“Mommy, this bed is noisy!”
He jumped in slow motion, and my focus fell on each detail: his blond hair, a smidge too long as it curled around his ears like Harrison’s did when it was due for a trim, his round cheeks pink from exertion, his toes poking through the holes in the feet of his pajamas because he stubbornly refused to give them up, and his long lean body.
The door to the hotel room opened. The delightful rich aroma of coffee infiltrated the room. I eyed the coffees in Harrison’s hands. Will ran to the bed, threw off his shoes, and jumped with Finn. They laughed and bopped each other with pillows. Will made blaster noises, and Finn went, “Beep beep!”
“Looks like a fabulous day, today, hon,” Harrison said, handing me the coffee cup, and then opening the curtains. A perky, blue-sky day greeted us outside the Snow Lodge in Yellowstone National Park. I recognized the view of the visitor center and beyond that was Old Faithful Geyser. To my left, by the vanity, were quaint bear-shaped soaps.
“Hey, careful, little buddy,” Harrison said to Will, who nearly knocked the coffee from my hand with his excitement. I switched to the other bed to protect my drink.
“Dad! My name is Will!”
Harrison and I exchanged a look. “Okay, little buddy,” Harrison said, employing the pet name he had for Will, although Will insisted that he had only one name, Will (or William, depending on his mood).
I sipped the coffee, the dark blend heaven on my palate.
Harrison bent and kissed me. His lips were honeyed from his over-sweetened coffee. His kiss lingered, and I pulled him closer. I drew a hand through his hair. Stubble on his chin tickled my face. He smelled like fresh tea-tree shampoo and the biting scent of spice deodorant. He shared a smile with me. “I’m happy you did this. It means a lot to me.”
His eyes, which had the same rounded shape as Finn’s, sparkled. I lay a hand on his chin, enjoying the prickles of stubble under my fingertips. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I have?”
“Well, you know why. I didn’t want you to be sad.”
“Sad? Why? What’s sad about coming here? The kids are having a blast. So are you. Why, yesterday you—” I stopped myself. A fuzzy cloud hung over my memory.
Wait, what had we done yesterday? Oh, yes, the Upper Geyser Basin walk. The ranger at the visitor center had loaned the boys a backpack filled with two workbooks, one a Junior Ranger investigation and one a Young Scientist pamphlet, along with colored pencils and an infrared thermometer gun to measure the heat coming off the geysers, rainbow-colored springs, and mud pots. Both boys had loved the boardwalk trail that took us through three miles of bubbling, bursting, egg-smelling steam and glory of the thermal beauty that was Yellowstone’s heart. “Remember? When Finn dropped the radar gun near Morning Glory Pool? That was a close call. Gosh, it almost fell into a bubbling one-hundred-sixty-five-degree pool. You retrieved it.”
“That wasn’t me. It was Brandon with you,” Harrison said.
I scratched my head, my mind strangely full but empty. “That makes no sense. He’s in California.” I sipped the coffee, but now it tasted like water, no longer fragrant and sweet. The mug had disappeared from my hand, replaced by a water bottle.
The lights in the hotel room flickered.
“I’m glad you went,” Harrison said, his voice drifting away, nearly muted as if he were under water.
The bed stopped shaking. Finn leaned over and gave a now-sleeping-under-the-covers Will a kiss on his cheek. “So he can have happy dreams,” Finn cooed. I nodded but found that odd. That had been something Will used to say when Finn was a baby. He would kiss his forehead and say that a kiss while he was sleeping would grant him good dreams. Wait, wasn’t Will just bouncing a second ago, too?
I blinked. My head was so heavy, I had to support it with a hand.
Then Finn was gone. Like that. Poof. Will was under the blankets, lightly snoring. The pillows were in their place. Fearful clarity took hold of me. The view out the window was overcast, and all I saw was a cluster of trees beside a brown dumpster, and not lodgepole pines, a Yellowstone signature. I turned to Harrison, who sat beside me on the bed. I reached for him, drew him in close, and clung to him like glue.
“Hush, Audrey Jane, my HBA, my honey baby angel. It’ll be okay.” His embrace encircled me. I rested my cheek against his chest, his heartbeat slow and steady and my compass north.
“How can it be?” The realization caught in my throat. Maybe if I didn’t say it, it wouldn’t be real. “Y-You’re gone. You’re dead.”
“I will always be with you.”
“H-How?”
“In your heart.”
I shook my head and sniffled into his chest. I inhaled deeply but could no longer smell him. I no longer heard his heartbeat.
“Find our son. Find Finn. Brandon’s got him. He’s okay. I will always be with you, my love. Always, my honey baby angel.”
My sweet Finn.
My dear Harrison.
The solid chest that I had been leaning against vaporized. I had to catch myself from falling onto the bed. I reached, but my hand went through him. He was no longer opaque. The hotel desk showed through his body. I reached for his chin for one last touch, but my fingers met air. I sobbed uncontrollably. “No, no, no. Don’t go!”
He smiled and mouthed, “I love you,” but I no longer heard him.
Then he was gone.
I blinked, and the gloomy room returned to me. I was in the hotel in Missouri.
My skin was cool and coated with the sticky residue of a night of sweating. The throbbing in my head had subsided. My eyes burned. I swallowed, thirsty. Will snored beside me, snuggled closely into the crook of my arm, the drab gray and blue hotel blanket to his chin. I readjusted his weighted blanket. He was my early bird, too, but he snoozed away. Maybe he had also needed a solid sleep not on the ground. I slid from beneath him, my arm numb and tingling from his heavy head having rested upon it.
I rose. In the bathroom, I gulped water and then spit it out belatedly, remembering it was contaminated. I scrubbed my face, hoping to erase the memory of the dream. It had been so real. God, what the hell was I doing? I was in the middle of Missouri, heading to Denver to canvas an ash-covered area on the long shot that my son and brother would be there. What if they had gotten on the Denver flight, but their flight had been detoured…where? They could’ve ended up in a hundred other possible cities in the entire country. What if they were in Salt Lake City? Dear God, no. What if? What if? What if?
All I did know was I wasn’t going to sit on my ass in Maine and wait for news. Brandon had yet to call. He was not anywhere else. He was in Denver.
I looked through the bathroom doorway at the keys on the desk, regret a heavy weight on my soul. I’d reacted poorly with Reid. Fatigue, illness, and my damn anxiety. I recalled far too many arguments with Harrison because we had both been burned out.
I’d check in the morning to see if he’d gotten a room. Yes, I would apologize and all would be fine.
****
A few hours later, Will and I were off. After no success with the front desk, I passed a hopeful look around the parking lot for Reid, but his bike, which had been hooked on my car, was now gone. If he had slept in a room, he was gone now.
I’d screwed up.
I drove onto the main highway and continued the preset course, Peregrine’s Atlas in the empty passenger seat. Then I looked at Finn’s empty booster. I was alone again. Alone. I glanced at Will. No, I was not that alone. I had my bright, cheerful, thirsty-for-life son with me. I had Harrison in my soul. And Finnie’s kisses upon my heart.
A brief ripple of expectation passed through me when I saw a man on a bike ahead. It was quickly snuffed when I realized it wasn’t Reid. I kept driving.
When we reached a stopping point, as I had done many times on the journey, I pulled out my phone to look at a few photos while Will explored and stretched his legs. Even though technology and I didn’t jibe well, I did have a camera on the phone. Of cou
rse I had grabbed a few printed photos of Finn to bring along, unsure why, perhaps to keep my spirit positive, to keep me motivated on the long haul. My phone was filled with many candid snapshots.
I flipped through them, and it brought an overdue smile to my face. Finn with raspberries on the tips of his fingers, smiling goofily at the camera. Finn next to his Lego tower he had proudly built and had insisted I photograph it “to remember it.” A sweet scribbled note he’d written me and tucked under my pillow. A few photos of the geology show we visited this past spring. Harrison would’ve enjoyed that, but I’d taken them alone. I had to. We either wallowed at home or I sucked it up and took the baby steps of healing. In the photo, Finn stood next to his line of amethyst, quartz, lava rock, “diamond,” and geodes.
The next photo was of our refrigerator, plastered with sight words for Finn, the conversation wheel Susie had made for Will, family rules, chore chart, school schedule, photographs, the scribbled note from Finn beside a pressed four-leaf clover he’d picked for me, important phone numbers, a list of “empowering words for children,” artwork, a reward chart, and numerous magnets from all of Harrison’s and my worldly adventures. One picture summarized my cluttered, demanding life. I’d snapped that photo one day in frustration, texted Siobhan, and she had responded with a “beautiful!”
My life had been, and still was, full. Tears, sweat, blood, emotional roller-coaster rides. I remember wanting to rip everything off that fridge. It’d looked that way the day Harrison died, save for a few extra add-ons. A part of me clung to the past and refused to strip the life from the fridge. To the outsider, it gave a messy impression, a disorganized mother. To me, it was my family. My life. In fact, many other areas of the house had been left untouched. The office bookshelves exploded with piles of books: diagonal leaning books, books laid on their side, papers and scraps from newspapers and magazines. Those shelves had been Harrison’s cave. He lost himself in historical, travel, and science tomes. I hadn’t touched the shelves since his death, except to dust them, and that was rarely.
Harrison’s side of the garage lay empty, his car long since impounded and destroyed after the accident. Christmas ornaments sat in a corner of the children’s playroom, waiting to be put away, after my lame attempt at the first Christmas after Harrison’s death. It’d been a dark, silent night indeed. All the firsts in the past year were painful. Since that fateful July evening, we’ve had to celebrate all those “special holidays” without him. I had a hard time with holidays already missing my mom, but now, my dear husband…they were unbearable reminders.
An old familiar sense of determination took hold of me. I was going to get through this. I was going to find my son. Life’s cruelties would not take me. Our normal wasn’t your typical normal to begin with. Autism and quirks composed our days. Then Harrison had died, and we’d entered a new normal. There would be a whole new normal for many others now, not just us. Change was inevitable.
I closed the photo screen on the phone and plopped it on the seat beside me. Anyone could give up. I’d never been just anyone. I had to keep it together. I’d gotten us through this past year.
I could do this.
Chapter Nine
Heart-Hurting Moments
Will didn’t understand why Reid left. Mom didn’t explain why. Reid wasn’t a bad guy. Will had seen bad guys in movies and in real life. Reid wasn’t a crook or bully or meanie. In fact, he was mad at her for letting Reid go. Reid was nice. He tried to not feel sad about it. Now it was just him and Mom. He didn’t like too many noisy people, but Reid spoke in a quiet-y voice. He liked that. Finn was noisy, but he was also his best friend, so he made an exception for him.
He tapped a finger on his knee. Mom was talking with the guy working near the gas pump. Will was now up to two hundred and was getting tired of waiting. He poked his head through the open window. “Mom, why are you doing all this grown-up talk? Let’s go!” He hated all the adult talk. Every time Mom met another person, it was talk, talk, talk. Too much talking. Like at Thanksgiving and Christmas, when his aunts and uncles and Grandma and Grandpa and cousins would come over. They spent too much time talking. When there were a lot of people all in the house at once, he heard it all—every conversation—it was like a swarm of buzzing bees around him. Yeah, like a beehive. Once Mom had asked him about it, and he told her that it was like that. Some stuff was hard to explain to her, but that was easier.
And he didn’t like bees.
It got so loud, the humming and buzzing in his head, that he wanted to bang his head against a wall. Susie and Mom had taught him to go to a quiet place when things like that bothered him. Usually he went to his room, and he could play with his Lego bricks. When they were at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, he couldn’t hide in his room so he would go to a corner, or once, he sat on the front stoop. He liked it there. He could watch the leaves on the trees move, the blades of grass swish as the wind blew past, or best—the puddles! Grandma’s house had lots of amazing puddles! He’d watch the water move when he swirled a stick in it, or he could make it muddy. Lately, Susie was teaching him to explain to others when things bothered him, but that was hard to do. They didn’t understand.
Sometimes closets or under chairs were the best places to escape. Nobody bothered him when he was there.
Mom explained to him this year why things like that troubled him, but it didn’t make it all better. Mom said that everybody has challenges, and he was special and had his own challenges and that his brain was wired a different way. He was sure brains didn’t have wires, though. His science encyclopedia said they had neurons and synapses. Mom always asked him about the kids at school. He went to Lunch Bunch at school once a week with Mr. Hansen and a few other kids. They sat at a separate table, and Mr. Hansen encouraged him to have “social skills” like talking to others, looking them in the eyes, taking turns, and all that other stuff, but he didn’t like any of those kids. They didn’t like cats or volcanoes or wizard stuff. His friend Oliver did, and although Oliver moved to a different school this year, Mom scheduled play dates once a month. Besides, Finn was his best friend, even if he was a baby sometimes.
He tapped his fingers on his leg. Mom was still talking, and she always talked using her hands. That was another thing Susie explained to him. “Mom!” he hollered.
She looked at him and made that face she always made. “Coming, Will.”
She finally got in the car. “Mom, that took more than three minutes. In fact it took three hundred twenty seconds.”
****
For a relatively unpopulated area of Missouri, the road we traveled was terribly congested. My head spun with the residual effect of the cold and the inept drivers. Reid had snagged me stronger cold medicine loaded with pseudoephedrine and a cough suppressant, and thankfully they didn’t make me drowsy, too. I was revved. We were in the middle of nowhere, far enough from the cities. Why was there a traffic jam? “This is such a mess!” I snapped as I peered ahead to see what was going on around a bend in the highway. Thick woodland bordered us.
“It doesn’t look untidy to me, Mom,” Will said.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “No, not a mess like that.” I pondered how to explain it to him. “There are a lot of cars, slow traffic, lots of people and excitement going on. Busy. Construction. Rush hour or an accident. We say that’s a mess. Or at least I do.”
“Oh.”
The speedometer needle trembled lower and lower. With each dip, I tightened my hands on the wheel. Thirty-five…twenty-five…twenty…
Well, at least it wasn’t raining.
Eventually, we came to a standstill, the red needle quaking at the zero. “Wonderful.”
“Huh?” Will asked.
I shook my head.
After a few minutes of going nowhere, I turned off the engine and opened the windows all the way. Many people were exiting their cars, gaping, swearing, and gesturing. Red and blue emergency lights blinked far ahead, always a jarring sight. I stepped out of the car
and with a crane of my neck confirmed it to be police cars and an ambulance.
“What’s going on?” I asked the short, thickset woman in front of me.
She shrugged and removed her baseball hat, revealing spindly unwashed gray hair. “I think they’re diverting us. Accident maybe?”
“F—” I began but caught myself. I had been diverted enough. I was already on a detour. Now I was being detoured from my detour? We were getting closer. Shit was happening.
Will popped out of the car and came to my side. “Mess?” He chewed on his lip, his gaze already falling on the grassy shoulder and the gathering of lofty trees beyond it. He kicked at a few pieces of crumbled old pavement.
I put my arm around his shoulder to keep him beside me. “Yup.”
“Deep breaths, Mom,” he said, mimicking Susie’s words. Three deep breaths. Pause. Let it go. Do something positive.
Sometimes I felt like Will…I could only handle so much on my invisible plate for the day, and once that extra morsel, that tiny crumb, was plopped on the mounting pile of crap, I imploded. Then I recovered. My heart was covered with bandages, some tightly attached, some hanging on by a paltry piece of adhesive.
I tapped a hand on my thigh and continued to peer ahead, while evaluating the situation and considering the next move.
A tremulous voice interrupted my contemplations. “May need to wait this one out. We’re heading north to Greer Spring campground, a few miles off this exit here, and up Route 19. I think there was an accident ahead,” the woman near us said, pointing in the direction of the detour and past her old, dirt-splattered and jangling station wagon. A grandmotherly smile creased her weathered skin. A man, in his sixties by my guess, sat in the driver seat, his pit-stained white shirt doing nothing to hide the rotund belly that touched the steering wheel. He cursed and slammed his hands on the wheel. The woman jumped, as did I. “Dennis,” she chided in her scratchy, submissive voice.
He grumbled incoherently beneath a grizzled beard and popped open a soda can. He slurped it and burped. “Goddamn traffic,” he mumbled.
Will Rise from Ashes Page 14