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“I’m not putting that on,” I explained.
“You don’t have to,” she said, cleaning off the material with a lint brush.
My chest suddenly weighed a million pounds. “How can you clean that when...when…”
She turned around. “I feel useless otherwise.” Her tears fell quietly. “I can’t do anything for you that would actually help you feel relief. I’m useless to you, my sweet Spence.”
I turned toward the window. The sky was gray and it looked like it would rain.
I dressed but had to use a cane to walk. I was a walking zombie, in complete disbelief. People cried around me, but I didn’t register it. I could only stand by her God-awful casket because I was still recovering and wasn’t allowed to carry a handle.
Emmett held Ellie as they followed behind us. They insisted I travel with them in the family car and I wasn’t in the mood to argue. I wanted to shout, “But I killed your granddaughter!” or “My kidney wasn’t good enough for her.”
And I should have known too. I should have kept my wretched life away from her beautiful one. I should have kept myself clear of her. I should have...but I didn’t. And now I was burying her. I was going to bury her and never see her lovely face or her clever smile again. I felt ill to my stomach, and I could tell it was going to be permanent. No amount of time was going to heal me. My wounds would close, but my scars would remain forever—they were deep and they were painful and they were endless.
The cemetery felt like such a ridiculous place to put someone so bright and lovely. Cricket was too astounding, too astonishing, too mine to be laid there.
They set the casket on the rollers above the grave and the priest performed the ceremony. He blessed the casket using holy water and incense.
Many drew roses from the arrangements setting by the gravesite and threw them on the casket. The entire family and friends stood in line to say goodbye, but I couldn’t go near her. I didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t be in there.
The smell of the incense, the wind in the trees, the feel of the sun on the back of my neck, the low soothing words of the priest. They calmed me and I closed my eyes.
But when the priest stopped talking, the family stood, confusing me. Two men in gardener’s jumpsuits approached the casket and I froze. They began turning their levers and I felt horrified.
“Stop!” I shouted, my whole body rejecting the idea. “Just stop!” I insisted and the family stilled. “She’s not there. She can’t be,” I said, approaching the casket. I started panting. “Cricket,” I demanded, trying to open the casket. “Please, you can’t be there!” I shouted. The lid was nailed shut and I dug my nails so deep in the wood that they started bleeding. “She’s not there!” I swore. “She’s not here! She’s not here! She’s not here!” I said over and over.
“Spencer,” Jonah said, throwing an arm around my chest.
“No,” I sobbed. “She’s not there. She’s not there.”
A few more hands came forward and held me back as the cemetery workers lowered her to the concrete slab beneath her casket with a resounding thud, making me howl with grief.
I longed for her. Longed so deeply. She was my happiness and she was gone in the ground. I would never get her back.
I sank on my knees to the grass and sat back. I wept into my hands until every pair of hands that had held me was no longer present. I looked up and the gravesite was empty. I looked around me, their cars disappeared.
The empty grave beckoned to me.
It began to rain so densely I could barely see around me. I crawled on my hands and knees through the mud and sat at the precipice. My hands went to my hair and I pulled as hard as I could to distract me from the pain. I wanted to be in there with her.
“Take me with you,” I begged her, staring down into the abyss.
“Do you feel alive yet?” I heard a shrill voice ask me.
My heart pounded and I stood, my body covered in mud. She laughed, making my teeth grind at its deafening sound. She approached my back and my body tensed. She never touched me, but I could feel her breath on my neck and I shuddered. She circled around the grave and faced me from the other side.
“What-what are you doing here?” I gasped, fear crawling up my legs.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked, walking to and leaning against a tall tree at the corner of the grave.
“I-I don’t know.”
She sighed and shook her head. “Spencer, you have nothing left now.”
“I don’t care,” I said, staring into the black hole.
“Didn’t I warn you that she’d take all your money?”
