Page 90 of Ablaze

Like a dream you can never recreate, no matter how long you try. A flash in the sky right before the most beautiful storm. A dandelion in a gust of wind.

Just gone.

Mom sobs inside Douglas’ arms; my own feel useless, numb.

I watch Garrett through the window as he takes her hand in his. His thumb slides over her knuckles and he whispers something into her ear as if she can still hear him. Maybe she can. Who the fuck knows.

Knowing her, she’ll be listening to everything, even from beyond the grave. She always did have a way of hearing things–knowing things–when you least expected it.

“Bye, Dean!” The brunette, with the hair that went all the way to her ass, waved at me as she got into the car with her friend–the brunette with the short bob. Both of them gave me sultry grins that indicated they were still thinking about last night.

For the life of me, I couldn’t remember their names. Lara and Sophie? Or was it Lana and Shelby? I know they gave their names to me somewhere between when I saw them at the bar and when I got back to Grams’ lake house with one under each arm.

“You have an adorable lake house, Grams!” the brunette with the bob chimed. She gave Grams her most innocent smile, but only I knew not to buy it, given all the not-so-innocent things she was capable of. “Dean told us how much he loves it here.”

Behind me, Grams’ voice resounded. “Ah! Did my grandson give you a whole tour of the house, or just his bedroom?”

I slapped my palm over my face, cursing under my breath. The woman reserved her comments and thinly-veiled sarcasm for no one.

Fuck. I just needed these women to leave.

Both the girls chirped out awkward laughs, finally leaving with another wave and a flying kiss in my direction. “Let’s do that again sometime, Dean.”

I winced, finally turning around to face Grams, convinced I’d be met with one of her reprimanding looks. Instead, what I saw was one laced with concern.

I sighed. “Let’s hear it. I know you have plenty to say.”

Grams took a sip from the cup in her hands before she looked toward the lake. “Grief does funny things to us, dear boy.”

I swallowed, knowing she was speaking about Zander.

I’d just lost him not even three months ago, and my life was in a tailspin. Some days, I’d wake up with a thought in my head that I couldn’t wait to tell Zander. I knew I’d hear his loud guffaw as soon as I got to the station. But then tentacles of the present would slowly ensnare me, and I’d remember that talking to him again was never going to be a possibility.

Last night was just an outcome of those tentacles having entangled me too tight.

“We all process loss in our own ways,” Grams continued. “Some of us turn inward, more quiet and distant. Others throw themselves into work, or friends, or nights of fun to help us cope and to make us forget.”

She gave me a knowing look. “But from having lived through a fair amount of loss in my life, I’ve come to realize that, for most of us, grief starts off as a catastrophic thunderstorm. It wipes away everything in its path; it floods every part of us like internal bleeding. But with time, it recedes. What once was a thunderstorm becomes a heavy rain, and then a steady sprinkle, to what eventually becomes a light mist.”

I looked from the wet porch under our feet to the darkened sky and realized why she’d been sitting out here in the first place. It had just rained, and she was looking for one of her damn rainbows. The woman was obsessed with them.

A frown pulled down my mouth. “Does the light mist eventually go away, too?”

“No.” She smiled sorrowfully at the cup in her hands. “You just get used to walking around with wet clothes.”

Garrett sits down next to me with his elbows on his knees and his face in his palms. I squeeze his shoulder before laying my head back against the wall.

I stay like that until Mom and Douglas come back out of Grams’ hospital room.

“Do you want to see her?” Mom asks me, wiping the tears under her eyes. “I know how much she would want you to visit with her.”

Reluctantly, I get up, even though there’s no part of me that wants to go into her room. But Mom is right. Grams would be pissed if I came all the way over here and didn’t see her.

My throat closes, but somehow, I manage to open her door and walk inside.

She’s laying on the hospital bed with a few machines surrounding her. Her skin is paler than she’d ever allow it to be, her eyes sunken in. But even in death, even as she lay there motionless and lifeless, she looks beautiful.

I find her hand and grasp it in mine, feeling it's cold pressure against my skin. It’s as soft as it always was, but it’s completely different, too.

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