Page 84

I’m drunk if you haven’t noticed. Completely shit-faced. I can’t even walk in a straight line. I tried when the sheriff pulled me over. Lucky for me, it was my dad, and he kindly took my keys and told me to walk home. And that’s how I ended up with Justice. Like any good cousin, he saw me walking alongside the road and gave me a lift to the bar. Then here, when we got ourselves kicked out of the bar when Justice threw a dart at someone’s head. It was an accident. He missed the board. That’s what the dude gets for standing too close to it.
I don’t bother getting up. Instead, I lie back in the grass staring up at the sky, painted streaks of blue and white as it transitions from night to dawn. I think about Mara and how all this started. Maybe that’s why we’re here at the cemetery, staring at the oak tree she’s buried beside in the distance. I shouldn’t be drinking at her grave, but in all honesty, it was the only way I was going to force myself to come here, and I knew I needed to.
I think about Kelly’s words.
I hate.So much. It’s raging through me to the point that I want to lash out and destroy. I want to slam my fists into the window outside her room just to feel a pain other than the emotionally draining ones inside me. I want so badly to cause physical pain on something, I’m shaking.
Even though wedidn’t talk in those moments, our pain was the same. I remember the dim lights, the pain in her eyes, and the devastation in mine that there was absolutely nothing I could do to change any of it. Mara was going to die, in my arms.
That last breath, I wanted it to be my last. I wanted to die with her just so she didn’t have to be alone.
In all that though, the pain, the suffering we went through and then bringing Fin into the world three days later, I shut down. I did it because it was easier to do that than to tell my wife I felt like I couldn’t be a father to our kids. If I didn’t think about Mara, it didn’t hurt. So I tried to push the feelings of regret aside and just get through life.
But in all that, I let her down. I lost her in many ways.
I feel so aloneand he’s driving me further and further away with every action, and it breaks my heart. Why can’t he just be there for me and not be so cold?
Tears roll down my cheeks,my vision blurring, her words hitting me harder and harder. I did this to her. I made her doubt my love and devotion toward her.
I fearwe’re at the end again because every time he shuts me out, my heart lets go a little more. Eventually, I’m not sure there will be enough to survive.
I hatethat I’ve done this to her, and I guess in some ways, I can’t even blame her if it’s really over between us. I brought it on myself by shutting her out.
Justice kicks my knee with his foot. He points to Mara’s grave. “I’m gonna go place these flowers on her grave.”
Drawing my elbows underneath me, I look at his hands. Somehow he’s stolen flowers from someone else’s grave because we certainly didn’t come with any. “Where’d you get those?”
He gestures with a flick of his wrist behind him. “Over there. They’re from Quinten’s grave. I knew that old bastard. He won’t miss them. Pretty sure he can share his fuckin’ flowers with a kid.” Raising the hand that’s holding the bouquet of flowers, he wipes his sweat from his forehead. “Now take that pity dick out of your mouth and go over there. It’s about a girl.”
I laugh at the way he says it’s about a girl. It’s always about a girl. I didn’t want to go to Mara’s grave. I didn’t because it’s real. Here I can’t escape it. I can’t run from it. I’m forced into reality that underneath that headstone lies a seven-year-old little girl I vowed to protect. And couldn’t. It might be just bones now, but that bothers me more than anything.
Do you know when the feeling hits me? It’s not when I see her headstone. It’s not even when I see her name etched in glitter. It’s not the memory of the funeral director asking, “How do you spell Mara?” and watching him carefully spell out her name in the spot of the deceased that would soon be etched in stone.
It happens when I see the drawings the kids made taped to her headstone. Oliver’s heart with her name in it. Hazel’s rainbow and unicorn that strangely looks like a fish with a boner, and then Sevi’s scribble of his name and a heart. They’re honoring their sister with little memories of her they have, and here I am, the first man to hold her, unable to step foot in this cemetery until now. I have all her firsts. She took her first breath in my presence, and her last in my arms.
Justice places the flowers on her grave, kneels and whispers something and kisses her headstone. Brushing tears away with the back of his hand, he stands, burying his hands in the pockets of his jeans. With his shoulders tense, he clears his throat before saying, “I’ll give ya some time with her.”
I had no idea what to say to her. When we knew she wasn’t going to make it, I spent hours staring at her trying to figure out something to say to make it better, but I had no words.
And now here I am again, searching for words. I stare at the headstone, the pictures, the flowers, and I have absolutely no idea what to say to her, but I’m drunk enough I just start talking. “I know I shouldn’t see you like this, but the night your mom told me she was pregnant with you, I was in the same condition.” Dropping to my knees, I sit next to her headstone and stare at the low hanging branches near the oak tree. In the distance, I can see the sky is now purple and pink streaked—Mara’s favorite colors. “I remember being mad she was pregnant again so soon because I felt like we’d just made the adjustment with Oliver being born. How the heck was I going to take care of another kid and work on the ranch? I don’t remember much about her pregnancy, but the day you were born, it was a hundred and four degrees outside. Your poor mama was miserable. You were the best baby for about two hours, and then you let us know you were a princess and had demands.” I smile at the memory, hot tears rolling down my face as I picture Kelly trying to breastfeed Mara and her refusing to latch on. “I can still feel the way your tiny hand curled around my finger when I held you for the first time.” She was so perfect in every way. Strong, healthy, so how’d it happen? How’d this precious wild-hearted little girl get cancer? Why’d it happen to her? Why couldn’t we have gotten that miracle that saved her?
I think back to Bonner’s comment. “When a child dies, they were meant to live a short life to make an impact and move onto something greater.”
My teary eyes find the skyline. “What’s your something greater, darlin’?”
Never once have I felt like Mara’s still with me. My mom says she feels Mara when she’s in the garden, a place where she spent a lot of time with her. Kelly once told me that when she’s listening to the radio and Garth Brooks comes on, she knows Mara’s with her. She loved any music by him. And Hazel, she apparently has dreams about her.
Me? Nothing. I’ve never dreamt of her, felt her near me, nothing.
Until now.
Until I sit beside her grave, over a year later on a pink and purple sunrise.
In this moment, I swear she is right next to me. I’ve never in my life felt such a strong presence of her smell, her touch, every single memory of her washing through me. Not the bad ones of her dying, but all the good ones of her laughing and playing with Oliver, barefoot and covered in dirt. Her blues eyes, the blonde curls down to her waist. It’s everything good about her and what she brought into our lives. And then I see Fin, and me holding her shortly after her birth. I remember the day, so completely gone with grief and here this baby had been given to us, and I’d completely disregarded it. She gave us Fin.
Swallowing over the tears, I gasp at the memories. I even blink trying to figure out if I’m hallucinating or what’s happening, but I hear her laugh, feel her touch and know she’s with me now. Maybe it’s because I’m drunk, or maybe I really am just losing my shit, but I swear on my life, she just invaded my brain. And maybe it’s because of the alcohol that I finally relaxed enough to allow myself to remember her.
A breeze kicks up. The wrestling of the tree above me brings me out of the trance I’m in, and when I look up, leaves are falling all around me. I glance over at her headstone and smile. “I got you,” I whisper.