Page 3 of His to Cherish
Chapter 1
Funerals sucked. There was simply no polite, pretty, or nice way to put it.
A child’s funeral was hideous. Absolutely dreadful.
All day long I had stared out into space: at the funeral home, the cemetery site, and now the wake at the Devereaux’s house. I couldn’t help but imagine how these young teenagers, who were walking around like zombies, were supposed to grasp the magnitude of what had happened to their friend.
Derrick was well liked. That was always apparent in school. Not only did he excel in sports and earn straight As in almost every subject but he was also kind, with a great sense of humor. He was polite.
Was.
I shook my head and took a sip of my warm lemonade. It was amazing how quickly someone’s life could be shifted from anisto awas.
It was brutal. Everyone loved him. It was apparent from the large gathering of citizens from the community to the number of students and teachers. There were a million kind things I could say about Derrick Devereaux, learned during the three short years I’d known him at the middle school.
Mostly, I stayed silent. I spent most of the day huddled into a small corner with my friends Camden, Suzanne, and Paige, along with Jackson and Lucas, Suzanne and Paige’s husbands. Tyson and Blue, and Declan and Trina joined us later. We whispered to each other, we hugged each other. The men spent time with Aidan, trying to talk to him, but it was clear he didn’t want anyone around him.
He spent most of the day alone, staring out windows and only mumbling his appreciation of the condolences people gave him.
At the funeral home earlier, my eyes had burned with grief when he stood next to his son’s casket.
It became clear to me then that Aidan was alone. There were no grandparents standing next to him. Even Derrick’s mom, who I knew took off when Derrick was young, hadn’t come.
It had just been Aidan until Tyson, Declan, and a man I didn’t know but who was equally attractive, stood in the receiving line with him.
In any other circumstances, the sight of four handsome, tall, and broad-shouldered men, standing in a line, wearing suits that fit them all perfectly, would have made me speechless.
That morning, it had made me burst out crying onto Camden’s shoulder.
I couldn’t handle it. I still couldn’t sleep without hearing Derrick’s and Shane’s screams filtering through the windows of my house the day of the accident. Every time I looked out my window, I shivered.
I wanted to go to Aidan and throw my arms around him and comfort him, but I knew it wouldn’t be appreciated. So instead I held back. I helped my friends in the kitchen as we took care of all the food people had brought for Aidan, and we kept the snacks and drinks for the wake supplied.
Now the crowd was beginning to thin. Suzanne and Paige and their husbands had taken off. Most of the students from school were getting ready to head out.
Yet I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Not that Aidan needed me.
But in my grief-muddled mind, I felt a pull toward him.
Perhaps it was because I saw the wreckage.
Perhaps it was because I couldn’t get it out of my head, and, days later, it still woke me up on the nights I actually fell asleep, screaming because I didn’t do enough.
The weight of my guilt was suffocating me.
I didn’t do enough to help Derrick. The doctors told Aidan that it was a blood clot. Something they couldn’t get to in time, and it ruptured on the operating table, killing him.
He died without pain.
Leaving behind a world that would be forever changed because he was no longer in it.
I felt selfish. He was not my child. He wasn’t even my student or my friend.
Aidan was my friend, sort of. Closer to an acquaintance, really. I first met him a couple of years ago at Latham Hills Middle School where I worked as the school librarian. They had been registering Derrick for sixth grade, and Aidan and I had had a very brief conversation at the refreshments table. Afterward, I would see him frequently at Fireside Grill when I’d meet my friends there for dinner. He and Derrick often came in to pick up dinner or hang out with Declan and Tyson. Because of that, I’d gotten to know Aidan more in recent months as my crew of original friends—Camden, Suzanne, and Paige—grew to include Blue and Trina and their men. Aidan and I weren’t close. We didn’t know each other well even though we did speak to each other.
There was no reason for me to be at his house helping him.
Yet my feet stayed planted in his kitchen, overhearing single moms of Derrick’s classmates place bets on who would land the mourning father first.
