Page 112 of Rough

I choked on each of the words.

“Thank you.”

The phone went silent.

I dropped it onto my chest and lay there in a daze, staring at the ceiling. Somehow, I felt if I didn’t move, if I don’t go there, if I didn’t react, I’d wake up from the nightmare.

Tegan rolled over. “Who called?”

“Mom,” I said flatly.

She sat up and looked at me. I turned my head to the side and met her gaze.

Immediately, she started crying.

I didn’t even have to tell her. She knew. She wrapped her arms around me, and before I’d spoken a single word, kissed my neck.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

Immobile and staring at the ceiling, I simply nodded.

I couldn’t do anything else.

She rolled to the side, got dressed, and turned on the light. “Come on. You mother needs you.”

“Are you going to go?”

“I have to,” she said. “I need to tell him a few things.”

“Okay.”

I got up and somehow got dressed.

“Can you drive? I asked. “I can’t ride.”

“Yep.”

Hand-in-hand we walked to her car.

The trip took us fifteen minutes that night, and we didn’t speak. Not one word. I’d end up forgetting it completely, as well as walking through the front door, but I’ll never forget what my father looked like when I saw him.

On the floor, laying on his side, he was still dressed in his tuxedo.

I looked down at him, and then at my mother. I didn’t have to ask.

“He insisted that he wear it to bed,” she said. “And you know how he is. There was no arguing.”

“I think he just hung on until the anniversary,” I said, feeling proud of him in an odd sense. “He probably just wanted to cling on to the celebration as long as he could.”

“He knew it was coming,” she said. “Can you pick him up? Get him in the chair?”

I chewed my bottom lip and looked at him for a few seconds.

“Can I?” Tegan asked. “One last time?”

I nodded, and then burst into tears.

She lifted him from the floor, shuffled toward the chair, and then lowered him into it. After brushing the wrinkles from his jacket, she leaned over, kissed him, and whispered something in his ear.