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“I want you to lean on me, Dev. I want to be that person, the one you turn to when you need something—anything. I want to be your best friend and your confidant and everything else.”
“You are.” Sitting up, Devin pulls me into his arms. His grip on me is tight, and his chest is heaving as though he just ran a marathon. “Trust me, you are, and I never forgot that. I made a terrible mistake walking away from you, and I swear that I’ll never leave you again. I know you said it before, but I need to hear you say it now. Do you forgive me, Katie?”
“Yes.” With that one little word, I feel his body relax against mine. He needed to hear that much more than I realized. “I forgive you.” It’s easy to say because it’s true, but there is still one little thing nagging at the back of my head. “I can’t believe Daddy made you feel that way,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief.
“Don’t. Don’t be mad at your dad. He only wanted what was best for his little girl, and I don’t blame him. I was a hotheaded teenager, and it didn’t matter how he said it, his words only meant one thing to me.”
“Say it,” I dare, pulling back, “and I will kick your ass.”
“I love you,” he says, laughing, the dimple in the side of his cheek popping out. I’ve missed that damn dimple. Leaning forward, I press a kiss to it.
“I love you, too.” Nuzzling against his chest, Devin pulls me in close before settling us on the pillows. We lie like this for several minutes, both enjoying the quiet, but my mind can’t help but wander. If he would have told me what happened with my dad a long time ago, I probably would’ve been pissed, because he should have known better than to think any of that. But I’m older now, and the situation he was in at the time is easier to understand as an adult than it was as a starry-eyed teenager.
Plus, as much as I hate to admit it, our time apart probably wasn’t such a bad thing. Who knows what would’ve happened if we had tried to make it work from nearly a thousand miles away? I just wish that Wyatt wouldn’t have gotten hurt in the process. And as much as I don’t want to, I know the topic needs to be discussed.
“Since we’re talking and opening up, is now a good time to talk about Wyatt?”
Devin rolls us over until his body is hovering over mine. “I think we’ve talked enough for today, don’t you?” I shake my head. “Plus, we need to get to the funeral home and make sure everything is ready for tomorrow.”
I’ve been so wrapped up in reconnecting with Devin that I totally forgot about why we’re even together right now in the first place. “I’m sorry.” I look down, but two warm fingers find my chin, lifting my face back up. “I’ve been so selfish—”
“No.” That one word is spoken with an immense amount of conviction. “You haven’t been selfish. You’ve been selfless. You took off work, rearranged your schedule and flew all the way here just to be with me, and I can’t tell you how much I love you for that. And I do want to know what happened after I left, as much as it may kill me.” The last part was mumbled, and I can’t help but giggle at the disgusted look on his face. “But can we wait until after the funeral?”
“Absolutely.”
“I just want to get past this. And I want to enjoy having you all to myself for a little bit longer before we talk about anything else.”
“That sounds like a plan. Now,” I say, planting my hands firmly against his chest, “we should get up and get ready so we can go finalize plans for the funeral tomorrow and order some flowers.” He doesn’t budge when I push him, so I wriggle out from under his rock-hard body. I make it to the side of the bed when I feel a strong hand around my ankle, yanking me back.
“We don’t have to be there for another hour.”
My eyes widen. “Yes, but I have to get ready.?
?
“I’ll be quick.”
I giggle when his hands attack my body, but my laughing quickly turns to a whimper when his mouth joins in on the assault.
“Body In A Box”—City & Colour
THE ROOM IS FILLED WITH rows of chairs, each of them empty except the two Katie and I take up in the front row and one occupied by a great-aunt I’d never met before, who is seated two chairs down from us. Ida is nearly ninety and not a hundred percent with it, but she told us she’d promised my grandmother long ago that if anything were to ever happen to my mother, she’d take care of everything—and so here she is. But she didn’t want to give the eulogy, and Lord knows I wasn’t doing it. So here we are, listening to the funeral director do his best to say nice things about my mother as if he’s known her for years.
It’s likely he never even knew my mother beyond what my great-aunt shared with him when she planned the funeral. This is small-town Pennsylvania and most everybody knows everyone else’s business, but it seems my mother became quite the recluse after I left, even more so than when I saw her last.
Katie and I stopped by Mom’s house this morning to sift through a few things, and her neighbor, Shelly, stopped by. Apparently, she was Mom’s only friend, although I would bet she was more of an acquaintance and was only trying to be nice. She told us that Mom quit her job at Kroger’s a few years back and has been surviving off social security disability payments. According to Shelly, it was about that same time when Mom began closing herself off, slowly becoming a hermit.
Shelly said she would check on Mom as often as she could, mostly to make sure that she had food and was keeping up on her bills, but other times to give her some social interaction. It hurt to know that this woman was the only person my mother spoke to for months at a time. She also mentioned that over the last two years or so, Mom had become paranoid and delusional, often claiming people were after her.
Shelly was sweet, cringing at her own words as if it made her sick to be the one to have to tell me all this, but I made her continue. I had to know what my mother’s last days were like. She went on to tell me that oftentimes she’d find my Mom lying in a pile of empty liquor bottles, and that a few times she actually had to check to make sure she was alive. Sounds like Josephine, alright.
Now here she is, looking shiny and porcelain like a Madame Tussauds wax sculpture, the frown lines still running thick down the corners of her mouth. I try to avert my eyes, but I can’t stop staring at her lying motionless in the coffin with her spindly fingers crossed together.
She looks terrible. Even after the work the mortician put in, I barely recognize her. I can’t help but think that this is for the best.
Katie must recognize my internal struggle because she takes my hand in hers and pulls it on her lap, squeezing tightly.
“Are you okay?” she whispers in my ear. Without looking at her, I nod, continuing to analyze my mother’s current state. I’ve seen too many dead bodies to count, all in various stages of decomposition, but never in my life have I seen this. I’ve only been to one non-military funeral before—my grandmother’s, and she was cremated—and the ones I’ve attended have never had an open casket because the bodies were in too bad of shape.
