by Sophie Stern
Now he was.
I loved my little brother, and I was happy for him. It was a little crazy for me to think that he’d found someone, I’d found someone, and we were all on the right track to move forward with our lives.
I drove home, parked my car, and leaned back in the seat.
Cordelia had gone on a date with me, and it had been the most wonderful experiences of my life. I couldn’t wait until Friday when I’d get to see her again.
9.
Cordelia
MY AUNT DIED.
She was dead when I got home from my date. I’d been out laughing and having fun with Cooper, and she’d been at home dying. I’d been gone, and she’d been passing away. What the hell was wrong with me? How could I have gone out and had fun when she was busy passing away?
I didn’t comprehend what was happening when I walked inside.
Uncle Ray was sitting next to her. The paramedics were checking her vitals, but it was obvious that she was gone. She had passed away when he’d been out at the grocery store, and when I’d been on my date. It was fucked up, and I knew we both felt like shit. She shouldn’t have died alone.
Finally, one of the EMTs came over to talk to me. He looked wildly nervous and a little bit sad. Had he known Hannah? Everyone in town had known Hannah. I bet he’d known her.
“I’m so sorry,” he said gently. “I can’t offer you any answers right now. We won’t know anything until the coroner tells us what happened.”
“She had cancer,” I said. “Was it the cancer?”
“I can’t make any predictions, ma’am.”
Ma’am.
He’d called me ma’am.
Not miss or young lady.
Ma’am.
He’d called me the name reserved for people I considered to be old. When someone was past their prime, they were a ma’am. Normal people in their early 30s weren’t supposed to be called that.
Wait...why was that what I was focusing on? What was it he’d said? The coroner had to make the call? Did that mean there would be an autopsy?
Questions swirled around my head, and suddenly, I was dizzy. I was overwhelmed with information. I should be focusing on the fact that my aunt was dead. She was gone. I hadn’t been here when it had happened. She’d been all alone. That was what I should be focusing on.
“Cordelia, come over here.”
My uncle called to me, and I went to the kitchen table and sat down next to him. His gentle eyes were filled with tears. I looked at him and he took my hand, squeezing it.
“What do you think happened?” I whispered. I understood that the EMTs couldn’t tell us definitively what had happened, but maybe Ray knew. Maybe he had an inkling.
“It was probably a heart attack or a problem with her chemo,” he explained gently. “The doctor warned us that this is always a possibility.”
“But the chemo was supposed to save her.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
She wasn’t supposed to die alone.
Not by herself.
She was supposed to be saved.
“I know,” he said. “And it did save her from the cancer. We got some more time together. We had a few wonderful months together, her and I. We even got to share some of that time with you.”
“It’s not fair,” I said.
“The world is a messy place, Cordelia. Hannah knew that.”
My uncle had tears streaming down his face, but he looked calm and serene. I think I had this idea that when someone passes away, you’re supposed to freak out. That was when happened when my mom died. I completely lost it. Hannah had been there for me, and she’d wrapped her arms around me, and she’d promised me that everything, everything was going to be okay.
And somehow, when she’d done that, I’d known that she was right. I trusted her.
I looked over at my Uncle Ray. He’d just lost the woman of his dreams. He’d lost the love of his life. He’d lost her far too young. Too soon. Uncle Ray had just lost the woman he loved more than anyone else in the world, and he hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.
“I should have been here,” I whispered.
“Don’t say that.”
“I should have.”
“You can’t blame yourself, love,” Ray said gently. “This is how these things usually go.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, looking over at him.
“When people get old, they have a way of looking at the world a little differently,” he said. “And one of those things is not wanting to be a bother.”
“A bother?”
I didn’t quite understand what he was trying to say. Why would Hannah feel like she was a bother? Was he saying that she’d given up on living because she didn’t want to inconvenience us? If that was true, then it was more than a little messed up. I hoped I was misunderstanding. I hoped that wasn’t what he was saying.
Uncle Ray seemed to take pity on me. He seemed to understand that I just wasn’t getting it, because he took a deep breath, and then he spoke.
“When my mom was ready to die, she sent us all to the park. How crazy is that? We thought we were all doing a good thing. I was the youngest, at seven, and I was so excited to go out with my brothers and sisters. My mom was old when she had my siblings, but she wasn’t old enough to die. She had pneumonia, though, and she had a bad case. While we were at the park, she died.”
“What?” I gasped. “That’s terrible.”
“When it’s time to go,” Ray said. “Sometimes, people like to be alone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s really normal, love,” he said. “Sometimes, when you’re ready to die, you hang on until you think the people around you can handle it. Sometimes, you wait until they’re out of the room so they don’t have to see your final breaths. Death is messy, and it’s painful, and it can be really, really sad and really, really horrible. I think your auntie knew it was her time.”
“She didn’t get to see the bakery,” I whispered.
He reached for my cheek and turned my head so I was facing him.
“Don’t you do this to yourself, Cordelia. This wasn’t your fault.”
But it felt like it was.
It felt like it was all my fault.
“I should have been here.”
“Cordelia, you couldn’t just sit here and wait for her to pass,” he said. “And neither could I. That’s not living, and that’s not what she would have wanted.”
Part of me knew he was telling me the truth, but part of me felt sick. Just then, someone came to the kitchen and needed to talk to Uncle Ray. They needed to talk to him about what came next. Uncle Ray got up and went back into the living room. I stayed where I was, watching everything, but not really hearing.
There were multiple people coming in and out of the house. They were talking about transporting her body. That was what someone said. The body. Her body.
But she wasn’t just a body.
I couldn’t think of her that way.
She was my aunt.
She was the woman who took care of me.
It took awhile, but finally, everyone left. The house seemed to feel emptier than it ever had before. A sort of desperate sadness seemed to hang in the air. Uncle Ray came back to the kitchen and he looked at me.
“It was a long day,” he said.
“It was,” I agreed quietly.
“If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to go to bed now.”
I looked up at my uncle and nodded. There were tears in his eyes, and I knew that even though he was the strongest man I knew, he wanted to be alone. He’d been with Hannah for what seemed like a million years. Long before they were ever married, they were a couple. They were best friends. They completed each other in every way.
“I understand.”
“Tomorrow morning we’ll start making arrangements,” my uncle said.
I knew what he meant. He didn’t have to clarify. He meant for the funeral. We’d have
to set up a funeral, and plan it. We’d have to do all sorts of things that we hadn’t thought we’d be doing for awhile. I just nodded.
“Yeah,” I said, swallowing hard. There was a lump in my throat that hadn’t been there before. “Yeah, okay.”
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said. He placed a hand on my shoulder, squeezed it, and then he started going up the stairs. “Oh, and Cordelia?”
“Yes?”
“Lock the door when you go to the apartment, okay?”
“Of course.”
My uncle went upstairs and I walked through the living room to the front door. I tried not to stare at the place on the couch where my aunt had died. That was where she’d passed away. She’d been in the living room relaxing, and she’d just died. Maybe it was a heart attack. Maybe the chemo had just weakened her body to the point where she couldn’t handle staying alive. Maybe it was a stroke. We’d find out soon, but we didn’t know now, and it bothered me.
Then again, maybe we’d never know, and I’d just have to get used to not knowing things.
I looked at the little living room where so many wonderful memories had been made. My mom had loved this house, and so had Hannah. They’d decorated it together, hanging up pictures and painting and choosing the perfect accessories to make the house wonderful.
And now Hannah was gone.
Would Uncle Ray stay in the house?
Would I want to, if it had been my partner who died?
I forced myself to leave the house. I locked the door and pulled it tightly closed, and then I just stood on the porch for a long time. Somehow, I couldn’t make myself go back to the apartment above the garage. If I went up there, I wasn’t going to sleep. I was going to sit up and cry and that was going to be about a million times worse than anything else I could imagine.
And then I realized I didn’t need to be alone.
There was someone who was trying his best to make my world a better place. He wasn’t trying to fix everything in the universe, but he was trying to make my smile. I could be with that person.
I could be with Cooper.
He needed to know about Hannah. He had loved her just as I had, and if I could get to him, I wouldn’t have to be by myself. He could comfort me. When Mom died, I hadn’t reached out. I’d suffered silently. This time around, I wasn’t going to be quiet. I wasn’t going to stay isolated. I needed someone, and I was going to ask for help.
Only, as I looked down at my phone, I realized that I hadn’t actually put his number in my phone. How the hell had I forgotten to do that? It was such a stupid little thing. Like, as soon as we decided to meet up, I should have gotten his number. It was just that I’d been so nervous, and so excited, and so intrigued, that it seemed like an easy thing to forget.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I didn’t have Cooper’s phone number, and I didn’t know where he lived. It wasn’t like the school was open. I couldn’t call and ask for the principal’s personal phone number even if it had been open. Then I realized that it was fine.
It was going to be totally okay because I knew where his dad lived, and I knew James wasn’t going to be asleep at this hour. It wasn’t even eleven. James had always been a night owl. He’d be up to answer the door, and this was worth waking them up for.
The drive to the Clark house took less than ten minutes, and I pulled directly into the driveway and headed up to the door. It wasn’t until I reached the actual door and raised my hand to knock that I second-guessed myself.
Was I making the right choice here?
Were they going to think I was insane?
What was I doing?
It was late, and my aunt was dead. I hadn’t seen James Clark in years. I hadn’t seen their dad since I was a kid. What was I going to do? Knock on the door, introduce myself, and then ask for personal information about Cooper? Shit. They’d think I was crazy. Hell, they’d probably call the cops on me. This was a horrible idea.
I turned and started to go back to my car when I heard the front door open.
“Tell me you aren’t going to leave after all that,” a deep voice said. “That was such a good entrance. Very dramatic.”
I turned to see a tall man with long dreadlocks standing there. I didn’t recognize him. He was wearing pajama pants that hung low on his waist, and he had on a t-shirt with a sort of funny joke on it. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, suddenly confused. I saw the camera doorbell then, and I realized he must have seen me drive up. “I must have the wrong house. I thought this was the Clark residence.”
I was an idiot. Of course, they’d moved. After so much time, there was no reason to think they hadn’t.
“Cordelia?” A different voice, a familiar one, called my name, and I looked up again. Next to the first man was someone in a wheelchair. He was no longer a gawky teenager. Nope. James Clark had grown into quite a handsome dude, and I was guessing the tall guy was his boyfriend.
“James?”
I rushed over and gave him a hug.
“I’m so sorry to come over so late, well, and so randomly. I mean, it’s been a long time.” To be honest, I was surprised that he recognized me and that he remembered me. Had Cooper told him we were meeting up?
“Are you okay?” He asked, pulling back. “You had your date with Coop tonight.”
There was my answer.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I had my date.”
I looked up at the tall man. He seemed amused with the entire situation.
“I’m Michael,” he said. He held a hand out.
“Cordelia.”
“I figured that.” He looked to James then. “Seems like you’ve got this under control. I’m going to head back to the bedroom before your dad wakes up.”
“Okay. Be there soon.”
James looked at me, and he wheeled out of the house onto the porch. He reached for the door and pulled it closed behind him. Despite being in a wheelchair, James moved with ease.
“That’s your boyfriend?”
“He’s a good guy,” James smiled.
“He’s hot.”
James just laughed.
“I feel the same way, honey. Believe me. Now tell me why you’re here. I know you didn’t come just to hit on my man.”
“No, I didn’t, I-“
James laughed, interrupting me.
“Cordelia, I’m teasing you. Why are you here?”
James looked concerned, and I wondered if my eyes looked red and bloodshot from shock, or from crying.
“My aunt is dead,” I said.
James’ face fell, and he shook his head.
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay,” I lied.
“No, it’s not okay.” James reached for my hand and squeezed.
Normally, when people say, “I’m sorry,” it feels stupid. It feels like a total insult. When people say that they’re sorry it’s because they don’t know what else to say. It’s because they have nothing better to do, nothing better to offer. Somehow, I didn’t get that vibe from James. When he said it, I believed him. I had never believed anyone before.
After my mom passed away, that was all I heard.
Even Jake would say he was sorry. Anytime I tried to talk about my mom, he had always said, “I’m sorry.” It had been frustrating because I’d never gotten to really talk about her. He didn’t like dealing with death, so he wouldn’t let me express myself around him. That had been just another reason things hadn’t really worked out.
Now, I wondered how I was going to be able to make it through. I only survived losing my mom because I had Hannah.
“I need to talk to Cooper,” I said.
“Well, he’s not here,” James cocked his head. “He has a house.”
“I know,” I said. “But I don’t have his number.”
“You don’t have his number?”
“Yeah, we kind of...” I blushed. We were too busy making out
to exchange numbers. How the hell do I tell James? Luckily, he didn’t seem to mind.
“Give me your phone,” he said.
I handed it over without hesitation and he messed with it for a second before handing it back.
“I added him as a contact. Now you have his phone number. I also punched his address into your GPS program. Just follow the directions and you’ll find his place. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks, James.”
“It was nothing. Take care of yourself, kiddo.”
Being called kiddo was a lot better than being called ma’am. Even though James was younger than me, I’d always sort of looked up to him. He always had his shit together.
“Hey James?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“Like I said, it was nothing.”
“Coop is...well, I’m glad he’s taking a chance on me,” I said. I didn’t know why I was blurting out the truth to James in the middle of the night on his front porch. James just smiled, tipped an imaginary hat, and went back into the house. He closed the door and I heard it lock, and I stood there for a second before I headed back to my car.
This was it.
I could do it.
My drive to Cooper’s place took only a few minutes. Ashton was so dead at night that I only passed a few other cars on the way. If I’d been careful in the route I selected, I had a feeling I might have been able to make it there without passing any cars at all.
When I arrived, I double checked the address on my phone.
Cooper was a total weirdo.
James was right: it was impossible to miss his house.
10.
Cooper
I WAS STANDING IN THE kitchen drinking water when I heard the knock. I glanced at my phone’s doorbell app and was shocked to see her standing there. What the hell was Cordelia doing at my house? How had she even found it? Leaving my phone on the counter, I hurried to the door to see what was wrong. If she had come to my house, then something was wrong.
Obviously.
Something had to be horribly, terribly wrong.
Why else would she have come over?
I hated the fact that the first thing I thought was there’s some sort of tragedy. I wished that I had thought something like, “she wants my dick.” That would have been a much better, much healthier thought. I definitely should have gone with that. It just couldn’t be true tonight, though.