Going for Kona by Pamela Fagan Hutchins Read Free Book Online Page A

Adrian’s Annabelle: our children. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, then tightened my jaw before I spoke. “Adrian, your dad, he was hit by a car this afternoon. He’s gone.”
    Annabelle dropped her head and a strange noise started from her chest, then turned into an escalating wail. I watched her long curls fall around the sides of her face. She and I had a good relationship, but she was her daddy’s girl and didn’t often come to me for emotional support. But he wasn’t here; he would never be here to hold her, or me, again, and I didn’t know what to do for her. After a beat, instinct took over and I reached her in two giant steps. I swept her into my arms and she slumped against me as her wail turned into a sob.
    Sam shouted over Annabelle. “Gone, Mom? You mean he’s dead?”
    I looked at him, nodded, and held out one of my arms for him, but he ignored it and shoved his books across the kitchen table. They took out a plastic Rockets tumbler on their way to the floor. The cup bounced high, then lower, and lower still, each crack against the floor splashing dark liquid against the wall and baseboard. Sam ran out of the room and I heard his feet pounding up the stairs like I’d heard them a lifetime ago that morning.
    “Sam?”
    “Leave me alone!”
    I let him go. I guided Annabelle to the couch. Her hysteria ratcheted up and we cried together until enough of the storm had passed that we could talk.
    Somehow, I got the words out in answer to her questions as I rocked and held her. What happened. What I knew. What I didn’t know. I realized that I had questions about Adrian’s death, lots of them. As we talked, I heard cabinet doors shut and dishes clink in the kitchen. My heart quickened involuntarily until I realized it was Brian, not Adrian, taking care of us.
    I pushed a strand of Annabelle’s hair behind her ear. “Honey, I need to go check on Sam, okay?”
    “Yeah. I know you do.” She put her head down on the side pillow of the couch. I laid a blanket over her legs. How many times had her father done just that? God, how I wished I had been the mother she needed when she was a little bitty thing, so I could be more of what she needed now. Precious jumped onto Annabelle’s lap, a more than adequate substitute for me. Annabelle stroked her back.
    I crept up the stairs with dread, feeling lightheaded and bone-weary. I found Sam curled up on his bed. Every article of clothing he owned was on the floor, as were a photograph of his district champion middle-school baseball team, his entire collection of J.R.R. Tolkien books, a Game Boy, and a week’s worth of dirty towels.
    His fists covered his eyes and tears poured out from under his clenched hands. Anger radiated from him, floated in the air around him. He reeked, not of his usual teenage boy smell, but of the rank odor of grief. It was almost palpable, and I had to force myself through it. He let me slip onto the bed and put my arms around him, but he remained wooden.
    In my imagination, the words flowed out of me in a soothing river. I could almost hear myself say, “Adrian loved you, Sam. He loved having a son. He’s not completely gone because he will always be in our hearts. Life includes death, and we never know when it will take any of us, but don’t be scared about losing the rest of the people you love, like Belle and your dad and me, because odds are it will be a long, long time before anything happens to us.”
    In reality, I choked on my own sorrow and only got out, “Are you okay?”
    He didn’t answer.
    “I’m sorry, Sam. I know you’re very sad. I’m sad, too.”
    No response.
    Everything I could tell him, everything I could think of that I should tell him, felt hollow and false. I couldn’t tell him that it would be all right or that I would be fine, because I didn’t believe it. And I sure couldn’t tell him the one thing that he and Annabelle wanted most to hear: that this was all a big