Page 79 of The Hardest Part

Billy got down on his haunches in front of him. “Did Dad say anything?”

“No, he just held her, whispering to her, running his fingers through her hair, all the way here.”

“What do we do?” he asked his brother.

“We wait.”

Every minute seemed like an hour. An hour felt like an eternity. They didn’t bother with shitty vending machine coffee. Nobody spoke. No one looked at their phone.

“You know what they say, no news is good news. Your mama’s gonna be just fine.”

Billy held onto that thought. It repeated in his head over and over again.

Mid-afternoon, the sun peeked out of the clouds and the double doors finally opened.

His eyes red and glassy, Victor sat in a chair across from them. “They’re taking your mom upstairs now.”

“Can we see her?”

His elbows on his knees, his father leaned forward. “Yes, but we need to talk first.”

Billy tried to swallow past the lump forming in his throat. “Did she have a stroke?”

Jake asked, “Is she okay?”

“Your mom had a cerebral hemorrhage,” he said, using his doctor’s voice. Maybe it was the only way he knew how. “Her blood pressure caused an artery in her brain to weaken and bulge like an inflated balloon—it’s called an aneurysm, and it ruptured.”

“Can they fix it?” But he already knew the answer. His father’s golden eyes brimmed with tears.

He took his hand. “No, son, they can’t.”

Beside him, Justin wept.

“What do we do, then?”

Victor closed his eyes, and the tears spilled down his face.

“Say goodbye.”

The Lakota don’t have a word for goodbye. Instead, they say‘toksa ake’which means I’ll see you again. And they were the words that Billy whispered when they lowered her into the ground.

Long after the grave was filled with dirt and the flowers were laid on top, the four of them stood there in silence, too numbed by grief to move.

Victor gazed up at the three-headed peak, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what, my love?”

“The mountain.” His father held onto Justin’s arm. “Carrie used to say if you listen closely, you can hear it hum.”

“We need to go now, Vic. Everyone is waiting in the hall.” Patting the hand on his arm, Justin turned him away from the grave. “Come on. We can come back tomorrow.”

Toksa ake, Mama. Forgive me. I love you.

The luncheon after the funeral was a blur. Like a fuzzy dream. Billy ate the food, but couldn’t taste it. Emily sat with him and Jake, squeezing his hand. He squeezed hers back, but he couldn’t feel it.

He wanted to cry or scream. Something. Anything. But nothing would come out.

Then, he came out of the restroom to find Arien waiting just outside the door. Maybe it was the way she looked up at him with her sad, hazel eyes, her wound nearly as fresh as his own, that had him putting his arms around her. Whatever it was, the floodgates opened.

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