Page 31 of The Way the Heart Breaks: Jade’s Story

The hospital bills keep showing up, and every time another envelope lands on the counter beside the fridge, he quietly stares at it and never opens it until I’ve gone to bed.

He still tries so hard to be here for me, that’s the part that kills me sometimes, the wondering if he’d rather be gone than stuck in this house because of me.

I know he’s strong, but should he have to be every day? Even exhausted, he still asks about my day. Still squeezes my shoulder when he walks past me in the kitchen. Still shows up at Aunt Maggie and Uncle John’s on Sundays, even when he looks too tired to stand.

There are times when I’ve seen him get sad when certain songs come on the radio now. Not crying. Just somewhere else for a few minutes. I try to turn off the radio before he comes home.

But I’m still making tapes, still leaving them out in the woodpecker hole. It’s always there the next week when I put the new one in. Aunt Josie bought me a bunch of them because I was upset. I didn’t save all of theirs. She’s the one who always seems to be here when I break.

This week, when Tessa asks me, I tell her it’s The End of the Innocence. Nothing is normal anymore. It’s hard to feel… joy and I am doing everything in my power to feel it. I’m happy when I’m with Tessa, and Aunt Maggie. Alex is so angry he doesn’t speak, and no, he hasn’t told me that, but I see it. Ry? He’s physically here, and I may miss him more. I just keep that one to myself.

Tessa’s is Don't Wanna Lose You. Her song is for me.

Aunt Maggie and Aunt Josie both pick Through the Storm again.

We’re at the pond when Ryan tells us, “18 and Life. Alex has one too. He started tapping his foot to the beat of Hangin Tough by his new favorite band. New Kids on the —”

Alex tackles him so fast that Ryan barely gets the sentence out.

The two of them wrestle half into the pond while Tessa screams at them to stop being idiots. Alex laughs, he actually laughs a real belly laugh.

It’s the first one any of us has heard since the accident. It makes me cry immediately, happy tears laced with just enough of the sad variety.

Tessa cries too, which turns into her shoving Alex hard enough that he almost falls backward into the water again while yelling, “You better keep talking to us! Even if you don’t talk to any of the dicks at school, Alex!”

Alex just wipes pond water off his face as he nods, then hugs her and me. Ryan forces himself to join in.

Voice breaking, Alex says, “Sorry.”

I blurt, “I pick songs for them again, too. I keep them with me like that. This week, I picked Once Bitten Twice Shy.”

They all go silent. They must think I’m an idiot.

Then Tessa laughs, “They would’ve made absolute fools of themselves every single time it came on.”

Alex laughs too, the kind of laugh that comes from pain. Horrible, traumatic pain. The kind of pain some people run from because they aren’t strong enough to live for the ones who can’t anymore.

For the real Janet Ross, before hospitals and drugs and disappearing completely, I pick Forever Young by Rod Stewart because if she were strong enough, she would still be here, and she would’ve chosen it herself. She would’ve cried with me while it played. Comforting, hurting, and loving… with me, with Dad.

But she’s not here because she died that day, too.

September 1989

The anniversary falls on a Saturday, an unusually warm September day that feels rude for existing when you’re grieving. They did that, I just know they did. They asked God to give us a day like today.

The four of us end up at the pond after school. Ryan and Alex are standing by the pond when Aunt Maggie drops us off with a picnic basket. They gave us permission to stay at the hunting cabin tonight if we wanted. They’ve never let us before.

All of us brought something of theirs we cherish; it wasn’t planned, so I think they asked for that too.

Tessa brings flowers from Aunt Maggie’s garden. Ryan brings one of Jason's old baseball hats, a stained white one he hid for him so the real Janet Ross wouldn’t see it and get upset. Alex brings a football and tells us the coach gave it to him; it was the one they’d won the game with that night. I bring the mixtape, the last one I made before the accident.

We spent a while talking about the boys before school and before funerals and before adults started looking at us with pity and our peers started acting as they knew them, the same ones that talked crap about snow mower Janet when they thought we weren’t listening.

Ryan talks about Jason trying to jump his bike over garbage cans behind the Brooks barn. Tessa talks about Jasper teaching her how to spit watermelon seeds farther than boys twice her size. Alex talks quietly about them all planning to live here forever after college, because this is home.

Ryan throws a rock across the pond hard enough that it skips almost to the other side. “I can’t stand that people who act like they are little kids. Like they don’t remember who they really were.”

I force a laugh. “Jasper and Jason weren’t ever tragedies. They were loud. Funny and⁠—”