Chapter 1
The emptiness. It was overwhelming. Even as Charlie sat in the living room, with a growing life filling her belly, she still felt the barrenness that accompanied winter. No life grew in this bitter season. Nothing survived, apparently not even children. It was wicked the way life tricked us into believing we had all the time in the world. Charlie was always taught to hunker down and ride out the frigid months until life bloomed again in the spring. One life wouldn’t return when the earth thawed. Not this time. In fact, the coldness would last longer. This house was filled with everything she could ever dream of. Every little luxury that she hadn’t even known she needed existed between these walls, but on this night, this home that Demi had made for her was void. This home didn’t matter; she didn’t matter. It was almost like she didn’t even exist. Only she did. She could feel her existence with every painful breath she took. Every single one…two…three…because she was counting them to calm her anxiety and stop herself from panicking. With every knock of her aching heart, and every stab from the dread quickening her pulse, she was reminded that she had chosen this. DJ, her fiancé’s son, was dead, and she couldn’t quite process her emotions. Demi had sent her home from the hospital, and she didn’t know what to do. What was expected of her? Should she cook? People always cooked when someone died. Surely, Demi would be starving by the time he made it home. Or was he not coming home? Demi’s son waslying on a hard slab in the morgue of the hospital. She knew leaving that building would be a challenge for Demi. He had walked in as a concerned father. When he exited, he would be a grieving one. Should she check in? Should she pray? She had called out the name of God all night from the shock of the tragic news, but she hadn’t prayed. She wasn’t even sure if she had a right to pray for a child who had hated her. Lo wouldn’t want her prayers.Should I call him?Charlie desperately wanted to hear his voice. She yearned to be at his side, to hold his hand, because she knew he was out of his mind, but she was afraid to pick up her phone. She was petrified to misstep because as much as she loved Demitrius Sky, she knew this wasn’t her place.
The nervous energy in her belly made her feel like she had to throw up. She felt guilty for carrying Demi’s unborn child while he was grieving the loss of his firstborn. How could she ever look Lauren in the eyes after this? How could Demi ever fully love their new child without feeling guilty? The burden was already so heavy. A puzzle of human dynamics.
The house felt bigger than it ever had. Suddenly, it was lonely, impersonal, and cold.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” she whispered. She felt like crying, but also felt like she had no right. Her last interaction with DJ hadn’t been a positive one. She had yelled at him. She had been angry with him. She never thought there would be no time to fix the misunderstanding. Would Demi remember her last moments with his son and bear resentment? Would Lauren hold them against her? Charlie couldn’t help but feel culpable for DJ’s death.
When Demi left, DJ’s world fell apart. I’m the reason he lost his daddy,Charlie thought. The shame of that had always been present. For them to love one another, DJ’s world had been forced to change. Charlie didn’t know what to do with this. Theemotions were almost unbearable. A picture of DJ and Demi sat on the end table beside the sofa she sat on. From the smiles on both their faces, it had been a happy day. Charlie knew that Lauren was the one who had taken it. Even something as small as a father-and-son photo reminded Charlie that she was out of place. Charlie couldn’t sit still, so she stood, and the inevitable pacing of the living room floor commenced as she fought back tears.
She pulled out her phone, hoping that Demi’s name would appear on her screen. She desperately needed to hear his voice, but she wasn’t surprised when the time was the only thing staring back at her. She knew him. His grief would turn to anger, and anger would turn to vengeance, but who could he seek revenge against when the two of them held the most blame? Their affair had cost Demi his son’s life. She dialed Stassi. The pounding of her aching heart echoed in her ear as she waited for her sister to answer the phone.
“Charlie, my goodness, I heard! Are you okay? How’s Demi?” Stassi fired off questions as soon as she picked up the line. Charlie didn’t have answers.
“He died, Stass. He’s been cutting himself, and nobody knew. How the hell didn’t we know?” Charlie asked. “He was a normal kid. Did I do this to him?”
“What? Nooo,” Stassi answered. It was loud in the background, and Charlie could barely hear her sister. “This isn’t on you, Charlie. Don’t even start that shit. You hear me?”
“Stassi, we need you to come troubleshoot. There’s something going on with the audio system, and people are showingup saying they’re VIPs who aren’t on the list.”
Charlie knew her sister couldn’t talk right now, and even if she could, there wasn’t anything Stassi could say that could make this okay.
“Go ahead, Stass. I know you’re busy,” Charlie dismissed sadly.
“I’m not busy,” Stassi countered. “One sec!” Stassi shouted to someone in the background. “Well…yeah, I’m busy, but not too busy for you. Day left this event in my lap when he got the phone call about DJ, so I’m just trying to hold things together, but I’m here. I’m listening.”
“It’s okay, Stass. Handling that for him is more helpful than sitting on the phone babysitting my feelings. I’ll call you later.”
“I’m really, really sorry, Charlie. Please tell Demi, too. This is terrible,” Stassi said.
“I will.”
With that, Charlie ended the call.
It was close to midnight. She had left the hospital hours ago and had heard nothing since. She knew there would be questions to answer, from the social workers, from the police, and from the doctors. There would be so much to handle. She told herself she shouldn’t expect to hear from Demi for a while. It was completely reasonable that he hadn’t called, but it didn’t stop her from checking her phone every few minutes. The silence was eating her alive. She knew it was selfish to look to him for comfort when his heart had been obliterated, but he was the only one who could reassure her right now. Being dismissed from the hospital had filled her with an insecurity that was growing by the second. Charlie was trying her hardest not to overthink. She and Lauren had just found common ground. They were finally communicating; and while they weren’t friends, they had at least been able to accept one another. Now, they felt like enemies. Charlie felt like she was on a deserted island while Demi and Lauren watched from a bypassing ship. She wasn’t even sure if they noticed her.
Was he just going to leave her there? A part of her felt expendable. Like Demi could just clock in and out of his lifewith her because she wasn’t truly a necessity to him. Lauren felt like the necessity, meanwhile, Charlie was the hobby. She felt like he picked her up and put her down whenever he felt like indulging in her. This had to be the hardest moment of his life, and he didn’t seek her for comfort. He didn’t even fight for her presence. He had just gone along with Lauren’s desire to make her disappear—almost like he wanted her gone, too. There was no way Charlie would be able to get through something like this without him at her side. Yet here she was exiled.
Charlie did the only thing she could do. She removed her clothes and showered. She wished she could rinse the trauma of the day away, but it clung to her. She couldn’t even get lifted to lighten the anxiety or have a glass of wine because she was housing another human. She washed her body, checked her phone, tried to eat but couldn’t, and then checked her phone again. The checking of calls was the intermission between all her actions. It would be until she heard his voice. She was driving herself crazy, but in a world where little boys were alive and well one moment, and then dead and gone the next, crazy was the only way to be.
She had half a mind to drive her ass back to the hospital to check on her man, but in this grief-filled moment, he wasn’t her man at all. He was a mourning father, and Charlie was the last thing on his mind. She had to find comfort in that space, in this unknown, in this hurting, because it was a space that would exist for a while. Perhaps forever, because unlike losing any other person in a lifetime, the aching behind losing a child would prolong eternally. It was something she couldn’t relate to yet. The baby in her belly was still a thought. She wasn’t even out of her first trimester yet. There was no face attached to the flutters in her stomach, no notions of unconditional love, no attachmentto an upbringing she had worked hard to provide, no memories of sleepless nights, no nothing. Just a man who had planted a seed that she hadn’t even wrapped her mind around yet. Just nausea. Just fear. Nah, Charlie couldn’t fathom motherhood at all. She hadn’t walked that walk, but it was coming, and her child’s father was going through a darkness that left no room for the light she was growing inside her. How could he balance the two? Was it even possible? Balance requiresa distribution of equal weight. An equilibrium between life and death, between Lauren and Charlie. She was outmatched. She would lose. There was that island again. The loneliness and impending abandonment she faced felt inevitable, but still, she walked into the bedroom she shared with Demitrius Sky and crawled under the covers, hoping sleep would find her. It didn’t. Grief located her instead.
Lauren Sky didn’t understand. It was like they were speaking a foreign language around her. She was concentrating as hard asshe could, trying to follow the conversation. They wanted to move him to the morgue. Her son. Her precious little baby was headed for the morgue. He was just at football practice. How does one go from football practice to the morgue? She was almost numb. The only thing that told her she still had feeling in her body was the pressure from Demi squeezing her hand. He was squeezing it so hard that it hurt, that the blood had stopped flowing. He was squeezing her in disbelief. He was squeezing her desperately like he was screaming for help without uttering a word. They were united in solidarity for the first time in years—over death. She didn’t know if he was holding her up or if she was keeping him on his feet, but together they absorbed this devastating blow.
There was something being said about grief counseling. An Autopsy. An investigation of the home.
“For what?” Demi asked, interrupting the social worker. His tone was aggravated and short. “What the fuck is there to investigate?”
“We need to know the circumstances and the state of the home to ensure that the cause of death was indeed self-inflicted. We need to see where it happened.”
“It wasn’t self-inflicted. DJ might have held the blade, but everything that led to him feeling like he had to do this, none of that shit was his to carry,” he said. “My boy.” Demi could barely choke out the words. The blood flow returned to Lo’s hand when he released it and walked away to conceal his emotions.
“Can I be with him?” Lauren asked.
“There are things we must do to the body,” the doctor said.
“DJ. He’s not a body. He’s my son. He’s my baby. Please don’t talk about him like he’s not a person anymore. I just need to see him.”
