The Long and Winding Road

by T. J. Klune

  He was our sensitive, kind, sweet little boy.

  She was our no-nonsense, wickedly smart little girl.

  It was a little scary at first to see her in a more dominant position. I worried for a long time that she would railroad right over Noah and that he would just let it happen, but she was oh so careful with him, treating him like he was something precious. No one messed with Noah Thompson, not while Lily was present. He was older, but she was his protector. He likes pretty things, and while Otter and I don’t give two shits about that, others aren’t always going to be so kind.

  Just after their fourth birthday last fall, Ty and Dom took them to the park. Ty told me later that Noah had taken one of his ponies, and some little dick with a fucking attitude had tried to give him shit for it, telling him that boys didn’t play with ponies. Noah’s lip had been wobbling just a little, and Ty had been up on his feet, ready to kick six-year-old ass, but then Lily had put herself between Noah and his bully, growling at the little asshole that Noah could play with whatever he wanted. Her eyes were narrowed and her hands were in little fists at her sides, and the older kid must have seen the same fierceness we’d witnessed over and over again. No one messed with her brother. Ever.

  The bully had turned tail and run.

  Lily turned and asked if Noah was okay.

  “Yeah,” he said, sniffling just a little.

  She kissed him on the forehead and didn’t leave his side after that.

  “Are you crying?” Ty asked me when he finished his story.

  “I’m not crying,” I said, wiping my eyes. “You’re crying.”

  We love them more than we could ever say.

  But that doesn’t mean they don’t exasperate us.

  Like now.

  Because Noah is in his little suit, lying on the floor, grinning up at us, head resting on Princess Celestine. “Hi!” he says, waving a little hand up at us. “Hi, Daddy! Hi, Papa!”

  “Shh,” Lily says. “Patients can’t talk before surgery. You’re asleep because of drugs.”

  “Shh,” Noah tells Otter and me. “I can’t talk afore sergys. I’m on drugs!”

  Yes. Definitely our children.

  “Surgery,” Lily corrects him gently. “I need to take out your spleen. It’s infected.”

  Noah smiles up at her adoringly.

  “Lily,” Otter says. “You can’t operate on your brother now. You know we have to go.”

  Her eyes narrow just a little above her mask. “But he could die.”

  “I don’t wanna die,” Noah says cheerfully.

  “He doesn’t want to die,” Lily informs us.

  “I think he’ll make it through the day,” I tell her. “If he’s still sick by the time we get home, we can schedule the surgery then.”

  She sighs like we’re the most difficult people in the world. “You never let me do anything.”

  “I highly doubt that’s true,” Otter says, crouching down in front of her. He reaches up behind her head and unties her surgical mask. She’s frowning a little when it slides from her face. “You know today’s a special day.”

  She nods slowly, dark hair bouncing on her shoulders. She had green ribbons in her hair. Noah (of course) had seen them and loudly demanded that he get ribbons in his hair too. Lily had thought that was only fair, so now they matched even more than they had before, her in her green dress and him with a tiny green tie that had caused a lump in my throat for reasons I didn’t quite understand. I’ve learned over the years that being a parent means being exhausted, elated, frustrated, amused, confused, and on the verge of tears at pretty much every moment of every day.

  “And the two of you have a very big responsibility,” I say, helping Noah off the floor and brushing the back of his suit, smiling as he giggles and tries to twist away. “Uncle Ty would be very sad if you guys couldn’t be there.”

  “And we wouldn’t want that,” Otter says, tugging lightly on the ends of Lily’s hair, causing her frown to melt away. Regardless of how much a tomboy she is, she’s a daddy’s girl through and through. She worships the ground Otter walks on. I was jealous of it when it first started showing but accepted it quickly, since Noah seemed to gravitate toward me. It’s just how things are.

  “And we can go at the same time?” Lily asks. “Uncle Ty said we could.”

  “Same time,” Noah agrees, his thick mop of messy hair falling all over the place. We’d learned early on there was no taming it no matter what we did. I reach down and brush a lock off his forehead. “Please, Papa.”

  “Well, if Uncle Ty said it,” I say slowly, like I’m still considering it, even though we all know I’m full of shit. Because it doesn’t matter what we say, if Uncle Ty says it, it’s law. Because no matter how much our children love us, no matter if we’re their parents, if asked, Lily and Noah would tell you that Uncle Ty is perhaps the greatest person to have ever existed. We’re pretty great, and Izzie is awesome (Noah’s assessment), but Uncle Ty? He’s absolutely the best thing in the world (Lily’s assessment).

  “He said it,” Lily says.

  “To both of us,” Noah adds fiercely.

  “And it’s his special day,” Lily reminds us. “So we have to do whatever he wants.”

  “We do?” Otter says. “Well, in that case, we better listen, don’t you think?”

  Noah and Lily grin up at us, both almost a spitting image of another Kid that I’d known a long time ago, who’d sat in my lap and told me that everything was going to be all right.

  I have to blink away the burn in my eyes, and that is not a good indication of how today is going to go.

  Shit.

  Otter must see it on my face, because he says, “You guys want to go see if Izzie’s ready to go?” and they’re out the door, hollering down the hallway for their auntie, telling her that Noah’s spleen is infected, but surgery would have to come later because we had to go.

  Otter’s hand comes to the back of my neck, and he presses our foreheads together.

  “Okay?” he asks me quietly.

  I shrug, trying to swallow past the lump in my throat. “It’s just—I’m probably going to be a wreck today.”

  He chuckles. “That’s expected.”

  “I shouldn’t be. It’s a good thing.”

  “It is,” he agrees. “A very good thing. But it’s still a big deal. You’re allowed to be sad, as long as you remember to be happy.”

  “I’m not sad. It’s just—it hit me. Now. It’s… a lot.”

  “It is,” he says simply.

  “I can’t believe it’s happening, you know? I thought he’d—I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m thinking right now.”

  His nose scrapes against my cheek. “This isn’t the end, you know? It’s just another beginning.”

  I know that. “I wish she was here.”

  “Who do—Mrs. Paquinn.”

  I nod slowly. “She’d like this. Us. Everything that we’ve become.”

  His hand tightens on the back of my neck. “I’m sure she’s watching. Probably laughing at us right now.”

  Fitting, that. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  I shrug. “Okay.”

  “You ready for this?”

  I don’t know if I am, but I say, “Yes,” because that’s what he needs to hear.

  THEY’RE WAITING for us downstairs, all three of them. Noah’s wrapped around Izzie’s leg, wrinkling her blue dress, but she doesn’t appear to give a shit about that. Lily’s standing next to Izzie, prim and proper, obviously trying to emulate Izzie’s stance but not wanting anyone to know she’s doing it.

  Izzie’s smiling down as Noah babbles at her, telling her that he’s got a big job to do today and that he’s going to be so good at it that everyone will clap for him when he’s done and then he’s going to eat so much ice cream and cake because Papa said he could have whatever he wanted today, even though that’s an outright lie. I’ve seen Noah hopped up on sugar before, and it’s a terrifying prospect.
/>   And I know Izzie knows that, but she’s humoring him anyway. She hears us coming down the stairs and looks up at us, winking once before she looks back down at Noah.

  The former Izzie McKenna (having been Izzie Thompson now for over four years) has grown up into a beautiful young woman. Her hair is cut pixie short, and much to my and Ty’s chagrin, she has somehow managed to gain an inch or two on us. As of a month ago, she’s a high school graduate, and this is our last summer with her before she moves into the dorms at OSU down in Corvallis, something I’m already dreading. She’s fierce and fiery and able to go toe to toe with Tyson, and I’m going to miss the hell out of her when it’s time for her to leave. But she’s excited about it, having been given a partial scholarship where she’s going to study biology on the way to becoming an entomologist, much to my extreme horror.

  It’d been a long road to get her to become ours legally and in name. Physically and mentally, she became a part of us the moment she showed up at our doorstep (and for Tyson, the moment he’d met her on that sidewalk years ago). Her teenage years hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park, but we’d given her the room she needed to grow into her own without feeling like we were stifling her. She’d spent more years on her own than she’d had with a large family, and there were times I knew she felt smothered by all of us. There’d been some rough patches, but that was what it meant to have a family. You took the bad with all of the good.

  She whistles at the both of us as we reach the bottom of the stairs. “You guys clean up well, for old guys.”

  I scowl at her. “I’m not old.”

  “Late thirties counts as old.”

  “When are you moving out again?” I mumble as Otter rubs my back.

  “August,” she says happily. “And don’t even try that with me. Otter already told me you’re sad about it.”

  “Traitor,” I hiss at him.

  He rolls his eyes. “Like it’s a secret. You hugged her at her graduation for almost twenty minutes and told her that she didn’t have to go if she didn’t want to, that she could stay in the Green Monstrosity forever.”

  “I was being courteous.”

  “I’ve never had a grown man cry on my shoulder for that length of time before,” Izzie says. “My friends asked me if you had a medical condition.”

  “Papa cries at everything,” Lily says.

  “I do not!”

  “You cried when Noah used the potty for the first time,” Otter reminds me.

  “I pee so good,” Noah announces to everyone in the room.

  “I want a new family,” I say, and Lily and Noah immediately protest loudly, telling me I’m not allowed that at all.

  Izzie’s looking amused, Otter’s smiling at me like I’m the best thing to have happened to him, and our kids are hanging on my legs, telling me that they’re my family, and I can’t get a new one, and there’s this burst of light in my chest, warm and bright, and yes, we’ve had shit thrown at us. We’ve been knocked down. We’ve been hurt.

  But we’ve made it. Here. Now.

  To this day of all days.

  I would do it all over again to get to this moment.

  WE PULL up to that little section of beach that only we seem to know about. Except today, the parking lot is full, more cars here than I’ve ever seen before. There’s only a couple of spaces left, and I don’t know why I’m so surprised. Ty had said the guest list was a little bigger than he’d been expecting, looking surprised at the thought that there were so many people that he’d wanted to invite. People from his master’s program, colleagues, friends from outside of school, half the force, where Dom now works as a detective. Our family, of course, all of us that had made it to this point. A couple of years ago, we’d had a scare with Jerry—Creed and Otter’s father—when he’d had a heart attack, but he’d made it through and bemoaned the fact that Alice was never going to allow him to eat anything delicious ever again. Much to the surprise of everyone, he was now a vegetarian, Tyson somehow infecting him with his evil, and he was doing better than he had in years.

  The twins are chattering excitedly as Izzie tries to unbuckle them from their booster seats, their little arms flailing as they laugh and squeal and all around make life difficult. Otter and I both turn to look at them, wearing what Izzie calls our dad faces (“They’re hysterical”), eyebrows arched, mouths thinned.

  The twins quiet immediately, watching both of us and waiting.

  We have trained them so well.

  “What are the rules for today?” Otter asks.

  Lily groans as her brother grins goofily at her. “Do we have to do this now?”

  “Yes,” I tell her.

  “Fine. No going in the water.”

  “No putting sands in our pockets to take home to have a beach at our house,” Noah adds gleefully.

  “No trying to catch a seagull to study,” Lily says with a frown, like her dads are the most unfair people in the world.

  “No telling people I don’t pick my nose and eat it anymore,” Noah says, clapping his hands.

  “The fact that he says that means we’re good parents,” I tell Otter.

  Before I can say anything else, there’s a frantic pounding on the passenger window, causing all of us to jump. We all turn and it’s—

  Corey Ellis, looking stressed, eyes wide, mouthing at me to unlock the goddamn door right this second.

  “Where have you guys been?” he demands after I do what he asks. He’s ripped open the door and is glaring down at me.

  I look up at him, confused. “What are you talking about? We were here all morning setting up. You know that. You were there too.”

  He blinks. “Right. Well, where have you been now?”

  “At home,” I tell him slowly. “Which you also knew, seeing as how we all left to go get ready.”

  “Stop being so reasonable!” he says shrilly. “There is a crisis.”

  I groan. “What the hell is it now?”

  The setup had gone rather smoothly, the tent pitched, chairs placed, balloons tied to posts strung with lights. We’d had a lot of help, so it hadn’t taken long, especially with Ty’s explicit directions as to how everything should look.

  Corey glances into the back seat, seeing the twins watching him intently, waiting for the moment when they get to go hug Uncle Corey, because they hadn’t gotten to see him yet. Corey leans forward and whispers in my ear, “He’s freaking out.”

  “About what?”

  “Everything.”

  “Perfect,” I mutter. “Because of course he is. There’s nothing wrong. We did everything like he asked.”

  “That’s what I told him. And I am an expert at weddings, because I helped throw that one for Paul and Vince years ago. And I am damn good at what I do.”

  “Where is he?” I ask.

  “Down the beach near Mrs. Paquinn,” Corey says. “I told him I’d wait for you guys up here and send you down to him when you arrived. I’ll help Izzie with the munchkins if you and Otter want to go find him.”

  “He wants me too?” Otter asks, sounding surprised.

  “Yes,” Corey says, sounding bemused. “Why wouldn’t he? You three are a package deal. Now, get out of the car and let me see my babies.”

  “We’re not babies,” Lily tells him. “We’re four.”

  “You’re still my babies,” Corey says, and Lily just melts.

  “You okay with them?” I ask Izzie.

  She waves a hand dismissively. “Go. I’ll make sure Noah doesn’t tell people he doesn’t eat boogers anymore.”

  “Because that’s gross and they belong in tissues and not in my mouth,” Noah recites dutifully.

  Otter and I are out of the car and walking hand in hand away from the stairs that lead to the beach where people are undoubtedly gathering, waiting for the festivities to start. The July sun is bright, and the breeze is filled with salt. Beach grass blows gently as we leave the pavement, taking off our shoes, the sand warm beneath our feet. The waves are crashing be
low as we crest a hill, and he’s there. The Kid, sitting on the beach on a towel next to a cross, looking out onto the water.

  Otter squeezes my hand as we start down the hill. Ty must hear us coming, because he looks over at us, shoulders a little tense. He relaxes a little at the sight of us, shaking his head ruefully.

  He’s handsome in his suit, his tie lying beside him, collar open at his throat, feet bare. The wind is blowing through his hair, and I remember the days when it was just him and me here, the sky above covered in gray clouds, the two of us walking side by side, his little hand in mine as he pointed out a crab and a shell and sea glass that he needed, and please, Papa Bear, could he just take it home with us? It’d look so good in our room, and it was so pretty.

  It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty years since then.

  But here we are.

  After everything.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey, yourself,” he says, looking down, picking on the frayed edge of the towel.

  “Okay?” Otter asks.

  He shrugs. “Think so.”

  “Make room, then,” I tell him. “I’m wearing a goddamn suit at the beach, of all things, so that towel better have a spot for me too.”

  It does. For all of us. He stands and spreads it out before he sits back down.

  Otter and I sit on either side of him, crowding in close, and he breathes a sigh of relief, like this is all he wants at the moment.

  I don’t say a word when he takes my hand and starts tugging on my fingers.

  Otter and I wait, because it’s the right thing to do.

  Eventually, Ty says, “I got scared.”

  “You’re allowed to be,” Otter says lightly.

  Ty nods. “I know. Nervous too. Dom told me everything was going to be okay, but I almost had to get into the bathtub this morning.”

  That makes my heart clench in my chest, because it’s been years since that’s occurred. “Almost?” I ask evenly.

  He shrugs, looking down at his hand in mine. “It didn’t get that far.”