The melodious sound of his voice is a counterpoint to Cash’s struggle, and the times when Cash stops breathing entirely become more and more frequent. But Luc doesn’t miss a beat. He keeps reading. Keeps reciting those soft, velvety words.
It’s his version of a benediction, I realize. A closing prayer.
I don’t know I’m crying until I feel a teardrop land on my forearm at the precise moment Cash drags in another rattling breath. He’s done this all afternoon, but somehow this feels different.
Luc can sense it too. He closes the book, lifts Cash’s hand, and presses the back of it to his cheek. Squeezing his eyes shut, he doesn’t try to hide the tears that streak down his face.
Pam stands from the chair on the other side of the bed and gently presses her stethoscope to Cash’s chest. She smoothes a hand over his brow and listens for his heartbeat. Then, with a serene nod, she hooks the stethoscope around her neck and turns to us.
“He’s gone,” she says quietly. Simply.
A sob lodges in my throat as I think how appropriate it is that the last lines of the poem Luc read were…
In this head, the all-baffling brain
In it and below it the makings of heroes.
Cash was a hero.Ourhero.
Luc grabs my hand, his gaze searing into my own. But he doesn’t say anything.
Some heartache transcends language.
Chapter Ninety
______________________________________
Luc
Mourning a loved one is like living two lives.
In one life, you act like things are all right. You eat. You work. You sleep. In the other life, your heart is broken, and every minute of every hour your soul is silently screaming.
It’s been two days since Cash died.
Cashdied.
Even as I think the words, they don’t seem real.
Yet I know they are. That night, a black hearse came and took his body away. The hospice nurses removed all the medical devices and doodads and left the swamp house, but the smell of their medicines and powders and ointments remain. And each night, I’ve held Maggie in my arms, letting her tears mix with my own.
You’d think there would be comfort in sharing our grief, in knowing we’re both feeling the same way. But it only makes things worse.
She hates that I’m hurting.
I hate that she’s hurting.
It’s an added burden on top of the already impossible burden of our new reality. Cassius Clay Armstrong is dead. Our friend is dead. Mybrotherin every way that counts is dead.
It’s inconceivable.
“Did you know he hired a lawyer?” Maggie asks as we stand in front of a large shotgun house on St. Charles Avenue. It’s an impressive place with marble stairs and iron handrails. The front yard boasts boxwoods and topiaries pruned to perfection and a live oak with heavy, gnarled limbs that nearly touch the ground. Behind us, the streetcar rumbles by on its rickety old tracks.
As one of the most iconic (and most prestigious) streets in the city, the house and its environs would look damn near intimidating if not for the Mardi Gras beads dripping from the trees and the bushes. St. Charles Avenue happens to be one of the main parade routes, and two weeks of rolling krewes have festooned the entire thoroughfare (and everything around it) in cheap, plastic colors.
It’ll take city workers a month to clean up the worst of it. Even then, homeowners will continue to find beads in their gutters and gardens until next Carnival season. Rinse and repeat. Year after year. New Orleans and her traditions abide.
“Not a clue,” I admit as we climb the stairs and stop in front of a door with the name Gregory Allen Toussaint, Esq painted on the opaque glass. “The first I heard of it was when I got the call yesterday from the man himself.” I point to the name on the door.
