His head was lolling back against the chair again, and his eyes were closing. And I didn’t know if he’d know what I was saying—or remember, if he was going to a place where there was remembering—but I leaned close to him and kissed his much-too-thin cheek. “Daddy,” I whispered, feeling my own breath hitch in my throat. “I love you.”

Just when I was sure that he was asleep, the one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. “I knew that,” he murmured. “Always knew that.”

I didn’t care if Paul saw me crying. It didn’t matter in the least. I had told my father what I needed to. I squeezed his hand, gently, and I felt him squeeze it back, so faintly, before he drifted off to sleep once again, as, above us, the stars continued to fall.

Chapter thirty-six

I KNEW THAT SOMETHING WAS DIFFERENT WHEN I WOKE UP THE next morning. I could hear voices outside, the phone ringing, my mother’s voice, low and choked. I could hear the crunch of tires on gravel, and voices from the living room, voices at a normal volume when normally we spoke softly, to let my father get his sleep.

Nobody was letting him get his sleep now. Which meant—

No.

I thought this as hard as I could. I hadn’t opened my eyes yet, and I squeezed them shut, tightly. If I didn’t open them, I could be anywhere. I could be in my bed, back home in Stanwich. And maybe it was five months ago, and all that had happened was just some terrible dream. And I’d go downstairs and my dad would be eating a bagel while my mother chided him about having to lose weight. And I’d tell him all about my dream, even as the details were fading and getting further away, just a crazy dream, thank God….

“Taylor.” It was Warren, his voice sounding cracked and broken. I felt my face crumple, my chin tremble, and even though I hadn’t yet opened my eyes, two tears slipped out from the right one.

“No,” I said, rolling away from him, toward the window, hugging my knees to my chest. If I opened my eyes, this became real. If I opened my eyes, there was no going back to a moment when this wasn’t true. If I opened my eyes, my father was no longer alive.

“You have to get up,” Warren said, his voice sounding tired.

“Tell me about Coca-Cola,” I said. “What were they trying to make?”

“Aspirin,” Warren said after a moment. “It was just a big mistake.”

I opened my eyes. Sunlight was streaming in through my windows and I felt a sudden rage at it. It shouldn’t have been sunny. It should have been dark, stormy, nighttime. I looked over at Warren, whose face was blotchy and whose hands were clutching a tissue. “It’s Dad,” I said, not asking a question.

Warren nodded, and I could see him swallow hard. “Paul said about dawn this morning. He was sleeping. It was peaceful.”

I was crying now; I wasn’t even trying to stop. I had a feeling I might never stop, ever. As long as this stayed true, I couldn’t imagine that I’d ever want to stop.

“You should come out,” he said, resting his hand on my doorknob. “So you can get a chance to say good-bye.”

I nodded and, after a moment, followed behind my brother. The clothes I’d dropped on the floor the night before were still there. My makeup was still on the counter. How could those things, those stupid insignificant things, still be there when the world had ended, sometime about dawn? How could they still be there when my father wasn’t?

I stepped out into the hallway and saw my family. My grandfather was standing in the kitchen. My mother was standing near the hospital bed, her arm around my sister. Warren leaned against the back of the couch. And in his hospital bed was my father, his mouth open, his eyes closed.

He wasn’t breathing.

He wasn’t there.

It was such a basic thing—I’d seen it on a thousand cop shows and movies. But I just stared at my father, on the bed, still. I couldn’t make myself understand it. I’d never not known him alive, breathing, laughing, making terrible jokes, filling up a room with his voice, teaching us how to throw a football. That he was suddenly not alive—that he was so still, there but not there in any of the ways that mattered—was a truth I could not wrap my head around. And as I looked at his closed eyes, I realized that I would never see his eyes again. That he would never look at me again. That he was dead.

I was crying full-out now, and even though I hadn’t noticed my mother move, she was suddenly right there, pulling me into a hug. She didn’t tell me it was going to be okay. I knew in that moment that things would be forever different—that today was going to be a day that split my life into before and after.

But in that moment, I just let myself cry onto her shoulder, as she hugged me tight, as though letting me know that, at least, I was not alone.

Chapter thirty-seven

THE FUNERAL TOOK PLACE FOUR DAYS LATER. IT WAS A BRIGHT, sunny day, which again seemed wrong. I’d been hoping that it would rain—the night before had been cold and overcast, but I’d nonetheless sat out on the front porch steps with the dog until my feet got numb.

I couldn’t get over how empty the house seemed now, and how without my dad there, none of us knew what to do with ourselves. Warren, for the first time since I could remember, hadn’t been able to read. Instead, he’d been spending days down at the tennis center, hitting a ball against the wall as hard as he could, returning home tired and drained-looking. My grandfather had been whittling and taking the dog for long walks. When he came back, his nose was always red, his voice hoarse, and the dog exhausted. Gelsey hadn’t wanted to be alone since that morning, and so we’d been spending a lot of time together. We weren’t talking about what had happened yet, but it somehow helped just to be able to look across the room and see my sister there—proof that I wasn’t the only one who was going through this. My mother had been spending her days organizing everything—the service, the casket, the flowers—and seemed as though she was handling things better than any of us. But earlier that day, I’d come outside to see her sitting on the porch, her hair damp from the shower, crying. There was still a piece of me that wanted to turn around and not have to face this, but I made myself keep going and sit next to her on the porch step. We didn’t speak, but I took the comb from her hand and combed through her hair in the sunlight. When I’d finished, and released the stray hairs into the wind for the birds, my mother had stopped crying. And we just sat there together for a moment in silence, our shoulders touching as we leaned against each other.