In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(95)

I flip the switch and the motor begins to hum. I wait for a full minute, listening to and watching for a sign from neighbors on either side or across the street to tell me to stop. It isn’t very loud, so I step forward, pushing the blades over the grass slowly until I look behind me to check for the evidence that my mowing job is doing any good at all. The grass is noticeably shorter, so I turn around and push the other way, winding the cord around my shoulder and elbow as I come close to the house and unwinding as I move away.

I’m halfway through my manic project when I feel the slack of the cord lift from my shoulder and I let go of the handle, letting the mower engine idle off.

She’s beautiful in the moonlight.

“You missed Paul’s tonight,” she says, winding the dirty cord on her own arm.

“You don’t have to do that. It’s going to get your dress dirty,” I say, the weight of my last few hours starting to push down harder.

She keeps rolling the cord, so I let go of my end and give into her. I look out over the half-mown lawn. It looks like a comical mess, zigzagged and burnt in a few spots. I bring my hands up to my forehead and jut my elbows out as I take in the work left to be done.

“Gahhh, I’m really bad at this stuff,” I say, turning in a slow half circle until I feel my girl’s hand on my back. My eyes close, and my cheeks quiver as my mouth falls into a frown.

“I went by your place first. Eli told me. Casey,” she breathes, dropping the cord at my feet by the mower and running her hands around the front of my body, pressing her face to my back from behind. She holds me, and I hold onto her hands for dear life.

“This is so hard, Murphy. It’s so hard,” I say, feeling the wet streaks start to take over my face.

“I know, Case,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

The neighbor’s door opens, and I hear someone’s voice. Murphy rubs my back and squeezes my shoulders, and as I turn, I watch her walk to meet my parents’ neighbor at the hedge that divides their properties. I bend down and tug the plug for the mower from the wall socket, giving up for the night, and begin to wind the cord to put my failed project away until sunlight.

After a few minutes, Murphy shakes hands with the older woman she was speaking with, and she comes back to me.

“Your parents’ neighbor is really nice,” she smiles.

“Oh,” I say, watching the woman step up on her own front stoop and hold up a hand to wave. I do the same as she opens her door and goes back inside. “I’ve never met her. I think she moved in last year some time. When I was a kid, it was this old man who didn’t like me because I kicked my ball in his lawn once. She’s nice though, huh?”

“Her husband said he’d mow the grass for you in the morning,” she says.

I nod.

“I think, maybe, they also thought yard work at midnight was a little…”

“Crazy?” I cut in, wincing.

“A touch,” she says, holding two fingers up to form an inch.

“My dad always kept things so…perfect out here, ya know? I just wanted to see if I could keep that up,” I say, realizing now how impossible that is. This lawn will never again look like it did when my father cared for it.

I walk to the front steps as that realization smacks me hard in the chest, and I sit down quickly, my head dizzy and my stomach sick. Murphy sits next to me and her hand finds mine fast—like magnets. We look out on the quiet street, and my mind plays through the jumbled mess of my day on fast forward—decisions, medications, pain, forms, likelihoods, arguments, sisters, my mom, my father, and me.

Perfection and chaos at war.

“How was Paul’s?” I ask, deciding I’d rather hear about her night than remember mine.

“Good,” she says, her face plain and her expression satisfied enough. I feel that pang of disappointment, because it doesn’t sound like Noah made it after all.

“Was it airplane-hangar good?” I ask, and when her eyes meet mine, they smile even though her lips don’t. She had fun on stage, and that feels good, because it means she doesn’t want to quit.

“I was f*cking phenomenal,” she says in a tired raspy voice that sounds as worn out as my own, but still finds the strength to laugh and make me do the same.

“I bet you were,” I say.

I fall away in her grays for as long as she can keep them open out here under the stars. When her breathing begins to change, I lift her in my arms as I stand, and carry her inside to the small pallet of blankets I’ve piled in my father’s den. I stroke her hair and stare at the sheen on each strand from the dim light of the hallway until I don’t remember seeing anything else.

When morning comes, I wake her before madness begins and my father’s in-home nurse wakes to start what will be the beginning of loss for everyone else in this house. My father will officially be pronounced dead today. I lost him years ago.

I never really had him at all.





Chapter 18





Casey


It was harder than I thought it would be. Houston was right.

Everything was so formal—slow and clinical. I signed papers that freed everyone from legal ramifications for following through with my father’s wishes. I stayed in the room while my sisters couldn’t bare to witness and held my mother’s hand while slow beeps turned to long tones and jagged lines became straight and flat.