I think about the morning I woke up and he was gone.
And the morning I woke up and he was still there. And how different those two things felt.
I think about the hospital. My dad’s eyes. Mara’s voice.
The white lights. And Cassian on a phone call with my father somewhere not here.
I turn the latch.
Click.
Locked.
The sound is so small. Such a small sound for what it means.
Such a small sound compared to the large sound of my heart finally breaking.
But even then, I still feel nothing. I don’t know if I can anymore.
I stand there with my hand still on it.
Then I go to bed.
• • •
I sleep for eleven hours. Dreamless. The specific kind of heavy sleep that comes when you’ve been carrying something for a long time and you’ve finally, finally put it down.
Three days pass.
Dr. Reyes. The correct medication. Breakfast with my dad. The garden in the evenings. Normal things. Tether things.
I don’t look at his window. I don’t not look at it either.
His car is there sometimes. Gone others. I don’t track it.
I’m angry.
I am so angry it lives in me like a second heartbeat.
Steady and constant and there when I wake up and there when I lie down and there in the specific silence of a house where his absence takes up more space than most people’s presence.
And underneath the angry — God help me — I love him so completely that the anger almost makes me laugh.
Almost.
• • •
The third night I wake at three in the morning for no reason. Body just decides.
I lie in the dark.
And then —
Tap.
My chest does the thing it’s done since I was eight years old. Before my brain catches up. Before I decide. My body just — responds. Like it always has. Like it never stopped.
Tap tap.
