53. CODY

CODY

“ T he boys said you were out here.”

Dad’s voice interrupted the ending of the golden sunset that was falling over the dock. Snow had started to fall faster, thick enough to coat the leaves of the lavender bushes that would soon be barren from the cold.

“The boys are chatty at all the wrong times.” I rolled my eyes. “What do you want?”

“Watch your tone,” Dad snapped and sank down in the grass behind me at a distance.

“Answer my question,” I responded, keeping my eyes trained on the horizon.

“I came to make sure you were alright,” he said.

I couldn’t stop the laughter that exploded from me. “Are you serious?”

“Cael.”

“Dad.”

He groaned, a loud huff of air leaving his lips. “Dean said Ella drove Clementine back to town. I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” I turned to look at him finally. “You’re the reason she left.”

“That’s not true.” Dad shook his head, and a few pieces of his graying blond hair fell against his forehead. “She left because she has a job to do.”

“Recycling a seven-year-old excuse,” I groaned and rubbed the back of my neck. “Classy.”

“Adults have responsibilities,” he responded.

“It’s different, Dad. You dragged us across the country because you wanted to chase your dream. You didn’t care what it meant for us. but we followed. Sure, I dragged my heels and made it your problem, but I was just a kid. ”

“You were seventeen years old,” he corrected me.

“Yeah, Dad, I was.” I stared at him for a long time, his tired green eyes screaming back at me. “I was seventeen when Mama collapsed in the kitchen of our brand new sparkly house while she unpacked dishes. You were at the stadium. I was seventeen when I broke my arm climbing up on the roof to put up the Christmas lights for her because she couldn’t climb the ladder.”

“You never broke your arm…” Dad said.

“In two places. There’s still a pin in my wrist.” I held up my arm to show him the scar. His face twisted in confusion and hurt.

“You weren’t there, you were training Nicholas after hours on a Sunday.”

I didn’t want to be angry, I hated the feeling but, where Mama could pull out all the soft, saddest feelings, Dad only formed the most hateful, bitter ones. It felt like all I did anymore was hash out the old memories with the people in my life. I was fucking sick of it.

“I was just a kid when Arlo and I helped Mama paint the kitchen in the Nest. Silas sat in your spot at my fucking High School graduation.” I held up my hand as he opened his mouth with an excuse. “I thought maybe there was something important going on, a valid reason you didn’t show up, but the guys on the team were louder than anyone in the crowd. So if they were there with me , where were you?” I raised my voice as I posed the question.

“I was nineteen when Dean and I found her on the living room floor.” I bit back the tears. “Nineteen, answering the questions my Dad should have been doing when I found my Mom passed out. I went to the doctor's appointments, I kept her spirits up. I read to her, I fed her, I bathed her. Just because you couldn’t bear to see her like that. I was just a kid.”

Dad stared at me, his jaw tight as he nodded. He listened to everything I was saying, but I couldn’t be sure he was actually processing it.

“You aren’t a kid anymore,” he said after a tense moment of silence, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes dropping to the grass. “Clementine can’t erase all of the bad things you suffered, Cael–and I am sorry that you had to do those things. That’s my fault.”

“You’re damn right it is,” I snapped.

“But,” he raised a hand, stopping me, “you were also a kid when you fell in love with her. You were six, nine, thirteen, fifteen, seventeen.” He listed off the ages like they meant nothing, but I had a memory for each year I had loved her.

“You were young. You didn’t know what love was,” Dad said. “Leaving Texas was what was best for all of us.”

“No, it was what was best for you ,” I snarled.

“You ever stop to think what would have happened to your Mama?” he stopped, stumbling over his words. His eyes shifted to the sky for a split second. “If we had been alone in Texas?”

“It would have been better than dying in a room without windows, begging for you to come see her. She begged, did you know that? She begged us all, all she wanted was you. All I wanted was you. At least in Texas, she would have had Mary and Clementine.”

I watched a flicker of secret cross his face, an angry, deep-rooted secret, and I hated him for it, the ability to just shove it all down and ignore the pain he was in. I wanted to scream at him.

“Your mother's death destroyed the boy you were.”

“You didn’t know the boy I was,” I hissed at him.

“What do you think it would have done to Clementine?” He asked.

The knife to my throat pinched, I could feel the blood dripping from each tiny cut he created with his questions. I couldn’t answer because I knew that he had pushed me into a corner. Mama’s death would have hurt Clementine more than anything; it had, and she wasn’t even around for it.

“You spent your entire life protecting that girl, Cael.” Dad pushed from the grass. “I was just trying to protect you . Loving her through grief would have broken you beyond repair. It would’ve broken her, and she didn’t deserve that. You can’t love someone like that without resenting them.”

“I don’t believe that.” I shook my head. “You want to blame us, blame the way we loved each other, but I know deep down that there's nothing wrong with the way I love her and there has never been a second in my entire fucking life where I questioned the way she loves me,” I snapped at him. “The grief broke me because you didn’t care as long as I was playing baseball and keeping my head down. But I couldn’t handle it alone, so I did drugs to feel alive and to keep putting on the mask you wanted me to wear!”

“Blaming me for your addiction, I thought we were over that. Isn’t that what your sessions are for?” Dad asked.

“You wouldn’t know,” I said each word with frustration. “You haven’t asked me a single question about my recovery. You go through Silas, who tells me by the way. He makes sure I know that you care, but you’re too much of a coward to ask me yourself because you don’t want to have this conversation.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Dad nodded after a long beat of silence. Silas had always been more of a Dad to me than he would ever be. The wind ripped around us and the smell of damp lavender kicked up in the air.

Stop fighting.

Mama’s voice floated between us and made me want to cry.

“I have this for you. I should have given it to you a long time ago, but I never thought you deserved to have it.” He held a letter out to me, Honeybug scribbled across it in Mama’s pretty handwriting.

Anger was the first to the party and it seemed that was the new normal but I shoved it down and took the envelope from him.

“I’m going back to Harbor this morning,” he said, backing away. “I’ll be at the office.”

I watched him go, eyes trained on his back as he disappeared down the path.

The paper was old and light in my palm, and it wasn’t clear how long it had been in his possession, but the fear of opening it was still so real. I folded back the flap and sunk back down into the snow-kissed grass, my knees against my chest as I read it.

My sweet boy, my Honeybug.

I bit into my lip and stopped reading to stare upward until the tears dried out of the corners of my eyes. I fucking hated everything about the moment. I had lost Clementine that morning, and now I was sitting alone, about to lose Mama all over again too.

Pay attention, I know this is hard and I know you don’t want to read this.

If I know anything, you stopped the second you started and are contemplating folding up these words, shoving them in your pocket and never reading them. So much like your Dad and still refusing to acknowledge it. But don’t you dare ignore me, little boy. You read this letter, you ingrain what I have to say in your bones, and you carry it around for the rest of your life.

Never let the compassion that thrives in your tender heart die. Stoke the fire until it burns bright so that it can lead others out of the darkness. You are the sun, Cael. You are my sun. So fierce and loud that sometimes it may be too much for others to share the space with you. But that doesn’t mean they don’t love you, everyone needs a little darkness every once in a while and, as impossible as it seems, one day you will need the moon too. I need you to remember that. That there will come a day when all you crave is the blue haze of the night, and you’ll need to remind your Dad of his job.

You’re currently angry at him. But, Baby, you’ve never known how to be angry. Not really. Dig deeper, it’s something else.

I scoffed. I’m trying Mama.

And before you argue with the sky, lose the attitude. I’m not finished.

I laughed through the trickle of tears that coated my cheeks and lips.

You have every right to be angry, if that’s what it is. But… we both know it’s your grief tangled with guilt. That’s always what it is because you always think it’s your fault. But it’s not. Not this time.

Your father is mean, he’s grumpy, he’s overprotective about all the wrong things. He’s elusive and, to the untrained eye, he might seem cold and uninterested. But he is anything but. He has loved me his entire life, since the moment he saw me. I know because he told me so, every day since. Your father was the love of my life, and I was his since we were seventeen. He has changed over the years; he has hardened and grayed.

No one has ever known Ryan Cody the way I do.

Since the day you were born, everyone always said that you were your Mama’s boy. But they were wrong. From the day you looked up at me with those big blue eyes, given they are mine, you have been your father’s son. The one I know. He was funny and beautiful, his laughter made people smile, and his eyes were the greenest shade with flecks of gold that danced when he looked at me for too long.

Okay, Mama… I rolled my eyes.

I’m gushing, but you’ll read every word because if you don’t, I’ll come down there and haunt you, Honeybug. Your Dad was the kind of spirit that couldn’t be contained, he gave me every adventure even the ones I never asked for. He filled my heart and home with so much love he had nothing left to give. The problem never lied in how much he loved me, because no matter what troubles found us, we had each other. You are your father's son. Love and light.

It was my mistake. All the discourse between the two of you is my doing.

I’ve been sick since the day we fell in love. I knew that one day it would catch up to me, it was inevitable. It didn’t bother me as much as it bothered him. I had made my peace with the monster to come but to help him cope I used to tell your father that it was his love that kept me healthy. That there was no room in my heart for sickness because of the way he loved me.

It’s true that after I had you, the illness returned. My immune system was compromised and my body drained. I do not for a moment regret bringing you into this world, my sweet boy, so if there is a shred of doubt in your mind that I did, please know it’s not true.

But you must understand your father is the way he is. It’s not that he’s cold or uninterested, Cael. He’s tired and he is suffocated by his own guilt of loving you more than he ever loved me.

I choked out a sob that hit me like a moving truck and knocked the air from my lungs.

He believes that because he loves you more, he left gaps inside of me that allowed the sickness to return. But that’s silly. I’m sick because of science and the cruel reality of life. He avoided me and you because he thinks that he failed us. That he failed me.

He doesn’t know what’s inside of this letter and, if I know your father, he waited years to give it to you like the stubborn jackass he is. But I also know that he never opened it because it was between you and me. And, right now, it may feel silly or frivolous because I am clearly long gone, but if you’re still with me, I need you to do something for me.

“I’m always right here, Mama.”

“I need you to find your Dad, and I need you to show him that it’s okay to love you. That he doesn’t have to feel guilty for doing so because I brought you into this world for each other.” Her voice washed over me like she was standing in front of me with both her warm hands around my face and our heads pressed together. “You have to show him, Honeybug.”

The sun and moon cannot survive without each other, Cael. I am simply just the stars between the two of you.