SLOANE
Idon’t remember taking my shoes off.
I remember the sound they made when they hit the floor, and then everything after that turns into a smear of black fabric and casseroles and hands touching my arm like they think grief is something you can rub away if you do it gently enough.
I remember smiling.
Not because I wanted to. Because my face did it on autopilot, because people kept saying things like, “He was so proud of you,” and “He’s not in pain anymore,” and “What a fighter,” and my body kept nodding along like we were all talking about the weather.
Like Pops wasn’t the center of my entire universe.
Like he wasn’t…gone.
I held it together all day.
I held it together when I stood in the church and felt the air press against my throat so hard I thought I might choke. I held it together when they said his name like it belonged in the past tense. I held it together when I watched Cameron’s jaw clench like he was white-knuckling his way through every second.I held it together when people hugged me and cried into my shoulder, like I was the stable thing they could cling to.
I held it together at the graveside.
That part is hazy, the sun too bright, the grass too green, the sky too blue in that California way that feels cruel. The wind barely moved. The world didn’t even have the decency to look like it was mourning.
I remember the sound of dirt.
Not the first shovel. I didn’t stay for that. I couldn’t.
But there’s a sound that comes after—heavy and dull and inevitable—and it sits somewhere deep in my chest now like a stone I swallowed by accident and can’t dislodge.
I held it together during the car ride back, my hands folded in my lap, like if I gave them permission to move, I’d come undone in a way I couldn’t put back together.
And then we came back to the house.
My house.
His house.
Our house.
Only it isn’t, not really. It’s just walls and rooms and a hallway that still smells faintly like the soap hospice used and a bedroom door that stays shut because I can’t open it—because if I open it and he’s not there, something in me will snap clean in two.
People filled the living room like a tide.
Neighbors and old friends and teammates and parents of kids Pops coached a decade ago. People I didn’t even know who spoke his name like they had a claim to him too.
They brought food. They brought flowers. They brought stories.
They stayed too long.
Or maybe time just stopped being linear the second I heard Cameron’s voice on the phone, and everything after that is punishment.
I stood in the kitchen and thanked people.
I accepted hugs.
I listened to “He was a good man” repeated so many times it started sounding like a chant.
Good man. Good man. Good man.
As if goodness can protect you.
