My breath caught as Hayes's eyes met mine. My chest ached as he spoke directly to me, even though the entire church was full of people holding back cries and wiping their eyes.
"If you let that one moment pass you by where you could have grabbed what you wanted, there will come a day when it's out of your grasp, and regret will haunt you, just like a ghost."
My heart sputtered in my chest, my fingers clenched into a tight fist. I was suppressing every natural instinct I had, forcing myself to stay seated. If I stood, I was either going directly to Hayes, or straight out the door.
"My mother wants everyone to know how much she loved my father." Hayes's voice cracked with his words. The sound pierced my chest and cut my heart right in half. "They had a good life together, and maybe one day she'll be strong enough to tell you all how he earned her love every day. Maybe one day soon she'll be strong enough to tell you how much she loved Cory, how from the day he was born until the day he was taken from us he was her baby. In fact," he said with a sudden short laugh, "he'll always be her baby and I've given up trying to compete with him anymore. The competition is now eternally unfair." He laughed again as a single tear streamed down his cheek, and light laughter came from a few more people in the church.
After a few moments he took another deep breath, then let his gaze sweep the church, seeming to take in the sight before him.
"Again, we're really thankful for everyone's support. We hope the death of Cory and my father isn't in vain, though. If anything, we hope you all will live your life a little fuller, a little more aggressively, and remember that tomorrow is never promised. Nothing is promised to us. The only thing we've really got is the here and the now, and if you let it pass you by, if you sit by and let it go, there's no guarantee you'll get those moments, or those people, back."
He folded his piece of paper up as he walked back down the stairs toward the pews. He came closer and closer to me, and it was almost as if the magnetic force between us grew stronger with each step because the instant he was right in front of me, I stood and opened my arms to him.
I was sure to everyone in the church it looked like one person offering a lifelong friend support during, arguably, the hardest day of his life. I was sure everyone watched us embrace and was happy that Hayes had a friend like me in his life to help him deal with his staggering loss. They all thought my motivations for wrapping my arms around him, for spreading my fingers wide over his back to feel as much of him as I possibly could, was innocent.
I would spend the next few days trying to convince myself of that too.
Chapter Six
Hayes
Funerals were exhausting.
Fuck that.
The last two weeks were exhausting. But yesterday was the most draining day of my life.
I'd led a pretty low-key life. I wasn't high maintenance by any means. I was focused and driven. I set a goal and I went after it. Well, most of the time. The last four years of my life had been so incredibly concentrated on getting my degree and moving on to my master's program, I'd barely had time to live the normal college life.
It was only now, in the midst of the biggest mind fuck of my life, that I've realized I wasn't just focused, or concentrating on life, I was avoiding things.
When Edward Harris had called me late that night, the night my father and brother were killed, he tried not to freak me out. He didn't want me panicking as I made the two-hour drive, so he just told me there was an emergency and that I needed to come home. But I'd known something was wrong. I never could have imagined everything that had happened. But since the moment I walked in that door, I'd been bombarded with every single thing I'd been trying to run away from since I left town.
Oh, and the murder of my dad and brother. That happened.
So even though I'd been exhausted, even though it was all I could do at the end of the night to strip to my underwear and crawl into bed, I never found sleep. Instead, I'd lain in my bed listening to my mother cry through the walls. Or when she'd managed to fall asleep, I'd lain in my bed and thought about Kenzie. But then, like I always had, I'd push thoughts of her away and I'd think about school, wondering how everything was ever going to be okay again. In the midst of all the rambling of my mind, my mom would wake up again, and I'd listen to her crying through the walls.
It was an endless cycle.
When I noticed the sky becoming lighter, I knew I'd been awake all night.
I sat up, reaching for my phone and disabling the alarm that was set to go off in another hour, and headed into the hallway. I stopped outside my mother's door, leaning in, trying to see if I could hear her crying. I could hear her breathing, but there were no cries.
Even if I couldn't sleep, I was glad she could. Although, she'd been put on medication just days after the murder. I made a mental note to e-mail her doctor as obviously she needed a stronger prescription. I didn't want her to cry every night. She needed rest. Pieces of her mind were slipping away all the time. The sleepless nights, the worrying, the paranoia, simply dealing with something a mother and wife should never have to deal with, each of those things were slowly robbing her of her sanity, and I knew she'd never get better if she didn't get any rest.
I continued down the hall, holding my breath as I passed Cory's room.
I hadn't been able to even open the door since I'd been home. I was terrified of what would happen if I did. So far, aside from kind of losing it at the funeral, I was the only person in my family who wasn't in the midst of a mental breakdown, and I didn't want to take any chances in that department. So Cory's door stayed closed.
I locked myself in the bathroom and prepared myself for another day. Another day where I avoided all the emotions clawing away at my insides, fighting their hardest to break their way free of me.
When I went downstairs thirty minutes later, Lucia was standing at our kitchen sink washing dishes. I'd asked her the day before, sometime during the wake, when forty or fifty people were in our house sharing memories with each other about Dad and Cory, to come and sit with my mother.
She'd given me the same response she had for the last two weeks anytime I asked anything of her.
"Of course, sweetheart. Anything you need." That was always coupled with a gentle squeeze on my shoulder and the saddest eyes on anyone I'd ever seen.
I was so thankful for the Harris family. Lucia and Edward had done so much for my mom and me since the murder, but I needed things to start getting back to normal if I was going to continue to avoid the feelings I was constantly aware of, just in the periphery.
That was also why I was glad it was Lucia in my kitchen, and not McKenzie.
"Good morning, Hayes," she said quietly just after turning off the faucet.
"Morning."
"Sweetie, you look terrible," she said, that gentle yet worried tone in her voice.
"I didn't sleep much last night. Mom was crying a lot."
"I see," she said softly, her eyes moving all along my face, trying to find the part of me that worried her the most. Was it the dark bags under my eyes? My sunken-in cheeks? The red veins in the whites of my eyes? "Whatever you've got going on this morning, can it wait? Maybe you should go upstairs and try to get some sleep. I'll listen for your mom."
I gave her the best smile I could muster. "Thank you, but this really can't wait."
Thirty minutes later I found myself in a situation I never could have ever seen coming.
"Hayes, it's good to see you. Please, take a seat."
I shook the hand of my high school principal and took the seat she offered me across the table from her at the only coffee shop in town.
"Mrs. Anderson, thank you so much for meeting with me on a Sunday. I know it's a hassle, but it's the only time I could make this happen. Life's been, well, a little hectic."
"I am so sorry for your loss, Hayes. Everyone at the school has been reeling from the loss of Cory, and we all extend our deepest sympathies."
"Thank you," I said with a nod, the words practiced and rehearsed to perfection in the last two weeks. I could take a condolence like a champ. "I don't want to take up too much of your Sunday." That was my subtle hint to Mrs. Anderson to move off the topic of my brother's death, and on to the real issue at hand.
"Yes, well, I think I have all the information I need. I've been communicating with your supervisor at your university and it looks like we've ironed out all the details. But, first, why don't you tell me a little bit about what you've accomplished academically in the four years since you've graduated from my high school."
The smile she gave me then was one of pride, which I welcomed. I could talk about school all day long-it had been my focus every day since I left this town. Talking about it now was the most welcome distraction I could have asked for.
"Well, I went into the university knowing exactly what I wanted to do and I didn't waste any time. All my elective courses were either related to my major, or in my area of study. I took courses all summer every year. I took night classes and at least twenty credits a term and I graduated at the end of my third year with a major in History. I applied to the graduate school of education, was accepted, and now I'm working on my master's. At the end of the year I hope to have my degree and my teaching certificate."