Page 110 of The Facade

Me:So basically, I’m a dead man.

Mistress:I don’t think he’s called the Mob quite yet.

Me:Well it was nice knowing you.

Maybe my mom and I could haunt my dad together.

Mistress:So dramatic.

Me:Your dad is a billionaire. He knows people.

Mistress:Just let him beat you in basketball a few times and I’m sure he’ll warm up to the idea of us together.

Us together. Despite the crap-hole that was my life right now, I liked how that sounded.

Me:Done

Mistress:Also in case you haven’t done it yet, you should probably change my name back to Cambrielle in your phone. Might make things less suspicious.

Right.

Me:Changing it back now.

38

Mack

The next twodays dragged on as I sat next to my mom and listened to her rattled breathing, watching her body slowly die. And then on Monday, November fifteenth at 5:45 A.M., my mom, Brianna Jackson Aarden, slipped from this existence to the next. Leaving her broken body behind with my dad sitting by her side.

I’d known the day was coming for a little over a year. Ever since they found the tumor, I had done my best to plan for the time when I couldn’t just walk into the house or her bedroom and tell her about my day.

But when my dad came into my bedroom that morning to tell me the news, no amount of preparation could have steeled me for the intensity of the loss. A feeling so strong that it felt like I was being clawed apart from the inside and that the world would always be empty without her.

And even though I knew why my dad was there in my room so early in the morning when he knew I wasn’t going to school that day, all I wanted to do was hide. To crawl under the covers or somehow sink through the floor, so I wouldn’t have to hear him say the words, “Your mother is gone, son.”

But I rolled over and faced him anyway, with his exhausted posture and hollowed out face, and listened to him say those very words.

Then, since I didn’t want my dad to have to be alone when he’d just lost the woman he’d been in love with since he was seventeen, I dragged myself out of my bed, put on a T-shirt and slippers, and went downstairs with him.

When I walked into my parents’ bedroom, it was silent. The sounds of my mom’s rattled breathing no longer permeated the air. I walked to the side of my mom’s hospital bed, and after taking in her body and her face that already looked different than it had yesterday, I touched her forehead briefly.

It was cold and clammy.

She really wasn’t here anymore.

39

Mack

My fatherand I cried a lot over the next few days. I didn’t sob like I had the first night that Mom was in a coma. I didn’t wail or scream or throw anything at the wall. But the tears were there. A steady stream that went on so endlessly that I wondered if they would ever stop.

Cambrielle came over after school and listened when I needed someone to talk to. Talked about all the things happening at school when I needed it. We watched movies and listened to music, and even though I was sure she had a ton of her own things to do and an audition she was nervous about coming up next week, I appreciated having her there with me.

Ava and Elyse came over on Wednesday night to help my dad sort through some photos and mementos to display at the funeral since I couldn’t bear to look at photos of my mom right now. We were all still getting used to the idea of becoming a family, but it was nice to see them make an effort to be there for my dad during this time. They listened to his stories about him and my mom and their life together, and I believed it was therapeutic for him in a way.

Carter and Nash invited me over to play video games on Thursday night, to get me out of the house, and it was exactly what I needed. They didn’t ask me about how I’d fallen for their sister right under their noses, but they also didn’t act like they were going to come for me in my sleep either, so I figured they were adjusting to the idea of Cambrielle and me dating. And it was just nice having some time that gave me some semblance of normality. Like not everything in my life had gone to complete crap when my mom passed.

My mom’s funeral was beautiful. She’d always said she didn’t want it to be held in a dingy funeral home, or a church since she hated how claustrophobic they made her feel. So we held the service in her favorite place in the world: our backyard, with her favorite pine trees as the backdrop.

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