Better Than Nothing: Part 3 of On the Edge Series

Chapter 5

I spent the rest of the day working, getting lost in the monotony. Solving other people's problems gave me back my breath. It gave me back a tiny amount of power after nearly all of it walked out with Billy. But a creeping dread seeped in as the sun faded to the moon.

"Dinner," Mary called from the kitchen.

I felt like a child as I sat across from Mary at the table. I had once seen her as the closest of friends, but now she felt like a parent. She was going to pry into my armor and reach my soft marshmallow underbelly, but if she got there, I feared I wouldn't be able to shove it all back inside.

My mind filtered to Tim and Billy doing the same with their kids. They were parents now, parents of teens. How had that happened?

"Your father was very proud of you," she began.

She was smart; starting with my father immediately threw me off guard.

"How do you know?" I tried to avoid sounding like a disgruntled teenager, but it still oozed through.

She smiled to herself as an answer.

"Did he ask, or did my dad offer?" I prodded, needing to know more about this muted relationship between my dad and Billy.

"Knowing those two, a little of both. Whenever I spoke with your dad, all he wanted to do was rave about you."

"You spoke to my dad?"

"Of course, I had to check up on my girl," she gave me a wink.

At that moment, in that wink, I broke. Everything I thought I had lost when my dad passed was sitting across from me, asking for nothing and offering everything, my greatest champion.

"I don't know how to be a person without my dad," the tears started to come. "I'm a grown-ass woman that just wants to crumble to nothing."

Mary extended a single hand across the table and grasped mine. "I know. And I can't make that better for you. But I can be here and tell you that you are very much a person. You're still you, Lily, and your dad is still with you. And I'm here, Tess, Tim; we're all here. All of us, Lily. Do you understand?"

I didn't listen; I was too focused on the swirl of mourning. "I don't want him to be gone. I know that's a silly thing to say, but I want him to be here still."

"When my Armand died, I did exactly what you're doing. I bottled it up. I thought I had to be strong for the boys." Mary looked at me with glistening eyes. I couldn't tell if the welling was for my dad or her husband, but it made me feel better not to be the only one with tears.

"Billy told me once that one of his favorite memories was the first time he heard you laugh, really laugh, after Armand died. He said it felt like life had restarted again."

"It had, and it will for you too. When you least expect it, you'll just suddenly feel it again."

"What? What am I looking to feel? I have been pushing everything away for so long; I'm not even sure what happiness feels like anymore. I don't even know if I know what anything feels like, except maybe lonely. Where did everything go so wrong?"

"You need to spend more time with Tim," she let out a laugh.

"Yeah, I do," I agreed as I wiped away the last of my tears.

"And you can cry. I still cry sometimes about people I've lost, not just Armand. Sometimes I cry, and I don't even know why anymore." She let out another chuckle. "Now, let's eat."

I ate until I was sure I had made myself sick. Mary kicked me out of the kitchen as soon as we were done. I offered to help clean up, but her insistence that I leave made me think she wanted to clean up alone to clear her mind.

I escaped to my makeshift office and answered a few lingering emails. Then I let my eyes wander the room. It had been the same one that I had found Billy silently strumming late one night so many years ago. It still had a turntable in the corner. I was positive that Billy and Tim had ensured that there were ample options for records around the house, like their own version of Where's Waldo. There were no albums at the ready and no stack of them nearby. A person would have to bring their own.

I finally allowed myself to sink into the silence I had avoided for so long. As the quiet encapsulated me, I realized I had been avoiding my thoughts for much longer than my father's passing. Busy, I had just been keeping myself busy. With a heavy breath, I tumbled deeper into the memories.

At first, they were bright and sunny. It's funny how many memories of youth surround the freedom of summer months. Moments of sitting in the front of my father's Grand Am, the skin exposed from my shorts sticking to the seat, and the music. Swirls of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones mingled with the beat my father would keep by tapping his ring finger on the steering wheel. It provided an accented thud from the metal of his wedding band. A smile crossed my face and I could almost feel the wind from the open window and smell the mix of fresh-cut grass from the passing lawns.

And then there was Billy, sitting next to me in the car. His hand engulfed mine and lifted it tenderly to his lips as his eyes stayed trained on the road. It was a colder memory, and I shifted deeper into my chair as the memory allowed me to remember the feeling of being tucked into his side. Blind Willie McTell warbled in the air as the dark night made the memory even more vivid. The lights from the dash illuminated Billy's pale skin. But the serene scene was ripped from me as the memory twisted and jolted us around and away from each other.

The sterile smell of a hospital filled my nose as my mind vividly recalled the shiny black shoes that led me to Billy. The moment, the image of Billy laying still in a hospital bed burned into my mind. At first, I thought I was recalling wrong, as I felt tears roll down my cheek. I hadn't cried at that moment. As a reflex, I lifted my hand to my cheek and felt the tears now. I wiped them away, only to be replaced with more. It was the beginning of the onslaught.

All the pain of my life with Billy came pouring back, but they weren't like the others. I was out of my body watching the moments. I saw myself watching his van pull away after that first night, then suddenly a flash of the lost boy outside my door that cold winter night. It was so easy to forgive him then, to let him in with open arms. The flashes came faster as just images of Billy's face came into focus all the times I left him: saying no to the road, sending him off to Europe, leaving him at the airport broken, his conflict when he saw Sam leave me, the lonely boy laying in a hospital bed, and then in the studio of his barn. Defeat permeated me as the memory chased me from my thoughts, just like it had chased me from Duluth.

The fading memories left me ill. I raced to the bathroom and purged everything in me until it left me drained on the cold bathroom floor. The thing with being entirely depleted is that you get to decide what fills you back up and at that moment, I only wanted one thing: to understand Billy Collins, all of Billy Collins.