did or didn’t want for her, but I knew that blaming herself or being miserable wasn’t it.
“I’m still waiting for it to not be true.”
“I think that’s part of grief. Don’t they have those five steps?” I tried to grab at what I’d learned in psychology last year. I was much better at crunching numbers than this kind of thing.
“I know denial is one, and bargaining. I don’t remember the others,” I said.
“I think I’m definitely in denial.”
“Well, that’s the first step, so I think you’re supposed to be.” She sighed.
“Can I get you anything? What have you had to eat?”
“I don’t want anything. I feel like I never want to eat again.”
“You have to. Please. I’m sure somebody has made something at this point. I don’t know much about this kind of thing, but I do know that when someone dies, people cook. Oh, shit,” I said, realizing I’d said “dies”. “I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry.”
“He’s dead. You can say it out loud. I did. He’s dead. Oh, I said it again.” She clasped and unclasped her hands. “How can I be in denial if I can say it out loud?”
“Saying it out loud and believing it are two different things,” I said, which I probably shouldn’t have. I waited for her to slap me, or yell, but she didn’t.
She just nodded.
“You’re probably right.”
Katie
The rest of the night was both the longest and the shortest of my life. There were endless hugs and more tears (hardly any from me) and plans for a funeral and lots of food that no one ate.
At last I was allowed to escape once more to my room. The hospital had prescribed Mom some sleeping pills, so she went to bed, making sure she didn’t touch Dad’s side when she got under the covers.
Kayla and I went down to the basement with Stryker and Adam, while everyone else upstairs cleaned and tried to do what they could because they couldn’t do anything else.
“What’s with the furniture?” Stryker said. He hadn’t seen it when he’d been here before.
“Mom collects it,” I said, noticing a new lamp in the corner that she’d tried to hide. “She has a bit of a problem.” Kayla and I lay side by side on the bed, and the guys had to settle for a couple of chairs.
“I feel like we should be doing something,” Kayla said, yawning. “Like planning flowers or buying an urn, or something.”
“One thing at a time,” Adam said, leaning forward in his chair. My phone went off again.
“I’ve got it,” Stryker said, holding out his hand. “I texted them, and they’re all freaking out. I was shocked when we got here and they hadn’t all driven down.”
“Just tell them that I’m fine. No driving necessary.”
His fingers went to work and I moved closer to Kayla and took her hand.
“What are we going to do about Mom?” I said, asking the question none of us knew how to answer.
“I don’t know. I need to see what the hell I’m supposed to do. I can leave right now. We just need to get through tonight and tomorrow and then we’ll go from there, I guess.”
How did we do that? How did we go on with our lives now? My life had been a girl with one sister, a mother and a father. That was all I knew how to be. I didn’t know how to be a girl who had lost her father.
***
I guess I fell asleep at some point, because when I woke, I looked over to find Kayla asleep next to me, our hands still linked. I looked around, and found Stryker and Adam had cleared a place on the floor and were both asleep on piles of my mom’s handmade afghans, Stryker on a Christmas one and Adam on one for Saint Patrick’s Day.
The basement was dark and there was no noise from upstairs. Stryker had my phone, so I had no idea what time it was and there were no windows in the basement.
The moment I moved, Kayla woke up.
“Hey,” she said, wiping her eyes.
“Hey, do you know what time it is?”
“No idea,” she said, sitting up and moving her head to stretch out her neck. “Guess it doesn’t matter.”
No, it really didn’t.
“Why can’t I cry more?”
“Everyone deals with things in their own way,” she said, nudging me with her shoulder.
“When Zack hurt me, I didn’t really cry for that either. Maybe I’m emotionally broken. Maybe I’m one of those people who doesn’t