I reach into the back seat and grab my bag. “Thanks, man.”

He coughs and hesitates for a second. “Tomorrow … I can come and get you, we can go together.”

My chest tightens up at the thought of tomorrow. I want to somehow stall time and put off tomorrow for a few years. Fuck, put it off forever. I’m not ready to bury my baby. I will never be ready to say goodbye to my Katie.

I press my fingers against my forehead. “Uh, yeah. I think that might be good. I don’t think I can …” I swallow hard and fight back the tears threatening to start and never stop. I can’t fucking deal with any of this.

“Vandal, say no more. I’ll be here in the morning. I’ll have Ivy meet me there. Are you gonna be okay?”

Letting my head fall back onto the seat rest, I shake it back and forth. “Fuck no. I’m never gonna be okay again, Lukas.”

“We all loved her. She was a great little kid. But you gotta try to just hang on, ya know? I know all this shit is tearing you apart, but don’t let it drag you under. Okay?”

“Yeah,” I say absently. “Be here tomorrow.”

I get out of the car before I lose my shit in front of him. No fucking way am I going to break down in front of anyone.

Walking into my house, I don’t feel like I’m home at all. I bought this house two years ago when I was finally given joint custody of Katie. I wanted her to have her own bedroom when she stayed with me, and a nice yard to play in. I tried to give her some kind of normalcy within my crazy lifestyle. Not that I have any idea what normal is.

And now it doesn’t matter, because she’s gone.

***

The house feels eerie. Too quiet. There’s no life here anymore. Just like that, in a moment, everything is gone. I never had a family, I never even wanted a family, and then suddenly I had an unplanned child with some crazy bitch that I fucked after a concert and kept around for a little while to party with. Next thing I know I’m a father and fighting the world just to see my own kid. I lost the first three years of her life because I was too fucked up to be a parent, and now I’ve lost the rest of her life because her mother just wanted to be a bitch. Katie was an angel and deserved so much better than two messed up people as parents. Maybe that’s why she was taken away.

I slowly walk down the dark hallway and stop at Katie’s doorway. Her pink nightlight is on, illuminating the room. I don’t want to go in, but I can’t stop myself. The mix of her presence and her void is completely overwhelming, and I fall to my knees in the middle of the room. The pain in my chest is like nothing I have ever felt before, as if my heart is being ripped from my body and sliced into tiny pieces. I want her back so bad. I want to just feel her tiny hand in mine and tuck her into bed.

Lifting my head, my eyes fall on Teddy, Katie’s coveted bear that she left here to ‘take care of me’. I crawl to the small bed and lie my head next to the little bear that, just a few days ago, we tucked into her blankets together until she’d be back. Pressing my face against the little bear, I can’t hold back my tears anymore.

Vandal

I’m a shadow at my daughter’s funeral. The pain I feel in my heart and soul has turned me into a catatonic zombie. I’m there, but I’m not. I stand next to the tiny, white closed casket as people file by and spill out meaningless words awkwardly. I say nothing.

Closed casket. Anyone who’s ever had a person they love end up in a closed casket knows something horrifying is going on under that lid. I know it. I can’t stop thinking about it. I want to pry it open and see my baby. I want to see the damage that I caused so I can torture myself with it for the rest of my life. I want to feel the pain that she must have endured. I want to live in it and suffer in it like I deserve to.

“Vandal?” My grandmother’s scratchy voice pulls me from my thoughts.

I turn and have to drop my eyes over a foot to meet Gram’s. She squeezes my hand. “Don’t turn to dark places¸ sweetie. Katie will always be watching over you.”

“Gram …”

She tugs at my hand and I follow because there’s no way to deny Gram what she wants. She’s five feet of white-haired awesome. This is the woman who found me five years ago when she realized her estranged son had two grown children that he’d never told her about. She’s the one who insisted Lukas and I get equal shares of my grandfather’s millions. Gram changed my life. If only she had found us sooner.

She leads me outside to the porch of the funeral home. The fresh air feels good and helps to clear my head a little bit.

She smiles up at me and smooths my long black hair. She’s the only one I let touch my hair. “Losing a child is the worst thing a person can go through,” she says, staring off. “A piece of us dies with them.”

I nod and wonder which Valentine child she buried and when.

“It won’t get better,” she continues. “You know all that is crap when people say that. But you learn to move on and carry them in your heart. The pain will never go away. You’ll always wonder what they would look like at this age and that age. You’ll develop a secret relationship with them, and that’s okay.” She squeezes my hand harder. “You’ll get through this, Vandal. For her, and for you.”

“It’s my fault, Gram. I never should have got in that fucking car.” I still blame myself, even though the accident investigation was inconclusive. The other driver had a few drinks over dinner. He wasn’t drunk, but may have been a little impaired. I know I was exhausted. The road was dark, with lots of winding turns. Maybe it was both our faults and we both drifted at the exact same horrible moment. I’ll never know for sure, but deep down in my gut, I know it’s my fault.

“Honey, life is a series of mistakes, regrets, bad decisions, tragedies, and occasional good luck. It’s not your fault. You loved her. You never would have hurt her.”

I rock back and forth on my feet. I hear the words, but I don’t know if I will ever believe them.

***

I stay at Katie’s grave until everyone is gone, long after Deb was hauled away by her family, crying hysterically.

“Vandal, we should go now.” I almost forgot Lukas was here, leaning against the huge oak tree, watching me.

I can’t take my eyes off the mound of fresh dirt I’m sitting next to. My beautiful baby girl, who slept snuggled in a pink down comforter surrounded by teddy bears, is now in a box in the ground. I fight the urge to claw through the dirt and bury myself with her. I want the dirt to slide down my throat and choke me so I can sleep beside her forever.

Lukas’s boots appear next to me. “It’s getting dark. I’m sorry, Van, but we gotta go.”

“I can’t leave her.”

He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I know. But I have to take you home. And Ivy’s waiting for me at my place.”

I throw a small rock that I’d been holding. “Must be nice. Does her husband know she’s there?” As soon as the words leave my mouth I regret saying them. I like to hurt people; I always have. I want them to feel the pain that I feel and the disappointments I’ve been forced to feel. That just seems fair to me. Not fair to Lukas, though.

“That was a douche thing to say, Vandal. I know you’re hurting, but don’t fling your sadistic shit on me. I’m going home. If you want a ride, get up.”

I don’t look up as he walks away from me to his car. I have no doubt that he’ll leave me here after what I said to him because I deserve it.

Minutes turn to hours while the sky morphs from blue to fiery orange to gray. I don’t want to leave her here but I know I can’t sit in the cemetery all night either. Kissing my fingertips, I press them to the mound of dirt that blankets my daughter.

“Goodnight, sweet girl,” I whisper. “I’ll be back soon.”

When I reach the end of the narrow path and walk through the wrought-iron gates of the cemetery entrance, I see one lone car in the dark parking lot. I trudge over to the black Corvette and get inside. Without a word, Lukas starts the car and pulls out of the lot. I turn to him but his eyes remain on the road, his inked arms taut as he grips the steering wheel, deep in his thoughts.

“Sorry, I’m an asshole,” I say after a few minutes of silent driving, and he finally acknowledges me.

“I’m gonna let it slide because I know you’re hurting,” he says. “But I’ll say this: I’ve tried really fucking hard to get to know you. I thought it was great when we opened the tattoo shop together and got involved in the band together. Unlike you, I was glad to have a family, and be around people that understand me and accept me. But you … I just don’t fuckin’ know, man. You act like you hate all of us.”

I try to stretch in the cramped front seat. Corvettes must be designed for midgets. All I want to do is get home and be alone so I can drink, pop a few pills, and numb the pain. The last thing I want to do is have a heart-to-heart with my little brother.

“I don’t hate you, Lukas. I just don’t bond well.”

His jaw clenches. “Maybe you should try to bond, Vandal. Did it ever occur to you that maybe Katie wasn’t the only person that needed you? Or that maybe the people who try to be there for you would like to have some kind of effort back? Not everything is just take, take, take.” He glances quickly at me before turning back to the road. “You can be really exhausting, and sometimes I wonder why I bother. If you keep kicking a dog, eventually he’s not going to come back. Think about that.”

I nod and play with a stray thread on my pants. “I’ll think about that, Lukas.”

We don’t say another word for the rest of the drive to my house.

***

I may be a reckless person, but all the choices I’ve made in my own self-destruction have been just that: choices. Maybe the path that led me to those choices was out of my control most of the time, but in the end, the decisions have always been mine.

I’ve been clean and sober for two years, and I chose to do that so I could be a good father to Katie. And as I sit here in bed with a bottle of vodka next to a bottle of pills, I choose to go back to my old way of dealing with life.