Flower stories

Stiles had lost many things since his mom started acting weird. Some toys, his batman fork and plate, even a pillow once. Most things were found after a while, once his dad had come home to look for them with him. But not everything can be found.
Eventually, he lost his mom. In several ways, and several times. In the store, in the park, even in the backyard. One moment she was there, and the next she was gone. She didn’t always come back, so he would sit right there like he was taught until his dad or a deputy came to pick him up. That tactic couldn’t work the last time he lost her. When he lost her forever.

I knew it as soon as I walked into the room. It was quiet. No beeping, no talking, nothing. I knew what it meant. I heard the voicemails the hospital left me while I was too far away. I knew she was gone. But this, the turned off appliance and monitors, the white sheet covering her beautiful face, all of this made it real. She was gone. Long gone.
If it weren’t for someone sneezing in the hallway, I might’ve stood in that door for hours. Just looking at my once wife. Instead, I walked in, closing the door. Almost invisible from the door, was Stiles. Half curled up in a chair pulled so close to the bed, it could’ve been attached to the bed his upper body was laying on. His little head resting on his folded arms, right next to the now cold and covered hand of his mother.

I had left them both alone. At the most crucial moment of this whole ordeal, I wasn't there to help. My wife, my Claudia, died, without me there. And my son, my little boy, had to watch. He had to watch as he lost what was left of his mother, forever. And he had to do it all alone. What kind of husband, what kind of father, lets that happen?
Would Stiles ever forgive me? I woke him up, and just from the look in his eyes I could tell he wouldn’t. His eyes were empty, yet angry. As if a part of him had broken, a part I could never fix.
I simply held him close, and let sleep take him again eventually.

Stiles is a teenager now. Yet sometimes he acts like he isn’t. When he looks at me, I can tell there’s something on the tip of his tongue. Something he wants to tell me, but feels as if he can’t. But what could it possibly be? Something about Claudia’s death? Or the few years after, where I wasn’t the best dad? Did he have something else? Whatever it was, I hope he can tell me soon.
Stiles never had that childlike look in his eyes again after Claudia. Scott still has it sometimes, not often, but sometimes. He’s been hiding things, barely talking to me. It’s as if I’m losing him already. It’s too soon. He’s 16, it’s too soon. Melissa brought over some food and daisies a few weeks ago. They’ve been dying in the window ever since. Maybe she knew what was going on. She didn’t. I was losing my son, faster than he had lost his innocence and his childhood.