It was.
Rodney hung up the phone. He turned to Don. Eyes wet. Mouth trembling. Hands shaking. He said, “Jeremy. Jeremy. Jeremy, he’s… he…”
Don fell to the floor and howled.
A ranger had found him. At a campsite, in his tent. Overdose. He’d been dead for at least a couple of days, skin pale and cool to the touch. Nothing could have been done. It was already too late.
They viewed the body in the morgue of the small hospital, the medical staff quiet and respectful. He looked… he looked like Jeremy. The body did. An empty space where a soul like a dying star had lived. Don held his hand, kissed his forehead, told him he was sorry, so sorry, that he didn’t know it was this bad. He said they should have done more, they should have forced him intogetting help, they should have made him do all the things he didn’t want to do.
And then the police showed them the letter.
It was short, with scratchy, frantic writing.
It read:
I’m sorry about this. I don’t know how to make it stop. I’ve tried everything. I don’t like myself. I don’t like who I am. I hear things. I see things. They tell me I’m awful, that I don’t deserve anything good. Maybe they’re right. It’s so hard being human.
Tell my dads I love them.
Death by suicide, they were told. Suicide by overdose. And didn’t that beat all? Didn’tthatjust crush them more than they thought possible? It did. It was one thing to live longer than your child. It was something else entirely to find out your child had taken their own life far from home. A mile from the watchtower, the one that Jeremy had once exclaimed in delight over.
It flattened Don and Rodney under the weight of it all. There were long stretches when it felt like they couldn’t breathe. Grief like a tsunami crashed over them, dismantling everything they’d built.
They had Jeremy cremated. In clear moments, few though they were, Jeremy had said he didn’t want to go into a hole in the ground, didn’t want to be food for worms. “Burn me,” he’d told them at age twenty-three. “Burn me until there’s nothing left but ashes.”
So that’s what they did. And when they were given the box of ashes, Don couldn’t believe how light it was. How an entire universe of a person could fit into a small box as if it were nothing. It wasn’t fair. None of it was.
But they listened. Even with all he’d put them through, even with all the bitterness and heartache, Jeremy was still their son. They took his ashes and divided them up into seven different vials. They went to Montana and spread his ashes near the shore of a lake. They went to Arizona and threw ashes into the Grand Canyon. They went on the Appalachian Trail. Eight miles in, they left part of Jeremy under an old-growth tree covered in moss. They traveled to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, standing on a cliff ’s edge, letting Jeremy drift away in the wind. They went to Utah, the petrified forest. They laid Jeremy to rest near a stone in the shape of a bird. They traveled to Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains, all the way to the top of Mount Le Conte, where they built a cairn of rocks, leaving Jeremy spread around it.
It took them years to do this. Years where the grief sometimes felt like it was fading, only to come roaring back with a gaping maw and sharp fangs, ready to sink into tender flesh. Years of leaving parts of their hearts in places that meant so much to them all.
They couldn’t bring themselves to spread the last of his ashes. It would mean the end. It would mean Jeremy was really gone. At least with his remaining ashes, they could pretend. Jeremy was far away, but he was all right. He was healthy. He was happy. He was seeing the world becausethat’swhat he should have been doing.
So they kept the last of his remains, not ready to let go, not yet.
And then the end of the world began.
They clung to each other, below the fire tower, the earth trembling beneath their feet. Above them, the broken moon, two large chunks pulling away from the fractured body. The black hole was coming. It was almost here.
“We were good parents,” Rodney whispered in his ear. “We did our best. It wasn’t good enough, but wetried.”
“We did,” Don agreed into his shoulder, shaking. Because that was the truth, wasn’t it? They had tried their best. They had still failed, yes, but oh, had they tried.
Rodney pulled back, gripping Don’s shoulders. “We did. And now it’s time to finish this.”
“I’m scared.”
“Me too. But we’ve made it this far.”
Rodney was right. They’d survived. Improbably, with all life had thrown at them, they were still here. Don didn’t know how that was possible, how he had been able to get himself out of bed every morning, but he had. They both had. And that had to count for something.
Don looked up at the tower. It seemed to be swaying slightly. The air was ozone-sharp, like an electrical storm was approaching. He said, “Let’s go. We need to—”
The earth rolled beneath their feet, a fierce tremor that caused Don to stumble to his knees. He looked down at the ground in horror as a large crack appeared between his legs, the earth shifting with a spectacular groan. And for a moment, didn’t he think he sawlightdown in the crack? A bright light that looked as if the earth was bleeding? He did.
Rodney grabbed his hand tightly. Before Don could speak, Rodney jerked him up. For a moment, Don felt weightless, going up and up until Rodney pulled him back down. “Go,” he said. “Quickly.”
They did. They ran as fast as they could toward the tower. The earth continued to shake and shatter beneath their feet. Climbing up a trembling path, Don heard an electrical snarl from behind him. Glancing over his shoulder as Rodney pulled him toward the tower, Don saw ball lightning rising from the cracks in the ground. A dozen balls, all blue and white, crackling, snarling. They rose slowly, arcs of lightning snapping off.