Page 71 of State of Mind

‘I’m safe in Savannah,’ he told her, then sipped his coffee again. His head was starting to calm down, even though the stress of the funeral was growing heavier. ‘He doesn’t know where I am, and I have family there who will take care of me. People I chose, who love me no matter what.’

He saw the hurt that caused, and he wanted to care, but Willow had been too much like their father. She enjoyed her power, and she was too afraid of losing her mother’s favor to ever stand up for him. It was easier that way—it was safer that way. He understood it, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to forgive it.

And it didn’t look like Willow had any intention of apologizing. One small gesture wasn’t enough.

‘Are you going to speak at the funeral today?’ she asked when the moment passed.

Wilder sighed into his coffee. In truth, he wasn’t sure. He had a speech written, because for all his suffering, any of the love he had known growing up had come from his dad. He hurt—a deep, visceral sort of ache knowing that they’d never have a chance to make it right. And it wasn’t the sharp pain he might have felt if he’d grown up with someone who openly cared for him, but he would grieve.

And he would miss him.

‘Wilder.’ She used the old sign name his dad had given him when he was young—and maybe it was to trigger something in him that would take the dead look he knew he had out of his eyes, but it didn’t work.

It wouldn’t work.

‘I don’t know,’ he told her, and that was the only answer he had. He might get up there in front of family and friends, and he’d let the words flow from his fingers, and hope that none of the bitterness would well up and spill out, because he didn’t want to ruin the pieces of his dad that everyone had left. But he wasn’t sure that he could say any of it without saying all of it. ‘I’m tired.’

Her shoulders heaved with a sigh, and she glanced at the clock before looking back at him. ‘Today probably isn’t the best day for Deaf Standard Time is it?’

At that, he laughed, because even growing up hearing, those pieces of his community were so deeply ingrained in him. He could play the hearing man for the moment though. He could watch the time, and get ready, and stop conversation, and get them all moving. His aunts and uncles were in the house, and his mother was God only knew where, and he had just enough time for a walk and to feed the chickens before he took this final step.

It occurred to him that with his dad’s death, he’d lost so much more than the man. He’d lost the remaining link to what was and all that was left was what could be. He could have handled it, knowing it was just Savannah—and his friends and Jayden. But knowing that it might also have Luca meant he could more than handle it. It meant he was ready.

* * *

Wilder hadn’t gone to church much as a kid. In spite of their Catholic roots, his mother had never found one with enough Deaf people to satisfy her need to be apart from the hearing, so religion fell by the wayside. It felt strange to gather in the parking lot, and it was even stranger to walk through the chapel doors.

Even though it was a funeral home and not a place of worship, it still felt sort of heavy and important in ways he’d never entirely understand. His family milled around, and his hearing aids sat heavy in his pocket because it was far easier to shoulder the burden without the weight of ambient noise.

His mother hadn’t bothered to approach him all morning—in fact, he could count on two hands the times she’d even looked him in the eye since he arrived, and it helped make his decision to throw all of his bags in the rental car before they made their way to the services.

It was over. This moment marked it—the end of whatever he had been, and it was on to whatever he would become.

Scott was gone, only scars left behind, and now the link to his biological family had been severed as his father’s body burned to ash and was poured into a little ceramic urn covered in soft blue flowers. The funeral was nothing like his dad, and everything his mother had wanted, and it was a reminder that Wilder only had memories left that were untainted by her hate.

He watched her across the room, watching the way her face moved just like his own, the similarities between them like knife wounds. She dragged her hand over her hair the same way, and bit her top lip like he did, and shuffled her feet when she wanted the conversation to be over. He also watched her face soften into gratitude and kindness when she stopped to talk to the interpreter, and the old familiar ache in him rose.

Why were strangers good enough to earn her kindness but never him?

He took his seat in the front row on the far end from where she’d be sitting, and he tried to nod and tried to smile whenever a distant cousin or a family friend’s son walked by to say hello. His sister sat two seats away, and she tried to catch his eye, but he knew if he was going to do this, he couldn’t let her in.

He couldn’t let his cracks show.

His mother requested the services to be short, so there would be a prayer, which got started right away. There was a hymn, led in poor Signed English by the church choir that had some people wiping their eyes but left his mother scowling into her lap, refusing to watch.

His aunt went up next to talk about what it was like growing up with his dad—all those stories he watched play out on her hands of family get togethers over the years, and he found he could smile at those. He’d always liked his aunts and his cousins. They’d been better people than the ones he lived with at home.

His sister was next, and he couldn’t let himself watch her. Her signs would be poetic and strong and big. She would recall all the times that their father had guided her and held her and helped her find her Deaf identity so she could live in the world without compromise.

His dad had loved him—but with conditions. His dad had loved him, but never enough to help him become the person he was. He was left to sink on his own, to recover on his own, to define his own worth.

He had clawed his way out of that pit with wounds that would never heal.

Wilder swallowed when Willow was finished, and he felt his mother’s eyes piercing and intense on him as he climbed to the podium and spread his hands on the soft wood. No one had bothered to set up a mic—only the pastor had used a hand-held one, so there was an unobscured view of his face as he took a breath and found himself surprised by his own tears.

‘My father had a boring name. Ron. Not Ronald—just Ron. He liked telling people that more than he liked sharing his sign name, because they always asked.’

He saw a few people smile, saw his uncle laugh.

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