Page 65 of The Intimacy of Finding You

I knocked my shoulder into his. “You never had to prove yourself to him, baby doll. He already knew you were the one. The way he talked about you? The way he was so certain you’d come back to me? Oh, he knew.”

Tobi grinned, just a soft, barely there tug of his lips. “Thanks for always believin’ in me, Grandpa Stanton. I’ll keep makin’ you proud. I’ll keep loving your grandson, and I won’t take that for granted again.”

“You better not, or I’ll never forgive you.” I didn’t really mean that.

Papa had taught me forgiveness when I was really young. I had a lot to forgive my parents for, and so did he. Like how they never taught me forgiveness or kindness. They’d left it to Papa to raise me. They’d left everything to Papa, and he taught me everything I needed to know.

I wondered if that was the whole point. I wondered if there was nothing left for him to teach or me to learn, and that was why his time had ended. I’d created him as this big, immortal being in my head, never sick, never dying.

He’d taught me patience, too. The patience I’d ended up needing to survive the decade Tobi and I had been apart. Now that Tobi had come back, was that it? Was Tobi supposed to teach me things, and I him, that Papa couldn’t?

I wasn’t very good at not pretending. Tobi made me stop pretending. He forced me to be present and to take things as they came. To meet people halfway and as they were until they were ready because if I waited until they were ready, it’d be that much more rewarding.

For just a moment, I let myself not pretend. I took the stone for what it was—Papa’s resting place. Not him. Not even his soul. But the place I could come to when things were hard, and I was missing him, and this was the closest I could get to him. I didn’t pretend like there was nothing else that needed to be done. There was plenty, and it was all because Papa had trusted me the most with his assets and the rest of his life after death. I stopped pretending like death was temporary and faced the truth that he’d never come back.

I stopped denying it. I stopped trying to conjure up a lie in my head. I stopped…thinking so fucking hard and took them in as they were.

Taking a deep breath, I stared through blurry vision. “I miss you, Papa.” I stopped pretending that it wasn’t completely crushing me on the inside. “I hate seeing your face in my nightmares.” I stopped pretending like I wasn’t running on four hours of sleep a night because of them. “I don’t want to deal with what you’ve left behind.” I stopped pretending like it wasn’t such a fucking hassle. “I’m scared I’m going to forget your face. Your voice.” I stopped pretending like the idea didn’t terrify me. “I’m mad at you because you made a thousand promises you haven’t kept.” I stopped pretending like it didn’t eat me up inside. “But most of all, I fucking love you, and I keep waking up thinking I’ll get a phone call from you to come fix your phone, even though I know you know how to fix it yourself.” I stopped pretending.

Tobi wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to his side. I let the tears fall freely down my face. They felt like relief. They felt like acknowledgment. They felt like a thousand-pound weight off my chest because pretending and lying to myself had been so exhausting, yet I wouldn’t admit to it.

For his last lesson, Papa was teaching me to face reality and not be ashamed of it.

There was truly nothing left.

Just as the wind stopped, a particularly loud bird started to sing. It sounded like it was right by my ear, singing so passionately. I turned my head, looking at the tree branches beside us, finding nothing on them. Tobi started to look, too, before tilting his head back and pointing up.

Right above us, with its beak and eyes staring straight down, was a mockingbird. It started to sing a different tune, its gray head tilting repeatedly.

I knew it was him. It had to be, with the way my heart suddenly grew, and the pieces started to mend, and it didn’t feel so fucking heavy. Not a heart attack, but the proof that love existed beyond living. Proof that I’d carry him with me wherever I went. Whatever I was doing. Whatever new thing I learned without him.

I watched the mockingbird, listening to its song and replacing it with a different one in my head in someone else’s voice.

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word. Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

chapter thirty-two

Kathleen was hell-bent on getting me to figure out all of my triggers for drinking. She wanted me to pick specifics, which seemed impossible.

“Everything makes me wanna drink.” I sighed.

She tilted her head from side to side, looking up at the ceiling for a second. When her eyes came back to mine, I knew to brace. We hadn’t known each other long, but I was already picking up on when she was going to say some shit. “Does everything make you want to drink, or do you already want to drink, and these situations give you an excuse to?”

Fuck. I knew it. “I don’t know. I mean, guilt often stops me from drinking.”

“Guilt is a powerful emotion. If you can excuse the guilt away…”

“Then I can give myself permission. And with that permission, I can cave, and it won’t feel as bad because, well, that thing made me drink. Like shifting the blame.”

She nodded, her eyebrows pinched together. “How does that feel for you? Does it make sense, or do you think it’s something else?”

“No. No, that makes sense. Thinking about it like that, I think…” I bit down on my lip, trailing off as I tried to process how it was making me feel. “Maybe it’ll give me…I don’t know.”

She gave me another minute to try to figure out what I was trying to say before jumping in herself. “Could it feel empowering, maybe?”

“Yeah. Empowering. Like it gives me control. Nothing can make me drink. I’m who decides whether I do or not, and it isn’t just because of guilt but because I don’t want to.”

“And what are you, Tobi? What do we know about you as a person?”