I wouldn’t let him—or Gabe—fade away.
I sent my brother an email, with links to a couple of new songs by bands I liked that I thought were pretty awesome. In case he hadn’t heard them. Yes, we were now under the same roof, and I was sending him an email.
That’s what it had come to.
Then I gave up on the laptop and started pulling things out of my backpack. I found my newly minted high school diploma and peeled it out of the frame my mom had put it in.
I dug out the big photo album from the back of the closet, and sat on the bed to open it. I’d been looking through it the other day when Xander burst in on me.
On that thought, I got up and locked the door. Then I went back to the album.
There weren’t many photos in it. It was mostly newspaper clippings, media coverage about the trial. Some items that Gabe had given me; stickers he’d signed, a backstage pass.
Stuff I really didn’t want my parents to find.
I loved my mom and dad. I really did. I knew they meant well. But my mom was one of those caring-yet-nosy moms with boundary issues. The kind who still thought she had a right to go through my things, even though I was eighteen, just because I lived under her roof.
If she ever saw what was in this book… she’d probably burn it while I was away at school. Or worse, she’d panic and call in the Sadness Experts again.
Counselors. Psychologists. I’d seen them all.
Apparently, when you felt sad because someone you loved died, and you didn’t stop feeling sad about it soon enough for some people, they felt the need to call in the Experts.
In this book was the hard evidence that I still thought about Gabe and what happened to him, and yes, still sometimesfeltthings about it. Including sadness. But in my mom’s mind, we weren’t supposed to think about what happened anymore. Thinking about such things led to feeling about them, and that was a no-go.
As if not thinking about them would make them unhappen or something?
Gabe’s obituary was tucked in the back, along with the little pamphlet from his memorial service.
My parents wanted to hang my diploma on their dining room wall, but this felt more fitting. This was where I filed away all the shit in life that hurt the most. Stuff that I didn’t yet know how to make sense of, no matter how many Sadness Experts they called in.
Maybe if I filed it all away for later… and kept coming back to it… one day I’d figure it out.
I tucked my diploma in the back.
Some hurts were bigger than others, sure. No one died at my high school graduation. But my brother didn’t come to see me graduate, and that hurt more than anything in recent memory. I’d graduated with honors, from the exclusive private school my parents had sent me to and my brother had paid for, and I knew Cary was proud of me. He just didn’t come.
No matter how much he loved me—and I knew he did—in my heart, I knew he wouldn’t come. I still wanted him to. I still hoped he would. Since he paid for the education, maybe I’d convinced myself that he might?
Hope was a funny thing that way. A real cruel bitch.
But deep inside, I knew.
My parents were the only ones who acted surprised when Cary didn’t show up. The only ones who felt they needed to perform that kind of charade.
But we all performed our charades sometimes, right?
I tucked the album away and went to get my brother a coffee.
* * *
When I approached the closed double doors to Cary’s studio, I found yesterday’s coffee, still full and cold, sitting on the floor. Exactly how I’d found the one from the day before, yesterday. In the mug I gave him.
Good Morning, Handsome.
I picked it up, dumped out the coffee in the kitchen sink, and washed the mug. Then I sent Cary a text to let him know I was running out to the coffee shop.
He didn’t respond.
