Page 145 of The Cheerleader

“You had me until you said smart because we both know whatever smarts I have I’m borrowing from you.”

She smiles, that big beautiful heartfelt smile. “You can keep it forever.”

Chapter Forty-One

Bryan

The next day is overcast and Susie leaves before the snow comes. There’s another week before classes start, and I normally enjoy the mostly empty campus, but not without her. I long for her, for her warmth, her laugh, her relentless untouched optimism.

As I finish cleaning the kitchen, the phone rings. I expect Harry to be on the other end.

“Bryan?” Mom’s voice, sad and resigned, reaches inside me and before she says more, I lean against the wall, my heart and soul on alert and shore up against oncoming devastation.

“Bryan…” I hear the crack in her voice as she says my voice a second time and I stiffen, as if that’ll help. “Your father is gone.”

Gone? The word doesn’t register, like it’s in a foreign language and has no meaning to me, makes no sense. I don’t say anything, suspended between knowing and not knowing, waiting for her to explain.

There’s a sniffle and then she goes on. “He committed suicide.”

Suicide. The word falls like an anvil on my head, crushing me. My chest squeezes unbearably and I force myself to breathe, to slow down the panic. I need to keep calm.

Mom’s still talking and I try to pay attention. “He wrote a note, said he didn’t want you to be worried about him or the farm. Didn’t want to be in the way of your life and dreams and…” She lets out a quick sob while I try to comprehend her words, keeping them in some kind of holding silo in my head until she’s finished.

“He said he knew you weren’t really a farmer⁠—”

“Dammit. Damn him!” My words echo against the walls of the kitchen. “I am a farmer.” I have an overwhelming need to yell this to him, to shake him until he understands. I didn’t need him to hammer it into me from childhood with punishing, relentless demands from me. It was always there in my soul. A reflection of his.

My chest tightens again, and so does my grip on the phone, but I hold my shit together, feeling like he’s hammering me from the grave now.

“Suicide?” I manage the word, plucking it from all she said and comprehending, but not understanding. “Fucking suicide?” It makes no sense.

She sobs, and my heart lurches.

“He didn’t regret teaching you the meaning of hard work,” she says as if she didn’t hear my question. Or maybe she doesn’t know the answer. Hard work? Maybe I owe my ability to outwork anyone, anywhere, anytime, to him.

“He left you behind,” I choke out the words. “What happened to honoring our family, the people we’re supposed to take care of?”

“He did. There was something he didn’t tell you.”

I wait for her to explain, but she doesn’t. Dread assembles in my chest, but I almost scoff aloud. What could be worse than him committing suicide? After telling me I don’t matter?

“What is it, Mom?” I ask in a gentle voice as I listen to her quiet crying.

“He was dying. Stage four cancer⁠—”

“What the hell?” My chest explodes with my voice as a hundred realizations storm me, knocking me back. He must have been in pain. He must have needed my help. Needed me. He was too proud to admit to pain or weakness, pushing himself too far.

Like I might do.

No. I would have said something. To someone. To Susie. To Liz? Not anymore. To Eldy. To Coach Hammer. Eventually.

Calming myself enough to speak, but not enough to ease the white-knuckle grip I have on the phone, I take a shaky breath and cut through Mom’s sobs. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. I’m angry at him, not you.”

“Don’t be angry.” Silly words from a smart woman, like asking a toddler not to cry when he’s in pain. Like my old man did.

But I’m no toddler. I know how to control my emotions. I need to rein them in starting now.

I need to let myself feel the hurt without pushing back with anger, to let it go through me without controlling me.