Page 36 of Steadfast

“Holy fuck, Aoife,” he was muttering, his hands sliding over me from my cheeks to my neck, my arms and torso. “You okay? You okay?”

He kept asking as he unbuckled my seat belt and pulled me out of the car.

Richie held me in the driveway, one hand on the back of my head and the other rubbing my back, while I stood there like a zombie. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t process. Too many things were coming at me all at once, and I couldn’t grasp a single one.

“We have to get the groceries inside,” I finally said, my voice sounding weird.

“What?” Richie jerked in surprise.

“We have to—” I shook my head and pulled away from him. “I can’t. We have to bring the groceries inside.”

“Baby,” he whispered gently, staring at me. “You saw—”

“I saw,” I confirmed, reaching in to take my keys from the ignition.

I didn’t say another word as we went to the trunk and pulled out all the groceries for Cian’s feast the next day. I felt like I was in a fog, but everything around me was warped and out of shape.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Cian said, throwing open the front door as we got to it. “I called the doctor, and he’s going to call in a new prescription because he thinks her last ear infection never went away. We don’t have to do an appointment.”

“I got her some pain reliever,” I replied, moving around him with the bags.

Cian instantly stilled.

“Close the door, bud,” Richie ordered quietly.

“What happened?” Cian asked, his voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear him.

Richie didn’t respond, but they both followed me into the kitchen.

I couldn’t deal with the questions. Not yet. Not until I figured it all out. My mind was racing.

Mom was dead. She was dead in a body bag. She’d gotten into a wreck with a fucking semi and lost. Mom was dead. Mom was dead. Mom was dead.

Mom and Dad werebothdead. We had no parents left. We wereorphans.

Fuck.

“Don’t open that!” I ordered Cian, turning to see his hand on one of the bags.

He jerked his hands back like he’d been burned.

“What?” he snapped.

And then something in my mind must have snapped because I started laughing really hard. I’d just panicked that Cian was going to see his birthday presents before I’d wrapped them while our mom’s body was laid out in a body bag on the highway for all the looky-loos to gawk at. I could not believe that this was my life.

I mean, I’d dealt with a lot in my life, but this took the fucking prize.

“What’s wrong with her?” Cian hissed at Richie.

“Aoife, stop,” Richie ordered firmly. He pulled me away from the groceries on the counter.

I couldn’t stop laughing. I’d been holding it all together for so long—all for nothing. Mom was dead. She would never be the mother I remembered from the first fourteen years of my life. She’d never get her shit together. Aisling would never really know her. She was dead, and they’d never give custody of the kids to me. Never in a million years.

My laughter stopped.

“Sit down,” I ordered Cian.

“What?” He looked between me and Richie. “No. What the fuck is going on?”

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