His face is filled with so much love and light. It reaches out to me from behind the frame, more alive in the picture than he is in this room.
“Do you want to go?” I ask, and in the next instant, it hits me that he’s already gone. For the first time, my mind grasps what it’s fought so hard to deny—he’s not in there.
His shallow breaths rise and fall, followed by a rattling sound, because each exhale takes work. During the hours we waited for him to pass at the hospital, Andrew told me he’d read somewhere that people often wait to die alone because they don’t want to put their loved ones through that pain, or they wait until all the people closest to them have had a chance to say goodbye and make their peace.
Maybe today was it.
“Is this what you were waiting for?” I return my gaze to his face, almost unrecognizable as the boy in the picture. My throat catches with a sob.
I could never bring myself to give him permission to go like Andrew. Not when all I wanted him to do was stay. I couldn’t imagine living with the hole in my heart that he’d leave. I’d seen the grief over losing a child take Kendra to places I wasn’t willing to go.
But my son is gone. That’s the reality. The only reality that stares me in the face as I watch him struggle to swallow the phlegm that’s built up in his throat. His brain unable to complete basic tasks.
I brush my other hand against his cheek. I’ve walked him through every important milestone since he was born, from teaching him how to tie his shoes to driving a car and filling out college applications. But I don’t know if I can do this. I’m not strong enough. My eyes rise to meet his in the photo; they sear into my soul.
What if he’s hanging on for me?
“You don’t have to stay any longer.” Grief thickens the sound of my voice. “I’m going to be okay,” I assure him even though I don’t know how I’ll live life without him. “I love you so much, Jacob.” Deep sobs overtake me, and it takes time for them to settle before I can speak again. I watch his chest as he struggles to breathe. I grab Sawyer’s blanket from the couch and lay it next to Jacob’s face so he can feel the softness and smell whatever scent of security might still be there. “You can go now.” I rub the blanket softly against his cheek. “You don’t have to be afraid. Sawyer is waiting for you. Go to him.”
Time stands still as I watch his chest rise and fall. I don’t move from his bedside until the sun begins peeking through the curtains, casting its first rays of light into our living room. His body releases a long exhale, and I wait for the next inhale, but this time it doesn’t come. His chest no longer moves. A calm fills the room. I imagine him walking toward the light and Sawyer waving at him and telling him to hurry up.
I reach down and close his eyes.
EPILOGUE
DANI
TWO WEEKS LATER
I shut the door behind me and slide into Mom’s desk. I push aside all her accounting and bills along with her itemized grocery list. I jiggle the mouse, waking up the computer. I have to hurry before Mom gets back. She scooped up Luna on her way home from the grocery store, and we’re cooking dinner together tonight. Mom’s been an amazing bridge between us.
Caleb’s with Bryan tonight. We’ve worked out a temporary visitation schedule with him until we can figure out something more permanent. Caleb’s confession created a huge shift in Bryan’s attention toward me. His sole focus is on making sure Caleb doesn’t do jail time. Bryan got rid of Ted and hired a cutthroat defense attorney to get him off. But Caleb killed his best friend because he was drunk and angry—I’m not sure he should.
If Caleb had his way, he’d be sent to death row. His therapist says he has a “disproportionate amount of guilt” over that night. My goal is to get him into as many therapy sessions as I can before his court date, because there’s no specialized trauma therapy in jail. What innocence he has left will be stripped away. The thought of going to visit him there makes me sick to my stomach.
I wait for the website to load while I pull out my phone to respond to the group text Lindsey sent earlier about making a dinner date. She wants to tell Kendra and me something about Andrew. She was all cryptic about it over the phone. She said it was important but that she hadn’t wanted to burden us with it when everything was going down. I can’t imagine what she wants to say. I’ve barely seen her since Jacob’s funeral. Her journey is only beginning, but she’s finding a way to go on every day, just like we all are.
Kendra started attending support groups about parenting children on the other side, and it’s simultaneously the saddest and creepiest thing I’ve ever heard. She’s met all these new friends in her groups, and she talks about them like they’ve known each other forever instead of only a few weeks. But I guess that’s how it is when you’ve lost a child. Nobody else can understand what that’s like. She’s tried getting Lindsey to go with her, but she’s not ready for that yet.
Things between her and Paul are slowly improving. They’ve banded together since they’ve found a common enemy to fight—an enemy that just happens to be my husband. A huge part of the defense Bryan and his lawyer have built for Caleb is directed at them for allowing the easy access to the alcohol that night. They also claim that Caleb’s erratic and violent behavior was because of the Adderall he’d been taking on a regular basis. They want to blame that on them, too, since there were times Caleb got it from Reese. It’s a jumbled-up legal mess, but the two of them are committed to get through it, and it has renewed their commitment to each other. At least for now. It’s a delicate balancing act trying to support Caleb and Kendra at the same time, but Kendra and I agreed not to talk about the case together, which makes it easier.
The home page fills my screen. Mom’s Wi-Fi is dinosaur speed. It’s been weeks since I logged in, but I checked my messages yesterday, and there was one in my in-box waiting for me. My heart leaped when I saw it was from him. He sent it two days ago. I select the message and stare at the blinking cursor as I get ready to type my response.
I stumbled on the site a few years ago after one of my fights with Bryan, when I was at my lowest. I had never felt so alone and just wanted someone to talk to. I created a profile based on the person I’ve always imagined I’d be if I’d never met Bryan—a successful woman living on the East Coast with a husband who adored me instead of hurting me, with children who respected me, and running my own interior design business. It gave me a chance to be the person I never got to become. I never expected to meet someone I cared about or to develop the feelings that have grown out of our relationship.
We can go weeks without being able to coordinate our schedules to be online at the same time, so most of our communication in the beginning was through long emails to each other that read like old-fashioned letters sent through the mail. I loved everything about it, and it gave me something to look forward to that was only mine—a treat at the end of my day, an escape from the suffocating walls of my home. I set things up through an old email account of Luna’s rather than my own. Bryan knew how paranoid and diligent I was about monitoring the kids’ online activity, so he left all that up to me, and he stopped paying attention to any of Luna’s stuff after she moved out. I was so proud of myself for exerting the first piece of independence I’d had in years.
It’s weird to feel so strongly about someone whose face I’ve never seen, but I liked it that way. I could imagine him as whoever I needed him to be at the moment. It has kept me going when I wanted to give up and allowed me to find the self I discarded years ago. Now that I’ve found her, I’m never letting her go again.
I’m going to miss him. That’s for sure, but I don’t need him like I did, because there’s nothing left to escape from anymore. I finally read Luna’s letter, and one of the things she described was how living a lie was the hardest part of being in our family. I can’t do anything about the past, but I can do things differently going forward, and I promised her an authentic life. It’s as important for her as it is to me.
This is a new beg
inning, and it’s time to let go of anything that stands in the way of my fresh start. I hope he understands.
L—
I’ve missed you too and I hope you’re well. Can we chat soon? There’s something I need to tell you.
Love,
May
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A book is only as strong as the team behind it, and I’m so grateful for my team. Forever grateful to call Thomas & Mercer my publishing home. To my brilliant editor, Charlotte Herscher, who always takes my work to the next level and finds the holes I miss. To Megha Parekh, who stands at the top supervising us all and keeping me in line. Whose words, “Make sure the suspense drives the story,” will forever reign in my mind while I write. To all the copyeditors, proofreaders, cover designers, and marketing managers who make sure the finished product shines—thank you. To my agent extraordinaire, Christina Hogrebe, who knew exactly how to pursue me and came into my life when I needed her the most. And lastly, my readers, because where would I be without you? Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your support.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Lucinda Berry is a former psychologist and leading researcher in childhood trauma. Now, she spends her time writing full-time where she uses her clinical experience to blur the line between fiction and nonfiction. She enjoys taking her readers on a journey through the dark recesses of the human psyche.
If Berry isn’t chasing after her son, you can find her running through Los Angeles, prepping for her next marathon. To hear about her upcoming releases, visit her on Facebook or sign up for her newsletter at https://lucindaberryauthor.com.
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