Coast (Kick Push Book 2) (The Road 3) (37 page)

“Will you come to bed with me?” I ask. “And
stay
in bed with me? I’ve spent too many nights away from you, woken up too many times and not had you there. Just stay and
be with me
, Becs. That’s all I want. Now and forever.”

My dad arrived at the same time Tommy came home.

The same time Sadie decided to pack her bags and leave the house.

If she’d been around this entire time, I didn’t notice her.

I don’t notice a lot of things.

I live in my own world, trapped in my own head.

Days pass.

Dad makes me eat.

Makes me shower.

Makes me sleep.

There are no summer storms.

And the storm that came took away her roses.

Now they’re dead.

Just like her.

And I don’t even have a camera to capture it.

To capture beauty in the face of death.

I should have captured her beauty.

I should’ve—

~ ~

—Joshua—

“S
he’s just not
responding at all,” Martin says, his words as rushed as our footsteps.

I practically crash through the front door, past the living room and into the kitchen where Martin said Becca had been for the past two hours.

I’d spent the past few days with Tommy, who’d taken the news better than I thought, and meeting with my mom to organize the funeral tomorrow and all the other things I needed to do as Chazarae’s power of attorney. Mom mentioned she was surprised at how well I’d taken Chaz’s death. I was purposely keeping too busy to feel
anything
. At least that’s what I told her. I’ll never tell her the truth. I’ll never tell anyone. Besides, how do you tell someone that you truly believe a person who had so much to offer alive was better off dead? She was no longer that person we all wanted to believe she was. By the end, she’d lost the fight to fake it, and now—she no longer had to.

I’d checked in on Becca often since her dad got here, even had her stay with me at night. She’d been bad, but never like this. Never so out of it that she couldn’t acknowledge my presence.

She’s sitting on the floor, her knees raised close to her chest, wearing one of my t-shirts—a shirt so big she uses it to cover her legs. She’s not crying, but her eyes are glazed, not with tears, but with complete and utter misery.

Her hands are on her head, her eyes staring at nothing in front of her.

It hurts to swallow.

About as much as it hurts to see her like this.

Completely
empty
.

I step toward her, careful not to spook her, and that’s when I focus on the hundreds of pictures littered around her. Pictures of Chazarae, some of them together, some of her alone. Some I’ve seen before, most I haven’t.

Martin says, “She was up all night on her computer, and I heard the printer running but I didn’t…” He rubs his eyes—eyes tired and defeated.

“Becca.” I squat in front of her. “Baby, what are you doing?”

She doesn’t react. Not in the slightest.

“Daddy?” Tommy says from behind me.

My eyes drift shut. He shouldn’t be here. I told him to stay in bed.

“Is my Becca okay?” he asks, standing next to me, his hand on my shoulder.

He’s not wearing a top. Just pajama bottoms.

“Becca’s very sad, buddy,” I tell him.

Tommy nods, and then copies my position. Only he settles a hand on her knee, and I almost cringe, fearing her response. I know not to touch her when she’s like this. He doesn’t. But the response isn’t what I was expecting. For the first time, her eyes move. First to Tommy, then to me, and even through her daze, through the tangled web of emotions that brought her here, sitting in the corner of the kitchen surrounded by painful memories, I can see the apology in her eyes. See the regret she feels that Tommy has to see her like this.

Her lips move, but her words are silent. Quickly, but carefully, I move Tommy out of the way and shift closer to her. “What is it, baby?”

“I want,” she mouths, rocking back and forth.

“You want…? What do you want?”

“I want,” she repeats, tears filling her eyes. She blinks once. Hard. And the tears fall, fast and free, giant droplets of withheld emotions streak down her cheeks and fall with purpose. “I want,” she says again, rocking faster, crying harder. She points to one of the many photographs on the floor.

Tommy’s the first to reach for it, the first to see the image of a woman with curly blonde hair, wearing a blue dress, carrying a toddler on her hip… a toddler with raven dark hair and eyes the color of emeralds…

“Is this your mamma?” Tommy asks.

Becca nods slowly, a silent sob filtering from her mouth and wrapping around my heart, taking away its pulse, its reason. It’s hope.

Tommy whispers, “You want your mamma?”

Becca nods again, covering her head as if to cover her shame that of all the things she could want, she could need, it’s the one person who tried to take it all away.

“Sometimes when I’m sad, I want my mamma, too,” Tommy says, his innocence defying all logic. “But most of the time, I want my daddy.”

Becca looks up, her eyes right on his, and her chest rapidly rising and falling with her breaths.

“Do you want me to sleep in your bed with you?” Tommy asks. “I can cuddle you. That’s what my daddy does when I’m sad.”

Becca nods again, her cries still silent, and takes Tommy’s offered hand to help her up. He keeps a hold of her hand all the way up the stairs and to her room.

“You raised some kid there, Warden,” Martin says.

I blink, coming to terms with everything that’s happened. I pick up the photograph Becca had pointed to. “This is her mom?” I ask him.

“That’s Rebecca.”

I don’t know why I feel the need to take the picture and shove it in my pocket, but I do.

I make my way upstairs and toward Becca’s room where I stand in the doorway and watch Tommy sitting against the headboard, patting his lap. “You can lie your head here, and I can stroke it. If you want me to. That’s what Daddy does when I’m sad, too.”

Becca lies on her side, her head on his lap, and he does exactly what he said he’d do. Becca cries. He doesn’t see it, but I do, because she’s looking right at me. She mouths, “I’m sorry.” And I shake my head at her. She has nothing to be sorry for.

“It’s okay, Daddy,” Tommy says, and my eyes meet his. “I got this. I’ll take care of
our
Becca.”

I move to the side, away from his view, but I don’t leave. Instead, I listen. I listen to him singing—a song Chazarae used to sing to him when she was still capable of having him spend the night. “Somewhere over the rainbow…” he sings, “…way up high…”

I lean against the wall, my son’s voice the soundtrack of our grief, our mourning, and I break. A thousand times over. I slide down the wall, my pain, my heartache, all of it consuming me, and I wonder how it’s possible that a six-year-old is the one to keep it together. To keep
us
together. “Don’t worry, Becs,” he says, the song now over.

I sniff back another sob and wipe my face with my sleeve.

“My Pa’s in heaven, too. He’ll take care of Ma’am. Even if she’s yelling at him to stop being so grumpy, and he’s yelling at her to stop being so loopy. They’ll take care of each other. And they’ll take care of
us
.”

coast

kəʊst/

noun

the part of the land adjoining or near the sea.

If I am the land,

and Josh is the sea,

Tommy is the shore that completes us.

~ ~

—Becca—

“Y
ou look so
handsome,” I sign slowly, hoping Tommy will understand.

“I look…?” he asks.

I spell out, “S T U D,” and smile up at him as I fix his tie.

He sounds out the word a couple times, before yelling, “Stud! I look like a stud?”

My grin widens.

“You guys ready?” Josh asks, entering Tommy’s room, dressed as he is.

“What about Daddy?” Tommy asks. “Does he look like a stud, too?”

I stand and take Tommy’s hand and lead him toward his dad. I kiss Josh quickly, and press my hand to his chest. “Stud,” I mouth.

He smiles down at me. “Let’s go celebrate your Grams’s life.”

*     *     *

We hold the
service at Grams’s church, of course.

They suggested we make it an open service. Because of everything my grandmother had contributed to the community, a lot of people would want to attend. Josh’s mother, however, suggested we keep it closed, keep it intimate, especially because of his status. It was hard to gauge who exactly would show up. We didn’t want media, and with how open Josh had been about his relationship with my grandmother, we were afraid it might take away from the reason we were there. But Josh disagreed with her and was adamant about it, so he hired security to keep the media out so that the doors of the church could remain open for everyone. No judgments. No questions. It was clear Grams had touched a lot of people in her life, and it wasn’t fair to her for Josh and I to be the ones to decide who could and couldn’t pay their respects.

Tommy sits between us. My dad next to me, and Ella, Robby and a heavily pregnant Kim, Nat and her fiancé Justin, Blake and Chloe and their families taking up the rest of the pew on the other side of Josh.

Josh’s team had flown back from Hong Kong without attending the event, and going by the look of surprise on Josh’s face, he wasn’t aware of their decision. They sit behind us at the front of the church, along with their families and many others from Josh’s work life.

Members from Grams’s church take up one side of the room, we take up the other. Soon, the church begins to fill, murmured voices and condolences filtering through the air.

I sit with my gaze lowered, with Tommy’s little hand in mine, his finger tracing circles in my palm—another thing Josh does for him when he’s sad.

The service starts, the priest says a few words, and so do her friends and other members of the church. Ella speaks, too, her words covering everything Josh and I feel. And soon, but nowhere near soon enough, it’s all over. I breathe, relieved that I was able to make it through without breaking down. We stand in unison, Josh leading the way, me in one hand, Tommy in the other, and we hold our heads high as we walk down the aisle and toward the church doors. There’s no space in the room left unoccupied. Groups of people stand against the walls, against the corners, anywhere they can to pay their respects to a woman who created a legacy. As we reach the doors, doors ajar from the people trying to pile into the room, I hear a tiny voice call Tommy’s name. We all stop and turn to the sound.

“Nessa,” Tommy shouts, letting go of Josh’s hand. He runs back a few steps and slows just in time to not crash into her. “What are you doing here?”

“We came for Becca,” she says simply, pointing down the row. Members of Say Something—volunteers, kids, parents take up the entire row and the one after it. I cover my mouth with my hand, shocked and confused, and the confusion doubles when I see Pete and the rest of the team from the paper. I turn to Josh, now standing beside me, “How?” I mouth, allowing a single sob to escape. “Why?”

Josh shrugs as he points a couple rows down toward Dawn and Lexy and even Aaron. “They all wanted to be here, Becs. For you.”

I move to Dawn first, allowing her to hug me. She’s been such a huge part of my life for so long and I’d taken that for granted. She’s here. For me. “You’re going to get through this,” she whispers in my ear.

“I know,” I mouth, believing her more than ever before.

I will get through it.

For Grams.

For Josh.

For Tommy.

“You need to look outside,” Dawn says, smiling genuinely at me.

My feet falter, my steps slow as I make my way back to the entrance, Josh doing what he can to keep me upright. It’s all too much. I’m on the verge of falling apart, of shattering in his arms, of becoming nothing more than a thousand pieces he’ll have to work to make whole again.

The crowd at the doors part, allowing Josh and I to walk through.

We freeze when we see it.

Just like time does.

People stand on the steps of the church, litter through to the sidewalk and onto the road, far beyond where my eyes can see.

Hundreds of people stand…

…beneath a sea of red balloons.

Next to me, Josh grabs one from Grams’s crazy friend Mavis and hands it to me, then takes one for himself.

Mavis clears her throat and leans in to whisper, “Your grandmother told me this is how she wanted to be remembered. Up there,”—she points to the sky—“she wanted to give everyone she came across a red balloon.”

“Why?” I mouth, looking up for an answer.

I release the first balloon, then watch as a couple join them, followed by dozens, until the sky is filled with nothing but red.