Kiss Me Goodnight (23 page)

Not garbled. She was crying—sobbing and hiccupping. “It’s John. He went to take a nap. We walked three miles this morning, and we were both feeling a little tired. When I woke up, he was cold. Lacey, John died.”

Strength drained from my knees. My joints turned liquid. Everything turned liquid. My mother must be in shock because normally she breaks bad news to me gently. John was the love of her life. She had to be devastated. She needed me. I needed her. I couldn’t move or speak.

I looked up to find Dylan and Luma standing over me. They said things I couldn’t hear. Luma disappeared. So did my shoes.

I have vague memories of Luma and Dylan loading me into a car, but that’s all. When I woke the next morning, I was in my old room at my mother’s house. Mom was asleep next to me. The two of us were crunched into a twin-size bed. I was a little sore, but I wasn’t sure why.

Rolling gently so I could leave without waking my mom, I took stock of my aches and pains. The pounding in my head and my stuffy sinuses indicated I had cried hard. I didn’t remember. This hadn’t happened to me since I was little. I used to cry a lot for no reason, mostly in my sleep.

“Lacey?”

Oops. I tried to apologize, but sounds wouldn’t come out of my mouth.

“Where are you going?”

I pointed at the door to the bathroom.

“Okay, sweetheart. I sent Luma to your place last night. She packed a bag for you. We were thinking you should stay here for a little while.”

John had been everything to us. In the dark days after that whole thing with my father, he’d saved us both. First, he’d been my counselor. I’d played in his office every day, never speaking a word.

To my mother, he’d been the man who swept her off her feet and saved her daughter’s sanity. He was the one who’d renamed me. Until him, I’d been Alice. One day when he was making lunch for us, he said, “Lacey, would you like to try this Asian sesame dressing on your salad?”

I said, “Yes.”

It was a stunning moment for everybody. I hadn’t uttered a sound in two years. Most people had stopped talking to me. They behaved as if I were deaf as well as silent. Not John. Never John. He talked to me every day, included me in everything.

From that moment on, Alice was dead. I was Lacey. Always and irrevocably Lacey.

Later, John confessed to my mom that he’d misspoken. But in tripping over his tongue, he’d made me a new person, and gave me another chance at life.

And now he was gone.

My heart was broken.

I couldn’t speak, but I knew I would. I had to. For him.

I nodded at my mother. Staying at her house would enable me to be there for her. She’d lost her husband, the only man she’d ever loved. Years ago, she’d confessed to me that her relationship with my father had been a fling. Conceiving me had been an accident—one she didn’t regret, but not something she’d planned.

But John? He was the real deal.

The moments of the day sifted through my consciousness, seeming to last forever and be over much too quickly. People visited. Some of them hounded us to eat. We weren’t hungry.

Later that evening, after the people had gone, I sat in the living room with Mom. Sadie lay curled on the sofa in John’s spot, waiting for him to scoot her to the side so he could sit too. Neither of us sat in his place. I know we both hoped he’d walk in at any moment, and we’d awaken from this nightmare.

“Mom? Why did you wait until after eight o’clock to call me? You said you guys had taken a nap.”

She blushed. “Well, we worked out a bit before taking a nap, and that exhausted us. I slept until about seven thirty.” Her eyes took on that faraway look, only laced with pain. “I tried to wake him. I was going to tease him about sleeping so late.”

Tears tracked down her cheeks. She’d held them in for most of the day, being strong because she didn’t like to cry in front of others. “Lacey, how am I going to live without him?”

I didn’t know how to answer that.

The next morning, Daisy and her family came over. Audra and Monty cleaned the house. Mom wanted to have the wake here, but neither of us had the energy to focus on a specific task. Daisy helped Luma and Jane make the phone calls my mom wanted made.

Dylan didn’t leave my side. He sat on the sofa next to Sadie and watched me as I paced or talked to people. He was a sentinel when I froze, staring into space as if I could find John between molecules of air. He didn’t say much, but having him here helped.

Thomas came that evening. I didn’t recall talking to him or texting him about John’s passing. He took me in his arms and held me for the longest time.

“Jane said you weren’t in a good state.”

All things considered, I thought I was doing okay. Except for that first morning, I hadn’t lost my ability to speak or interact with my surroundings.

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m doing better.”

I don’t know when Dylan left, only that when I looked up next, he was gone.

Chapter Sixteen

T
HE
F
UNERAL
W
AS
B
EAUTIFUL
. Daisy, Audra, Luma, and Jane decorated the chapel at the funeral home with collages of John. I spent hours studying the board with pictures of him as a child, and then I got stuck on the pictures he’d taken when he and my mom first got together.

I looked so haunted, a ghost of a child who neither smiled nor spoke. I had mittens on my hands to keep me from washing the skin off. I remember wanting so badly to die. If I could’ve rewound time to make things different, I would have. Then, I would have. Not now.

Because John had come into my life, I learned that fathers weren’t evil. I learned that I didn’t have to be glued to my mother’s side at all times to feel safe. I realized life was worth living, and I was not the worthless piece of shit my father had labeled me.

Grief made my bones weak. I rocked forward, and a strong arm came around my waist to prop me up. “Let’s get you settled. They’re going to start the service in a few minutes.”

I leaned against Dylan, soaking up his strength because I’d used my reserves.

The service was long. My mother had a minister there to give the sermon, and then she opened the floor for anybody who wanted to talk about John. We were there for three hours. I listened to people, some of whom I’d never met, talk about John’s generous nature and loving soul. Some of them addressed my mom and me directly. Others sobbed as they spoke.

I wanted to go to the dais and tell everybody what he’d done for me. It was something we’d kept private, a process only my mom and I were privy to. Now I wanted the world to know how extraordinary he was.

The minister, a woman who appeared to be around my age, helped me up the two steps and positioned me behind the podium. She hovered nearby, and I had to wonder if I looked that bad. Why did people keep thinking I was going to keel over?

I saw Thomas sitting in the row behind mine. Dylan and my friends from the band sat on the other side of the aisle. All the chairs were filled, and people lined the back and sides of the room.

“I can see by the sheer number of people here today that John touched many lives. He was a wonderful man and a remarkable person. There was nothing he loved more than helping people. He was a one of those rare people who gave of himself to everybody.”

I paused to sniffle, and I had to wave the minister away. No doubt she hadn’t realized the service was going to take so long.

“When I met John, I was a mess. Bad things had happened in my life, and I’d withdrawn from the world. I couldn’t speak, and I wouldn’t interact with anybody but my mom. I wanted to die.”

One deep breath to banish the images that threatened to overwhelm me, and I continued.

“John helped me see it wasn’t my fault. He helped me accept what happened and how it had changed me. He made me see that life was worth living, and that I deserved to be loved. I put that man through a lot—him and my mom—but he never blamed me for it. He never made me feel like a burden. I never called him ‘father,’ because he was so much more than that to me.”

By the time I finished, my mom was at my side. She held my hand tightly, and I stayed there with her while she talked about losing her best friend, her lover, and her husband.

Flecks of blood dotted the backs of my hands, and I turned them over to reveal smears where I’d tried to wipe it away. I looked up at the people who still milled around after the service, and I knew I was the only one who could see it. Nonetheless, I excused myself to the bathroom.

I washed, scrubbing at the stubborn spots that wouldn’t come clean. As I did, echoes of my stepmother’s screams rang in my ears, and I felt myself sliding backward. Years of progress fell away. I shrank. My body was that of a six year old again.

I’d crawled out of bed early because I had to use the bathroom. The house was dark, so I was careful to be quiet. My father had a temper, and I hated doing anything to set him off. My visits were so much nicer when he was in a good mood.

My stepmother, Kathy, often put him in a good mood. She was magic, able to take him from furious to apology with one soft look. A year before, she’d given him a son. I’d fallen in love with Jason before he was born. The idea of having a little brother tickled my fancy like nothing else. Kathy let me help her decorate the nursery, and she often left Jason with me while she went into the kitchen to make lunch or dinner.

Noises from Jason’s room drew my attention. It was too early for him to wake up. My father would be upset. He wasn’t a morning person. I crept closer. I could soothe my brother back to sleep. I’d done it before. Kathy told me all the time what a good big sister I was, how much Jason loved me.

His door opened suddenly, and Dad’s large form stumbled into the hall. He wiped his palm on his shirt. I pressed my body to the wall, hiding in the shadow behind the potted fake ficus next to a hutch. If he didn’t see me, he wouldn’t get mad at me for waking Jason. I hadn’t meant to.

He disappeared back into his room, and I stole into Jason’s. Sometimes he fell asleep a little, and then he would start awake. If he found himself alone, he would cry. He was learning to say my name. It didn’t sound like much, but he was trying. Sometimes he’d get so excited he’d grab my lips and squeeze as he squealed. It hurt, but I didn’t mind. He didn’t do it to be mean.

I hoisted myself up to bend over the railing. I couldn’t see him clearly, so I stroked my hand down his back. It came away wet and sticky. Jason hated being wet. I knew how to change his diaper. Kathy let me help her all the time.

I climbed down and lowered the railing. When I reached for him, I realized he was soaking. I needed to see the extent of the damage. How could Dad not notice Jason was so wet? He was going to get a rash all over if I left him like that.

Jason had a nightlight, so I closed his door as quietly as I could and turned it on. In the dim light, I could see that the wetness coating him was too dark. A sense of dread wrapped its hand around my heart and squeezed. I wanted to whisper his name, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. His pajamas—a polar bear pattern I’d picked out for him—were shredded, and he lay on his stomach, his cheek bathed in a pool of blood. My stomach roiled, threatening to get sick.

Blood was all over the place, covering his little body, his arms that had hugged me so tight last night before bed, the mattress, the wall behind the crib…and me. It was all over me. I looked down at my hands, staring at the splatters and specks with horror. Red smears marked the front of my nightgown where I’d pressed it against the crib rails.

This was my little brother’s blood. Jason was dead. He wasn’t pretending. Babies didn’t know how to pretend like this.

Screams came from down the hall. “Bill! What are you doing? No! Don’t! Please!”

Panic pushed me down, and I rolled under the crib, wedging myself in the corner farthest from the door. It went on like that for a long time, her screams punctuating the horrible stillness in the room.

Jason’s blood dripped down through gashes in the mattress, landing on me. It smelled tinny. I tried wiping them away, but it only smeared. Kathy’s screams grew weak. I clutched in the semidarkness, searching for something. I knew I should go to help her, but I was too afraid to move.