I’d never leave her.

Sure, I’ve thought about what our children would look like; bright emerald eyes behind a sea of raven dark bangs. She’d be a girl, of course, because why the hell wouldn’t I want two versions of Becca in my life? And, yes, I appreciate her telling me how she truly felt. But did it change the way I feel about her? Not one bit.

“Will you come to bed with me?” I ask. “And stay in bed with me? I’ve spent too many nights away from you, woken up too many times and not had you there. Just stay and be with me, Becs. That’s all I want. Now and forever.”

37

Journal

My dad arrived at the same time Tommy came home.

The same time Sadie decided to pack her bags and leave the house.

If she’d been around this entire time, I didn’t notice her.

I don’t notice a lot of things.

I live in my own world, trapped in my own head.

Days pass.

Dad makes me eat.

Makes me shower.

Makes me sleep.

There are no summer storms.

And the storm that came took away her roses.

Now they’re dead.

Just like her.

And I don’t even have a camera to capture it.

To capture beauty in the face of death.

I should have captured her beauty.

I should’ve—

~ ~

—Joshua—

“She’s just not responding at all,” Martin says, his words as rushed as our footsteps.

I practically crash through the front door, past the living room and into the kitchen where Martin said Becca had been for the past two hours.

I’d spent the past few days with Tommy, who’d taken the news better than I thought, and meeting with my mom to organize the funeral tomorrow and all the other things I needed to do as Chazarae’s power of attorney. Mom mentioned she was surprised at how well I’d taken Chaz’s death. I was purposely keeping too busy to feel anything. At least that’s what I told her. I’ll never tell her the truth. I’ll never tell anyone. Besides, how do you tell someone that you truly believe a person who had so much to offer alive was better off dead? She was no longer that person we all wanted to believe she was. By the end, she’d lost the fight to fake it, and now—she no longer had to.

I’d checked in on Becca often since her dad got here, even had her stay with me at night. She’d been bad, but never like this. Never so out of it that she couldn’t acknowledge my presence.

She’s sitting on the floor, her knees raised close to her chest, wearing one of my t-shirts—a shirt so big she uses it to cover her legs. She’s not crying, but her eyes are glazed, not with tears, but with complete and utter misery.

Her hands are on her head, her eyes staring at nothing in front of her.

It hurts to swallow.

About as much as it hurts to see her like this.

Completely empty.

I step toward her, careful not to spook her, and that’s when I focus on the hundreds of pictures littered around her. Pictures of Chazarae, some of them together, some of her alone. Some I’ve seen before, most I haven’t.

Martin says, “She was up all night on her computer, and I heard the printer running but I didn’t…” He rubs his eyes—eyes tired and defeated.

“Becca.” I squat in front of her. “Baby, what are you doing?”

She doesn’t react. Not in the slightest.

“Daddy?” Tommy says from behind me.

My eyes drift shut. He shouldn’t be here. I told him to stay in bed.

“Is my Becca okay?” he asks, standing next to me, his hand on my shoulder.

He’s not wearing a top. Just pajama bottoms.

“Becca’s very sad, buddy,” I tell him.

Tommy nods, and then copies my position. Only he settles a hand on her knee, and I almost cringe, fearing her response. I know not to touch her when she’s like this. He doesn’t. But the response isn’t what I was expecting. For the first time, her eyes move. First to Tommy, then to me, and even through her daze, through the tangled web of emotions that brought her here, sitting in the corner of the kitchen surrounded by painful memories, I can see the apology in her eyes. See the regret she feels that Tommy has to see her like this.

Her lips move, but her words are silent. Quickly, but carefully, I move Tommy out of the way and shift closer to her. “What is it, baby?”

“I want,” she mouths, rocking back and forth.

“You want…? What do you want?”

“I want,” she repeats, tears filling her eyes. She blinks once. Hard. And the tears fall, fast and free, giant droplets of withheld emotions streak down her cheeks and fall with purpose. “I want,” she says again, rocking faster, crying harder. She points to one of the many photographs on the floor.