Page 114 of The Truths We Burn

It’s been cleaned recently, the white marble bright compared to the more weather-eroded markers. A little glimpse at just how much light she put into the world when she was in it.

How had it been a year without her?

I think we’d filled our lives with so much chaos to prevent the ache of her loss, and today, we were forced to stop, to reflect on the person we’d lost.

Right now, I’m compelled to pull back the bandages I’d slapped over that emotional wound, only to find it still raw and nasty. There is no healing, still just a dirty gash across my soul.

It’s hard to think of anything other than the pain. I can’t think about Frank or Sage, only this melancholy feeling that suffocates me.

Death is inevitable, and I always knew that. It’s a rite of passage, but you think of it happening when you’re older. Death when you are this young, it’s nothing but a sick, sick tragedy. It’s an entirely different form of mourning.

Silas lifts his head, looking up at the sky, and I see the tears tracking his face.

“Rose, come back!” He screams a scream that makes chill bumps rise on my skin.It’s his heart begging for her. Pleading for her.“Why didn’t you take me with you?” he cries. “I would’ve gone with you.”

I lay my arm around his shoulder, tugging him closer to my side and wrapping him up in my arms.

I feel his body shaking from the screams, the shouts that ricochet off my body over and over again. And I absorb every single one of them.

That’s all I can do. All I can do is hold him as he sits there reliving the nightmare from a year ago. One we are all still waiting to wake up from.

I recall the agony I felt when I helped Alistair pull him away from her body, watching him carry her one last time to the ambulance.

How after it only got worse.Somuch fucking worse.

I sat outside his door, feeling useless, just listening desperately for the sound of his breath. Anything that would tell me he was alive. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was standing out there waiting on him to die.

When I broke the door down, splintering the hinges, I found him lying on his back.

Nothing in his room had been touched; he’d just walked inside and laid on the floor. That’s where he had been, on the floor with one of her jackets balled up to his chest. He hadn’t even changed out of the clothes he’d worn when we found her.

And he was just mumbling, about everything and anything. Muttering to himself, like he was having a conversation with his own mind.

I forced him into the shower. I made him eat and shoved his meds down his throat. I did that for weeks, until he was able to do it on his own again.

I would do it again, I would do it all over again for him because I’m not losing him too.

I’m keeping him. I’m keeping all of the boys.

I had lost too many people that I cared about, and I’m not losing any more.

“How long have you been out here?” I ask, speaking for the first time once his shoulders stop shaking.

“Since you left for class. I wanted to watch the sunrise with her, but I was late.” He swallows. “I’m always too fucking late.”

“Silas, you know I’d never lie to you, so I’m not going to say it gets easier from here. But I know over time, you will heal. It won’t be so sharp like it is right now.”

“I think that might be worse.” He lifts his head, staring at me. “Time doesn’t heal. It helps you forget, and she doesn’t deserve to be forgotten. Ten years from now, am I going to remember how she smelled? Or what she looked like when she smiled? No. She’ll become a memory, and she was more than a memory, Rook.”

That’s what grief is. It’s a double-edged sword.

“I know she was. And she’ll always be more to us. We’ll get through it, together. We always get through it.”

Silence passes through, a breeze sweeping around us, and I watch as one of the petals from the peonies gets picked up by the wind.

It floats in the air, flowing with the current.

Free and with wings.

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