Dad & Husband. Son. Coach. Teacher. Friend.
He was a teacheranda coach?
Gone too soon.
Loved Forever.
1996-2024
We honor victims best by preventing the next tragedy.
There’s something about the last line that stays with me. It stays with me as I walk to my car and drive away. It stays until I’m sitting in Natalie’s driveway, under the torrential rain, figuring out if I should go in and talk to them.
The newspaper article sits on the seat next to me, and I study every child, remembering the reasons they were part of the group. What was it about them that?—
It all comes rushing through me like a downpour.
The picture.
Bella screaming, asking if I knew.
He died suddenly.
We honor victims best by preventing the next tragedy.
Holy shit.
47
HAND ME THE MATCHES
In This Shirt by The Irrepressibles
Natalie
It may only besix o’clock, but the dark sky makes it seem like it’s midnight. The way my child froze me out, didn’t even look my way once on the way home, makes it even darker. She locked herself in her room, and she refuses to come out to talk to me. I’ve felt helpless many days in this lifetime, but today has climbed to the top.
What are the odds?
There’s a knock on the door that startles me. I don’t know how many times I’ve told Nellie to just come in. She’s bringing Vero home after therapy, making me very thankful to have my group of friends. If I had to stop to get her with a very dysregulated Bella, we wouldn’t have made it.
I open the door, faking a smile that disappears immediately—there’s no Nellie on the other side. There’s a soaking wet Holden, looking devastatingly lost.
“What are you doing here?”
“How did Nick die?” he asks, cutting to the point, making me flinch. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to make a sense of it all, and I think I?—”
“You know,” I interrupt, stepping outside, closing the door behind me, shutting half my world in while I try to face the new one. One day or another, this conversation was going to come up, but I’m not ready to have it. I wrap my arms around myself. “You already know.”
“Cody’s brother,” he clears his throat, “killed him.”
I sigh. “Yes.” I shake my head. “No, it’s more complicated than that.”
I guide him to the rocking chairs on the porch. “What do you know?” I ask. I’ve found it’s easier for me to just fill in the blanks as opposed to reliving the worst day of my life again and again.
“Natalie, I don’t know. All I know is that Cody was in the center for a while after it happened, and then he left, and I never heard from him again.”
Yeah, because his parents went to jail and he went to live with a family member or something. He got help.
