This Is Not How It Ends(81)

Ben left me alone to mourn. I was memorizing Philip’s fingers, the shape of his hands and face. “Oh, Philip,” I cried. I half expected him to answer, to tell me to stop blubbering. I thought about the life we’d had together, the love we were supposed to share forever, and I lay there while my body writhed against his lifeless frame.

The sun came in through the blinds and hit a shelf on the wall. It was the one that housed the collection of snow globes. They lit up, dazzling me with the places Philip had gone without me, but always with me in mind. In their glass, I saw ice-cream cones and Philip jumping naked in the ocean. I saw him chasing the iguanas off our property and singing at the top of his lungs with the top down on his tiny car. I saw him shuffling down the aisle on the airplane and asking me to marry him.

When someone you love slowly dies, you have the time to say what you need, and while I had shared a lot with Philip, there was still more I wanted to say. How would Sunny and I survive him? How would I ever begin to explain the love of someone so large? And how could I ever forgive myself for what I’d done? For giving myself to someone else?

My sobs were streaked with shame, paved with guilt and sadness. “I’m so sorry, Philip.” My voice trembled, my hand caressing his cheek.

And the finality crushed me. It collided into me, making it impossible to accept. I tried shaking him awake. I tugged on his hands, hoping they’d fold around mine. I took hold of his face and yelled for him to stay. “Please don’t go, Philip. Please don’t leave me. I don’t want to be here without you. Stay with me. Please, don’t go.”

I was tugging at him, jabbing at his arms and thinking I could beat the life back into him. “Philip!” I was crying—large watery tears that made me scream louder as I begged him to open his eyes.

The door opened and Ben appeared.

“He can’t die,” I shouted at him. “He can’t . . .”

Ben closed in on me with devastating grief. I resisted him, punching and swiping, preferring to touch Philip, to wake him up, to convince myself he was playing one of his stupid jokes. Exhausted, my body fell limp, but Ben was there to hold me up. He whispered into my hair, “It’s going to be okay.” I pulled back and found his eyes.

“It’s not,” I whimpered. “He’s gone.”

Whether it was because of my pain or how close we were standing, Ben retreated, sadness dotting his face. He brought the back of his hand to my cheek, but I turned away. His body was so awake and alive, it made me furious.

“Charley.” He was sobbing, too. “I know it hurts . . .”

“No. Don’t call me that.” I was sobbing, the raw, bleeding ache running through me. “You don’t. You’ll never know how I feel . . .”

Darkness flooded his eyes. When he spoke, his voice trembled. “I know how you feel.”

What I’d said to him was unforgivable. Regret coiled around my body and I felt unsteady. I turned to Philip and collapsed on his bed, the slow realization that he was gone forever filling my every bone, making it impossible for me to move.

“He loved you so much, Charlotte,” Ben said in this tone that made me sadder. “All he wanted was for you to be happy.”

I was sobbing into Philip’s lifeless body, blocking out Ben’s words.

“Just go, Ben.”

He didn’t respond. He simply left the room, leaving me to bawl in Philip’s pillow. Leaving me to memorize his scent, because soon it would be gone, and I’d have nothing left.



Philip wanted his ashes spread along the ocean. The idea pained me in theory, but when we held the private service behind our home, Philip’s presence tightened around me, and I understood. In his will, he made it abundantly clear there was to be no large gathering. He wanted me and Ben, Meghan and Myka, Natasha and Bruce, Elise, and Liberty. That was it. He prepared a separate note for Jimmy, which made it clear to the young boy that he didn’t need to come to this “horribly boring and sad” event. In the envelope were two box seats to the upcoming Heat game. “You enjoy this game with your father, mate. This is no time to be sad.”

Elise nodded at me when she handed him the envelope. I later learned she went through multiple tickets until the time finally arrived. Philip instructed her for each missed date to give the unused tickets to children at Miami’s Overtown Youth Center.

The house was filled with flowers and food, well-wishers expecting a crowd, but there was none. Elise made sure calls were answered and clients and employees were given the information for donations in Philip’s honor. He asked that any financial contributions be made to pancreatic cancer research, but not in his name, in my mother’s. “Time to end this rubbish.”

Ben and I didn’t speak a single word to each other, moving side by side like strangers.

A bouquet of flowers arrived with a note; it was one of the largest arrangements I’d ever seen, and it was one of the few cards I decided to read. It was from a woman whose name I didn’t know, though the company was familiar. She worked at TQV, the air-bag company Philip came to Kansas City to buy. The note was a lengthy one, detailing lawsuits and lost lives, and finished with gracious praise for the new management team Philip instated and their careful restructuring. Millions of lives have been saved because of Philip Stafford.

I found Elise and asked her what should have occurred to me but had not. “TQV? His parents’ accident. Is this why?”