Invisible Strings

Chapter Forty

Delaney's POV:

With each day that passed, my heart broke a little more and more for Chloe and Colton. Seeing them mope around, the pain of missing their father breaking their little hearts more and more every day, was almost unbearable. And I didn't know how to fix it. Honestly, that was the worst part of being a parent; seeing your child hurting, wanting to take away all of their pain, but not knowing how to do so was excruciating. Every parent out there can agree with me when i say that we would literally do whatever it took to take away their pain, to take it on as our own so that they could go back to being the happy-go-lucky children they had always been.

Long story short, I wanted to take every bit of their pain away, I wanted to make things better for them. I wanted to make them realize that even though they had lost the first man they had ever loved –a man that they would love for the rest of their life simply because of who he was to them– that things wouldn't feel like this forever, that one day, they would be able to go about their day and the pain of losing him wouldn't have them in tears as soon as their feet hit the floor. I wanted them to know that one day, they would be able to talk about him and not start crying immediately. All in all, I wanted them to know that even though the pain of losing their father would always be with them, it wouldn't always hurt as bad as it does right now.

It's been a week since Alex's funeral. A week of watching Chloe and Colton's little minds try to accept the reality of what is happening, hearing their cries in the middle of the night when they miss their father. A week of them asking to call their father only to realize as soon as the words were out of their mouths that it wasn't possible, that they would never talk to him again. And it's been pure hell for everyone involved ranging from tears that seemed to never end, sleepless nights, and even bursts of anger because they didn't know how else to act.

More than once, I have turned into a blubbering mess over Alex. Not because I miss him in any way and not because I have any residual feelings or that I wish I had said things to him that I would now never get the chance to. That's not true... I do have things that I want to say to Alex. Things like 'why did you get in that car drunk?', 'Why didn't you think of your kids?', 'Why didn't you use your head for something other than a place to hang your damn hat?'. And I had asked those questions –to him and to Brantley– but of course there were no answers from Alex for obvious reasons and Brantley had simply held me tight while I'd broken down, telling me that some questions we would never know the answers to. Deep down, I knew he was right but that didn't make things any easier, didn't give me the answers that I needed to help explain things to the kids.

"Mama," said Chloe as she walked into the living room, the stuffed mermaid Alex had gotten her at the zoo for her birthday last year tucked tightly in her arms. Her eyes —the same ones that before all of this seemed to dance with mischief and were always the brightest shade of green— were puffy, telling me that she had been crying again.

"Come here, baby." I spread my arms open wide and she climbed up into my lap, burying her head into my chest. I wrapped my arms around her tightly, pressed a kiss against her head, and simply held her. "Tell mama what's wrong."

"I miss daddy." she said, her voice coming out in a whisper.

"I know you do, bird." I said softly, my voice cracking as I said the words. Whether the emotions were coming from the pregnancy or the tragic loss of my children's father, I didn't know. Hell, it's probably a combination of the two.

We sat there for a while, both of us quiet except for the sniffles that came from Chloe as she burrowed her face more into my chest. But when Chloe lifted her head, when her puffy green eyes stared directly into mine and said "Did daddy not love us anymore? Is that why he died?", my heart completely shattered into a million little pieces. And when I say that the organ shattered, I mean it splintered into so many pieces that I didn't know if I would ever be able to put it back together again.