Chapter Twelve
Then
“Here we go,” I say as I watch Aussie’s row of classmates stand and make their way toward the stage.
First row, first to go.
I’m flanked by Casey on my left and Ryder on my right, with Logan on his right. Declan is on Casey’s far side, and my two brothers, Chase and Tyson. All of us are taking pictures or filming with our cell phones.
Ellen’s sisters wereinvited, but all sent their regrets.
Thankfully.
Not shocking. Aussie probably couldn’t have picked them out of a lineup to save her life. She barely knows them and after her experience with them ahead of the first memorial attempt, she doesn’t want to.
She’s graduating fifth in her class, and dammit, this is yet another one of those events where every other fricking thought in my head is,“Ellen, I wish you were here.”
And it’s silently killing me inside.
I have a feeling I’m going to need to ask Casey for one of my Xanax tonight. I hate taking the damn things, but I haven’t slept more than two hours in the last forty-eight.
I’m barely holding it together.
It’s been nearly a year. When the fuck does the “it gets easier with time” part think about maybe kicking in? I mean, Idon’t expect to be doing Broadway numbers in front of the Grand Ole Opry, but I’d like to wake up justonegoddamned morning andnotfeel like I’m being crushed to death from the inside out.
The only reason I haven’t killed myself yet is my kids, and especially Aussie. Ellen would never forgive me if I gave up and left them behind right now. She’d especially never forgive me if I did it in away that made one of them the unlucky person to discover my body.
Except I don’t know how much longer I can last. It feels like I spend most of my time trying to fake being a functioning adult. And I don’t mean in the usual way adults normally fake it.
I mean barely faking it in the way that keeps me in office as governor and not being admitted to a psych ward for a forty-eight-hour mandatoryhold.
Faking it in a way that makes me glad I don’t own a gun.
Faking it in a way that hides how much the sound of the wind screaming refuses to go away.
This moment is the first truly bright spot in my life in a year. Watching our baby, who heartbreakingly looks so much like her mother, walk across that stage.
Our children have used their studies to help ease their pain, digging in and studying.We’ve been through a couple of family counseling sessions, because I thought that’s what we were supposed to do. Then they ganged up on me after the third one and begged me to stop. That they were fine, they simply needed to grieve in their own ways.
So…we stopped.
Hell, it was one of the few times in their lives they’d ever banded together with that kind of solidarity.
Although Logan had apoint, and it was the same point Aussie made to me the night she came out to me—they’d accepted they’d lost both of us, started grieving, and then they got me back.
On the stage it’s Aussie’s turn, and the woman reading names smiles. “Aurora Claire Forrester.”
We all stand and cheer for her, but that’s lost in the thunderous applause from the entire auditorium. We whistle and scream, and whenshe looks at us, smiles, and waves, I remember them placing her in my arms after cutting the cord.
Carrying her over to Ellen, both of us crying as we counted fingers and toes and welcomed her.
Introducing her older brothers to her.
The first time she saidMama.
Her first day of school.
When she was a flower girl in a friend’s wedding when she was six.
