Total pages in book: 196
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186555 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 933(@200wpm)___ 746(@250wpm)___ 622(@300wpm)
It felt so final now, her loss.
Nearly as fresh and painful as it had been twenty years ago. My body and soul felt cracked open, with all the vulnerable soft bits out for exposure. It was like I’d lost her all over again.
I tucked my cheek against my Rhodes’s leg and grabbed his thigh. And I cried a little more.
* * *
I would have wanted to believe that I took the news as well as could be expected in the days afterward, but the truth was that I didn’t.
Maybe it was because it had been years since I’d last let myself feel a shred of hope of finding her. Maybe because I’d been so damn happy lately. Or maybe, just maybe, because I’d felt like everything that had led me here had been for this. For these people in my life. For this hope of a family and happiness, and while I’d give anything to have my mom back, I’d been at something close to peace finally.
But I hadn’t been prepared for how hard I handled the days that came.
In those first few days after Rhodes’s confirmation, I cried more than I had since she had initially gone missing. If someone had asked me to tell them what happened, I would have only been able to recall pieces because everything became so foggy and felt so desperate.
What I knew for sure was that after that first morning, waking up again in Rhodes’s living room with exhausted, swollen eyes, I’d sat up and gone to the half-bathroom to wash my face. When I’d come back out, feeling stiff and almost delirious, Rhodes had been standing in the kitchen yawning, but the second he’d spotted me, his arms had dropped to his sides and he’d given me a flat, level look and asked, “What do you need from me?”
That itself had been enough to set me off again. To force me to suck in a shuddering breath through my nose a moment before even more tears welled up in my eyes. My knee had started shaking, and I’d bared my teeth at him and said, in a ragged, tiny whisper, “I could use another hug.”
And that was exactly what he’d given me. Wrapping me up in those big, strong arms, holding me against his chest, supporting me with his body and with something else that I was too heartbroken and numb to sense. I spent that day at his house, showering in his bathroom and putting on his clothes. I cried in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of his bed, in his shower while the water beat down on me, in his kitchen, on the couch, and when he tugged me outside, on the steps of his deck while that long, solid body sat beside me for who knows how long, lined up completely against my side.
Rhodes didn’t let me out of his sight, and Amos brought me glasses of water randomly, both of them watching me with calm, patient eyes. Even though I didn’t feel like eating, they pushed small things at me, nudging me with their gray irises.
I knew for a fact I managed to call my uncle to give him the news, even though he hadn’t been all that close to my mom. My aunt had called almost immediately afterward, and I’d cried some more with her, remembering when it happened, that it was possible to run out of tears. I spent the night at Rhodes’s house, sleeping on the couch with him as my pillow, but that’s all I was able to process other than the finality of the news I’d been given.
But it was the day after that, that Clara came over, sat beside me on the couch, and told me all about how much she missed her husband. How hard it was to keep going without him. I barely talked, but I listened to every word she said, soaking up the tears that spiked her eyelashes, soaking in her mutual grief at the loss of someone she had adored. She told me to take as much time as I needed, and I barely said a word. I hoped the hug we shared had been enough.
It wasn’t until that night, when I was sitting on the deck after texting Yuki back and forth while Rhodes showered, that Amos came out and squatted on the step beside me. I didn’t feel like talking, and in a way, it was nice that Rhodes and Amos weren’t big talkers in the first place, so they didn’t push me, didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to do other than eat and drink.
Everything was hard enough as it was.
My chest hurt so bad.
But I glanced at Am and tried to muster up a smile, telling myself like I had a thousand times over the last couple of days that it wasn’t like I hadn’t known she was gone. That I had gotten through this before and I would get through it again. But it just hurt, and my therapist had said that there was no right way to grieve.