AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Then I started finding little plastic baggies here and there. In his pants pockets, in his luggage. I thought, well, that’s strange, if the doctor gave him a prescription, shouldn’t it be in a bottle? As the weeks went on, he changed more and more. When he was on the road, the phone calls would be few and far between.” She shrugs. “Then when he was home, he started hanging around with these people I’d never seen before in my life. They’d come over unexpectedly, and he would leave and return a couple of hours later. It would take fifteen minutes before he was out, and nothing I could do would wake him up. He fell asleep once while Luna was in the bath, and he was supposed to be watching her. Fuck, she was in the bath.” She shakes her head, the tears flowing nonstop.
“We fought that night when he finally woke up, still on the bathroom floor. It was after three o’clock in the morning. He was passed out for nine fucking hours while I waited for him to wake up.” The knots in my stomach now feel like they’re tearing through. “He said he was sorry and it wouldn’t happen again. He was fine for four days.” She spins the glass in her hand. “Then he came home one Saturday night, shirt on backward. When he took it off, he had marks on his chest. Marks I did not leave. Marks someone else made.” I was wrong before. If I thought today was hard, I was wrong. This right here, this listening to the hell she has been living, this has to be something that will forever be engraved on my soul. “Told me to lay off him. Everyone does it. I was a cold stuck-up bitch.” She looks at me then, the pain written on her face.
“Koda.” I take a step toward her. “He loved you more than life,” I tell her. “You know he did. You and the girls were his life.”
“Maybe once he did,” she says calmly. “After that day, he didn’t even try to hide he was with other women. He would be okay for a couple of hours during the day. The rest were him off doing whatever it was that he fucking did.” She inhales. “He would wake up and stumble around the fucking house until he went to the bathroom, and about forty minutes later, he was in tip-top shape until he was so tired he had to nap again.” She leans forward, putting the glass on the table in front of her. “I should have left.” Her voice quivers. “What kind of mother lets her kids stay around a drug addict?”
My feet move without my head knowing what is going to happen. I sit next to her, putting my hand around her shoulder. “Don’t you fucking say another word.”
“The day before he died, I found pills again on the coffee table. At this point, they were literally all over the fucking place. At least when he was on the road—” Her body shakes in my arms. “I picked them up and put them in the garbage disposal. What the fuck would have happened if Luna or Rain thought they were candy?” She looks up at me. “I was giving him until this weekend, and then I was going to leave him.” She shocks the shit out of me. “I was going to tell his father everything. I was going to fucking tell everyone everything.” She looks at me. “But you guys all knew, and no one did anything to save him.” The minute she says those words, I think I’m going to throw up.
“You guys just watched him kill himself.” She closes her eyes and sobs in my arms. I lean back on the couch, her tears seeping through my jacket and then through my shirt. So many fucking tears. I never knew someone could cry that much. As the sobs start to drift off, her body gets heavier next to me, and when I look down, I see she’s sleeping. I put my cheek on the top of her head, my own tears running down my face. I don’t move from the couch for what feels like an eternity. When I hear footsteps coming down the steps, I look over to see Eddie there. I hold my finger to my mouth to tell him to keep quiet.
“You should bring her upstairs,” he whispers. “She’s probably out.”
I move as gently as I can, tucking my arm under her legs and getting up. Holding her in my arms, I walk up the steps softly, going to her bedroom and laying her down in her bed. I kiss her on her forehead before turning and leaving the room.
I don’t say anything to anyone. Instead, I walk out the front door, closing it softly behind me. You guys watched him kill himself. Her words hit me in the stomach. I take a couple of steps before two things happen to me at the same time. My stomach lets go of everything it was holding in and I throw up all over the side of the driveway. Then my knees buckle, and I crash to the ground. Car doors being slammed shut make me look up, and there I see it. My family waits for me. “I’ve got him,” my father says, walking to me, but he’s never alone because my uncles are two steps behind him. Stone waits at the car for me. “Let’s get you home.”
CHAPTER FOUR
dakota
Three weeks later
“Morning, Eddie,” I greet him as he walks into the kitchen a little after nine.
“Morning, Koda,” he says, smiling at me. “Where are the girls?” He looks around the kitchen as I was just about to clean up the breakfast dishes.
“They’re upstairs getting dressed,” I reply, looking over to the hallway to make sure Rain or Luna aren’t there. “I was going to talk to you.” He pulls out a stool and sits down, putting his hands down on the island in front of him. “You know we love having you here,” I say, my voice trembling a bit, my hand shaking, “but it’s time to get back to normal.” The sting of tears comes to my eyes, and I blink them away furiously. “Or better yet, back to our new normal.”
“Koda,” he says softly, “are you sure this is the right time? I mean?—”
“Yes,” I state, trying to make my voice firm. It’s been over two weeks I’ve been planning on talking to him about this, and today, I finally got the courage to bring it up. “It’s not that we don’t love having you here. But if Benji was here, you wouldn’t be here all the time. Hell, you’d probably be preparing to go down to your Florida condo for the winter.” He looks down at his hands.
“Benji would want…”
“It doesn’t matter what Benji would want.” I swallow down the lump in my throat. “He’s not coming back, and it’s time for us to find our routine.”
“You’re right,” he concedes. “I just worry.”
“And I love you for it. I really do.” I smile at him. “But for everyone’s sake, this needs to happen. My parents went back home after two weeks, and now it’s time for us to get into our groove.”
“What do we tell the girls?” He looks over at me. “What if they think I’m going to abandon them?” He wipes the tears from his eyes.
“We aren’t going to tell them anything,” I tell him. “If they ask, you are busy. It’s not like you aren’t going to see them, or I’m blocking you from seeing them. It’ll just be like before when they see you on Saturday.”
“Koda…” He looks at his hands, his bottom lip quivering. “I just want you to know…”
I hold up my hand. “I know,” I deflect, not really knowing what he has to say but also afraid of what he might say.
He just nods. “Why don’t I get out of here?” He pushes away from the island. “Maybe go play a round of golf?”
“That sounds like fun.” I try to sound chipper. He pushes the stool in, taking one more look around. “You call me if you need anything.”
“I will,” I assure him, trying not to sound like I’m as scared as he is about leaving me with just the girls. I hold up my hand, willing to be strong and watch through blurry eyes as he slowly walks back out the front door. The door closing feels like the finality of something. I stretch my hands in front of me on the island and place my forehead against the cold marble countertop. “You can do this.” I’m trying to give myself a pep talk. “It’ll just be like he’s on the road.” I sigh deeply, the lone tear running down my face when my head reminds me that he’s gone and not coming back.
When I hear the sound of the girls walking down the steps, I stand straight and spin around. I turn on the water in the sink and pretend I’ve been cleaning, and not telling their grandfather he had to go and second-guessing myself.
