POV: Ivory
The sheets still held the heat of a body alive an hour ago. Warm. As if he'd just gotten up. As if he might come back. He wasn't coming back.
I stood in the doorway with both hands on the frame, gripping, because the floor was moving and I needed a fixed point. Jolene was still in the chair. She hadn't moved, hadn't called anyone.
"How long?" My voice came out flat.
"About an hour." Jolene's hands were folded in her lap. "He was peaceful. His breathing just stopped."
"Did he wake up?" I couldn't let go of the doorframe.
"No." She looked at the bed. "He was asleep the whole time. There was no pain, Ivory."
Her voice was steady. "Someone needs to tell the children."
"I can't." The words came out before I could stop them. "They're eating breakfast and their grandfather is alive to them and I can't be the one who changes that."
"Then let me." She stood from the chair. "I've been in rooms where people end, Ivory. I know how to carry news this heavy. Let me carry it for you." She touched my arm as she passed and went downstairs.
Kameron appeared at the bottom of the stairs, looked up, and read my face immediately.
He sat on the bottom step with his head dropped forward. Colt was already on the phone calling hospice and the funeral home.
I sat on the hallway floor outside Hank's room. Couldn't enter, couldn't leave.
From below, Jolene's voice: "Come sit with me." The sound of the couch, three small bodies settling.
"Grandpa Hank went to sleep last night and he didn't wake up." Jolene's voice was level and close to them.
"He's not in pain anymore. He's not confused anymore. He loved you very much, and the last thing he did when he was really, truly Grandpa Hank was hold your sister and tell your mama she did good."
"I don't want him to be asleep," Lily said through the tears. "I want him to wake up."
"I know, baby. I know you do."
Luke went rigid beside her, his body fighting feeling by becoming stone. "Luke," Jolene said gently. "You don't have to talk. You don't have to do anything. You just have to let me sit here with you."
"Is he still upstairs?" Luke asked, and his voice was small.
"His body is still upstairs. But Grandpa Hank, the part that loved you and told you stories and held your hand, that part is finished hurting."
Levi was silent. I was listening for his voice from the hallway and it didn't come.
"Levi," Jolene said. "Do you want to write something?"
"Not yet." He paused. "Can I see him?"
"Not right now, sweetheart," Jolene said. "Soon. When everything is ready."
Jolene held all three of them, Lily against her chest, Luke under her hand, Levi pressed to her side.
The woman who left her own children holding someone else's, and not one of them pulled away.
I sat on that hallway floor and I let someone else hold my children, and I felt every second of it like a blade drawn slow across something that was already open.
The day unfolded in phone calls and arrangements. Ryan arrived in uniform.
"What do you need?" Ryan said, and I looked at him and couldn't answer.
"She needs you to handle logistics," Colt said from behind me. "Funeral home is Westbrook on Main. Hospice is sending someone for the equipment. I've got the financial side."
"Done." Ryan's jaw was tight and his eyes were red but his voice was operational. "Ivory, go sit down. I've got this."
"I can't sit down." My hands were shaking and I couldn't make them stop.
"Then stand somewhere that isn't a hallway." He put his hand on my shoulder. "Go be with your kids, Ivory. I'll handle the rest."
"He was warm, Ryan." I said it and didn't know why. "The bed was still warm when I found him."
"I know." Ryan's hand tightened on my shoulder. "Go be with your kids."
Colt handled the funeral costs. "How much?" I asked him, and he told me the number, and the number was larger than the account could hold.
"We can't afford that," I said, and Colt's jaw tightened the way it tightened when someone told him a problem couldn't be solved.
"I'll find the money." He said it the way he said things that weren't negotiable. "I rebuilt the finances from Gerald's wreckage and I'll build this too. Your father is getting the funeral he deserves."
Kameron held the kids wherever they needed, Lily in his lap, Luke against his side, Levi nearby with his notebook closed for once.
"Daddy," Lily said into his chest. "Will Lucy remember him?"
"We'll make sure she does," Kameron said, and his voice was rough but it held. "We'll tell her every story. We'll show her the drawings."
"What if she doesn't believe us?" Lily pulled back and looked at him. "What if she thinks we made him up?"
"She won't." Kameron wiped Lily's face with his thumb. "Because she'll have your drawings and Levi's notebook and every person in this house who loved him telling her what he was."
"I have stories in my notebook," Levi said from beside them. "I wrote down things he said, and things he did. She can have those."
"Then she'll have the best ones," Kameron said, and Lily pressed her face against his chest. Luke reached over and put his hand on Levi's notebook, and the three of them sat together without speaking.
Evening. The house emptied, Ryan gone, Marisol's containers on the counter. Kids in bed with Jolene handling bedtime.
"You don't have to go in there," Colt said when he saw me heading down the hallway. "Not tonight."
"I know." I kept walking. "I need to see it empty. I need to know it's real."
I walked to Hank's room. Door open, bed stripped, equipment removed. The chair where Luke held his hand was empty, and Lily's drawings were still taped to the wall.
On the nightstand, something I hadn't seen before, placed there or uncovered when the equipment was removed.
A photograph, small, edges worn from years of handling. Young Hank and young Margaret, smiling, both whole and young before the disease and the death and the daughter who would carry both.
I picked it up and looked at my mother's face, the face I had, the face Lucy might grow into.
My father's face, the man who'd been in that bed, warm, and was now nowhere I could reach. I turned it face down, set it on the nightstand, and walked out.