AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But I wouldn’t. For Parker. Only for her.
So, I straightened my back and lifted my chin, then sucked back the sudden urge to cry. I wouldn’t dare break down in front of all those people. I swallowed my tears and pushed through. Just like I’d done every time something had laid me low in my life. And I’d been laid low plenty. Although this one felt like a damn knockout.
And when I’d finally hugged what felt like a million people I hardly knew and shaken too many hands to count and everyone started filing to their vehicles, I’d thought I was for sure out of the woods.
I’d made it, I’d congratulated myself.
I could go home and hide in my bath and lose my mind. Fall apart. Curse God.
But I’d been stupid and naïve.
Because then it was just me and my Parker. Just us.
As we stood and watched them lower my husband’s shiny casket into the ground, I all of a sudden wondered if all those people were the only thing keeping me together. Because, at that moment, I felt like I wanted to shatter into a million pieces.
I wanted to fly apart and I didn’t want anyone to try and put me together again. Pieces of me strewn all over the same place my husband would be for the rest of eternity.
Instead, I clenched my teeth until my jaw ached as much as my broken heart. Poor Parker slipped her smaller hand into mine and squeezed. I clenched my eyes closed tight, wishing I’d wake up from this nightmare.
“It’s so pretty, Momma.” I heard her say, but I was too lost in my grief and despair to understand her meaning.
Confused, I opened my eyes and leaned down closer to her. I let go of her hand to wrap my arm around her shoulders. “What, baby? What’s pretty?”
She turned to me with tears shining in her pale blue eyes, Andy’s eyes, before turning back to the casket now covered in dirt. “Daddy’s treasure box,” she said, pointing at the casket.
It took me a brief second to understand what she meant before my breath caught and my knees quaked beneath my too slender form.
Daddy’s treasure box.
That was exactly what it was, wasn’t it?
My quivering knees gave out and I hit them hard with an agonizing sob.
“Oh, God,” I cried out, the crushing weight of my grief crippling me.
How was I expected to carry this grief around? It was so unbearably heavy.
Fresh tears spilled over my cheeks.
Daddy’s treasure box.
It was the sweetest, saddest moment of my life.
Small arms came around me and brutal cries wracked my body. She was right. My sweet baby was right.
That was our treasure buried in that beautiful, awful box and we’d never see him again.
He’d never bring me coffee in bed and kiss me with his fresh, minty breath first thing in the morning. We’d never again argue over where to eat dinner or who was going to unload the dishwasher. He’d never lie next to me in bed at night and hold me until I fell asleep.
It wasn’t fair.
I should have known better. I should have prepared for this because I hadn’t deserved him, anyway. He’d been so good and kind and wonderful, and I’d just been me.
But my stupid, wild heart had wanted to believe I was worthy of his love, that I’d get to keep him.
I thought of my lonely fifteen-year-old self and how he’d seen her when no one else had. How he’d saved her from herself.
He was gone.
