SUNSHINE

fifty-nine

[ Alright this might be the last update for a little bit, it's finals week for me, so bear with me! ]

They buried her father next to her mother a few days later. Alessio has helped her plan the funeral, sending information out to her family in North Carolina, as well as anyone from either one of her teams who wanted to come and pay their respects. Alex and Servando as well as Ashlyn and Ali had all come, along with several players from the Orlando Pride. They were going to be on a break for the next couple weeks before the victory tour, which she had full intentions on competing in, but for the next week or so she was not going anywhere near the Orlando Pride stadium. First her mother almost a year ago, and now her father. She needed a little time to recover, for her own good. She had reached out to Marc, and he told her to take as much time as she needed. She had to figure all the legal and financial ordeals out, and it was going to take a little time to get everything done. She also needed a mental break from it all, and although she was only planning on giving herself the next week off, it was going to be enough to refresh and restart.

The day after the ceremony, Casey and Alessio made the trip down to Tampa to her childhood home, a place where Alessio had only been a handful of times. Atlas was staying with Alex for the day while they went through the home, Casey deciding to pack up and donate, sell, or put things into storage. Anything she wanted to keep with her they would bring it back to their home. What she did not realize was that she was going to have to go through her mother's things as well, for her father had never gone through it all. They threw on some music, trying to make the best of it all, and started down where her room used to be. The bed was still there and there were some furniture pieces that she left behind, but a lot of it had either gone with her or was already in storage. He looked around the room as she started to pack what was left, deciding to just put it into storage with everything else. They went room by room, some rooms not having as much as the others. Around one in the afternoon they had a little more than half the house packed and ready to be moved to storage or donated. They took a short break from packing and hung around in the kitchen, Alessio finding an unfinished case of beer in the fridge.

"Your father had good taste." Alessio said as he handed her a can, and she smiled.

"Yeah, he did." She responded as she put the can to her lips, gulping down some of the alcohol and sighing. "How did you feel when your dad passed?" Casey asked him out of the blue.

"Honestly? When I first found out he had passed, it didn't hit at first. I felt numb, but no tears came. It had been coming, he had stage four lung cancer, and we were all kind of expecting it. But after it sunk in, I felt lost, like I was drowning and I couldn't come up for air. That was about four years ago now, and I miss him, but those feelings have faded. I promise it gets better, sunshine." He told her, and she gave him a small smile as he squeezed her knee. "Why don't you go grab more boxes from the truck and I'll start in the bedroom?" He suggested.

"Yeah, sure." She said, hopping off the countertop and setting her can on the counter to go grab more storage bins out of the bed of his truck. He took his beer with him as he made his way to one of the last rooms to be packed, which was Patrick's bedroom. He sighed as he stood in the doorway, looking around the master bedroom. He decided the closet would be a good place to start, so he set his beer down on the dresser and opened the sliding door. He found some woman's clothes, but not a lot compared to the amount of suits, dress pants, dress shirts, polos, jeans, and khakis he found. He chuckled, for he had always admired Patrick Radcliffe's sense of style. He pulled the clothes off the rack with the hangers, leaving the rail empty. He found a couple of empty storage boxes, but there was one box that was particularly heavy on the back of the shelf. He pulled the box down and opened the lid, finding the box that contained memories from Patrick and Kate Radcliffe's wedding some twenty years ago. He smiled as he set the box down on the bed, and he took the velvet box that sat on top of the pile in his hands, opening it. An unexpected note fell out, and he picked it up off the bed, reading it to himself.