My heart, my mind, everything I am is frozen in the moment she died in my arms. I cannot move forward. And the truth is, I don't want to.
But you must.
You have so much life ahead of you. Dreams waiting. Milestones to reach. Love to discover. If I stay, I will only hold you back. You'll feel obligated to carry me, to tiptoe around my grief. I cannot let that continue to happen.
You deserve to live without having to carry what is broken in me.
I cannot stay here anymore. Not without her.
I will make sure you are cared for. The house is paid off. Food, utilities, school tuitions all accounted for. Trust accounts are set for each of you. You will want for nothing. AuntLorraine and Uncle Reggie will help with anything else.
Julian. I am proud of the man you’ve become in the wake of my weakness. I know you will keep them safe. I know you will grow into the man I cannot be.
Stay together. Take care of each other.
I love you. Forgive me if you can.
Pops/Daddy
I read it once.Then again. Then I put it back in the envelope, walked it upstairs to my room and slid it into the drawer of my nightstand. Then I went and made dinner.
I told myself he would be back in a few days, but a week went by. Then Simone and Tre started asking where he was. Zion never asked. He’d just study my face as I struggled to answer their questions, as if the man I knew was not coming back, might be.
I read the letter twice more in that second week. Each time I read it I understood it a little better.Julian. I am proud of the man you’ve become in the wake of my weakness.He was not asking me to be the man of the house while he got himself together. He was naming me the man of the house in his place. He had decided.
By the end of the second week I had stopped waiting. I called my siblings into the living room, took a deep breath and read the letter aloud. I kept my voice flat the way I'd practiced for everything else. Flat got me through. Flat would get them through. Until the last part.
Stay together. Take care of each other.My voice broke on that. Like the words had jumped me from behind.
Tre cursed, slapped both hands on his thighs and pushed up off the couch like he was about to walk out. Then he stopped halfway across the room and pressed his palms into his eyes.
Zion made a sound at the window I won't try to describe. Then his fist went through the drywall beside the curtain. He didn't look at it. Just stood there with his hand still in the wall, breathing heavily.
And then Simone. I almost missed it. She made no sound at first. I felt her shift against my leg, then go very, very still,and when I looked down she was already on her side on the rug, eyes open but unfocused, hands curled in toward her chest.
“Simone.”
Nothing.
“Simone?”
She had been so still while I read. Unnaturally still, then a high and broken sound came out of her, and she was breathing wrong, too fast, too shallow, hands on her chest, while her whole body shook like she was cold.
I dropped to my knees, both hands cupping her face, telling her to look at me. To breathe. “Simi, please, please look at me, please.”
She couldn't look at me. Her eyes were somewhere else, panicked, and her breathing was short, desperate pulls that weren't getting her enough of anything.
“She can't breathe!“ Zion had dropped to her other side. “Julian, she can't?—“
“Call nine-one-one,” I shouted to Tre. “Hurry!”
Tre already had the phone, tears falling down his face, and when the dispatcher answered he could barely get words out. "My sister is dying!” Tre said into the phone. "My sister, she's on the floor, she can't breathe, please help!” He gave our address.
"Tre. Hand me the phone."
He handed it to me and I put it on speaker. "My sister is twelve years old. She just received bad news. She is on the floor. She is conscious. She is breathing but very fast, clutching her chest. Her eyes are open."
The dispatcher was a woman, calmly rattling off questions:any conditions we knew of, was she conscious,could she hear us.