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It wasn’t Mom. It was Dad.
He grinned as he answered the phone. “Hey, Pops. What’s the—”
A sharp breath. An exhalation. Then, “Nicky. Oh my god,Nicky.”
Hang up the phone,a voice whispered, urgent, terrified.Hang up the phone. Put it down. Ignore it. It’s nothing. Everything is fine.
“Dad? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Where are you?” Dad asked, shattered like so much glass. “Are you at home?”
“Yeah. I’m waiting for—are youcrying?”
“I’m coming to you,” Dad said, and voices were in the background, someone—Cap?—saying, “Aaron, Aaron, listen to me. We don’t know what’s—”
“Don’t open the door,” Dad said. “You hear me? You don’t answer the door foranyoneuntil I get home.”
“O… kay?” Mind racing, a billion thoughts at once, butnone of themwere close to the truth. It was unfathomable. It was impossible. He was twelve years old—not yet teenager, not yet a man—and he didn’t yet understand that no matter how much he loved someone, it wasn’t enough to save them. “Have you talked to Mom? She was supposed to be back by now. I tried calling her, but she didn’t—”
“I’m coming,” Dad said again. “I love you, kid. I love you so much.”
Alarm bells began to ring deep in Nick’s head.
Then everything stuttered, the frame rate skipping, jumping, and he was pacing downstairs in front of the door, phone gripped in his hand. He tried to call Mom again. No answer. Again. No answer. Again, and then Dad burst through the door, face wet, eyes swollen, mouth twisted down. Suit wrinkled, tie lopsided, hair sticking up. He looked old. So old, as if decades had passed since Nick had seen him that morning when Dad had popped his head into Nick’s room, telling him that just because it was summer didn’t mean that he could stay in bed all day.
And just like that, he knew.
Heknew.
“No,” he said, taking a step back and shaking his head, heart in his throat. “No. I don’t want—”
Dad reached for him, hands shaking, and though Nick tried to fight him off, tried to shove him away, Dad was bigger than him. Stronger, and he crushed Nick against his chest, entire body quivering like he was being electrocuted.
Nick breathed him in and Dad was crying, he wassobbingwhen he choked out, “She’s gone, kid. Oh my god, she’s gone, she’s gone. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I—”
Nick screamed, then. He screamed and screamed until his throat was raw, and for days after, when he spoke—rarely, and only when asked a direct question—his voice was hoarse, gravelly, barely above a whisper.
Skip, jump.
Seth. Bob. Martha. Gibby. Jazz, all hugging him, all telling him they were here, they were with him, they would never leave him.
Skip, jump.
An urn. A funny little thing. He didn’t know what it was made of. Metal. It felt like metal, cold and impersonal. Her name carved into the surface:JENNIFER MARIE BELL. Everything she was reduced to ashes, and Nickhatedher, hated her for leaving them, for leavinghim.She was supposed to come home because they were going to get pizza. She was supposed to be there when he woke up, when he went to bed, when he came home from school, when he figured out that he was queer, when he realized he loved Seth as more than his best friend. When he graduated. When he went to college. She was supposed to be there for all of it, to help him make sense of the world, and hehatedher for taking herself away.
Another skip, another jump, and he was cold, a mist of salt water spraying on his face, the sky gunmetal gray, the lighthouse in the distance, dark and looming over them. Dad held the urn and pulled out the plastic bag that held her remains, a pile of ash that looked like what Dad scooped out from the fireplace.
No one was with them. There’d been offers, many offers, and they’d had a service for her, agnostic, calling it a celebration rather than what it really was. No one used the wordfuneral,and Nick was absurdly grateful for it, even if he thought a celebration was the last thing he wanted.
Dad had dark circles under his eyes, deep bruises that would take years to fade, if they ever did. Nick knew he looked no better, but he couldn’t worry about that now. Dad needed him to be strong, needed him to be a man. Dad, who was clutching theurn to his chest with one arm, stupidly looking down at the bag in his other hand as if he thought he was dreaming, that none of this could be real.
They stood there, staring at it, shivering as the wind whipped over them. For the longest time, neither of them spoke because they both knew the moment they did, it was over. Done. Finished. The end.
It was Nick who spoke first, Nick who never met a silence he couldn’t fill. He said, “You and me. No matter what. You and me.”
“A team,” Dad whispered, coming out of his stupor. “We stand together so we don’t struggle apart.”
They held the plastic bag together, Dad untying the offensively festive ribbon holding the bag shut—red with a glittering gold trim. It opened, and as one, they turned the bag over, spilling out the contents into the sea, the same place they’d come to because it made her happy, it made her smile. Nick had proof of this in a photograph on his desk.
