The door to our room opened, and Chris stepped through. He was doing so well. He was walking stronger, and he had color back in his face. He was doing it. He was surviving; he was going to walk out of this place cured.
“Hey, bro,” Chris said, the only giveaway about how he was feeling was his hand at his side, balled into a fist. “How’s it hanging?”
Jesse forced a smirk, and my heart shattered. “Oh…ya know…thriving.”
Chris laughed, but that laughter was cut off by a strangled cry. He leaned down and threw his arm around Jesse. “I’ll miss you, man.”
When a tear leaked from the corner Jesse’s eye, I didn’t think I could take anymore sadness.
When Chris pulled back, he said, “Say hi to Emma for me.”
Jesse nodded, then said, “Live a good life… for us all.”
“I will,” Chris rasped, leaning over and kissing my cheek. “Love you guys. So much.”
And I knew in that moment, he was saying bye to me too.
Chris left the room, glancing over his shoulder at us one more time, expression racked with pain and grief. I brushed the tear off Jesse’s cheek just as Lucy and Emily walked in, quiet and scared.
Cynthia hugged them with her free arm. Like me, she couldn’t let go of her son, not even for a second, because seconds were all we had left. “Lucy, Emily, y’all need to say your goodnights to Jesse,” she said, and I felt a shred of flesh rip from my slow-beating heart. How Cynthia managed to keep her voice strong was unclear to me. She was an incredible woman with incomparable strength.
My daddy lifted Lucy and Emily onto the bed.
“Hey, gremlins,” Jesse said, and I caught another tear trickling down his face.
“Where are you going?” Lucy asked, brazen as always. But there was a tremor to her voice, like she could tell this wasn’t merely a trip away to a ranch to heal.
“Heaven,” Jesse said plainly.
“I don’t want you to go,” Emily said, and I had to turn my head away for just a moment. My mama’s face was what I saw as I did. Racking pain was etched in her expression.
“Remember what I told y’all before?” Jesse said.
“That you’ll be our guardian angel,” Emily said, repeating how Jesse explained what was happening to his little sisters a few weeks ago.
He nodded. “I’ll always watch over you both. I promise.”
Emily looked down at her hands, then threw herself over Jesse’s chest. Jesse hugged her and kissed her, only for Lucy to then do the same. “I’ll miss you,” Emily said, being so good for someone so young.
“I’ll miss you more,” Jesse said, and his voice broke.
“I’ll take them to Susan,” my daddy said when the girls had said their farewells.
As Jesse watched them leave, his resolved completely cracked. I wrapped him in my arms, and his mama did too. The two women who loved him most, comforting him with so much love as he passed.
I inched back, still holding his hand as his mama sat beside him. She smoothed her hand over his head. “I love you so much, Sunshine,” she said. “Thank you for being there with me through the thick and thin. Thank you for teaching me how to be a mom. It’s been the best thing I’ve ever done, and it was all down to you.”
“I love you, Mom,” Jesse said, then embraced Cynthia so tightly it broke me.
Jesse rolled his head to me as his mom sat back on her chair. “Junebug,” he said and opened his arms.
I fell into his embrace and held him with all the strength as I had left. “I can’t do this without you,” I said, sobs tearing from my throat.
Jesse pulled back and put his finger under my chin. “You have a book to finish, baby. You need to complete our happily ever after.” I shook my head, but then Jesse said, “Remember what Pastor Noel said.”
I did. Jesse had told me all about his and Pastor Noel’s conversation in the chapel, about how people see something or someone when they pass. That people can come and get them—loved ones, to help them cross over.
“Don’t leave for heaven without me,” I said. “Stay by my side until I go too.”
