Chapter 44
Blake
“She’ll be here,” Skye says, his hand resting heavy on my shoulder as the light rain lands against his suit jacket. “She’s probably just running late.”
I jerk out of his grip, and he gives me a sidelong glance before turning back to our parents, pulling one of Mom’s hands into his own and giving it what I’m sure is meant to be a comforting squeeze.
Comfort.
I doubt Tracy was comfortable as her head broke through the windshield of Whitney’s Jeep. I doubt Tracy was comfortable as she was impaled by a fucking metal post. I doubt she was comfortable as she somehow drug herself toward my sister, bleeding out along the way.
Whitney’s the only one who’s comfortable now. She got to take the easy way out and avoid the consequences of her decisions.
The funeral passes in a blur. The priest says words I don’t hear.
People hug me and offer condolences that mean nothing.
Peonies are placed on Whitney’s headstone, and her body is lowered into the ground and covered before I’ve even realized it’s happened.
Chairs are folded up and hauled away from the gravesite by workers who cast me pitying glances, and all the while I sit here under an umbrella by myself, watching a fucking swing in a nearby tree sway.
The bottoms of my slacks are soaked from the rain falling onto the too tall grass. I reach up, loosening the tie at my throat and undoing the top button of my shirt. It does little to help me breathe.
I’m suffocating. I’m drowning and I need her here to help me find the surface. I need her here to reassure me this isn’t the end. I need her here to comfort me—she’s the only thing that ever has.
Dusk falls, and the ground around me turns from damp to muddy. A chill seeps into my bones, but does little to quell the fire churning through my veins as I sit here by myself, under this umbrella, waiting for the woman who would never come as I watch that swing sway in an invisible breeze.
It becomes obvious then, an undeniable truth I feel in every fiber of my being.
The accident didn’t just take Whitney from me. It took Tracy, too.
To Be Continued