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For two decades, Sharon Leone had been responsible for visiting families who lost loved ones in fires to tell the of their loss. She thought she had done a good job, that she had been understanding and empathetic, and gave them the space they needed. But as she recalled the words she had used in those death notifications they felt so hollow. How does one empathize with the worst loss a parent could ever experience? How did she ever think she could comfort someone with the aching pain that she now felt in every inch of her body?
It had been her Husband, Vince, who told her that their beautiful 21-year-old daughter had perished in a car fire. They had been married for more than 25 years and she could not recall a more difficult conversation. Vince had held her hand gently as he looked in her eyes and told her that Riley would not return from her 21st birthday. The two had held each other as Vince explained that he had missed a call from Riley and, at least in his mind, that meant Riley’s death was his fault.
But, it quickly became clear that Vince didn’t just blame himself, he also blamed her son. From the second Sharon laid eyes on Bode, she had compassion for him. Between knowing that he had watched his sister die and seeing him with cuts, bruises and a broken arm, Sharon was filled with sympathy and wanted to hug him tight.
Vince, on the other hand, seemed to be filled with Rage. When he had started , this was no time to pass around blame. However, what she had been utterly unprepared for was for Vince to attack their son. That moment seemed in slowmo in Sharon’s mind -- Vince charging at Bode and pinning him to the wall, her trying to throw herself between them, Luke pulling Vince away. As Sharon turned around to look into Vince’s eyes she saw a fiery hatred she didn’t think she had ever seen in him before.
She loved Vince but she couldn’t be around him, not in that moment. Instead she had fled upstairs with Bode. The two had held each other for a while before Bode dismissed his mother, saying that he wanted to go to bed. Sharon understood, he was hurt and he had been through a trauma. She left to her own room, but she found that sleep had refused to visit her.
Sharon shifted her thoughts from last night back onto her daughter. Riley had been such a beautiful, energetic girl. From a young age her optimism captivated everyone around her, even her terse grandfather couldn’t find fault in her. Riley had loved absolutely everyone and gave second chances to people even when they didn't deserve it. For years, starting in high school, the two had been like best friends. Riley always knew she could confide in her mother and Sharon did her best to be a safe space for all of the troubles that teen girls go through.
It wasn’t just the past that Sharon grieved, it was the future, too. There would be no beautiful wedding watching her husband Vince lead Riley down the aisle in a beautiful ball gown to Mary the love of her life. There would be no watching Riley transform from a daughter to a mother, no sharing of motherly advice like Sharon had done so many times with her own mother.
Instead, Riley was just gone. She was never coming back.
Even though she knew she shouldn't, Sharon had spent hours wondering what Riley's last minute had been like. Bode had told Sharon that Riley hadn’t spoken after the crash, but she knew that didn’t mean she had died. All she could htink about was her daughter being trapped, in pain, and unable to communicate. Had Luke rescuing Bode first cost her daughter what little time she had left? Could there have been another reality, one where her precious daughter had lived? Would she instead be sitting by a hospital bed, caressing her daughter’s hand while praying to a god she didn’t believe in that Riley would wake back up.
Sharon hadn’t slept that night. Instead, she had been held in the agonizing purgatory between sleep and wakefulness. She was too weak to lift her head off the pillow but not weak enough to leave this realm behind and drift into a peaceful rest. Instead, she spent the entire night reliving every moment of Riley's life. She wanted to remember every moment, good or bad, that Sharon had with her daughter for the rest of her life.
Sometime after the sun came up, Sharon started tracing her hand around the cold side of the bed where her husband usually slept. Even though in the moment she had been upset with him, she had expect that, at some point, he would join her in bed. She had assumed that he would come to bed, tell her he was sorry for attacking Bode, and lay in bed together. In that moment, she knew he was the only one who could understand how she was feeling.
It had been a long, hard night without him. Even though he had not come to bed she knew he was somewhere feeling the same way she was. Was this what their life would be like now, separated from each other by their overwhelming grief? She should be used to sleeping alone, when their kids were young they often worked opposite shifts, seeing each other just a few nights per month. They had even joked that, with how little they saw each other after Bode’s birth, it was a miracle they were able to have a second child.
They’d been such a happy family for so long. Yes there were challenges, but every family had their challenges. it always been the four of them dealing with every situation now, for as long as Sharon could see, it would just be the three of them. The idea of birthdays and holidays without Riley was painful, the thought of sitting down for dinner with their table set for three, not four, was unbearable.
Around noon Sharon gave up on sleep. She decided that Vince’s lack of appearance meant he thought she was asleep and didn’t want to bother her. She decided she would go to him. She needed him now more than she had ever needed him, if only for him to just hold her. When she rose she realized she had not even taken off her clothing the night before so she haphazardly threw on fresh clothing and left her room.
First she passed by Riley’s door. She felt the grief root down further inside of her. Riley would never be inside of her room again. Sharon would never hear her and Eve joking around, like she had gotten so used to ever since Eve had come into their lives. There would be no more fights on either side of the door, either. Riley had inherited the Leone stubbornness and always thought she was right. Fights with Riley had always been so hard, they said terrible things to each other but they always made it through.
Sharon started to wonder if she had been right to fight with Riley. She started questioning every decision to not let her go out with a boy or tell her to change into a more appropriate outfit. She only had 21 years of moments with Riley and every fight was a waste of one of them.
Next Sharon walked past Bode’s room. It was quiet and she couldn’t help but wonder if he was in the haze of drugs hiding from what had happened. Even though she hated the thought of Bode hiding from his sister's death in a pill bottle, she understood it. Riley was her daughter, but she was also Bode’s sister. She tried for one brief moment to imagine the pain if it had been her driving and not Bode. The longer she allowed that thought to permeate her brain the more she wanted to remind Bode, just as she had done when they sat together in his room, that she loved him. He was her only living child now and he needed to know that what had happened the night before did not change the love she felt for him.
Sharon raised her hand to knock on his door, but she found herself stopping. She wanted to see Bode, she wanted to tell him she loved him, but she couldn't. Not by herself. Vince should be here, they should do this together as his parents. So she stepped back and then walked to the kitchen.
She found Vince laying on their couch. Like her, he had laid down in the clothing he had worn to Riley’s birthday party. Sharon stooped beside her husband and ran her hand gently over his shoulder. “Did you sleep?”
“Not much,” he said as he opened his eyes. The alcohol on his breath hit her in the face like a ton of bricks. When they were probies, one of their favorite past times had been to drink. She hadn’t imagined, though, that a bottle would be the first place Vince would go to deal with the immediate shock of Riley’s death.
“Me either,” she said. “Were you down here all night?”
“I think I got home from Waler’s around six or seven.”
She gasped, “you didn’t--”
“No,” he told her. “Luke picked me up when he got off shift and brought me home.”
She sighed, now his absence made sense. Walter Leone was the kind of man who didn’t just enjoy alcohol, he treated it as medicine. Even though surely getting drunk was the after your child died was the worst possible choice, she was sure Walter had convinced his grieving son of the opposite, “I’m glad you made it home safe.”
“Like Walter always says, firefighters don’t drink and drive,” Vince told her, “I should have come to bed when I got home but I didn’t want to wake you if you had found sleep.”
“That’s OK,” she said before kissing him. Even though all she could feel inside of her was crushing sadness the kiss made her feel a little less alone. She knew at this moment that there was one person who was hurting as much as she was. It wasn’t just anyone, it was the man she knew she would spend the rest of their life with.
When they broke apart, she noticed that Vince’s bloodshot eyes were filled with the same pain that she felt inside of her. She searched for words to continue their conversation but all she could find were words about Riley. It felt like there was something separating them. Maybe that was just how grief this big was.
Sharon sat on the couch beside him, then watched as Vince’s hand crossed the chasm between them and grabbed hers. He looked in her eyes and said, “Was it really just yesterday that we were all at Smokey’s, celebrating her birthday?”
Sharon nodded. “It was just yesterday morning we were gathering for french toast at the Breakfast table. Now I’m not sure that we can ever sit there again.”
As Sharon began to sob they just sat there, hands intertwined. They had never been a perfect family but yesterday they had been whole. For more than 20 years it had been the four of them, two parents and two kids, doing what families do. But Sharon had a feeling, deep in the pit of her stomach, that they would never be normal again. That every vacation, every shopping trip, every meal would be a reminder that there should be four, not three. How could they even survive? Would the barrier between them, which she had first felt when she stood outside Bode’s room and now as she sat beside her husband, exist between them forevermore?
After several moments Vince cleared his throat and said, “It’s after noon, we should eat something.”
“I think we should make something and take it to Bode.”
“What?” Vince asked incredulously.
“He needs to know that we don’t hate him,” Sharon said, turning to look in Vince’s eyes. “That kid is sensitive enough without thinking we hate him. Taking him food, I think it will bridge the gap. We don’t have to talk about Riley, or even at all, just give him food so he knows we are thinking about him, too.”
“Bode is fine,” Vince said in a voice just above a whisper.
“No, he just got into a car accident that killed Riley.”
“Share,” Vince said. She could see a look of indecision in his eyes.
“What?” she asked.
“I… I don’t think Bode is here right now.”
“Of course he’s here. Where else would he be?”
“Can’t you feel it,” Vince said. “I mean doesn’t the house feel a little too quiet for Bode to be here?”
“No, no. Bode is here, he’s asleep in his room. I can feel it,” Sharon said. She stood up, still holding Vince’s hand said “Come on.”
The two walked silently through the house and over to Bode’s bedroom. Sharon’s knock had none of the timidness that her previous attempt to wake her son had. When he did not answer her knock she said, “Bode, It’s Mom and Dad, can we come in.”
They stood in silence for a moment. Then Vince said “Bode, come on, don’t ignore us, we need to talk to you.”
“Bode, honey, we just want to be there for you,” she said softly. “Can you let us in?”
“It might be locked, I’ll go get the key,” Vince said.
“Wait,” she said. Sharon grabbed the handle, thinking maybe Bode hadn’t locked the door. Maybe she could go in and show him that he couldn’t just shut them out. She wasn’t surprised when the handle twisted and she opened the door slowly.
The first thing Sharon noticed was Bode’s empty bed. It was made just as it had been the prior morning. Then on his desk she saw his cellphone just sitting there.
Unsure of what to think, her legs carried her over to Bode’s closet. For his 18th birthday they had given him a small fireproof safe. Now that he was an adult they decided he should be responsible for keeping track of all his vital documents like his birth certificate and social security card. When she opened the closet she saw the safe was slightly open. Crouching down slightly she opened it, “It’s empty.”
“He must have taken his documents with him, wherever he went.”
Emptiness filled her heart as she said, “he left his cellphone here so we couldn’t find him,” she couldn’t help herself from sinking to the floor. “He’s gone, they’re both gone” she whispered.
Vince shook his head, apparently in as much disbelief as she was in. “He’ll be back. He’s probably out with Jake trying to feel better.”
“Why would he take his documents if he was going to come back?” What little of her heart was not broken shattered into so many pieces she would never be able to put it back together. She wish she had shared Vince’s optimism but in her heart, she knew that there was only one reason Bode would leave his cellphone on his desk. “He doesn’t want us to find him.”
“Maybe it’s for the best, Sharon,” Vince said. “Maybe he needs space to process Riley’s death.”
“No,” she cried out. “No, he needs us to help him.”
“Bode’s a grown man, he can make his own decisions,” Vince said. He kissed the top of her head. She left herself sit, enveloped by him for a few moments. It had been bad enough this morning to think that Riley was gone forever. Now Bode was gone too and there was no way to bring either of them back.
Sharon had a feeling that, for the rest of their lives, they would live in this house with two empty beds, one for the child they had lost and the other for the child whose guilt had driven him away. An hour ago she wouldn’t have thought it possible to lose another child, but now she had to face the possibility that Bode would not come back, they would not be a family again.
“It’s OK,” Vince said, still holding her tight. “Maybe being here was too much. Maybe he knew that you needed space, that he needed space.”
“I’m his mother, I could never need space from him,” she said.