But then shit had started happening, things I didn’t fully understand at five years old, and by the time Alex and I hit our seventh birthday, she was dead.
And I’d known that I never wanted to have kids of my own.
I clenched my hands around the steering wheel of my truck and pulled into the garage of my town house. There was no reason to relive all that shit. It was what it was. I still didn’t want to have kids, but that decision didn’t change my feelings on Arielle in the slightest.
Those two truths were a contradiction I would never understand.
I climbed out of my truck and closed the garage door behind me, taking my boots off at the door to my kitchen. I was filthy.
I’d spent the day overseeing some cutting we were doing, and I was covered in mud and leaves. I’d even found some little branches in my hair on the drive home. I needed a shower before I did anything else.
Twenty minutes later, I was leisurely drying off when my phone started ringing where I’d thrown it on the bed.
“Hello?” I answered in surprise.
“Hey, bud. I need you to come on up to the house.” My dad’s voice was raspy.
“What’s going on?” I asked, practically diving for my dresser where I had a shit ton of clothes folded on top. Something bad had happened, I knew it by his tone, the pauses between the words, even the way he was breathing.
“We’ll talk about it when you get here,” he said firmly. “I want you to go pick up the girls first, then come straight here.”
“Does Ani—”
“I’ll call and let her know you’re coming, but I don’t want her worried and driving up by herself,” Dad cut in quietly. “Drive safe, but hurry, all right?”
“Okay,” I said, pulling on a pair of jeans, not bothering with boxers.
“Love you. See you soon.” He hung up before I could reply.
Less than three minutes later, I was in my truck and on my way to Ani’s.
“Do you know what’s going on?” she asked frantically as she met me at the door.
Her hair was soaking wet like she’d just hopped out of the shower.
“No idea,” I murmured back, setting my hand in the middle of her torso to push her backward into the house. “Go dry your hair.”
“It’s fine,” she argued, pulling on a sweatshirt that was hanging over the couch. “Dan said to hurry.”
She moved toward the family room where I could see Arielle sleeping in the baby swing, but I hooked her with an arm around her waist to stop her momentum.
“Go run a towel over your hair, baby,” I ordered, leaning down to talk directly into her ear. “I’ll get Arie in her seat, and then we’ll go.”
Ani went still under my hand, sighed heavily, then nodded her head and pulled away from me to walk back down the hallway.
As soon as she was gone, I went to the swing and picked Arielle up. She was getting heavier, and my lips twitched as I had to readjust my hands under her little body.
“Time to go to Nana and Papa’s,” I said, carrying her over to the pink car seat I’d bought her when she was in the hospital. I found it at a random store I’d stopped in for a phone charger, and I’d known she needed to have it. After I bought it, I’d told my mom to give it to Ani because the impulse buy had embarrassed me. “Mama’ll bring you a blanket so you’re nice and cozy,” I told Arielle as I buckled her in and tightened the straps the way I’d seen done on the local fire station’s YouTube channel.
“Here,” Ani called, tossing me a light purple blanket. “You get her bundled up, and I’ll grab her formula and some diapers.”
A few minutes later, we were out of the house, and I was driving Ani’s SUV up to my parents’ place while Ani fidgeted in the seat next to me.
“Hey,” I called, reaching out to grab her knee, “calm down.”
“What the hell could be wrong? It must be something huge if Dan made you come get me,” she replied, crossing her arms over her chest.
“I would have come to get you anyway,” I mumbled, letting go of her knee so I could turn my windshield wipers up. It was raining like hell, and when you added that to the dark sky, it made the road almost impossible to see. “The roads are shit right now.”
“I can drive in the rain,” she muttered back.
I didn’t argue. The last thing I wanted to do with Ani was argue at that moment. I wanted to pull over to the side of the road and pull her into my lap so I could feel her. I wanted her to run her hands through my hair while I stuffed my face into that spot between her neck and her shoulder that always smelled so fucking good.
I was scared out of my mind, and the longer it took to get to my parents, the greater the fear became. I didn’t let myself speculate. I didn’t want to make a list of all the bad things that could have happened to make my dad order us up to the house in that horrible voice.
“I’ll get Arie. You go on inside,” I said as we came to a stop in the muddy gravel driveway in front of my parents’ house. The rain was still pouring down, and I’d rather I got caught in it getting the baby out of the seat than Ani.
Ani’s hand instantly gripped mine, and I turned to face her in surprise.
“I don’t want to go in without you,” she ground out, her eyes wide with panic.
My throat tightened, and I used my free hand to unbuckle my seat belt so I could lean toward her.
“Okay, baby,” I said gently, as her nails dug into my skin. “You scoot over here, and as soon as I have Arielle, you can hop out, okay?”
She nodded jerkily, scooting toward me, but she didn’t let go of my hand.
I pried her fingers away and jumped out of the truck, my coat instantly getting soaked as I threw open the back door. It only took a second to get Arielle’s car seat unlatched from the base, but by then my entire lower back was soaking wet and I could feel rain dripping down the inside of my jeans. I threw the little car seat cover thing over her and pulled her out of the car, snagging her diaper bag as I went.
Then we all raced for the house.
“Hey, guys,” Dad said, opening the front door as we reached the porch.
“What’s going on?” Ani asked frantically as I pushed her into the house.
“Let’s all go into the living room,” Dad replied, his words barely leaving his mouth before Ani was looking at me and then leaving us in the entryway.
“Gimme that baby,” Dad teased, a tired, halfhearted smile on his face.
“No way in hell, old man. I just got her.” I set Arielle’s seat on the ground and pulled her out of it.
I followed him into the living room and stopped dead when I saw my mom’s pale, tear-streaked face. She was holding it together—but barely.
“Alex?” I ground out, swinging my head toward my dad.
“Alex is fine,” he assured me, squeezing my shoulder.
But then he took Arielle carefully from my arms, and I knew we’d lost someone.
“Aunt Ellie and Uncle Mike—” my mom choked out. “They got a visit from the Marines today.”
“Shane?” Ani asked, her eyes panicked.
“Henry,” my dad corrected in a strangled voice.
It took me a second. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what they were saying. I’m not sure if it was shock or if the human brain just takes a minute to process big news, but in the moment that it took for me to understand what they’d just told us, Ani started to go down.
She looked at me as her face went gray, and I barely caught her before she hit the ground.
“What?” she rasped out as I lowered her to the floor, settling her between my knees. “No. I just talked to him two weeks ago. He’s training.”
“Something went wrong,” my mom said, her voice warbling. She raised her hands palm up, like she didn’t understand what was happening, either.
“What?” Ani cried out again. “He was training!”
Mom dropped her face into her hands and began to cry, and everything inside me seized up. It was hard to breathe
. Hard to think.
“He was training, Bram. That’s all,” Ani whimpered. Her eyes begged me to make it better.
“Where’s Aunt Ellie and Uncle Mike? Trev?” I asked my dad as he sat down next to Mom and started rubbing her back.
“Mike got Ellie a sedative from her doctor. She’s out for the night,” he said between his teeth. “Trev took off. Not sure where.”
I nodded, tightening my arms around Ani as she began to cry softly.
“Have you—” I cleared my throat, closing my eyes for just a second. Just to get myself under control. “Have you called Alex and Katie?”
“Your aunt and uncle called Katie so they could get a Red Cross message to Shane,” Dad said with a nod. “I was waiting for you to get here before I called Alex.”
Shit. Katie must be going crazy down in San Diego by herself. She and Shane worked like a well-oiled machine at this point, but no one could plan for something like this. It was the worst possible time for Shane to be deployed. I just hoped that the Red Cross did their thing and got him sent home quickly.
Ani’s shoulders hitched as she took a shuddering breath, then she pulled away, climbing to her feet. “You should go call Alex,” she said roughly, wiping at her face. She reached for Arielle, but my mom stopped her with a gentle hand on her arm.
“You mind if I hold her for a little bit?” she asked.
“Sure,” Ani said with a small smile, her cheek puckered where I knew she was chewing on the inside of it.
Dad and I left the room and stopped at the kitchen counter.
“Come here, bud,” he ordered gently, pulling me against his chest.
I’d been taller than him since I was fourteen years old, bigger too, but when he wrapped his arms around my back, I felt like the scared nine-year-old I’d been the first time I’d walked into his house. He was the only dad I’d ever known. And as I’d gotten older, the hugs had become squeezes on my shoulder or quick, backslapping embraces.
It had been years since he’d given me a hug like this one.
“It’s all right, boy,” he murmured as I shuddered. “It’s gonna be all right.”
Henry had been with Ellie and Mike for as long as I’d lived with Dan and Liz. We’d joined the family in the same year, and even though he was five years younger and had been a total pain in the ass when we were kids, I’d always loved him. He’d seemed so fragile at first, a four-year-old with blue eyes that looked too big for his face and white-blond hair that was always sticking straight up in the front.
Trevor, Katie, Alex, and I had watched out for the little joker. Taking the fall for him more often than not when he’d do stupid shit and get hurt, and we’d be blamed for not watching him. He was our little mascot. Our motion-sick-prone little tagalong.
I couldn’t imagine a world that he wasn’t in.
“We should call Alex,” I said finally, wiping a hand down my beard as I stepped away from my dad. “Do you want to or should I?”
“That’s up to you, Abraham,” Dad said. “Your mom and I would never put that burden on you, but we—hell—we thought you might want to do it.”
I nodded, understanding exactly what he was saying. He didn’t want me to have to tell Alex the news, but I knew that it should come from me. We were two halves of the same whole, and even though we were close to our parents, there wasn’t a relationship on earth that was closer than ours.
“Hey, bro!” Alex answered after his phone rang a couple times. “It’s late here, you know? Time difference and all that.” He laughed, and I had to brace myself against the countertop.
“Alex,” I ground out.
My brother went completely silent. I couldn’t even hear him breathing.
“Who?” he asked simply as I was trying to get my shit together.
“Henry.”
“Aw, fuck,” he hissed.
I heard something crash, but stayed silent as he cursed.
“Motherfuck!” he yelled, followed by more loud crashing coming through the connection.
I stayed with him, letting him get it out of his system. I hated listening to him lose his shit. It killed me that he was so far away. All alone. So I just waited. I would’ve sat on the phone all night.
“I’ll see if I can get home,” he said finally, his breathing heavy and loud. “How are Ellie and Mike doing?”
“Uncle Mike sedated her, so she’s asleep for now.”
“Christ,” he sighed. “And Trev?”
“He took off. Probably out in the woods somewhere.”
“Yeah, not surprising. He’ll come back when he’s ready.”
“I wish I knew where he was headed,” I said tiredly, staring at my mom’s granite countertop as I scratched at my beard.
“If he wanted anyone to know, he would have said something,” Alex said flatly. “I’m going to call and see what I can do about getting leave, all right?”
“Yeah. Let me know?”
“Yep. Give everyone a kiss for me. I’ll call you in a bit.”
“Okay.” The word was barely out of my mouth before he’d hung up.
I looked up and met my dad’s eyes as I dropped the phone to my side.
He was crying.
“He all right?” he asked, not bothering to even wipe off his face.
No. He wasn’t. I didn’t know when any of us would be all right again.
“He’s going to try and come home,” I replied instead.
“Good.”
The next few hours were spent gathered in my parents’ living room as we fielded phone calls from my brother and sister. Both Alex and Kate were trying to fly home the next morning and were calling my parents as they found their flights.
Neither needed help. I think they just needed the connection to home, even if it was over the phone.
Arielle woke up and had to be fed, then fell asleep again. My mom drifted off for fifteen minutes, then jerked awake when the phone rang. Ani paced the floor.
Finally, around one in the morning, my dad forced Mom to go to bed and get some sleep.
“I should probably get Arielle home too,” Ani rasped, glancing at the baby.
“I’ll drive,” I said as my dad came back into the room.
“You two can stay here tonight,” he replied, rubbing his hand over the bald spot on his head.
I used to think he’d gone bald there because he always rubbed it when he was overwhelmed or frustrated with one of us kids. Kate, Alex, and I called it his “worry spot.”
“She’s finally sleeping through the night,” Ani replied, shrugging her shoulders. “I should probably bring her home to her own bed.”
Dad nodded, and Ani got ready to go. As we left, we both hugged him good-bye and promised him we’d be back in the morning.
It was both a relief to get out of the house, and hard to leave.
Shock was slowly turning into grief.
We were silent as we made our way to Ani’s house. I didn’t have anything to say and she didn’t, either. I pulled into her driveway, and we were silent as I helped her carry Arielle into the house. Silent as I kissed Arielle good-bye. Silent as I pulled Ani into a hug and kissed her hair.
Silent as I left.
I drove all the way to my town house, but before I’d even reached for the remote to open my garage, I was throwing the truck into reverse and turning around.
Ani met me at her front door like she’d known I’d be back and led me into her bedroom. She climbed into bed facing away from me, and I stripped down before crawling in and curling myself around her.
We were silent even then.
* * *
When Arielle woke us up at seven the next morning, we got up and went back to my parents’ house. We didn’t discuss the fact that I’d spent the night or that I’d changed Arielle and given her a bottle that morning before Ani had even gotten out of bed.
We spent the day making phone calls. Telling people that Henry was dead didn’t become any easier no matter how many times I did it, thou
gh none of the calls I’d made that day hurt nearly as much as the call I’d made to Alex.
I picked him up from the airport at noon, and by the time we got to the house, Mike and Ellie had made their way over. My aunt looked like a zombie as she puttered around my mom’s kitchen, refilling coffee mugs and wiping down countertops. She didn’t stop moving, even fidgeting as Alex and I went over to give her hugs. It made my stomach churn. She was there, but her mind was far away from us.
Uncle Mike was the opposite. He sat silently on the couch, looking at nothing. He wasn’t even pretending to be paying attention to the things happening around him.
“Where’s my baby?” Alex whispered to Ani the minute she walked into the kitchen.
I ignored the flash of annoyance that hit me.
“She’s in Katie’s old room in the playpen,” Ani said. “Hey, asshole.”
“Hey, pretty girl,” he replied, a small smile on his face. He pulled her in against his side as she wrapped her arms around him. “How you doing?”
“Shitty.”
“Yeah, you and me both,” Alex said on a sigh.
“Has anyone heard from Trev?” I asked, interrupting their conversation.
“He called Ellie a little while ago,” Ani said, leaning her head against Alex’s chest. “He’ll be by later.”
I nodded, then turned on my heel. I needed to get away from them for a bit. I needed to get away from all of it. The emotion filling the house was stifling in its intensity, with everyone talking in hushed voices, their eyes hollow.
I made my way back to my sister’s old bedroom and quietly let myself inside. On the far side of the bed, Arielle slept in one of those little portable cribs that were so popular, her arms flung out to the sides of her head. I moved closer to her and sat on the edge of the bed, watching her chest rise and fall.
She had no idea what was going on. Her life revolved around bottles and diaper changes and baths. She slept when she was tired and cried when she was hungry and had no clue that the adults around her were falling apart at the seams. I envied her that, but was so fucking grateful that she’d never remember any of it.