Page 58 of Saving Wyatt

I breathed a sigh of relief into my empty glass and turned to the waiter to order my food. Until it was served, I found every little meaningless thing to talk about other than the elephant in the room. Or the elephant in my head, to be more precise.

When we came out, Warren turned right and I turned left. He stopped as soon as he noticed I wasn’t following him back to the van.

“Where are you going?”

“Oh, I was going to pay Kale a visit. See how he’s hanging on,” I said.

Warren smirked, and before he even said anything, I rolled my eyes.

“Ooh, you’re visiting Kale, are you? I wonder why.”

“Definitely not for whatever reason you’ve got in your filthy mind,” I answered and waved at my friend. “See you in an hour. Try to keep the crowds at bay.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t kill anyone while we wait for you.”

I didn’t respond. I threw the keys at him and continued my walk down Main Street, then turned right a couple streets down, and at the end of the road, I found Crown Resort, a large mansion that boasted over three floors of hotel rooms, a large patio with a swimming pool, and a spa.

After inquiring at reception about Kale’s room and being given the okay, I climbed the stairs to the second floor and located his room. He answered the door almost immediately.

“Hi, Ari, was it?” he said.

I offered him my hand, and he let me inside. “That’s correct. You’ve got a good memory,” I said.

The room was quietly luxurious, like old money, and I wondered if that was also Kale’s status.

“What can I do for you?” he asked and offered me a seat at the mini lounge in front of the windows.

“I just stopped by to see how you’re feeling,” I said and sat down. “Funerals can be a little weird. Intense and stressful. I thought today you might be feeling the brunt of it, so I thought I’d check on you.”

Kale sat down opposite me and crossed his legs, smiling. “You’re right about the intense and weird part. Emphasis on the weird,” he said. “So many people came up to me crying their eyes out to tell me how much Uncle Greg meant to them, and I feel…I don’t know, guilty.”

“Guilty, why?” I asked.

“Because. I wasn’t crying like them. I wasn’t mourning like them. I barely knew the man. I hadn’t seen him in so long, since I was a kid. And then I feel guilty for that. That I never returned to check on him. I…I don’t know. Maybe I’m an ass.”

“You’re not an ass,” I said and leaned forward, reaching for his hand, and to my surprise, he offered it to me. “I’m not gonna pretend like I know your life or your situation, but just because you didn’t know him so well in your adult life, or because you can’t cry like others, doesn’t mean you’re not grieving too. We all grieve differently. And, I mean, you came to the funeral. That counts for something. You could have ignored it. So you do care. Don’t let others dictate whether your grief is enough.”

Kale pursed his lips to the side and squeezed my hand. “Thanks,” he said. “I didn’t know how to put to words how I felt, but I think…I think you’ve described it perfectly.”

Then he pulled away and sat back in the armchair.

“I hate that I won’t ever get a chance to see him again. He’d call me once every few months to see how I was getting on, and I always promised him I’d come as soon as my schedule cleared… It fucking sucks that I focused so much on my career instead of family.”

I took a big breath and let out a long sigh before I spoke. “Trust me, Kale. Even if you’d done everything in your power, even if you’d visited him every month, even if you’d moved in with him, you’d still find something to regret. You didn’t tell him you loved him enough, or you didn’t help as much around the house as you should have. Or you never told him how much he means to you. It’d be something or the other. Death is…death isn’t easy. Not for us left behind, anyway.”

“You seem to know a lot about grief,” he said with a sad expression that almost made me tear up remembering Evan, but I didn’t. I held back. I focused on the here and now.

“Yeah, a thing or two.” I shrugged, and thankfully Kale didn’t push.

“Any advice on what to do with these?” He pointed to the credenza behind me, and I turned to see it was littered with tin-foil-wrapped platters and Tupperware of all sizes.

“Ah, the casserole brigade game is strong in Mayberry Holm, I see. I’m not surprised. Besides, everyone loved your uncle.”

“It’s not just the food. It’s all the offers for a home, a bed. Everyone is being so generous, and I don’t feel like I deserve it. If anything, they seem to deserve it more than me.”

“Hey! Don’t say that. Everyone deserves help. There’s no shame in asking for it, or accepting it. Despite how we’re raised to constantly think about being self-sufficient, we’re social beings and we can’t do everything on our own.”

If only I could drill that into Wyatt’s thick head, maybe he wouldn’t have walked into the town hall yesterday.