The funeral was three days later. The long-sleeved shirt Sam wore covered the gashes on his wrists, which had been cleaned and made up almost to invisibility. He looked so peaceful, lying like that, thought Pixie. His face was set in a thoughtful expression of bliss, not much different than he had looked in life.

Pixie was standing over him, hands folded in a handsome casket, looking almost unreal. The tears hadn’t stopped falling from her eyes since she found him lying sprawled on his bed, next to a note addressed to Pixie herself. After all that had happened that day, his suicide note had been written to her. Suicide. The word rang hollow and unfamiliar in her ears.

She had it memorized. She’d read it over fifty times in the past three days, and her tears had smudged some of the words.

“Pixie,

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything…that I wasn’t there for you, that I couldn’t understand you the way I should have been able to. But I do love you. Even in death, I will love you. But if the email I sent you this morning means so little to you that you could still say to me what you said today at lunch, then I obviously don’t love you enough. You’re the only thing in my life that means anything to me. So…I hope you can find someone who can do better for you without me holding you down.

I love you always.

Sam”

She cried every time she read it, harder than before. Why hadn’t she seen this? He did understand her. It just took her so damn long to figure it out. Just five hours too long.

Pixie walked away from the casket, starting towards the family line. She stopped for a moment when she reached his mother.

“I’m…I’m so sorry, Mrs. Clark…I think it might be my-” Sam’s mother cut her off.

“No, Pixie. Please, don’t blame this on yourself. You’ll never be able to live that way. None of us will. Just go on knowing that he loved you, okay sweetie? Our boy loved you.” The woman collapsed into Pixie’s waiting embrace, and for that moment, they shared their love for Sam.

Pixie let go first, and turned to flee. She couldn’t be there anymore, not around those people, not around Sam; she couldn’t deal with any of it. She just couldn’t. On her way out the door, she bumped into Sam’s little sister. “Hello,” she was greeted quietly.

“Hi,” Pixie sniffed, trying to get around the little girl as quickly as possible.

“I know who you are,” Sam’s sister said, so quietly that Pixie strained to hear it. “You were the girl my brother loved. You were the girl he lived for.” Those words broke her. Broke her and fixed her and freed her all at once, and she was then free to cry and mourn the way she had to.

Slamming herself down against the back of her car, she wiped her eyes and pulled out her guitar. Softly, quietly, she began to play. She began to sing for Sam. She sang to him with all she had, a sad, slow song she had written herself.