Page 64 of Sex. Love. Marriage.

Hazel cups her hands over mine on her face. “Am I going to die and go see Mara now?”

“No!” I assure her, holding her to my chest. “It’s fine.” I know it’s fine because I myself have swallowed them in the past. Big brothers are assholes sometimes and I was naïve enough at six to think if I swallowed BB’s, I could fart fire. Which seemed like a pretty cool superpower to have.

“Daddy.” Hazel gasps, wiggling from my arms and placing her hand over my heart. “Your heart is beating loud.”

I don’t reply. Instead, I hold her, and for a moment, I forget it’s Hazel I’m holding because she feels a lot like Mara did. Oliver’s watching us, a furrow to his brow, but then he sighs and walks inside the house.

Kelly follows him, and I stay there, on the porch hugging my daughter. When I pull back, because I need to before I start crying, Hazel’s eyes find mine, and I’m reminded she’s not Mara. She’s completely different from her in looks, but her heart, it’s just like her sister’s, full of love for her brother. So much so she’d hold BB’s in her mouth because he asked her to.

I touch her cheek. “Don’t put BB’s in your mouth, sweetie. It’s not good for you.”

She blinks slowly, her hands on my shirt as she runs her fingers back and forth of the seam on the collar. “So I won’t die?”

“No. Not for a long time.”

“Why did Mara die then? Why did she not die for a long time?”

I swallow over the lump lodged in my throat, tears stinging my eyes. “Because Mara was sick,” I choke out, my breathing heavy. “It was her time to go.”

I hate explaining this. Even when Mara died, Kelly and I didn’t tell the kids. A social worker came in and explained it to them. But even then, Hazel was four. I’m not sure she understood any of it at the time. Now, she’s left with curiosity and confusion as to what happened.

Hazel sighs. “Okay.” And then takes off inside the house. I hear her yell to Ella, who’s taking the pizza out of the oven. “Do you think if I eat pizza, the BB’s in my belly will pop?”

Ella gasps. “Silly girl, why’d you eat those?”

“It was an accident.”

I make my way back inside the house. I find Kelly upstairs in Oliver’s room where believe it or not, he’s crying and has a pillow over his face. She’s rubbing his arm, talking softly to him. “We’re not mad, buddy. You just gotta be very careful with your sisters.”

“I didn’t mean to fall on her. I didn’t.”

I close my eyes and press my forehead into the doorframe. He’s not crying about Hazel and the BB’s. He’s talking about Mara, and I want this fucking day to end. I want to lock myself in a room with a bottle of whiskey and drink the entire goddamn thing.

“We know you didn’t, Oliver,” Kelly assures him. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“But it is!” he screams, ripping the pillow from his face and sitting up. “It is my fault because I fell on her and then she got cancer and died!”

That’s not how it happened though. Yes, Oliver fell on her, and that’s what finally made us take her to the doctor, but for months before that, Mara had a limp. I thought it was growing pains and brushed it off. Kelly knew deep down it was something more and kept telling me we should take her in. Months went by, precious months where if I hadn’t been so hard-headed that kids need to toughen up and not run to the doctor for everything, maybe she’d still be alive today. But she’s not, and if anyone’s to blame, maybe it’s me.

“You didn’t make her sick, Oliver,” Kelly assures him, trying to hold him, but he keeps pushing her hands away. “She had cancer before we even knew and you falling on her, that’s how we found it so really, we should thank you because we got more time with her.”

“No, you didn’t.” He cries into his hand, so much anger and sadness releasing. “She died.”

No ten-year-old should ever have to feel the guilt of thinking it’s something he did that caused his sister’s death. No parent should have to shoulder the pain and pretend it’s okay when deep down they feel like they failed all their children that day.

I want this pain to end, and these emotions none of us can handle or understand to process them. This grieving shit, this useless emotion they say comes in waves, well it’s hit me like a tsunami today, and it needs to stop. Now.

The anger gets stronger, a fuel to the flames of blame. I can’t ignore it anymore. It surfaces and pulls me under. Inside our bedroom, I grab my heart, gasping for air, feeling trapped. The image of Mara lifeless in my arms taking over.

I don’t know how much time passes, but Kelly is in front of me, her hands on my face. “Talk to me,” she begs.

I can’t. I don’t want to.

“You shutting me out, this isn’t living, Noah. It’s surviving, and I’d rather drown in your harshness than suffocate in your silence.”

I’d rather die than feel this pain.

(The night that destroyed us.)

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