When I was fifteen, my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. It all started when she slipped in the shower. Miraculously, she didn’t break her hip, but while she was at the hospital for a check-up, the doctors insisted on giving her a complete physical since it had been a while. That’s when they found the cancer. It was already in an advanced stage, and they gave her only about six months to live.

My family lived in Seattle, and my dad worked long hours at Boeing, often up to 16 hours a day. So, my mom packed up my seven-year-old sister, Anne, and me, and we moved to Lakeside, California, to care for my grandmother during her final months.

To say I hated the idea would be an understatement. I had friends in Seattle, and now I was losing the chance to spend the whole summer with them. I wasn’t close to my grandmother and didn’t understand why I had to be there. But my mom said I needed to help look after Anne while she took care of Grandma. Plus, since Dad was never around, she thought I was still too young to be left alone all the time.

So, we flew to California and moved into my grandmother’s house. My first impression was that she didn’t seem extremely sick, but no one talked about it openly — at least not with me. The only information I gathered was from overhearing hushed conversations between her and my mom at the kitchen table. Grandma had some pain, but the medication helped manage it, and she was just constantly tired.

Two things stand out in my memory from that time, especially about my grandmother’s death.
First, I overheard the secret, late-night kitchen conversations utterly devoid of emotion. No crying, no expressions of love or regret — just businesslike exchanges. It was like listening to two people discussing mundane details at work:

“Morning,’ Bob.”
“Morning, Sam. How’s the missus?”
“Fine. And yours?”
Fine. Well, I’ll get to die now. Great! I’ll get to watchin’ ya. Have a wonderful day.”

It was that passionless, as though they were merely going through the motions.

The second thing that stands out is that I hated that house. It was the association with my grandma dying, but to me, that house was the physical embodiment of death. The few lights that were ever on felt more like a formality. Sunlight filtered through the window shades, casting eerie shadows in the corners that made you question things. The shades were the color of lifeless desert dirt, faded and worn from years of sun rays. At one point, they might have been off-white, even white, but now they’d done their job — keeping life out of the house — perfectly.

There were bowls of hard candy that had survived several presidencies. If you tried to take one, it would stick to the others, leaving you with an unappetizing clump of sugar. The wallpaper was faded, the furniture odd, and the floor coverings strange, but I guess it was just typical weird-grandmother stuff.

What unsettled me were the large portraits hanging all over the walls — people I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know if they were famous, family, or just people she admired, but I hated them. They were terrifying. The overall darkness of the paintings, the way the figures never looked happy or at ease… and their eyes — there was something off about them. I was convinced their eyes followed my every movement, a creepy sensation that grew the longer I stayed in the house. Fifteen was too old to be scared by paintings, but those eyes were evil. They watched me.

I wasn’t eager to spend any more time in that house than I had to. So, I started looking for something else to do. That’s how I met Jessie and Katy.

Part Two
 
The first time I saw Jessie (though, technically, we didn’t meet), he scared the shit out of me. He came barreling around the corner of my grandma’s house, his face smeared with black ashes from a barbecue or a burnt briquette. He had a chocolate ice cream cone in one hand, and the mess was all over his mouth. He was screaming at the top of his lungs that there wasn’t enough dirt in his backyard, or something like that.

He stopped right in front of me, quietly for a split second, as if trying to figure out who I was. Then, without warning, he screamed, “Dirt!” and I nearly fell on my ass. Just as suddenly as he’d come, he dashed in the other direction.

Then a girl appeared around the same corner and sprinted off after him. She didn’t scream but glanced at me for a few seconds. Now, I wasn’t some hopeless romantic. I had a few girlfriends in the day, but they were mostly schoolyard squabbles over hair-pulling. I didn’t buy into the ‘love at first sight’ thing — until I locked eyes with Katy. Something clicked in that moment. I can’t say I fell in love right then, but I could finally understand how it might happen. I changed in that instant, and I felt something shift.

I ran after them, curious to see what was going on. When I caught up, Katy had tackled Jessie to the ground. He was still squirming, dirt mixing with the mess on his face, and his ice cream was long gone.

Once she had him pinned, she looked up at me, shrugging. “It’s just time to take his medication,” she said, like it was the most normal thing in the world. “He hates it.”

She added that he was “slow,” but I figured she meant he was retarded. Physically, though, he looked swift — like a top spun as fast as possible and let loose in a small box.

Then Katy flashed me with an innocent but sly smile and took off, leaving me standing there, watching them both disappear. I asked Grandma about Jessie and Katy, and she told me their names, casually mentioning that they lived a little further down the street. Jessie was my age, she said, and Katy was a few years older. According to neighborhood gossip, Jessie’s “slowness” stemmed from a childhood accident she blamed on her father. As for Katy, Grandma described her as a “little troublemaker” and recommended that I stay away from the whole family. Naturally, my immediate response was to do the opposite, especially about Katy.

The next chance I got, I took a walk down the street. I didn’t know where exactly they lived, but as I walked, I found myself feeling oddly relieved to be out of the house of death, away from my mom and grandma. The fresh air helped clear my head a bit.

Then I heard it: the unmistakable sound of digging.

I peeked over a fence and saw Jessie, struggling with a shovel, moving dirt from one place to another with no real success. He was making a mess of the yard — holes everywhere, piles of dirt scattered all over. Sometimes he would try to climb onto one pile, only for it to collapse under him, sending dirt back into the hole.

I hadn’t realized I’d been leaning on the gate, but when I shifted my weight, it gave way, and I fell right through. Jessie spotted me and bolted straight toward me, realizing what had happened. I scrambled to get up, already bracing for some outburst. But instead, he grabbed my arm and pulled me over to his latest dirt pile.

“I’m Jessie,” he said repeatedly, his hands moving ritualistically, like he didn’t know how to hold them properly. There was some drool on his fingers, which I tried my best not to think about.

He handed me the shovel and asked me to help him dig. I didn’t see the point but tried changing the subject.

“Where’s Katy?” I asked.

“Kathryn is my sister,” he replied, not understanding what I meant. “I don’t know where Kathryn is.” He asked me again if I wanted to dig, just in case I’d suddenly changed my heart.

Part Three
 
Katy sat there for a while, watching him. Jessie wasn’t skilled with the shovel, and his digging lacked order. He had several piles of dirt and holes; most of the time, his efforts made the dirt slide back into the holes. But he was determined, checking in with me to see if I wanted to join in, and every time, I’d decline.

Suddenly, I heard a car pull up out front. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Katy leave the passenger side. Since she wasn’t looking for Jessie and couldn’t see me watching her, I got my first honest look at her.

And indeed, I understood every cliché, every sappy boy-meets-girl description I’d ever heard, read, or seen in movies. I felt it physically — my knees went weak. It was absurd, and yet undeniable. I wasn’t sure if she was a classic beauty, but she was my beauty at that moment.

But then the moment snapped. She slammed the car door and leaned over, screaming at the driver with a rage I’d never seen before. It was like fire came out of her mouth. My romantic vision crumbled into something much more objective and much less flattering — like a waitress losing it at the fry cook after a hellish shift. The driver gave her the finger and sped off.

Katy straightened herself up and walked toward the house as if nothing had happened. Despite the chaos, I stood there, feeling that strange, conflicting pull toward her.

Then Jessie’s mom — who I assumed was Jessie’s mom — came out onto the porch. She was big, with a face that had long stopped resembling anything feminine. If she had held a cleaver, I would’ve sworn I was watching an overdramatic opera. She wore an apron covered in stains, most of which looked suspiciously like blood.

When she saw Jessie, she rushed over to him, and they hugged. Jessie kept repeating, “Hi mama, hi mama,” as she stroked his hair.

“Who’s that?” she asked, her voice gruff.

For a split second, I imagined her pulling out that cleaver and pointing it in my direction. I suddenly realized I was trespassing on her yard. Jessie piped up before I could do anything:

 

“That’s my friend. He doesn’t like to dig, but I still like him.”

I was taken aback. I didn’t even know Jessie well, but in that moment, I felt oddly grateful to him for labelling me as his friend. His mom grunted at me, waved me off with a dismissive hand, and said,

 

“Well, run along then. Jessie must come in for supper.”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I stood there, hands buried deep in my pockets, shoulders pulled up to my ears. I didn’t say a word as I ran off toward the gate. But as I reached the street, I heard a scream from inside Jessie’s house. It was followed by crying. I stopped dead in my tracks. My hands went back into my pockets as I listened, but eventually, I turned around and headed to Grandma’s.

The following day, I woke up early, disoriented. In the thin predawn light, the room looked routine — undisturbed. My sister lay asleep in her bed, calm, breathing softly. But then I heard it.

My grandmother is coughing.

Not just a cough — the cough. Deep, raspy, endless. The kind of sound that made you forget breathing ever came easy. She was struggling for air to fuel the next spasm, like her body had turned on itself.

And suddenly, I knew she was dying.

I’ve said before, I can be oblivious. Turns out I can be self-absorbed too. I’d been so wrapped up in my petty drama — leaving friends behind, being bored at Lakeside. Meanwhile, she was dying.

This house, her house, would be empty.

She had walked through these rooms for what felt like forever, and now, one day soon, she wouldn’t. And in six months, she’d be a name in a story or a picture in a drawer, and my life would… go on. She would no longer be.

The thought was too much. I had to stop it before it reached whatever place came after thoughts like that. Some dark edge I couldn’t climb back from. I couldn’t imagine my own life ending.

Then — nothing. Just the quiet truth: she was dying.

I pulled the pillow over my head and tried to force my brain onto something else. Katy usually lived there rent-free, but I thought of Jessie for some reason.

Did he know about death? And if he did, what did he think about it?

Eventually, I took the pillow off. The coughing had stopped. But now I heard something else — soft and fragile — the sound of my sister Anne, crying in the dark.
 
Part Four
 
Later that morning, I asked Mom about Grandma at the breakfast table. Usually, she’d be sitting there with us.

“Don’t worry,” she said, brushing it off. Then silence. After a while, I told her I’d gone to Jessie’s — about the backyard, the dirt mounds, the construction-slash-destruction project that looked more like performance art than landscaping.

She didn’t say much. She rarely did. But I could tell she thought it was nice of me to spend time with Jessie. She was offering her only son up to the gods of charity work. Or she knew more than she let on — about the chaos at that house — and was trying to sacrifice herself to keep me out of it.

I couldn’t tell.

She finally said, “Be careful. You heard what Grandma said about them.”
But even though she felt half-hearted, like she didn’t believe the warnings more than I did.

So, I finished breakfast, wiped my mouth, and returned to Jessie’s.

Ready for whatever that backyard — and that house — had waiting for me.

I wasn’t sure what to do when I got to Jessie’s place, but I figured I’d improvise. This time, though, I was distracted — distracted by the sight of Jessie himself.

He was standing on one of his beloved dirt hills — four feet high, five — buried up to the middle of his shins like he’d just decided that was far enough. He wore nothing but a pair of boxers. Arms stretched out, palms facing up, head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth open with his tongue barely hanging out on the right side. The sun blazed down on him, and there he stood, absurdly still, exposed to the harsh indifference of the universe like a lunatic prophet or a nudist scarecrow.

I didn’t know what he was doing. Or thinking. I didn’t want to interrupt whatever holy moment was happening, but I was too weirded out to let it go. He looked… not dead exactly, but dead-adjacent like someone had preserved him mid-worship.

I walked to the front door, thinking his mom would announce me, or Kong the dog would maul me, which would at least break the spell. No way I was touching Jessie to wake him up. I had this vivid, terrifying image of tapping him, feeling his skin cold, and watching him crumble into a lifeless sack like a used-up bag of flour.

This morning’s death spiral thinking had scrambled my brain. I tried to shake it off as I stepped onto the porch. Just as I reached the knock, the door burst open. Katy grabbed my wrist like a secret agent and whispered,

 

“How deep is your voice?”
I squinted at her. “Huh?”
“That’s good enough,” she said, grinning like we were about to commit a felony.

The next thing I knew, I was being dragged through the house, up the stairs, and into a room. She picked up a phone, covered the mouthpiece with her hand, then shoved the phone, hands, and everything between her knees. Hunched over, eyes up at me like some wicked gremlin, she said,

 

“All you must do is say ‘Hello.’"

Before I could protest, the phone was on my face.

“Uh… Hello?”

She slapped her hand over her mouth to muffle her laughter. The man on the other end did not share her amusement. I could hear him from five feet away, clear enough: “I will kill him!”

Click.

She collapsed in laughter, curling into the fetal position on the floor, holding her stomach. I couldn’t help but smile. There was something unhinged but weirdly comforting about her energy.

Eventually, she caught her breath, sat up, and lit a cigarette.
“Hi,” she said, like nothing happened.
I blinked. “Wha…”
“Oh yes, that was my boyfriend. Just messing with him.” She leaned out the window to blow the smoke out, but most returned. I looked past her to see Jessie, still in full “Sun Jesus” mode. I figured now was a suitable time to ask something, anything.

“What is he doing out there?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s just stupid,” she said. Then she shouted, “Jessie, knock it off!”

I flinched, bracing for his collapse. But he dropped his arms and sulked away like a scolded golden retriever.

“So, you’re a friend of Jessie’s, huh?” she asked.

That idea had comforted me the other day, but now it felt weird to say aloud. “Not really. We just met yesterday.”
“Oh yeah, now I remember you.”
I tried to reply, but she cut me off.
“I should call my boyfriend and calm him down. He’s been stewing long enough.”
Her face said, “get out,” so I did.

I walked through the kitchen toward the back door, half-wondering if the legendary cleaver was hanging anywhere. No sign of it. It lived in a drawer.
 
Part five
 
Outside, I scanned the yard. Eventually, I spotted Jessie curled in a rare patch of non-dirt, looking precisely like the lifeless heap I had imagined earlier. I forced myself to check.

When I got close, he looked up and said, “Hi, I’m Jessie.”

I exhaled, relieved he was still breathing. I sat beside him, unsure what to say. Then, out of nowhere, I asked:
“Why did you tell your mom I was your friend yesterday?”

“Because you are my friend, right?”

“Yeah… sure… I guess, Jessie. But we barely know each other. How can we be friends?”

“You were here, and I was here, and it was a long time. I liked it. You helped me dig. You’re a good friend.”
“I didn’t help you dig.”

“Ut uh, yeah,” he laughed. “But you will. That’s what friends are for. And we’re friends.”

I shook my head. “I’ll be your friend, Jessie. But I doubt I’ll ever help you dig.”

He laughed again. I smiled — with him, at him. He didn’t care.

Then, like something took control of my mouth, I asked, “Why do you dig, Jessie? Are you looking for something?”
He stopped laughing. His face changed. For the first time, he looked severe — eerily normal.

“I want to make a big dirt hill and stand on it,” he said. “I’ll be closer to the sun… I need to be closer to the sun.”

Was he serious? Physically closer? What did he want so badly? What was three or four feet of elevation supposed to do?

I was about to ask, “What do you mean?” — ready for a real conversation, even something profound — when Katy’s voice exploded from the upstairs window.

“Hey…you…dude, I don’t know your name, buy I need a favor.”

I looked at Jessie. He still hadn’t moved. Then I looked up. Katy was grinning. I stood, started jogging toward the house, immediately realized how dorky I looked, and slowed to a saunter. She was still watching. She was still laughing—not cruelly, but enough to keep me uncomfortable.

When I got to her room, my jaw fell to the floor.

She was standing there in nothing but shorts and a bra, studying her side profile in a full-length mirror, tugging her waistband down and stroking her belly.

I was mesmerized.

“Do I look pregnant?” she asked, casually.

My brain fried. “Uh…”

She must have seen it on my face because she pulled on a shirt — not the reaction I was hoping for, but it made speaking possible again.

“Do you really think you’re pregnant?” I managed to squeak out.

“I know I am. Missed two periods. Got a feeling.”

“Who’s the father?”

“My boyfriend,” she said, as if I should’ve known. Then she added, “Oh, and by the way, you’re my boyfriend now.”
My jaw was already on the floor.

“Wha…?”

“Yeah. I told him I had a guy over. You’re him.”

Suddenly, love at first sight felt utterly reasonable. I had a million questions, but she cut me off again.

“Shoosh!” she hissed. “That’s my parents’ car! I’m not allowed to have boys in my room. I could get so grounded.”

Her face, once all mischief, now showed real fear.

“You have to go out the window!”
“What? Are you insane?! I could break my neck!”
“Please. Please — I need your help!”

How do you say no to the girl of your dreams when she’s playing damsel in distress?

I climbed onto the overhang, hung down, aimed for a soft pile of dirt, and let go. I’m quite sure I twisted my ankle, but I survived. I heard shouting inside the house again, so I hobbled off toward my grandmother’s, trying to process everything and failing beautifully.
 
Part Six
 
Mom poked her head into my room the next morning and said, “Your grandmother wants to talk to you.” Still half-asleep, I blinked at her. She just shrugged.

That alone should’ve scared the hell out of me. But I’m incredibly useless in the mornings, and by the time it registered as strange, I was already walking down the hallway toward Grandma’s room. I sat on the edge of her bed, rubbing the last sleep from my eyes. It was a slow process. She took a long breath, gathering every ounce of strength she had left, and began.

“I know we don’t talk much,” she said. “And I’m sorry to drop something this deep on you at what must be a weird time. But it breaks my heart to see how your mother’s life turned out, and I never dared to talk to her about it. I was too scared to have hard conversations with my daughter. So now, in a small and too late way, I’m trying to make up for it — by talking to you.

“In six months, you’ll have forgotten me. And that’s okay. That’s how it should be. But please, don’t forget this: love is all that matters.

“My body’s about to leave this world, but my heart left it six years ago with your grandfather. I was sad then. But I’m not unhappy now. I hope I’ll see him again — but nobody can say that. What matters is that we had each other. We lived our time together. And that means more to me than anything — life, death, or whatever comes after.

“It wouldn’t have mattered if we only had a minute together, or a lifetime. If I’d missed it or been too afraid to hold on to it, my life would’ve felt incomplete. But I didn’t. I wasn’t. We loved. And because of that, we could love life too, no matter what else was going on.

“We were lucky. It’s rare. But if you find it — really find it — remember this: nothing is more important. Don’t let anything stand between you and love.”

She smiled and looked at me. That was all she had to say.

She looked… not quite alive but not gone either. I didn’t slip into my usual spiral of death-anxiety. She blinked slowly, like it took effort, then closed her eyes, still smiling.

I sat there with her for a while. It should’ve been a shocking conversation. But it wasn’t. This woman — my grandmother — was someone I barely knew. We’d only seen each other a handful of times over the years. She wasn’t a stranger, but she hadn’t been part of my life in any absolute sense. And yet, everything she said sounded like it came from someone who’d been right beside me this whole time, someone who knew every twisted thought and feeling I’d had recently.

Somehow, she knew.

And I didn’t feel shocked. I just felt… love. Not the kind of love she’d spoken about — the kind that fills up your whole life — but something close. Something that gave me a taste of what that kind of love might be—a glimpse of what it might mean to have someone in your life’s gravity field forever.

You could say I became a man in that moment. I wouldn’t. But I’d say I grew up a lot in those few minutes.
Because I knew what I had to do.

And knowing it isn’t enough. Doing it is.
I know that now.
And I owe that to my grandmother.
I loved her.
I needed to talk to Katy.
 
Part Seven
 
I rushed through breakfast. Would’ve skipped it entirely if Mom hadn’t snagged me by the collar on my way out the door.

The yelling was already going on when I got to Jessie’s house. Same voices, same chaos. I figured it never stopped when the parents were home. Still, the thought of turning around or doing anything other than knocking didn’t even cross my mind.

The door opened.

A man filled the frame. I assumed it was their dad.

“Who the fuck are you?” he barked.

He was wearing a stained wife-beater that looked like it had been in a losing battle with gravity and personal hygiene. Brownish patches had bloomed from his armpits and slowly migrated toward each other, merging across the chest. Food stains covered his belly — different from the food-prep smears on Kong’s apron. This was food’s sad afterlife.

He smelled like someone had dropped a wedge of stinky cheese—not spoiled, just naturally offensive—into a bucket of battery acid.

“I said,” he repeated, louder this time, “who the fuck are you?”

Behind him, I could see into the living room. Katy was wrapped in a blanket. Jessie sat near her. Their mom hovered nearby like a ghost in chaos. Katy’s face was bruised and blotched with blood. She wasn’t crying. Just… still. Sad.

Disgusted.

“Who the fuck are you?” he shouted again, throat now shredded from use.

“I… I’d like to speak to Katy,” I said.

He threw his arms up. “Can’t you see we’re having a family crisis here?”

“I’m her friend. Please — ask Jessie. I just need to talk to her.”

“Oh, a friend, huh?” His voice twisted into something sharp. “Then you must know Dennis.”

I didn’t know who Dennis was, but I could guess.

“He’s the one that beat her up,” he growled. “And I would love to have a little chat with him. So, if you know where he is, you better tell me now, boy.”

“Let it go, Dad!” Katy screamed from the living room. Her voice cracked. Now the tears had come.
Her dad turned his back, muttering to her as he slammed the door shut, “When I find him, I will kill him.”
The screaming inside continued.

I stood on the porch for a few seconds, frozen, not expecting the door to open again, not knowing what to do. I just knew I had to talk to her. I would find a way.

Somehow.

I went back to their house the next day. It was empty. No cars in the driveway. No lights in the windows. The backyard was still, untouched. I looked around for any sign of life, but there was nothing.

The next day, the same. Deserted. A slow fear began to take hold. I was scared I’d never see Katy again, talk to her, or tell her how I felt. It was precisely what Grandma had warned me about. Missing your chance.

I didn’t know what to do. So, I walked.

Every day, I wandered. My feet took me by their house three or four times a day, like I was orbiting it, hoping it might suddenly come back to life. It never did. And with every loop, I sank deeper into quiet desperation.

On the third day of this wandering routine, I passed close enough to Grandma’s house to see an ambulance pulling away. No sirens. No lights.

I ran.

When I got there, I could see through the doorway, straight down the hall into the kitchen. Mom was sitting at the table. She was crying — but she’d stopped by the time I was close enough to tell. Her face was blank, like nothing had happened.

“Grandma died,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “I saw.”
She asked if I was okay. I said I was. And I was, in a way. If Grandma had been ready, happy with her life, and content to go, I wouldn’t have felt bad about that.
“I think I’ll miss her,” I said.

Mom nodded, ruffled my hair, and gave me a tired smile. “Should only take a couple of days to get everything in order. Looks like you’ll still get some of your summer vacation.”

That’s when it hit me.

That I was running out of time.

And the fear came flooding in. Not just fear — pain, urgency, a crushing kind of helplessness. The feeling that something vital was slipping away right before me, and I couldn’t stop it. Like playing tug-of-war with Conan — every inch pulled from my hands, no matter how tightly I held on.

And I had no say in any of it. No control over the thing that meant the most to me.
That was the worst part.

I went outside, shoved my hands in my pockets, and started kicking rocks out of the dry ground in the front yard.
 
Part Eight
 
I had been walking for a while, hoping time would pass. Not much time — we didn’t have much. Just enough to circle back, talk, and try to make it right. Then I heard something behind me. I turned just in time to avoid being knocked over by Jessie. He flew past me, then doubled back, panting too hard to speak.
But his eyes — his eyes were screaming.

“Kathryn — your friend — help!”

He grabbed my arm and pulled, and I didn’t need more than that.

We ran.

Up the porch steps. Through the door. Jessie collapsed just inside, his limbs curling into himself like he was folding under the weight of everything. His left arm clutched his chest. His right arm, hand, and finger pointed up the stairs.
“Help!” he screamed, before crumpling to the floor.

I bolted upstairs.

Katy’s room was empty. I scanned it, wild-eyed. Nothing. Then, something caught my eye—something off.
I turned my head slowly and looked down the hallway. The bathroom door was cracked open. I could see the end of the tub — and water.

Red.

I stepped forward. Step by step, the bathroom came into full view.

The tub. The water. The red. And then — her.

Katy. Lying in the tub. Her blood in the water. Her head was resting on the edge, facing me. Her eyes were open. The spark in them was gone. She wasn’t just in the water. She was gone. Our life was gone.

She took it from us.

“No….!”

I ran to her and cradled her head in my hands. It was still warm.

I still loved her.

“No….!”

The world started to go gray.

A hand grabbed my shoulder and threw me across the room.

I hit the floor hard.

“No….!

Through blurred vision, I saw firemen. I saw Katy’s lifeless body being carried away. I saw her parents — screaming, fighting, breaking.

Then —
Nothing.
Just black.


 

Epilogue

I went to the funeral to say goodbye to Katy. I knew no one in her family except Jessie, so I kept my distance. I felt like some ghoul, lingering among the headstones — close enough to see their bodies dressed in black and their faces painted with sorrow.

I wasn’t sure if Jessie understood what was happening. He did. Or he was just heavily sedated. Then I thought I saw a tear slip from his eye. And suddenly, it all became real.

Do you know how it feels like a movie when things get weird in your life? Like your mind can’t entirely absorb it, so it wraps the grief in fiction? That’s how it had been for me — until that tear.

That was the moment I realized: I had come down here, fallen in love, and somehow, in some horrible way, contributed to the death of the woman I loved. That time — our time — was over. And now, my life would always be missing something.

This wasn’t a movie.
This was permanent.
And I would never be the same.
I cried.

I didn’t cry often. It wasn’t like the movies where the tears fell in perfect silence. It was a fight. My eyes filled and burned. I tilted my head back to the sky and squeezed them shut, trying to force the tears out. They came anyway, hot and slow, carving little lava paths from my eyes to my temples and into my hair.

Then it was over — the liquid part, anyway. I didn’t feel any better. People say it helps to express emotion. But it didn’t. Not for me.

All I knew was that Katy was gone.

And I knew I would never cry again.

After the funeral, I walked. I don’t remember where I thought I was going. The weight in my chest reminded me of something Grandma once said to me — how she was content to die.

But we arrived at that feeling from various places. She had lived and loved. I was just sure that love was lost.

I heard digging.

I stood in front of Jessie’s house. Over the gate, I saw him — still in his funeral slacks, shirt, and tie — sweaty and slow, making little progress.

I stepped through the gate and sat on a pile of dirt.

He kept digging a while longer. Dirt went up the mound, then mostly slid back down. Eventually, he looked at me through strands of wet hair and said, “Kathryn is gone.”

“I know,” I said.

This time, I saw the tear for sure.

He nodded slightly, then said, “This is the house where sunlight dies.”

I stood up, took the shovel from his hands, and started to dig.

​