Chapter Four
Four
My dad died on a Tuesday.
I’d been conditioned to believe if I was good and polite, nothing bad could happen to me.
As if a halo deterred misfortune. Happy in my mindless optimism, swimming in an endless belief that life was full of beauty and wonder, and anything less couldn’t reach me if I did my chores and smiled at strangers.
Two weeks into the school year, the sky was gray, air crisp.
I wore a daisy-printed sweater that one of my students told me looked like summer.
It was my second year working full-time at Spencer Elementary and the imposter syndrome raged, whispering that I wasn’t ready, or good enough.
But the kids liked me, and my fellow teachers welcomed me warmly.
I’d fallen in love with teaching while helping raise my sister; I couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything else.
My life had fallen into place, surely because I’d done everything I was supposed to do.
Three other teachers sat around the lounge during lunch, making small talk. My phone vibrated. I almost didn’t answer it. When the voice on the other end mentioned the hospital, the world skidded to a stop.
A few words stuck. Emergency contact. Accident. ICU.
And I knew. She gave almost nothing away, but the slightest edge of sympathy digging into the nurse’s tone told me my dad was dead before I hung up the phone.
Hands shaking, vision blurry, a colleague led me out of the lounge and walked me outside for some fresh air while she called my boyfriend. Gray sky. Cool breeze. Dead dad.
And that simply made no sense because I’d seen him Sunday night. We had dinner, eating our weight in clam cakes and chowder, laughing at how bitchy the contestants were in an old season of MasterChef.
Later, I’d learn someone ran a red light. That his heart stopped in the ambulance and doctors worked for nearly half an hour to save him. That by the time his heart miraculously restarted, his brain couldn’t follow through.
I was a ghost, barely in my body. Shawn arrived and held me in the parking lot, whispering the same thing over and over.
He’s okay. He’ll be okay. And I already knew he wouldn’t, but I let Shawn keep saying it, as if the repetition might sink in and tattoo the words into truth.
I needed him to keep saying it, especially once we made it to Rhode Island to pick up Phoebe.
She believed it. I hated him a little for that.
A blurry nightmare in which an open gray sky danced overhead as we sped to the hospital.
Stepping out of the elevator, we were met by the ICU waiting room decorated for Halloween, and a nurse who knew who we were.
Eyes tracked us down the hall, heads turning, as if grief and fame bore the same face.
We passed rooms of people in white beds hooked up to various machines.
The ceiling tiles were the same as my classroom’s.
He looked the same, save for a few cuts and bruises. He could’ve been asleep. But a machine breathed for him, wires protruded from his chest, and ominous beeping came from the machines around him.
The doctor sat us down and told us what I already knew. Shawn wrapped me in his arms, holding me tight. Phoebe clutched our dad’s hand and kept asking the doctor if there was any chance at all, and they never gave her a straight answer.
Nurses moved around us and we were supposed to pretend they weren’t there.
It felt imperative to keep my hands in my pockets.
Nurses discussed his condition around us, not to us.
A social worker dropped in to express her condolences and gave us her card, assuring us she’d be around.
I sat in a stiff chair beside the hospital bed, watching the pointless heart monitor. My shoulder was squeezed by everyone who entered the room, whether they made eye contact or not.
When a different doctor arrived to check whether my dad’s organs were viable for donation, I quietly excused myself and threw up in the restroom. On my way back, the social worker stopped me to ask if my mother was in the picture, and suddenly trauma gave way to something bigger.
Dad loved us so wholly, it never felt like we were missing out. And now, for the first time in the fourteen years since his decades-long situationship admitted she wasn’t cut out to be a mother and signed over all parental rights, I felt the absence. I felt fucking unmoored.
Phoebe didn’t have anyone else. Just me.
I couldn’t fall apart.
We pulled the plug the next morning, because he would’ve hated living like that. My dad’s boss paid for the funeral. I took a leave from work for bereavement, technically, because there’s not an official term for taking custody of your sister when your father dies.
Phoebe spent a few nights at the apartment I shared with Shawn, crashing on the couch.
Neither of us could stomach going back to Dad’s.
I knew it would be hard for Shawn, but it wore on him faster than I anticipated.
Maybe it was the grief, or the sudden responsibility of caring for a teenager, or maybe there were underlying problems my dad’s death merely brought to light.
Within a week, Phoebe and I moved into our dad’s house, and Shawn ended things six days after that.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said after driving all the way from Boston. “It’s just too much. I love you. You know I love you. But this isn’t what I signed on for.”
Every good thing in my life vanished, leaving me with shattered remains.
My sister who wouldn’t even look at me. The house I grew up in, haunted.
My best friend texting every hour to check in.
My dad’s wisdom, smile, silly jokes, every ounce of kindness and light he saved for me at any given moment, gone forever.
I felt like a husk of a person, every morning spent sitting at the kitchen island where my dad or I used to pour Phoebe cereal, staring out the window to the creek where we used to play, listening to my sister’s sobs turn into stomped feet and slammed doors.
Desperate measures didn’t seem like enough, but one night I asked Phoebe how she felt about selling the house.
I’d been living in Boston since college; Arden and Noah were there, my job, a life that wasn’t full of ghosts.
I would’ve stayed in Rhode Island if Phoebe asked.
I would’ve lived in that haunted house and driven around the city where my father’s heart stopped beating and I would’ve died inside every day, but if Phoebe had the slightest hesitation, I would’ve done it.
Instead, I saw a spark of relief in her eyes.
I never saw that relief again. Phoebe only seemed angrier in Boston. I tried so hard and she drifted further and further from me.
Dad was gone. Phoebe was running.
My life split in two on a Tuesday. You don’t come back from that.
Nearly a week after Phoebe’s last indiscretion, I began wishing for angry calls from Principal Chambers. At the very least, acting out meant Phoebe felt something.
Work became excruciating. All day, my body tensed in anticipation, waiting for my phone to blare with another complaint from Phoebe’s principal.
My brain began throwing out terrible ideas on an hourly basis, like start a fire or slash a tire.
It was bad. I knew that. But I had to believe it was forgivable because dammit, I just wanted my sister to be okay, and she wasn’t.
I’d get home from work and Phoebe would be in her room doing homework in silence.
Considering our dad routinely wore earplugs around the house to block out the sound of her music, this was more than a little concerning.
I overcorrected. Since we returned the letter, Phoebe had sulked her way through Ice Cream Sunday, Chinese Takeout Night, and Surprise Gift of the Month.
Growing more desperate, I recruited Arden and Noah to pool together enough money for tickets to see Phoebe’s favorite band. She barely managed a smile.
I knew my sister. After nine months, I could tell the difference between apathy and genuine depression. We’d reached the latter, and it scared the shit out of me.
Her therapist told me we had to wait it out.
Everyone goes through rough patches, grief isn’t linear.
But the thing is, I’d seen a difference in Phoebe for a minute there.
A noticeable difference after nine months of stagnancy.
Joy that was snuffed out before it got the chance to spark.
And as much as I agreed only time healed wounds, a nagging thought kept insisting there might be a shortcut.
The idea flitted around my head all week, growing wilder each time I passed Sequest on my way to and from work.
Somewhere inside that building sat the answer to my problems. Or at least half an answer.
Phoebe wouldn’t magically cheer up if I managed to coax information out of Benji Dexter, but at least she wouldn’t be left wondering.
Would he get the letter to Catalina? Did he know where she was? Did he still care?
I missed Phoebe’s smile so much, I burned through a jumbo pack of TUMS. Stress raged, my esophagus was eating itself, and the only thing I could think to do was beg a stranger for information about his love life. Nothing had ever felt so pathetic.
By the end of the week, I anticipated the quiet upon walking into the apartment. I dropped my bag by the door and slipped off my shoes, then padded to Phoebe’s bedroom, racking my brain for something that might cheer her up. My list of things that wouldn’t work had grown longer than what would.
Three things might have to get downgraded again.
I knocked softly, only pushing the door open once she grunted.
Her room was like mine: mostly empty, boxes everywhere, her backpack unzipped with books strewn across the floor, her bare mattress sending a tiny shock of guilt through me—I’d buy sheets and put them on myself, if I had to. This, I could control.
Phoebe sat at the edge of the mattress, laptop balanced on her lap as she typed furiously.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m back.”
She kept typing.