Page 37 of The Dearly Departed

I needed to put distance between myself and that humiliating scene.

"Nothing," I answered.

"Seriously?! Because that didn't—"

"I really need you to shut the fuck up, Shawn."

I didn’t need to look at him to know he was staring at me, probably trying to peer through my thick skull and into the dysfunctional brain within.

“Why—"

My palm smacked against the steering wheel. “Dammit, Shawn! I said, shut the fuck up! Please!”

Then he finally listened. But he didn’t shrivel up and sink into the seat beneath the heft of my anger and embarrassment. No. Instead, he glared at me from across the cab the whole way back home, and it was me who struggled not to slink away with my tail between my legs for losing my shit on him.

But, holy fuck, I hated this! The realization that I wouldn’t recognize Anna if I ever managed to find her again was killing me. Too much time had passed; too much had changed. She would be a woman now, someone completely different from who she’d been at eight years old, just like I was now a man and worlds away from who I’d been at twelve.

She probably doesn’t remember me either.

We’d loved each other once. It was platonic, of course; we were children. But she needed me, and I protected her, and over the year we’d lived together, we had grown attached by more than mere affection. There was something deeper that held me to her. An old, soul-deep connection. Something ancient that stretched the length of lifetimes and into an eternity we’d never share.

It was special and sacred. The dearest thing I’d ever experienced in all my life.

But time had severed that bond, turning something I’d cherished into nothing more than a hazy dream.

It hurt.

Dammit, it hurt so much.

My shoulders sagged as I turned into the funeral home parking lot and pulled into our usual spot, trying to force my mind to conjure the memory of her childish, gap-toothed smile to light up my world once again, but it was too faded to do anything more than leave me desperate and frustrated and wanting.

“You thought she was Anna, didn’t you?”

I lifted my eyes to Shawn to find him staring at me with a knowing look in his eyes.

I could yell at him again, but what would be the point in that? He already knew.

So, I nodded, then hung my head.

“I didn’t know you were still so hung up on that.”

“I’m not,” I insisted, but who was I kidding?

I wished I could see her once more. Just long enough to know she ended up all right. To know she was okay … despite everything.

And maybe, if she wanted to, we could be friends again.

Maybe I could give back what was rightfully hers.

Shawn grunted, then opened the door. He swung his legs over, ready to get out, then stopped to look back at me and said, “Listen, you do you, man. I’m not gonna pressure you to do anything you don’t wanna do. But if you’re not letting yourself open up to someone else because of … I dunno … some shit in the past or whatever, then I think you need to let it go and move on. It’s stupid to punish yourself for something that happened fifteen years ago—"

“Fourteen,” I corrected him from between gritted teeth.

“Whatever,” he replied. “You know what happened to her wasn’t your fault. What happened to you wasn’t your fault either.”

I turned away, unable to face him at the mention of what Jim had done to us—me and Anna—and suddenly, I wished I’d never told him in the first place.

“She knew it wasn’t your fault, Bram. Don’t waste your life being alone because you think you deserve it. Because you don’t.”