Chapter 2
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO THIS?
In The Stars by Benson Boone
Natalie
“Please stop apologizing,” Bella says as we walk to Nick’s resting place. How did I forget? I should be ashamed of myself. I knew Nick my entire life, and he was mine for half of it.
“I am sorry, and it’s—”
“It's important for adults to apologize, I know,” she interrupts, grabbing the flowers from my hand and walking ahead of me as I carry her sister on my hip.
Vero fell asleep on the way here, and I can’t blame her.
At three, her life is full of therapies and never-ending pushing her body to the limit in the name of being where she needs to be developmentally.
I understand the benefits of early intervention, but it doesn’t negate the fact that it’s exhausting for an adult, let alone a kid.
Bella’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes as she walks backwards, nearing Nick’s grave.
“I know, okay? We get it. But you overdo it sometimes. You’re human.
You forget. Forgive yourself.” She spins in a circle, her dress swirling with her as it did the first time we came here.
The first time she had to come say goodbye to her father, six feet underground.
It hits me like a thousand pounds to the chest. So young and already so close to loss.
“Life’s clearly too short, Mom. Give yourself some grace.” Sometimes, I forget who the adult is in this relationship, and the pain hits even harder.
She was so young when her world came crumbling down, cracking into a million pieces and burying both her parents under the rubble. Her dad never to be seen again, and the mother she used to know replaced by a shell of a human.
I’m the shell.
The impostor.
She falls to her knees in front of her dad’s grave as I sit on the worn bench facing it, cradling a little girl who never knew her dad or a mother who wasn’t tainted by grief.
This bench stands far back enough to allow Bella space to talk to her father in private.
It’s like I blinked, and she’s changing right in front of my eyes, so grown but still so little.
She’s full of hope and dreams and feelings, full of wants, needs, joy, sorrow. She’s vocal about them, too, letting everyone who would listen know. Unfortunately, I can’t protect her from everything.
I try.
I really do. But in the end, there was nothing we could do to protect her from knowing this pain.
Bella laughs with her eyes closed, sitting on the ground, her dark hair spilling over our last name on the silver gravestone.
Nick Bradshaw.
Dad they weigh the same in my eyes.” And he was the best at both.
His relationship with Bella was stellar, and it has carried through even now, years later. This moment—our girl, laughing and talking to her father as if it hasn’t been years since he came home.
She opens her big blue eyes, just like his, and smiles at me, nodding. I wonder sometimes if she can talk to ghosts, if she can communicate with him. I wonder if he tells her to reassure me he’s fine, that we will be okay.
It’s like he’s gone, but a piece of his steadfast heart and his entire legacy is living on through his daughter. His fourteen-year-old daughter, who gives me more peace and hope than anything else.
Vero stirs in my arms, rubbing her eyes with her chubby hands.
I sometimes forget how small she is until her hand disappears as mine swallows hers whole. When her soft, almost blonde eyelashes kiss her tiny, freckle-dusted cheeks, and when her bright green eyes look at me like I hung the moon. Because in her eyes, I did.
“Hi, baby,” I whisper as she smiles. A touchless hug. A warm pillow and a hushed ‘everything will be alright.
I wonder sometimes if whoever let Nick die knew, after he was gone, taking half my life with him, I was going to need a reminder it would be okay. That life goes on, that I still have reasons to fight, to stay, so they gave me her.
Years and years of trying, and so much hope lost. Every month, year after year, and when the wish finally came true, another one was lost.
I know I didn’t trade him for her. I know that. But sometimes, I wonder who needs whom more.
“Mama,” she whispers in her groggy voice. I still catch my breath when I hear it. After two years of speech therapy, hearing her say anything—especially the title I wear with the most pride—is everything.
“Are you ready to visit Daddy?” Her eyes search the space, but she doesn’t understand who Daddy is.
She knows the cold stone half-buried in the ground is what we call Daddy.
The pictures on the wall at home, the videos we watch on Sundays, or the ones I watch silently in my room when I miss him are who we call Daddy.
She doesn’t know any better, or at least, I hope she doesn’t. All I want her to know is that both of us loved her wholeheartedly, even though she can’t see him. Even though she never met him.
She does see Bella, the smile on her face, brighter than the moonlight over the graves. She wiggles herself free from my arms and runs until she lands in her older sister’s arms.
Bella scoops her sister into her lap, and while she brushes Vero’s copper hair, her mouth moves in a conversation between the three of them.
I give them distance. Who am I to be privy to the relationship two girls have with their father who died a hero?
With their father, who was such a fundamental part of their lives.
With a father this whole town misses every single day.
Who I miss every day.
“We did good,” I whisper into the air, the June breeze carrying my words. A small leaf falls on top of his grave, followed by a little cardinal flying behind them.
I see you.
I let out a breath. I don’t need to voice the words for me to know he knows.
I miss you. It was too soon. How am I supposed to do this? Who am I without you?
How does one live without the love that shaped them? The love that made them the adult they are today? I grew up next to him, my life intertwining with his—my heart and soul lived in him.
One day at a time. My mom’s words echo in my head at the mere thought. You don’t quit living. You don’t quit, period.
You cry, you miss, you suffer, you scream in anger, and then you pick yourself back up for them.
For you.
But twice a year, I let myself miss him more. I let my grief drown me, and I don’t pretend I’m okay.
Except this year, one of those days came, and I didn’t even notice, and that almost hits twice as hard. Something about being so busy at work and then seeing how sad that guy looked. For once, I didn’t feel like the one carrying all the sadness and guilt.
He came in looking defeated, as if life had given him an answer he wasn’t expecting.
I felt a gnawing in my stomach that screamed to help him feel better.
I was so lost in figuring out why those whiskey eyes looked like they were drowning in a pool of hurt, which is wild to even think about, since I have no clue what they look like regularly. I don’t even know his name.
I shake my head and the lie with it—the one where I don’t know what those feelings were, grief.
It felt good being so busy and seeing my little business thrive.
It felt so good to put a smile on someone’s face and, for a second, allow him to forget whatever brought him into the shop today.
I didn’t forget you.
My heart whispers as a lone tear trickles down my cheek, landing on the corner of my lips where he used to kiss me goodnight.
I’m lost in my internal spiral when Bella and Vero walk back to me, hand in hand, two soft smiles on their faces. They’re so strong, and they don’t even know it.
My girls.
His girls.
They get it from him, that’s for sure. Me? I’m the cookie crumbling every time you try to pick it up.
“Are you going to talk to him today?” Bella asks, pointing at the grave.
I shrug and stand, smoothing my shirt and tucking a curl behind my ear. “Already did.” She comes closer, landing right under my arm like she’s done since she was five.
“I miss him.”
And my heart shatters some more.
“Me too, kid. Me too.”
We walk in silence to the van, our elbows linked and Vero counting, as she’s taught in therapy, until we make it there. I help her buckle, kissing her head.
“Pizza for dinner?”
“Please,” Bella begs, clipping her seatbelt and grabbing a book to read.
I drive us away, leaving my lover and heart behind.