Chapter 28
28
It always snuck up on me. Every year, I knew it was coming. Every year, I counted down the days, tried to prepare myself. Every year, I thought I’d be able to move through it with more ease and grace than the one before. And every year, I was wrong.
It never got easier—the grief, the devastation. It was always right there, waiting for me, as strong as ever.
I’d struggled through morning meeting like a ghostfly through honey. Freddie’s concerned stare across the staff room table alone made me dig my fingernails into my palms so hard one of them left a half-moon indentation in my skin. After the meeting, I’d asked Chan for the rest of the day off, and he hadn’t hesitated to give it to me, looking at me like I might break into pieces right in front of him. Which was exactly how I felt.
I should have been able to manage this better. I should have been compartmentalizing and developing coping strategies and accepting my loss—all the things the therapist I never had the courage to see would have taught me how to do. But the list of all the things I should have done stretched out farther than I could see. I should have been there. I should have made sure he was safe. I should have been a better mother. If I had been, maybe he’d still be here.
But he wasn’t here. He was gone. So like I did every year on this day, I disappeared, hiding in one of the ship’s sensory rooms, huddled under the domed ceiling, sitting on the floor I’d instructed the room’s climate controls to make feel hard and cold.
This was the only way I could get through it, bombarding myself with so much sensory input, there was no room left for anything else. Once I was completely overwhelmed by the wind and the thunder and the crashing waves all around me that I was numb, then I could remember him. Then I could look at the pictures and watch the vids I only let myself watch on this day. Then I could miss him without it ruining me.
I accessed the room’s controls again through my VC, turning up the wind until it drowned everything else out. Everything. Even the opening and closing of the sensory room’s door.
When a hand slid over my shoulder, I yelped.
“It’s okay,” Freddie said against my ear. “It’s only me.” His hand slid away from my shoulder as he sat down behind me. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said while I dimmed the audio. “I knocked, but it was so loud.”
“What are you doing here?” My voice was a rasp. “How did you know I was here?”
I felt more than heard his sigh. “Elanie.”
Turning around so we faced each other, both of us sitting cross-legged on the floor, I asked, “How? Nobody knows I come in here. How did she…” My shoulders sank as I closed my eyes. Elanie knew. She’d hidden it, but of course she knew. She knew everything .
“I’m not sure,” Freddie said. “She only said that today would be hard for you. That every year on this day, it’s hard, and you come in here. But Sunny, you look…” He scanned my face, deep grooves creasing his brow, bracketing his mouth, like it was agony for him to just look at me. “You’re hurting. And at the meeting this morning, you seemed so…lost.”
“Did Elanie tell you why?” With the question, I braced myself for the wave of panic certain to crash over me, that he might know my secret, that Elanie might have told him. “Did she say why today would be hard for me?”
He shook his head. “When I asked, she said she didn’t know.” He reached out, his fingers wrapping gently around my clenched fist. “You don’t have to tell me, Sunny. You don’t have to say a single word to me if you don’t want to. And I know there’s something going on between us right now, but can I sit with you? I can be quiet. I can just be here. So you’re not alone.”
Whatever I’d been feeling toward him, whatever confusion or frustration or hurt I’d been holding inside over the last few days, was so entirely dwarfed by my heartache now that it might as well have been a single particle of dust floating in the vastness of the universe. I wanted to tell him. I wanted to let him in. I was so tired of being alone. I needed someone else to carry this grief with me. So I tried. I really did. But my mouth only opened and closed, nothing coming out but worthless wisps of air. I had no idea what to say, where to start.
“ Stars , Sunny,” he said, his eyes turning glassy. “Do you need me to leave? I shouldn’t have come. I’m so sorry. I can go.”
“No,” I said, the panic I’d been waiting for arriving in full, sudden force. “Don’t leave.” But as hard as I tried, I still couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say the words. But maybe I didn’t have to. Maybe there was another way. “Can I send you something?”
“Of course,” he said. “Anything. Anything you need.”
Closing my eyes, I sent him the stream of pics and vids of Jonathan I’d been watching. When I opened my eyes again, his were distant, his gaze unfocused, his lips pressing together as a tear tracked down his cheek. As I watched his heart break right in front of me.
After a long moment, he asked, “Is this…? Is he?—”
My son, I commed, because it was easier that way. His name was Jonathan. He was five years old, and he was the love of my life. Swiftly, like a river rising over its banks, the words burst out of me. “I was going to have a busy week planning the New Year’s celebration on my old ship, and my parents had offered to watch him. So I put him on a shuttle back to Tranquis. It was a Class-Two Euphonia.”
Freddie cursed under his breath.
“As you probably know, the Class-Twos were all scrapped after several accidents due to a faulty reactor. Unfortunately”—I swallowed hard—“we were one of those several. They promised me it happened quickly, that he didn’t feel any pain. But he was all alone. I should have been with him. I shouldn’t have sent him at all. I should have known I was putting him in danger. I should have sensed it, felt it somehow. That was five years ago today. And soon, he’ll have been gone longer than he was ever here.”
Taking a deep, trembling breath, Freddie said, “He was beautiful.”
I tried to smile. “He was. And funny. He was really, really funny.”
Running his thumbs over my knuckles, Freddie gently worked my fists open. “I am so, so sorry. ”
“Me too,” I said with the most useless shrug.
We sat for a while that way, holding hands, not speaking. Until I admitted, “This is why I can’t be with you. Why you shouldn’t want to be with me. I am a broken woman, Freddie. I don’t think I’ll ever get over this. I’ll never get better. I’ll never move on. I’m scared all the time. I’m scared of getting too close. I’m scared of losing someone else. I’m scared of my memories, but I’m also scared of forgetting. I’m just…so scared.”
So softly I had to strain to hear him, he said, “I had a wife.”
My head whipped up. “What?”
“I was married,” he said, his gaze still pinned on our clasped hands. “We were high school sweethearts. I loved her. So much.”
The floor beneath me vanished. My mouth went dry, my throat spasming, and I gulped empty air. “Freddie.”
“Massive pulmonary embolism,” he continued. “The worst three words I know, in any language. One minute, she was fine, and the next, she was gone. Just like that, in my arms.” He blinked, another tear slipping free. “Her name was?—”
“Serena,” I finished for him, my chest caving in on itself, coring me out.
Looking up at me again, his jaw clenching, he nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her. And when you said her name, when you asked who she was, I should have reacted better. But it was so unexpected, how much I still missed her, how badly hearing her name?—”
“Hurt,” I said, because he didn’t need to explain. I understood, felt the pain of it in my own bones.
“I lost Serena over ten years ago, but sometimes it still feels like it was yesterday. And on the anniversary of that day, I don’t get out of bed, even now.”
I hadn’t thought it was possible for my heartbreak to claw itself even deeper into me. But that was the thing about grief: there was no bottom.
“I’m not telling you about Serena for sympathy or to diminish your loss,” he told me, squeezing my hands. “I just wanted you to know, that’s all. I wanted you to know that you’re not alone. And that you are not the only broken person here.”
It was such a heartfelt sentiment. But it was also so wrong. Because he had no idea, and he deserved one. He deserved to know how messed up I really was. So I wiped a tear away from his cheek, rubbed the wetness between my finger and thumb, and told him the truth.
“I have never cried for him, for Jonathan,” I said, knowing it would be the end of whatever remained between us. “Not when my parents called to tell me he was gone, not during the funeral, not even after, when I told my parents I couldn’t see them again, that it was too hard to be around family, around them. Who does that? What kind of mother doesn’t cry for her dead child?”
He said nothing. Because what was there to say? He only sat there for a long while, his eyes wet while mine remained dry. I waited for him to leave. To get up, say goodbye, and leave me for good.
But he didn’t leave. Instead, with his voice carrying over the muffled roar of crashing waves still rolling through the room, he asked, “Have you ever been to Neptune?”
I shook my head.
“Have you heard about its terraforming? Its people?”
“Only a little.” Neptune’s inhabitants rarely left their planet. There were rumors about the type of people who lived there—nomadic, fierce, dangerous.
“The terraforming on Neptune didn’t take as it should have. Now the planet is mostly desert, sand as far as the eye can see. Water is the most precious commodity. Not a drop is wasted.” With a level stare, he took my hands more firmly in his. “As a result, for the people of Neptune, crying is strictly forbidden.”
Another dry swallow burned in my throat. “I didn’t know that.”
“In such harsh climates, the mortality rate is astronomical. Especially infants, children. An entire planet of parents and grandparents burdened not only with surviving on one of the most inhospitable planets in my solar system, but also forbidden to fully mourn their losses.”
Nausea twisted my stomach. An entire planet of beings locked in grief. Like I was locked in grief. It was inconceivable.
But then Freddie said, “Unless it rains.”
“It doesn’t rain on Neptune, though, does it?” I asked.
“It does. Once or twice a year. But when it rains, and only when it rains, the people of Neptune are free to go outside, sit underneath the downpour, and weep over those they’ve lost. They call it the Sorrowing.”
“I can’t do that, though,” I said, having a hard time finding my breath, the room closing in all around me. “It never rains on the Ignisar .”
“It’s true,” he agreed. “It never rains on the Ignisar . But that doesn’t mean it can’t.”
A drop of water splashed onto my wrist. I stared at the trail it made over my skin when another drop fell, and then another. He must have accessed the room’s weather controls.
“What are you doing? ”
A raindrop landed on his nose. “Letting it rain.”
Scant drops became a sprinkling, a pattering on the floor, in my hair. And then the skies opened up. The rain fell, warm but insistent. It seeped into my eyes, my mouth, drenching me until I felt suffocated by it. “Stop,” I begged, pleading with him while I struggled to breathe.
You can stop this any time you want, he commed softly. The controls aren’t locked. After another gentle squeeze, the rain plastering his hair to his forehead, dripping off his lashes, he released my hands. Or you can let it rain, Sunny. You can mourn your loss. You can have your Sorrowing. It’s safe now. You’re safe.
I gasped, and water flooded my mouth. I spat it out, but my mouth filled again. The rain was driving, merciless. I shook. I trembled. I gnashed my teeth, wanting to scream, wanting to run, wanting to hit something, anything. But even though a frantic panic raged inside me, stronger than the storm, stronger than anything I’d felt since the accident, I didn’t access the controls. I didn’t make it stop.
And I wasn’t sure when I started to cry. But with the rain streaming down my face as if in solidarity, giving me permission, mixing with my tears, concealing them, I collapsed, folding to rest my head on the cold, wet ground as vicious sobs racked my body.
Freddie’s hands were on me, pulling me into his lap. His arms encircled me, holding me together as I dissolved, as the rain washed my tears from my face before they had a chance to drop from my eyes. Brushing his fingers over my hair, he rocked me from side to side. And I clung to him while everything poured out of me. Five years of stored-up grief, of unshed tears.
“I’ve got you,” he said. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. It’s all right. It’s all right. ”
Even through the unrelenting sobs, I felt him there with me. I felt how much I’d missed him—his lips, his touch, the warmth of his body, and how safe he made me feel. It felt like coming home.
After some time, the violence of my tears giving way to something less demanding, I turned my face to his. I cupped his cheek, feeling the wetness that was either from the rain or his own tears, maybe both. And then I kissed him while the storm faded gently away.
“I’m sorry,” I said against his lips. “I should have told you, talked to you. I should have been better.”
He pulled away, looking at me with a ferocity that stole my breath. “Don’t say that. Never say that. You couldn’t be better if you tried.”
Five years without more than a single tear, and now they wouldn’t stop. When I kissed him again, my tears slipped between our lips, salty and cool. Until he broke the kiss to take my face between his hands. “Wait. Who are we right now?” His eyes searched mine, desperate for an answer. “Who am I kissing? I need to know.”
More tears swelled, obscuring my vision. Because I knew what he was asking. Am I kissing Phoebe or Sunny? Is this real or only more make-believe?
Blinking my tears free so I could meet his gaze clearly, my voice breaking, shattering, I confessed. “I love you, Freddie—you and only you. I love you like I never thought I could love anyone again. And I think I have for a long while now.”
We were still soaked, but we were in his pod, on his bed, our clothes in a wet heap on the floor. He’d settled between my legs, kissing me, telling me he loved me, that he was sorry, that I was beautiful.
When he pushed into me, our hearts beating next to each other, our breaths soft and even, all I could do was kiss him back. And while we moved together, slow and careful, I realized that I had never made love to another being before. Not like this, not when it wasn’t for pleasure or power or fun, but only to let that other person inside me completely, holding nothing back, leaving no single dark corner of myself hidden from them.
With my gaze fixed on his while his hands cradled my head and mine cupped his face, I felt held, safe, loved. On this, the anniversary of the single worst day of my life, I felt loved. It was enough to make me start crying all over again.
But he was there, kissing my tears away one by one, making love to me until there was no sadness left.