I don’t want to discuss the funeral. “He left a box. It’s in the closet.”
I sit at the kitchen table, my hand wrapping around the cold coffee that Nicole made before she left, with a pat on my shoulder.
Before moving on to the next patient. The next life. The next Ben.
The thump makes me look up as Jared drops the cardboard box onto the table. Lifting the lid, he starts lifting out folders and paperwork, dropping them to the table as he digs through. Silently, I watch as he lifts out several envelopes.
He turns them over in his hands. “The… these are the letters.”
Ben’s letters.
There are two, and Jared hands one over. My name is scrawled on the envelope with a message underneath in spiky, jagged writing that I trace my fingers across, feeling the indent from the blue pen.
I don’t open my envelope, and neither does Jared. He just holds it, his head bowed.
Eventually, he slips it into his pocket and reaches for a folder, flipping through it. “He wanted a simple service, and a burial. I’ll take care of it.”
His voice is choked.
“I want to do the flowers.”
The words slip out before I can bite down on them, hold them in. He looks at me for a moment, before he nods. “Fine.”
He goes back to the file, but I keep looking at him.
Searching for any part of Ben that might still be here, with me. “Do you have any family at all?”
He frowns, glancing up. “No. He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“We were foster kids.” His face wipes of any emotion at all, expressionless. “Grew up in care until we aged out. No family.”
My brow knits. “But that story about your mom...,”
“She died.” He sighs, and it sounds tired. “People do.”
Ben grew up in the system. So did Jared.
And he didn’t tell me.
“I didn’t know that.” My eyes slip down to the table.
“There’s a lot you didn’t know,” he mutters. “You barely knew him.”
The blow lands. I flinch back, pushing myself to my feet.
I don’t know.
I don’t know what to do.
Swallowing, I pull my hair forward. He follows the movement, his eyes lingering on my scar. “I should… maybe I should go.”
This isn’t my apartment.
Ben isn’t here anymore.
And I suddenly feel the absence of him, of his smile, his warmth, his heartbeat, so keenly that I could scream. There’s an emptiness in my chest, a hollowness that aches with the memory of something lost.
