Stryker watched me as if he was waiting, too.
I held out my hand and he looked down at it as if it was the first time he’d ever seen one. He looked back to my eyes and then took my hand, twisting and locking our fingers together.
“I’m so sorry, Katie.”
“Thanks,” I said, because that seemed like the thing to say. I sipped the coffee because that seemed like the thing to do and talked to Kayla about the ugly watercolor that hung in the hallway and pretended I couldn’t hear Mom sobbing and talking to Becky behind the door.
Kayla and Adam huddled together, talking quietly.
Stryker and I stood silent.
“I don’t know what to say. To make you feel better, or to make this somehow less of a shitty situation,” he finally said as I finished the last of my terrible coffee.
“You don’t have to say anything. I can’t even cry, so clearly you’re not the only one who doesn’t know what to do.”
“You can cry or not cry. You can do whatever you want to.”
I set the empty cup on the floor. I couldn’t be bothered to find a trash can at the moment. “I should cry. I’ve been trying to, but I can’t. How fucked up is that?”
“Like I said, you can do whatever you want.” He pulled our linked hands to his lips and kissed the back of mine. It was a simple gesture, but it made me want to smile. If only I could figure out how to make my face do that.
“Can I do anything? Get you anything?” he said.
I shook my head.
“Unless you know how to travel back in time, no.” Was I joking? How could I be joking? To his credit, Stryker didn’t look shocked.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so desperately sorry for you. I wish there was something…fuck.” He took the hand that wasn’t linked with mine and banged it against the wall.
“My dad died. There’s nothing you could do.” I said it again, in my head.
My dad died. My dad died
.
Three words. A bunch of letters strung together in such an order that they meant my dad was dead. He was dead. As in gone, lost, far away, never coming back.
My dad died
.
“Oh my God. My dad died.”
I said it a few more times and Stryker looked like he wanted to put my hand over my mouth so I’d stop saying it.
“He’s dead,” I said, looking at Stryker. “He’s dead.”
There they were. Tears.
Like I’d somehow tapped into a hidden well, they started pouring out of me. A sound tore from my mouth, and I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. I started to fall, but Stryker caught me again, yanking me into his arms, whether to comfort me or stifle the noise, I wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter because my dad was dead.
Kayla’s arms came around my back and I was in a hug sandwich, but it didn’t matter because my dad was dead.
And then I didn’t remember anything because my dad was dead.
Chapter Nineteen
Stryker
I’d been waiting for her to break, or do something, and finally, she did. That was almost worse than the shock, because at least with that, I could still sort of reach her. When the grief and reality finally consumed her, there was no reaching her.
I tried to hand her off to Kayla, but she wouldn’t let go of me, so we both sort of held her while she cried and made that sound I’d heard earlier.
Someone must have called another grief counselor, because a second woman in a crisp black jacket and skirt showed up and tried to usher us down the hall to a room where Katie’s crying wouldn’t disturb the rest of the hospital.
She wouldn’t walk, despite our coaxing, so I just picked her up like I had before and carried her into a room that looked like some sort of playroom with lots of plastic toys in a bin and ducks on the wall and plush couches for sinking into. I tried to set her down, but I had to sit with her, so she ended up on my lap, like a child.
I stroked her hair and whispered things in her ear and the grief counselor tried to get her to talk, and finally made the decision that they had to give Katie a sedative.
They took her to an empty room down the hall from Mr. Hallman’s and she fought a little before they gave it to her.
“Hey, it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay.” I said it over and over, even though neither of us believed it.
Soon, her eyes were drooping closed and her grip on me loosened. When the artificial sleep finally claimed her I sat back on the bed she was in and looked at Kayla.
“She didn’t cry at all on the way down. She kept saying that she couldn’t and she wanted to.” I pushed Katie’s hair back so it wasn’t in her face.
“I should go check on mom,” Kayla said, looking out the door. We hadn’t heard anything from the room down the hall in a while.
“Go, it’s okay. I’ll stay with her. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Thank you,” Kayla said again before leaving the room. I went back to watching Katie, making sure her breathing was deep and even.
Adam sat down in one of the chairs and stretched his arms over his head.
“I feel like I should know what to do by now, having lost my mom and all my grandparents, but every time I think of something to do or say, it seems wrong,” he said.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
I nodded and adjusted Katie’s head on the pillow. Her face was calm, as if she’d fallen asleep naturally.
“Kayla’s trying to keep it together, but it won’t last forever. Eventually it catches up with you. Just takes some people longer than others.”
Katie’s eyebrows twitched and then went still.
“I have no idea what to do. I’ve never lost anybody I cared about. Not like this. I’m not exactly close with my family.” I wasn’t sure how much he knew.
“Yeah, Kayla said you’d had a hard time, but the truth is, nothing can prepare you for something like this. There’s no manual or training course. You just have to hold on and not let it take you away.”
I hoped it wouldn’t take Katie away. She was already so broken. It was too much for one person to handle.
“Are you going to be okay? I know we just met, but we’re sort of in the same boat here.” He had a point.
“I have no idea. I just want to be okay for her.” He nodded. Adam understood.
What he didn’t understand was that I’d been on the brink of telling Katie about sleeping with Ric. I’d been about to hurt her again, and then something even bigger swooped in and did it for me.
How could I tell her now? But how could I leave her in the dark? Every time she looked at me with such hope, it killed me. I wasn’t the guy she thought I was. I wasn’t the guy she needed me to be.
She shifted in her sleep, turning toward me, and I knew that I couldn’t tell her anytime soon. Right now I had to be there for her and I’d figure out the rest later.
***
Katie woke up a few hours later, after Mrs. Hallman had sort of calmed down. She’d moved from hysterical to a state like Katie was in earlier. Eerie detachment.
Kayla ended up stepping in and helping with the arrangements, that his wish was to be cremated. She and the first grief counselor, Becky, talked and talked as Mrs. Hallman sat and nodded when they asked her a question. Katie was still groggy, so I kept her in my arms.
Her phone went off and I realized that no one knew where we were. In all the chaos, neither of us had thought to tell Lottie, or anyone else, where we’d gone. I pulled out Katie’s phone to find about a million frantic, all-caps text messages and a number of voicemails.
I didn’t want to leave Katie, but I had to do something, so I texted Lottie, Trish, Will, Simon, Zan and Audrey what had happened. This was not the kind of thing you sent in a text message, but I couldn’t really make a call.
They messaged back, and I tried to answer them as best I could, saying that I would call later with more details.
Talking, talking, talking. So much talking.
And then it was time to leave. Just like that.
I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do, so I just got Katie to her feet and waited for someone to tell me.
“I guess Africa is going to have to wait,” I heard Kayla say to Adam. “You can go back if you want.”
“Not without you, and not like this,” he said, giving her a kiss on the side of her forehead.
I looked at Katie, at her red eyes and disheveled hair, and I knew I wasn’t going anywhere either. Not like this.
“I’m coming with you,” I said. “Wherever you go, I’m coming with you, sweetheart.”
I drove Katie back to her house and Adam drove Kayla and Mrs. Hallman. It seemed like there should be more to it. Like rain, or a sad song. I guess death isn’t like the movies.
There were a few cars in the driveway and the lights were on as if everything were completely normal.
I didn’t carry Katie into the house, but she did lean on me as I helped her up the steps. The last time I’d been here, she’d kissed me and I’d drawn on her hand and I’d played the violin and she’d fought with her mom.
As much as it had sucked when I’d had to leave, I wished I could rewind time and go back to it. Even that was better than this.
The house was in chaos, the floor covered in dirt and debris from the paramedics tramping around.
“Oh, you’re back,” someone said, coming out of the kitchen. It was Katie’s aunt, Carol. There were other people in there as well, most of whom I recognized from Thanksgiving.
It was like they were having a grief party.
Everyone tried to come hug Katie after hugging and comforting Mrs. Hallman, who was back to crying again. Kayla went to the kitchen and Adam followed, never leaving her side.
“Tell me what you need, and I’ll do it.”
“I just want to go to my room,” she said, so I took her. It was changed from the last time I’d been in here. The walls were white and bare, empty of the hundreds of smiling photographs that had once covered every available bit of bare wall.
“She did it,” she said, going to the wall across from her bed and rubbing her hand on it. “She cleaned it off.”
“What?” She turned around and went to sit on her bed.
“I drew all over my wall with marker and she cleaned it off. I took a picture with my phone though.”
“Can I see it?” I said, sitting down next to her. I thought she would lean into me again, but she didn’t, instead propping her back against the wall. I did the same, our shoulders almost touching.
“It was so stupid. Just a bunch of designs and words. It doesn’t matter now because my dad is dead.” She turned her head and met my eyes. “My dad is dead.”
I thought she was going to break down again, but she didn’t, instead closing her eyes and tipping her head all the way back until she was staring at the ceiling.
“I don’t remember the last thing he said to me. It was probably I love you, but I don’t know. How could I not know? What if I’d said something horrible to him and that was the last thing I said to him, before…” She didn’t finish.
I had to say something, even if I couldn’t find the exact right words. Maybe there weren’t any right words.
“He loved you so much, and nothing you could ever say would change that, Katie. Nothing. He thought the world of you. Anyone could see that. You can’t think about that stuff, or regrets, or anything like that. You’ll just end up crazy and angry and he wouldn’t want that for you.” Not that I had any right to say what her dad did or didn’t want for her, but I knew that blaming herself or being miserable wasn’t it.
“I’m still waiting for it to not be true.”
“I think that’s part of grief. Don’t they have those five steps?” I tried to grab at what I’d learned in psychology last year. I was much better at crunching numbers than this kind of thing.
“I know denial is one, and bargaining. I don’t remember the others,” I said.
“I think I’m definitely in denial.”
“Well, that’s the first step, so I think you’re supposed to be.” She sighed.
“Can I get you anything? What have you had to eat?”
“I don’t want anything. I feel like I never want to eat again.”
“You have to. Please. I’m sure somebody has made something at this point. I don’t know much about this kind of thing, but I do know that when someone dies, people cook. Oh, shit,” I said, realizing I’d said “dies”. “I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry.”
“He’s dead. You can say it out loud. I did. He’s dead. Oh, I said it again.” She clasped and unclasped her hands. “How can I be in denial if I can say it out loud?”
“Saying it out loud and believing it are two different things,” I said, which I probably shouldn’t have. I waited for her to slap me, or yell, but she didn’t.
She just nodded.
“You’re probably right.”
Katie
The rest of the night was both the longest and the shortest of my life. There were endless hugs and more tears (hardly any from me) and plans for a funeral and lots of food that no one ate.
At last I was allowed to escape once more to my room. The hospital had prescribed Mom some sleeping pills, so she went to bed, making sure she didn’t touch Dad’s side when she got under the covers.
Kayla and I went down to the basement with Stryker and Adam, while everyone else upstairs cleaned and tried to do what they could because they couldn’t do anything else.
“What’s with the furniture?” Stryker said. He hadn’t seen it when he’d been here before.
“Mom collects it,” I said, noticing a new lamp in the corner that she’d tried to hide. “She has a bit of a problem.” Kayla and I lay side by side on the bed, and the guys had to settle for a couple of chairs.
“I feel like we should be doing something,” Kayla said, yawning. “Like planning flowers or buying an urn, or something.”
“One thing at a time,” Adam said, leaning forward in his chair. My phone went off again.
“I’ve got it,” Stryker said, holding out his hand. “I texted them, and they’re all freaking out. I was shocked when we got here and they hadn’t all driven down.”
“Just tell them that I’m fine. No driving necessary.”
His fingers went to work and I moved closer to Kayla and took her hand.
“What are we going to do about Mom?” I said, asking the question none of us knew how to answer.