like that for a long time.
Hayden doesn't move from the other side of the bed.
The hours pass slowly. We talk, eventually. Dad asks about the house, about whether I've been eating. I tell him about Hayden's family, about his mom's cooking, about Mason eating everything in sight. Dad laughs once, short and rough, and it sounds like the most important sound I've heard in weeks.
At some point he looks at Hayden and says, "You've been with her through this."
"Every day," Hayden says.
Dad nods slowly and looks at the ceiling again for a moment. "The funeral," he says. "When is it?"
"A few days," I say quietly. "We waited; we wanted you to be awake."
"The cost." His voice tightens slightly. "Livvy, the cost of everything, the hospital bills on top—"
"It's taken care of, Mr. B." Hayden's voice is even and complete. "Before you start."
Dad looks at him.
"Hayden—"
"It's done. The funeral, the arrangements, it's all handled. Before you say anything, I've already had this fight with Olivia, and I'll tell you what I told her. You're not doing this alone."
My dad is quiet for a long moment. He looks at Hayden with an expression I can't entirely read.
"Your family did this," he says.
"Yes."
"Then I'll thank them properly. When I'm on my feet."
"They won't want thanks," Hayden tells him.
"They're getting it anyway," My dad tells him, because I think my dad knows there is no point arguing about this.
Hayden's mouth moves, "Yes, sir."
Dad turns to me a small smile forms on his lips. "Your mom," he says softly. "She always loved him, you know. She used to say she knew you two would find your way back."
My throat tightens so hard I can't speak.
"She got to see it," he says. Almost to himself. "She got that." He squeezes my hand. "She got that, Livvy."
I press my lips together and nod because it's all I can do, and Dad reaches up with his other hand and puts it against my face the way he used to when I was small, his palm against my cheek, just for a moment.
Then he looks at Hayden over my head.
Something passes between them. Man to man, quiet and complete, the kind of thing that doesn't need words.
Hayden gives him a single nod.
My dad nods back.
I wear her favorite color. That was the one thing I knew, her favorite color.
When everything else felt impossible to think about, the flowers, the order of service, the words, all of it.
Mom’s color I knew. Pale blue. She wore it to every important thing.
My first day of school, parents' evenings, the day we moved, the day she sat across from a doctor who told her she was sick and she came home and made dinner and didn't say a word about it until she'd fed us both.
Pale blue.
It's the only decision I made entirely on my own and I made it without hesitating, and I think she would have liked that.
I'm dressed before anyone else is awake, mainly because I didn’t sleep all night.
I sit on the edge of the bed in Hayden's room in the pale blue dress and I look at my hands in my lap, and I breathe the way he taught me. In. Out. One thing at a time. Just the next thing, not all the things. Just this breath, then the next one.
Hayden stops in the doorway of the bathroom for a moment, taking me in, and then he crosses the room and crouches down in front of me.
He doesn't say anything at first. He just looks at my face with those beautiful eyes of his.
"She'd love that dress on you," he says quietly.
My throat tightens. I nod, because there’s nothing else I can say to him. I don’t have any words, but I’m scared if I open my mouth the only things which will escape are cries, and I don’t want that, not today.
He stands, and holds out his hand, and I take it, then he pulls closer and wraps his arms around me.
The funeral home is small, white and full of pale winter light.
Autumn has done the flowers and they're exactly right, soft whites and creams with small touches of blue woven through, nothing over the top. I don't know how she knew. I don't know how any of these people knew what my mother needed when I couldn’t piece it together myself, but they did.
The Crawfords fill the left side of the room. My dad’s in a wheelchair in the front row.
He wasn't supposed to be discharged yet. He told the doctors he was going to his wife's funeral, and they could either arrange transport or watch him leave. Eventually they arranged transport. They also sent a nurse with him, to make sure he’s okay, another thing I know Hayden has paid for, and I’m never going to be able to repay him.
Dad's pale, he hasn't said a word since we arrived, but he reached for my hand the moment I sat beside him, and he hasn't let go. I hold his hand, and I look at the coffin at the front of the room, and I breathe.
The service is short, the way Mum would have wanted.
She had no patience for things that went on longer than they needed to.
Meetings, queues, phone calls with people who didn't get to the point, she had a look, a particular press of her lips, and I find myself almost smiling thinking about it while the officiant speaks. Almost.
Someone reads something. A poem, I think. I hear the words going past without quite catching them.
They asked me if I wanted to say a few words, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I knew I would break down, and I needed to be strong today.
Then a song comes on, something she used to hum in the kitchen without knowing she was doing it. Beside me my dad's hand tightens around mine, his head drops forward, and his shoulders shake once. Just once, and I put my other hand over our joined ones, and I hold on.
Hayden's hand in on my lower back, letting me know he’s there for me.
I hold it together through the song, and the final words.
My dad's wheelchair moves carefully over the path, the Crawfords are around us like a tide that has simply decided this is where it belongs.
I hold it together across the grass. I hold it together as we gather at the graveside, the ground soft from last night's rain, the sky low and white and completely indifferent to all of us standing beneath it.
This is the part where the ground closes over her and she’s gone; she’s not coming back.
She will never sit in a kitchen and hum without knowing she's doing it.
She will never press her lips together at something that's taking too long, and she will never hold my face in her hands the way she did in that hospital room, or look at me like I was something she made and was proud of.
She's gone.
She's actually gone.
The sound that comes out of me is small and broken and it takes my legs out from under me.
Hayden catches me before I hit the ground.
Both arms wrap around me, the same way he always catches me, like he's always positioned for it, like some part of him is always ready. He pulls me against him, and I turn my face into his chest. I cry at my mother's graveside in the cold grey morning while the earth receives her.
He holds me, one arm around my back and one hand at the back of my head, and he lets me grieve for her properly.
Behind me I hear my dad's voice, very low, saying her name once.
Just once.
“Patricia”.
Like a goodbye.
It makes me cry harder.
Afterward, at the graveside, while others drift back toward the cars, I stand for a moment alone.
Hayden is a few feet behind me. I can feel him there without turning around.
I look at the flowers on the fresh earth; the pale blue threaded through the white.
"I'm going to be okay," I say quietly.
I turn around, and Hayden is there, hands in his pockets. I walk back to him. He puts his arm around me without a word, and we walk back across the wet grass together, toward my dad, toward his family, toward the cars waiting to take us somewhere warm.
I don't look back.
But I carry her with me.
I always will.