But how could I not? She had been a part of my life, even with her addiction and the pain it brought.
I had a long way to go before I could be truly happy and at peace in life; the road stretched ahead like an uncharted territory. But this time, I wouldn’t be alone.
Finally.
The rest of the in-between time before I left passed in a haze.
The house was silent in the way only a house can be when all the living things inside it have gone slightly mad with sadness.
The TV ran, but with the volume down low, so whatever minor-key music played in the background just bled into the hum of the refrigerator and the soft, terminal cough of the HVAC.
I drifted between rooms, a sleepwalker, carrying the same mug of cold coffee through every permutation of the kitchen, the couch, the guest bed.
There was a sense of waiting, but for what, I never knew. I imagined myself a widow; I imagined myself a child again, waiting for judgment, for something heavy and inevitable to land.
Sabrina had tried to cheer me up by buying fresh flowers, which wilted almost instantly in their shallow vase. All thepetals made a damp red circle on the countertop, like some minor crime scene.
I spent a whole hour one afternoon picking them up, petal by petal, and arranging them in the garbage for maximum neatness. It was a compulsion, a ritual of control. It didn’t help.
The first night after Caiden agreed to come home with me, I lay awake on top of the covers. I tried not to think about my mother’s body cooling on a slab or the long, silent drive that would carry us back toward everything I had run from.
I tried not to think about Caiden in the next room, folding and unfolding the same thoughts of violence and comfort, or about how he would never be mine in any way that made sense, a feral hunger braided with passion.
The next evening, I found myself trembling in the guest room, bare feet pressed to the cold planks, unsure whether my body or my mind was the lighter, more defective cage.
Grief had bled out of me in slow, viscous drips all day, soaking every pillow and windowpane, until I was nothing but a husk full of dread.
I waited until the house had gone silent except for the wind rattling the storm glass, then slipped from my room and padded down the stairs.
The basement door was closed, but I knew the exact sound it made when it opened: a soft, sucking whine, then a single shriek of the lowest stair.
I opened it and tiptoed down, gripping the rail with the desperation of a child. The air was colder here.
The lights were off, but the guest suite at the bottom of the stairs glowed faintly from the sliver of streetlamp that bled through a window.
I could see the faint shape of Caiden’s body curled on the mattress, his breathing so slow I suspected he might not be alive at all.
I stood just inside the door, frozen not by fear but by the conviction that if I made a noise, I’d shatter the spell that kept him here, in this house, in this bare, pitiful little bed at the end of the world.
I wanted to crawl in beside him and press my face into his back, to drink in the heat of his skin and let it convince me that some comfort still existed in the universe.
I wanted to be a child again, allowed to be needy, to be weak, to demand another human fill the void, even for a single hour.
But I was not a child, and the old terror of being too much, wanting too much, was still there, hissing, alive in the marrow of my bones.
He made a sound then, half-moan, half-sigh, and turned over onto his stomach, one arm splayed wide as if to hold the whole bed hostage.
For years, I had trained myself to fear the silhouette of him, to tense at the sound of his approach, but in this moment, I felt nothing but an awful, crushing loneliness, and a small, sick hope: maybe if I lay down next to him, the ache would stop for a few hours.
I watched him for a minute, letting the dull pain in my ribs settle, letting the comfort of his shape settle the panic that had been gnawing me to shreds for days.
I peeled back the edge of the blanket and slid in beside him, slow and silent, the mattress barely creaking under my extra weight.
He did not wake, but some part of him must have registered my warmth, because his body shifted back, aligning itself to mine, the broad muscle of his back curving into the bowl of my chest.
I tucked my knees behind his and wrapped my arm around his middle, pressing my palm flat over the rough cloth of his t-shirt.
I could feel his heartbeat, a slow, steady drum, and in its pulse I found a rhythm I had forgotten how to trust.
