I shook my head as my brows lowered. “Why would he be nice to me?”
Raye laughed. “Because you’re remarkable.”
I rolled my eyes.
I wasn’t remarkable. I was the opposite of remarkable. I was mediocre at best. Awful at worst.
“Just because you don’t see it right now, doesn’t mean that you won’t at some point, Karla.”
I agreed to disagree with her in that moment, and we continued our appointment as normal. I wondered what it was about that day that made me open up to her so much. I wondered why I told her about Ash. I wondered why I couldn’t stop thinking about him, too. No matter how hard I tried, he kept showing up in my mind.
After therapy ended, I stood from my chair and headed toward her office door to leave. I paused for a moment and turned back to Raye. “You’re really great at your job.”
She smiled a nicely beautiful smile and said, “Thank you.” She gestured toward me. “And you’re a really great sister. And a great daughter.”
I didn’t believe her, but I wouldn’t argue.
I stepped into the hallway to find Dad still in the waiting room. His head was down, and his shoulders were slumped forward. I wondered if he was doing it right then and there—sitting in his own grief.
I cleared my throat, and he looked up at me. He dusted invisible dirt from his dress pants and stood. “Karla. Hi. How was today?”
I should’ve given him a decent answer. I should’ve told him that I was working on sitting with my grief and not blaming myself for my past mistakes. I should’ve told him I missed him and loved him and wanted to go home. Not to our actual home, but to the home that he’d built with love and warmth and protection. I wanted to go back to him. I should’ve given him a few bids. I should’ve at least given him just one.
Instead, I shrugged. “Fine.”
8Ash
My house was quiet when I got home that afternoon.
It was always quiet. Somehow the cemetery seemed livelier than my actual home.
As an EMT, Dad usually worked evenings. He worked mornings, too, when he was allowed to pick up extra shifts. Maa fought with him a lot about how often he was working. I figured she mostly worried about Dad’s safety. He was often traveling to crime scenes or sites of gun violence. Maa preferred his jobs that dealt with smaller medical issues, not life-threatening situations. Dad made it clear that his job wasn’t to pick and choose his assignment. He only had one goal every day he went into work: to save lives, no matter what. Maa said he was reckless. I thought he was brave. But Maa was convinced Dad had become even more obsessed with saving lives after being unable to save Rian’s life. He was the one who found my brother in his bedroom after he took his own life.
I didn’t blame Dad for struggling to cope. I knew I’d be haunted by Rian’s ghost for the rest of my life. Dad must’ve felt an even deeper pain than I did. No parent was ever supposed to say goodbye first to their child. No one in life was supposed to feel that type of weight. Now my parents both carried that unwanted torch. So I didn’t blame my father’s need to try to save people’s lives. I understood him packing his days with tasks to avoid thinking about my brother. If anything, I wished I could save lives, too.
Dad also worked on updating the basement when he wasn’t working long shifts. It gave him something that he could control the outcome of, which seemed important to him. Maa once told him that he should consider therapy, but Dad didn’t believe in that. He said he was too busy to sit down with his own thoughts.
I felt the same about my own mind. I didn’t want to talk to a professional about my feelings. I just wanted to stop feelingeverything. Maybe I got that characteristic from Dad.
Saving lives seemed to be a family business, seeing as how Maa was an ER nurse who worked night shifts for the most part. It was uncanny how both my parents’ professions were to save lives, yet they lost their son. I was sure that fact ate at them each day.
When Rian was alive, Maa worked during the day. We’d almost always come home to her hot meals, too. We had a mixture of cuisines when Maa cooked. Her mother was from India, and her father was from Nigeria, and our meals showcased both cultures. From our favorite Indian dishes likepaneerbuttermasalaandbiryanito our favorite Nigerian dishes ofjollofrice andewa riroanddodo—beans and fried plantains.
I missed Maa’ssamosasthe most, but she didn’t make those anymore. They were Rian’s favorite.
The smell of spices used to fill the kitchen almost every single day, but now all I had was storage containers with meals and warming instructions that were prepped while I was gone.
I ate alone.
I studied alone.
I went to bed alone.
Maa usually came home from work while I headed out to school. She’d smile at me, but the smile was always weak and exhausted. Sometimes, her eyes looked empty. She’d remindme to eat something before going to school, and she’d head straight to bed.
Dad came home from work around the same time. He’d make small talk with me about sports. I used to play basketball at my old school, but I gave that up after Rian passed away. I gave up a lot after losing him. There was a basketball hoop over our garage where we used to shoot baskets with one another. We didn’t do that anymore, but Dad would still talk to me about basketball, and I’d reply like I cared, knowing neither one of us cared about sports anymore. It was just our way of carrying on.
I wished Maa and Dad carried on with each other, but they hardly talked to one another anymore. If they did talk, they argued about stupid stuff that didn’t matter, like Dad’s obsession with the basement repairs. Their back-and-forth bickering didn’t make sense to me. I wished they would admit that they missed Rian instead of pretending that they were mad at each other. My parents never fought before the incident. The closest to an argument was one night when we played Uno and Dad laid down three Draw Four cards on Maa. Then they kissed and made up and vowed to never play Uno against each other again because it brought out their dark sides.
