Page 73 of One Foggy Christmas
Slowly, I lead Sadie to his headstone. The moonlight illuminates his name, making the nightmare more real. I lay down a couple of blankets over the skiff of snow, and she falls to her knees, blankly staring at his memorial.
I expected tears and anger and all the emotions I’ve talked her through over the last few years, but this time around is different. She’s different, and I don’t know how to help ease this new version of her grief.
After thirty minutes, she stands, gently touching the edge of his tombstone. “We can go now.” Smoke puffs out as the words escape her mouth.
My arm wraps around her shoulder, gently leading her back to the car. Her parents are by the door when we get home.
“Sadie?” Lynette starts. “Are you?—”
“I can’t talk about it.” She shakes her head, walking past them.
I follow her up the stairs, but when we get to her room, she shuts the door, blocking me out. In the safety of her room, the tears come. From my spot outside her bedroom, I hear the gut-wrenching sounds of my wife falling apart.
It’s agony in its purest form.
I try the handle, needing to get to her, to comfort her, but the door is locked. My head presses against the wood as I listen to her muffled cries.
All I can do is wait outside until she trusts me enough to hold her pain. Slowly, I slide to the ground, leaning against the wall. It’s there in her parents’ dark hallway, in the middle of Skaneateles, New York, that I allow myself to fall apart too.
SADIE
Tate is gone.
It took most of the week lying in bed for the reality of that to sink in.
I’m mourning the loss of my brother while mourning the loss of my life, and it just feelssoheavy, like a crushing weight I can’t avoid.
My mom, Annie, and Nash rotate, bringing me food and sitting beside me. This week has been a blur of depression at a level I’ve never experienced before. At least, I don’t think I have, but maybe it was like this the first time I found out about Tate.
I sit on my bed, hugging my knees to my chest with my head pressed against the cold window. So far, my day has consisted of watching snow flurries swirl from the sky onto the lake. Even the soft knock on my bedroom door doesn’t break my focus.
Nash enters. He walks to the nightstand beside my bed, placing a steaming cup of hot cocoa on the coaster. I don’t even acknowledge his presence, just keep looking out the window.
“I brought you something you might like.” He sits on the edge of the mattress. “If I were in your position, I would want to see this, but now I’m second-guessing everything. It’s stupid.”
His back-and-forth nerves are enough to pull my attention away from the snow flurries. My eyes flick to him and the phone in his hands.
“I have a link to Tate’s funeral. I thought you might want to watch it. Get some closure like people usually get in normal situations.”
The pounding in my heart shows how scared I am, but I take the device from his hands anyway.
His lips press into one of his sad smiles. I’m getting used to that one. I’ve seen it the most. “I’ll just be in the other room if you need anything.”
The door shuts behind him.
I’m all alone, free to come undone.
Sometimes, the best way to get through the pain is to feel it, so I sink into my bed and push the link.
A picture of Tate flashes on the screen—the one I took at the derby a few years ago. He looks happy, and my heart breaks, thinking about everything he hid behind the facade.
The camera pans the room as the funeral procession begins walking down the church aisle. I smile at the large crowd there to pay their respects. Of course Tate would have standing room only at his funeral.
Rows of white flowers fill the front of the church—he loved white flowers, said they were the most perfect. Every detail of his funeral was beautiful, and seeing that somehow eases my grief. Nash was right. Experiencing Tate’s funeral again does bring a small measure of closure.
When all the talks and tributes are done, the crowd stands as the family follows his casket out to the cemetery. The camera pans the room again, and that’s when I see a familiar face, wiping tears off his face.
I grab my chest, where my heart aches with a discomfort I can’t quite name.
