From the Embers

by Aly Martinez

  Emotion sparkled in his light-brown eyes as he turned back to face me. “Are you sure? I mean about me being here all the time and watching the kids. We are two very different people and parents, Bree. This won’t be as easy as it sounds.”

  “Yeah, I know. But we can do it together. Let’s just try it without the hating-each-other thing this time.”

  “I can do that,” he vowed with so much hope in his tone that it made my chest squeeze.

  “Just promise no more syrup.”

  Smiling, he wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and stared deep into my eyes. “I swear never to feed your children anything they will actually enjoy again.”

  I let out a half laugh, half cry, and then, with a gentle pressure at the back of my neck, he pulled me against his chest.

  That man—always a hugger.

  He rocked us from side to side, more like he was trying to calm a crying baby than slow dance. “We got this, Bree. Me and you. We got this.”

  And for the first time since our world had exploded, I felt like maybe he was right.

  EASON

  One year later…

  “Rawr!” I yelled, jumping out from behind the couch.

  Madison squealed with laughter, racing down the hall with her nightgown brushing her ankles.

  Luna stopped dead in her tracks, pinning me with a menacing glare that no nineteen-month-old should be able to produce. “No!” she said, pointing her finger at me. “No, Daddy.”

  I lifted my hands in surrender. “Okay. Okay. I’ll be nice.”

  She smiled and brought her hand to her nose, but kept the fingertip leveled on me. “No. Scay. Una.”

  It was crazy how fast the kids grew. Gone was my slobbery baby who’d thought pocket change was an acceptable snack. Stop judging. It happened one time and I’d fished the quarter out of her mouth immediately.

  No. I did not tell Bree. All of our lives were safer that way.

  With her short, curly, brown hair and a set of teeth so straight they looked like baby dentures, Luna was a big girl now. Or so I told her while trying to convince her to potty train with Madison. We were still working on both girls, slowly and surely making progress toward a diaper-free paradise.

  “Did you find it?” Bree asked, walking into the room.

  Luna turned to look at her, and while she was distracted, I pounced. Springing off the floor, I scooped my daughter into my arms.

  She fell into a fit of giggles as I tickled her. Squirming and flailing, she extended her arm out to the side. “Bwee, help! Help!”

  “Oh, no.” Bree caught Luna’s hand and brought it to her lips for a kiss. “You are on your own when it comes to the Maxwell tickle monster.” She lifted her gaze to mine. “However, if we expect them to be in bed by eight, the tickle monster might want to start singing a lullaby instead.”

  I glanced at the clock and damn if she wasn’t right. We only had twenty minutes to get everyone in bed and—God willing—halfway to sleep. I set my daughter on her feet and accepted the wrath of her toddler glare. She was still smiling, so it didn’t pack much heat.

  “Okay, Lunes. Go tell Maddie and Ash goodnight.”

  “Nigh nigh!” she started yelling as she took off down the hall to the playroom.

  Grinning like a fool, I watched her go. I loved that little girl so much; it was a fine line between euphoria and pain while watching her grow up.

  “Any luck with the phone?” Bree asked.

  I sighed and planted my hands on my hips. “Not yet. It must have fallen between the cushions though. The girls had it a little while ago.”

  “You want me to call it?”

  “Please.”

  She tapped on her phone and a second later a muffled, nearly untraceable buzzing pulsed in the general direction of the sofa.

  “How’d your call go?” I once again dropped to my knees and continued my hunt through the cushions.

  “About as well as can be expected when your attorney calls you after hours.”

  “Anything new?”

  She let out a sigh. “Not really. Prism’s accountants claim everything is in order, but an IRS audit is never going to be completely comfortable for a company.”

  Bree had been working her ass off since she dove headfirst back into full-time corporate life. She spent long days and longer nights trying to get Prism back to its peak. Rob had taken quite a few risks that hadn’t necessarily panned out, leaving Bree to clean up the messes. Luckily, Bree thrived under pressure. Sure, she was tired and stressed most of the time, but overall, she seemed to like being back in action.

  Going behind me, she straightened the pillows as I cleared each section. “Why don’t we just use my phone?” Bree suggested. “Or sit in the car?”

  “Luna’s monitor cuts in and out in the car.”

  She arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Have you been spending a lot of time in your car recently?”

  “Only when I’m doing drugs or day drinking.”

  I paused my search long enough to wait for her scowl. It was a half pucker, half pinch to the side, but it didn’t pack nearly the punch it used to. I’d also gotten wise to her eyes changing just a shade or so lighter when she was trying to hide her good humor. God, I loved riling her up.

  Never one to disappoint, she leveled me with a squinted gaze.

  “I’m kidding. During naptime, the old Tahoe doubles as my home office so I don’t wake up the girls.”

  “Why don’t you just use my office upstairs?”

  I went back to flipping cushions. “I didn’t realize I was allowed in there again after the great Christmas M&M’s debacle.”

  “Eason, you ate all the red ones,” she defended. “I allow myself one bag a year. Imagine my disappointment when I opened my secret drawer and they were all green.”

  I craned my head back and peered up at her skeptically. “One bag a year? Does this mean we don’t count the pastels at Easter or pinks at Valentine’s day or the peanut ones you keep hidden in an empty tub of flax seed in the pantry year-round?”

  Her shoulders squared and her chin lifted haughtily, and then she fought to suppress a grin. “We don’t talk about those.”

  “Okay, good. Because I ate all the reds out of the flax seed too.”

  “Eason!”

  Bree and I had come a long way over the last year, but it was not a journey without speedbumps—or the occasional sinkhole. As I’d suspected, working for little Miss Perfection had not been an easy adjustment. The first few weeks were awful, and I reconsidered the dueling piano job on a nightly basis. Bree could be very particular. I understood when it came to the kids. She liked them to eat a healthy diet, have limited screen time, and spend the majority of their time outside in the fresh air. It was the good parenting I’d expected and wanted for Luna too.

  What I had not expected was to be critiqued on how I folded towels or loaded the dishwasher. Once, she gave me a step-by-step course on how to properly change the toilet paper in Asher’s bathroom.

  It should be noted that housework was not part of my job description, but she worked hard, so I tried to make sure she didn’t come home to a mountain of laundry—or, say, a sock covered in poop because Asher had run out of toilet paper and gotten creative. See the aforementioned class on changing the toilet paper when I’d tried to stash an extra roll on the back of his toilet in case of emergency.

  A few weeks in, we sat down for a discussion like grown adults. She presented me with a seventy-nine-page binder of rules and instructions, and I told her I would rather live in a tent under the bridge than read the damn thing. She, in turn, told me where to find Rob’s old camping equipment and gave me explicit instructions of where I could shove it before stomping upstairs.

  I wasn’t really going to move out. Bree knew this. I knew this. Asher, however, called me in hysterics on the walkie-talkie I’d given him for his birthday, begging me not to leave like his dad.

  That was the last big argument Bree and I ever had. We all
slept in Asher’s room that night. The binder was trashed the very next morning, and I started folding towels the way Bree liked—the wrong way, might I add.

  Together, we were a team and those kids were our first, top, and only priority.

  After that, things got easier. As we developed a mutual respect for each other, trust followed. And then somehow, through the chaos, a genuine friendship was born. I worked a lot of nights, writing music and playing anywhere that would have me. It was exhausting to get home at three a.m. then get back up with the kids at seven, but each time I stepped onto a stage, no matter how small, it felt like I’d found another piece of myself again. On the nights I wasn’t working, Bree and I would swap stories about Rob and Jessica. Sometimes we’d laugh, sometimes we’d cry, and on the one-year anniversary of the fire, we sat in silence, unable to even utter their names.

  There was no rhyme or reason for the tides of grief. All we could do was hold on and try to keep our heads above the rushing water.

  On Luna’s birthday, I’d felt like I was drowning, knowing Jessica would never get to see her grow up.

  On Christmas, while watching the kids laugh as they tore through presents, I smiled until my face hurt and felt like maybe I’d finally climbed out of the depths of devastation.

  On my wedding anniversary, I felt like I was trapped in an undertow, unable to reach the surface no matter how hard I fought.

  Over time, Bree hit the same heartbreaking milestones, but day after day, week after week, month after month, we swam the often-turbulent ocean together.

  Flat on my stomach, I ran a hand back and forth under the couch, still searching for my illusive phone. “How, in this huge house, do you not have one single radio?”

  “Um, because it’s not nineteen ninety-nine,” she answered. “Here. Just download the app on my phone. I’ll meet you out there. I need to start story time.”

  On a groan, I pushed up off the floor, vowing to never let Luna and Madison play with my cell again. Or so I told myself at least twice a day. Those girls knew I didn’t have any follow-through.

  Bree and I made fast work of getting the kids in bed, and like a team of trained professionals, we made it to the backyard with time to spare. We spent a lot of nights huddled around that firepit. For obvious reasons, we’d never lit it, but I’d added a strand of white lights inside the burn basin. Partly because it added a nice, relaxing ambiance to our late-night chats. But mostly because I hated the way Bree stared at the fireless pit as though she could see the flames. God knew I still could.

  “Here,” she said, handing me my phone. “It was in the storage part of the ottoman. Asher knew where it was.”

  “Awesome. Remind me to share your M&M’s with him in the morning.”

  She settled into her spot in the corner of the wicker sectional, glass of wine in hand. “Forget it. I already re-hid them.”

  “Inside the box of granola doesn’t count as hiding.”

  “Dammit,” she hissed, making me laugh.

  While double-checking my connection to the Bluetooth speakers on the patio, I stole a glance at her from the corner of my eye. Just as I’d hoped, she was smiling, and it caused my lips to stretch as well. For whatever reason, keeping her in a good mood kept me in one. Making her smile or chuckle hit different now. Also like, if I could just make her feel better, relax, enjoy a goddamned second of peace—even if it was fleeting—then I could allow myself to do the same.

  When she laughed, it made things easy on my heart, and she was pretty easy on my eyes too. Although that was probably more to do with my newfound celibacy than any real attraction. But when you’re lonely, it’s easy to confuse friendship with something more. Something I didn’t even let my mind entertain.

  As the radio app on my phone filled the humid evening air with an auto parts commercial, I found my spot on the end, pulling the chair over to use as a footrest as usual. Luna had just started to doze off, so I switched the baby monitor for my beer and took a long pull.

  “Are you nervous?” she asked.

  I ignored the fact that her expression made her look almost excited by the notion that I was anything but cool as a cucumber. “Why would I be?”

  She circled her finger around the mouth of her wine glass. “Oh, I don’t know. Because for the last six months there’s been a social media frenzy waiting for Levee Williams’s new album and the first single is your song.”

  By all measures, I should have been ecstatic. This was huge. I’d had other songs on the radio before. None performed by artists as big as Levee. “Turning Pages,” the duet she’d recorded with Henry Alexander, had already been picked up prerelease to headline the soundtrack of a major motion picture, which from a royalties perspective would no doubt make it my biggest payday yet. But no matter how much I tried to psych myself up about hearing “Turning Pages’” highly anticipated radio debut, I couldn’t bring myself to get excited.

  It was my song. I knew every lyric and every chord and not simply because I had been the one to put the pen to paper. I’d lived that music, and dammit, I should have been the one performing it.

  But my life didn’t seem to work that way. The amount I made on gigs was laughable, and after selling the rebuilt house along with the money the insurance had given me for our destroyed contents, I’d stashed away a small nest egg.

  Every Friday, Bree had a direct deposit sent to my account.

  Every Monday, I had auto pay set to send it right back.

  The way I saw it, we swapped childcare. So, unless I paid her for all the nights she kept Luna, I couldn’t allow her to pay me to keep her kids. I paid the little she’d allow me to in rent on the pool house every month, but there were still other bills. Private health insurance was a racket, and then there were groceries, diapers, and industry fees to be paid.

  Selling songs was the obvious choice; not to mention it was my final commitment to my wife. Assuming you didn’t count the utter failure of when I told her I’d be right back.

  After the last thirteen months of heartbreak and grief, I should have been basking in my success and clinging to whatever happiness I could find. However, watching your dreams come true for someone else never got easier.

  “Not my first rodeo, Bree,” I replied before sipping on my beer.

  “Maybe not. But I’m proud of you.” She wasn’t being sarcastic as she carelessly wiggled her sandal off the end of her foot. She was—at least for the moment—content, and it showed in her relaxed appearance. “And I know Rob and Jessica would be too.”

  With caution, I paired my gaze with hers, a lump forming in my throat. “It was Jessica’s favorite song.”

  Proudly, she beamed. “I know. Rob’s too.”

  I looked back down at my beer.

  Right on time, the radio DJ’s voice rang through the speakers. “And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the debut of ‘Turning Pages’ by none other than nine-time Grammy winning artist, Levee Williams, featuring America’s favorite R&B star, Henry Alexander.”

  I smirked at the ground because it was what I was supposed to do. Songwriters all across the world waited their entire lives to hear their music on the radio, and there I was wallowing in self-pity. God, I needed to get a grip.

  As the intro faded in, the DJ kept talking. “Exclusive WQXX piece of trivia for you. A little birdie informed me today that this song was penned by one of Atlanta’s very own, Eason Maxwell.” My head popped up. “If this one is anything to go by, he might be a name to keep an eye out for.”

  No sooner than he finished the last syllable did Levee and Henry’s sultry harmonies consume the summer air.

  They’d nailed the emotion of the song, and if I was being honest, it was a perfect fit for their voices. But that wasn’t why my mouth hung open.

  I swung my gaze to Bree. “A little birdie?”

  She hid her massive grin behind her wine glass. Her long eyelashes batted against her blushing cheeks as she sang, “Chirp. Chirp.”

  I star
ed at her for a long minute, thoroughly perplexed as lyrics about forever and stopping time played in the background. I couldn’t decide if I was impressed, touched, possibly embarrassed, or some wicked combination of the three.

  “What did you do?” I whispered.

  “What any good friend would. I took a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue, a basket containing roughly two bakery’s worth of treats, and enough Prism bedding to redecorate an entire house up to the radio station today.”

  Yep. Totally impressed. “You bribed them?”

  “No. I wanted to let my new friends at Q99.3 know that I happened to have insider information on a certain celebrity who currently resides in our great city.”

  Wait, nope. Definite embarrassment.

  I lurched to my feet, dragging a hand through the top of my hair now that it was finally long enough to rely on it for expelling frustration again. “You told them I’m a celebrity?”

  She shrugged. “Well, you are. You wrote a song for the Levee Williams. And Henry Alexander,” she said dreamily before quickly cutting herself off. “And this time next year, it will be your voice on the radio. They better start getting used to your name now. I don’t want to hear any of that Easton crap when you hit it big.”

  All right, fine. I was touched. I didn’t exactly share her positivity about my career. Or her surprising fondness for Henry Alexander.

  Was he her type?

  Never mind.

  Anyway, it was crazy sweet how she’d gone out of her way to make sure I was recognized and more than just in the fine print on the back of the album.

  I planted my hands on my hips and gaped at her. I was unsure of what to say and even more unsure if I could say anything at all. So, after clearing my throat, I kept it light for both of our sakes.

  “You know, it’s moments like these that make me feel really guilty for throwing up on your shoes all those years ago.”