Page 57 of Cassie
He knew that pain, too. So heavy on your chest that just taking the next breath was beyond what you could do.
“Everyone’s telling me it’s time to move on.”
He understood what it was like to be surrounded by people who loved the one you loved and have their pain added to yours. Their worry for you and what came next. Their ignorance about grief and how it looked for different people, how you didn’t advance at the same pace. How they got impatient when you didn’t follow a path that seemed reasonable to them.
“I love you.”
The first balloon launched, the bundle of bobbling white jostling as it slipped free.
“So much, Mitchy.”
This was an intimate moment, one he felt wrong about listening to, but there was no graceful exit yet. The next balloon lifted, followed quickly by a third.
“Wanted you back, still do. I’d take you any way I could have you.”
A pause, then, “Wish you peace. Hope you find it, honey.”
A harsh sob came then, followed by a dozen more, raking through the air with the agony of loss, slowly falling until they were soft and muffled.
“I hate you.”
Released from her hold, the next balloon floated, then hesitated. Driven down by an errant draft, it circled her then drifted sideways and a hand appeared, fingers batting it away.
“I hate you.”
The balloon, caught in the draft of her movement, danced away and then back again.
“Hate you so much.”
Another circle, and this moment so pain-filled, so evocative of how nothing ever seemed to go the way it was needed, Sammy hated he was a witness.
“I hate you. Hate you.”
Balloons all lifting, rising in a mass, released at once so she could combat the one that persisted in pestering her.
“Hate you.Hate you. I hate what you did. Hate you didn’t talk to me. Hate you didn’t trust me. Hate you didn’t trust yourself. Hate you didn’t love me. I loved you so much, Mitch. Why would you take that away from me?”
Sobbing, screaming, she battled the balloon.
“Why did you do it?”
White dancing just out of reach, she was jumping, trying to hit the balloon.
“Why? Why didn’t you love me?”
The wind finally cooperating, it swept the white balloon up and into the sky about ten feet. In her pursuit of the balloon, she’d moved sideways, and Sammy could see her now, head tilted back, blonde hair trailing down her back. Thin to the point of frail, she stood and watched as her balloons made their way into the sky. All except for the one which seemed to be stuck in a holding pattern overhead, wavering left, then right, then left again until finally it drifted with more purpose, caught by a guiding wind. Directly towards him.
She turned, eyes only for the balloon, tracking its progress. When taken in feature-by-feature, she wasn’t pretty by popular standards, but Sammy found he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Strung tight, she could serve as the anchor point for high-tension wire. Classy and well put together for a trip to the graveyard, she had on a tight skirt and heels, and looked like she could hold her own in a conversation. Looked like she would be up for a debate over coffee, or wine. She probably went to fancy cafés, listened to poetry read aloud, and probably had never been to a metal concert or a hockey game in her life. Maybe no sporting events, ever. She could be a librarian, or a congressman’s aide, a sex kitten teacher. What she wouldn’t be was a hockey player’s girlfriend.
Her eyes dropped from the balloon and he saw they were filled with tears, tracks leaving a gleaming swath down her cheeks. As her chin dropped, she finally noticed him and her entire body locked into place, growing so still he was startled to see her hair still moving with the wind, strands lifting to blow around her face untamed. She seemed stuck, so he lifted one hand, waved, and offered a lame, “Hi.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and the way her face changed with the words tore something loose in his chest, so he couldn’t do anything except whisper in response.
“I’m sorry, too.” Bizarrely, astonishingly, one of the balloons floated across between them and her eyes snagged on it, watching as it moved away, rising finally and making its way over the fence and towards the fields in the distance. “I’m here”—her gaze flicked toward him, then back to the balloon, then back to him in the space of an instant—“for my mom.” He thumbed over his shoulder at the granite headstone that marked his mother’s resting place.
“Mitch,” her voice was quiet, above a whisper but only barely, “my fiancé.”All kinds of pain. “My mom’s still alive.”
That stung in a way he didn’t expect, so his words weren’t considered when he said, “Never had a fiancée.” When she flinched at the sure knowledge that she’d had one and now didn’t, he followed up with, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Yeah,” she whispered again, him more reading her lips than hearing it. “Me, too.”
