Midway through the service, a familiar hand squeezed my shoulder, this time from behind. Riley had finally arrived. Rather than feeling comforted, I was annoyed and angry. For someone who professed to love me, I certainly wasn’t high on his list of priorities today of all freaking days. No doubt he had a perfect excuse though, some cat caught in a tree, or a stranded stranger with a flat tire.
An officer stood at the podium and began the traditional roll call. Oh God, here we go. As he called out the names of soldiers present, they stood in the congregation announcing their presence. All around me, figures in blue popped up like jack-in-the-boxes, alive and well. I thought I was ready to hear it. After all, I knew it was coming. Our CAO had walked us through this many times. They would call my father’s name, but he wouldn’t answer.
That was the whole point.
“Lieutenant Colonel Howard?” The officer’s voice echoed from the silent church. Every muscle in my body tensed and my teeth ground together. “Lieutenant Colonel Justin Howard?” April’s keen wail split the silence and tears burned their way down my cheeks. I couldn’t so much as raise my hands to wipe them away. God, just stop calling his name. Please. But he didn’t. “Lieutenant Colonel Justin A. Howard?” One more time. I just had to make it one more time.
“Why do they keep calling Daddy’s name?” Gus asked.
To prove he’s really gone.
I couldn’t answer him; my vocal cords were paralyzed from fear of what would finally erupt when I spoke. I pulled him closer. “Lieutenant Colonel Justin August Howard?” I knew more was said, but I didn’t hear it. Instead, I was back in my memory, watching Dad kneel down so four-year-old Gus could help pin Lieutenant Colonel rank on his shoulders. We’d all been so happy and proud. I guess we were also supposed to be proud today, knowing he’d given his life for something so much bigger than himself. What people didn’t understand was there was nothing bigger than my dad in my eyes, nothing worth the cost of his life.
Bagpipes belted out “Amazing Grace.” Beside me, my mother finally spoke, whispering my father’s name in a broken plea. “Justin?”
I forced my teeth into my lower lip to keep from crying out, slicing into the soft flesh until the pain I caused could stand against the grief tearing through me.
Once the service was over, I felt like congratulating myself for surviving it, but I still had to make it through the burial. We walked down the aisle behind the chaplain, exiting the service through the main door, where a black limousine waited. Grams pulled my mother inside. April followed soon after with her boyfriend, Brett. I waited outside with Gus, knowing Riley would want to come with us.
He came down the steps slowly, dressed impeccably in a suit his mother had picked out, no doubt. His blond hair was parted to the side, and his blue eyes stood out against the black of the suit. Another spurt of hysterical laughter nearly took me. Riley was a living Ken doll. He pulled me into his familiar arms, wrapping me in the scent of the cologne he’d worn since our senior year. He pulled back to kiss me, and his eyes flared. “Uh, babe?” He recoiled, like he was disgusted.
Josh appeared next to me, setting Gus down after a hug. He pulled out a Kleenex and dabbed at the area just beneath my lip. The tissue came away red, stained with the blood I had drawn with my teeth. He gave me a weak smile and backed away quickly, as though he knew he had overstepped a boundary. Whoa. I ran my tongue across my lip and felt the area I’d abused.
Riley rolled his eyes before he realized who it was. “Josh Walker!” He held out his hand, and Josh shook it. “It’s been a long time, man. You’re coaching my little brother and Gus now, right?”
Josh nodded. “Rory’s a great kid. I’ll catch you later, Gus.”
Gus grabbed onto my hand and tugged. “Can Coach Walker come with us, please?”
Riley answered before I could. “Gus, the limo is only for family.”
Gus smirked. “Well, you’re not family. Besides, if April and Ember get to bring someone, I can, too.”
I couldn’t argue with Gus’s logic. “You’re welcome to join us,” I said to Josh, avoiding his eyes.
The limo ride was the most awkward twenty minutes I’d ever spent in a car. On my left, Riley updated his Facebook status. What could he be typing? Heading to bury girlfriend’s dad? He didn’t handle stress well, and I didn’t hold it against him. It was simply one of the aspects of his personality that I understood, that I tried my best to complement. After all, that was part of our plan, why we went so well together. I filled in his gaps. “Ah, man,” he whispered.
“What is it?” I asked.
He shook his head, scrolling through his phone. “They moved our formal a week earlier.”
I didn’t bother responding. He wasn’t looking for my input anyway. Grams sat stoically, her silver hair pulled into a French twist, her single strand of pearls immaculately appropriate. She’d always had an air of dignity about her, but the way she held herself together in the wake of her son’s death was awe-inspiring. Her hands clutched the small picture frame of Dad’s basic training she had rested on her knees.
“What’s on your mind?” Josh asked, sitting on my right. His phone was out, too; he’d given it to Gus, who was currently destroying small pigs in the Star Wars version of Angry Birds.
I subtly gestured to my grandmother with my head. “My grandfather died in Vietnam.” I shook my head. “She’s already been through so much; this hardly seems fair.”
He was quiet for a minute, as though he was carefully choosing his words. “As hard as this must be for her, maybe she’s really the only one who can help your mom through this. After all, she’s been there.”
I watched the way Grams reached out to hold my mom’s hand, stroking her skin with her thumb. Josh was right. If anyone was going to pull her back from this precipice she was standing on, it would be Grams. They were equally stubborn women, equally strong, equally capable. “She’s going to be okay, eventually.”
“So are you.” He squeezed my hand gently before quickly pulling it away, careful not to brush the skin of my knee just below my hem.
Riley slipped his phone back into his pocket as we arrived at the cemetery. We stepped from the car and crossed the frozen ground to the plot my father had chosen. At the time, I had thought it was a morbid thing to do, choosing his own funeral plot. Now, I was thankful. It was one more choice I didn’t have to make, and I knew he’d be happy. As we took our seats in the front row, facing my father’s casket, people walked by. They shook our hands. They leaned down to hug us. They were sorry for our loss. They couldn’t fathom our grief. They wanted to know what they could do. I said thank you so many times that it no longer sounded like a word. Selfishly, I just wanted them to stop touching me.
Riley took the seat behind me, keeping his hand on my shoulder, anchoring me as he’d done these last few years. He was my reminder that I would get through this; things would return to normal and our plans wouldn’t change. Well, whatever “new normal” was waiting for me.
“Can you make them stop hugging me?” Gus asked, reaching for my hand. I kissed his soft forehead.
“Sure thing, buddy.” I ran interference for Gus until everyone finally took their seats. Again, the chaplain began to speak about duty and sacrifice. I fought the urge to stand up on my chair and stomp my foot, reminding myself that I was no longer a petulant teenager. What did they know of duty? My father’s duty was here, at home. Now someone else had to step into his shoes, figure out what we were supposed to do from here. It wasn’t fair.
The American flag draped Dad’s silver coffin. I wanted to see him, to verify with my own eyes that he was really dead. But when his remains arrived from Dover, they came with a cutting little note attached: “These remains are not recommended for viewing.” When I got Captain Wilson alone and was able to ask the question, he danced around it until I finally got my answer. Dad was shot in the head, chest, and leg. The asshole had been so thorough there wasn’t enough of Dad’s face left to see.
The small, childlike part of me wondered if he was really in there, or if there had been some drama-worthy mix-up. Maybe the poor soul in this coffin belonged to another family, and my dad was lying somewhere wounded, unable to tell his real name. But I wasn’t Gus. I knew the truth: we were burying my father.
The flag slid from the coffin into the arms of the waiting honor guard. They snapped the flag tight with military precision. That flag had been with him from the hospital in Afghanistan where he was pronounced dead, through Dover where they prepared his body and tailored his uniform, to here in Colorado where we would bury him.
The guns rang out, killing the silence and jolting my heart. The honor guard fired three volleys, each time freezing me until I died just a little bit more. Three volleys for the guns. Three bullets in my father. It was poetic really. Gus began to cry horrible wrenching sobs. I reached for him as the honor guard folded the final corner of the flag into the triangle. Josh leaned forward and pulled Gus over the chair, into his lap, and rocked him like a baby. I nodded my thanks. Across the empty chair I reached for April. She clasped my hand in a death grip as cold as her frozen fingers. We’d forgotten gloves.
A colonel dropped on one knee in front of Mom, grasping the folded flag. She raised her head and brought her chin up, showing a shadow of the spirit I knew she had. “On behalf of the President of the United States and a grateful nation,” he said reverently as he handed the flag to my mother’s shaking hands. She crossed her arms in front of the flag and pulled it to her chest, lowering her face into the folds as if she could catch Dad’s scent on the fabric. Then she began to keen, a low, ugly sound, like her soul had been dismembered.
I held it together until the bugler began to play “Taps.” Day is done, gone the sun. So often I’d heard it around the military bases where we’d been stationed. There was something familiar, cleansing about hearing it played, as though the song itself was saying this awful event was over. This was the worst, the lowest we would ever be. God is nigh.
Grams shook with grief on the other side of my mother. Now she had truly given all she had for this country. She wrapped her arm around Mom, drawing her to her shoulder; they had each lost the person they loved most.
As everyone left the burial, my family piled into the limo, but I couldn’t leave, not yet. The honor guard handed Riley a stack of folded flags, one each for Grams, April, Gus, and myself. Like we needed a memento. War was such a spiteful bitch; she took everything we loved and handed us back a folded flag in return, telling us the honor of their sacrifice was a just and equal payment. It wasn’t.
One of Dad’s five deployments had begun shortly after Gus was born. In the middle of the night, I had watched Dad pack his bags as Mom rocked the crying Gus to sleep. Even at thirteen, I didn’t mind being pulled into my dad’s lap. He’d cradled my gangly frame and kissed my forehead in the way only fathers can do. “I need you to take care of your mom while I’m gone,” he’d requested. “Take it easy on her; this will be tough, and I need you to be my girl of the house. Can you do that for me? Can you take care of your mom, and April, and Gus?” Of course I had agreed. I would have done anything to please my father, as I knew he would have done for me. Anything but stay.
As they lowered his coffin into the icy ground, I raced forward. “Stop!” The cemetery workers froze, leaving Dad only inches above the surface. I stumbled forward, my heels catching on what was left of the grass. My knees landed in front of the cold metal that marked the entrance to my father’s grave. I placed my right hand on the chilled exterior of the coffin and stifled my cry with my left. “I love you,” the whisper broke from me. “I miss you, and I don’t know what to do without you,” I cried. I dragged the frost-bitten air through my lungs. “But don’t you worry about them, not Grams, or Mom, April, or Gus. I will take care of them, I promise.”
Riley’s familiar arms surrounded me, lifting me off the ground until I was standing. I gave a small nod to the cemetery workers. They began lowering my father again, deeper and deeper into the ground. “I promise.”
Chapter Three
“Ember.” Gus shook me awake before my 7:00 a.m. alarm could blare. Sleep was great. When I was asleep, everything was normal, and this was the nightmare, but then that stupid alarm would go off, and I was back facing our “new normal.”
“Mmmm?” I mumbled, pulling my hair from my face and trying to focus my sleep-deprived eyes.
“I’m hungry.” Gus crept closer and laid his head on my pillow, inches from my face. He hadn’t brushed his teeth.
“You’re always hungry.” I tugged him closer, my hand meeting denim where I expected soft pajama pants. “Are you already dressed?”
“I have school today. The bus comes in a half hour at seven-three-zero.”
That woke me up. I climbed out of bed, secured my flyaway hair with a tie, and found a smile. “Food it is, bud.”
“We’re out.” He jetted ahead of me, taking the back stairs toward the kitchen.
“Out of what?”
The bright, open windows of the kitchen let in the morning light, and the tiles were cold on my bare feet. Coffee. Coffee would be good. I turned the Keurig on and checked the pantry while it hissed itself awake. Yeah, I don’t want to be up, either. Gus was right; we were out of cereal, oatmeal, and bagels.
We were out of everything.
When had this happened? I pulled out the last of a loaf of bread and checked the calendar on my way to the fridge. January 5. “First Day Back to School” was inscribed in Mom’s handwriting on the otherwise empty block. A week from today displayed an ominous message: “Ember back to CU for spring.”
I swallowed the panic and, instead of thinking about my departure date, reached past the doors of the fridge to grab the eggs and milk. It was also astonishingly bare. When had the food stopped being delivered? Meals had been coming in and out of this house with such frequency, it never dawned on me to actually go and buy some.
I asked Gus to check on April, and he scurried off, happy to get back to his routine. A plate of scrambled eggs and toast later, I grabbed five bucks out of the change jar for Gus’s lunch money and we headed out the door. At the bus stop, the parents were cautious around me. After all, we were now the kids with no dad, but the kids treated Gus no differently than they had before everything changed. He wasn’t dad-less Gus; he was just Gus, and it was great.
I kissed him on the forehead and sent him off, then shut the front door, coming back in the warm house. April lounged in front of the television in her pajamas. “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked. “You should have been at school already.”
“Looking for something good to watch.” She had zero intention of moving.
“It’s a school day,” I said incredulously. She had to get her butt in gear or she wasn’t going to make it to first period on time. I knew for a fact it took seventeen minutes to get to the high school from our house.
“I’m not going.”
I ripped the remote from her hands and placed it on the farthest coffee table from her. If she wanted to fight me, at least she’d have to get off her butt to do it. “Yes, you most certainly are.”
“You’re not my mother.” Had she seriously used teenager logic on me? Maybe this was payback for all the hell I’d given my mother. “Besides, it’s a half day. They don’t really expect us to go.”
“Well, I’m your grandmother, and you will be going to school today.” Grams’s hands fastened the last piece of silver hair into her French twist as she came into the room, already dressed and accessorized with her single strand of pearls. Grams believed that class never slept. When April began to argue, Grams cut her off with a single arched eyebrow. “Your father died, not you. Go dress yourself, grab your backpack, and get to school.”
April didn’t bother fighting with her. We both knew that would get her nowhere. Instead, she got dressed then flew through the kitchen, snagging another five dollar bill out of the change jar as I filled my coffee cup w
ith more creamer than I should have. “Have a good day, darling,” I sang to her.
She flipped me the bird in reply and slammed the front door as her punctuation.
Grams reached for the sugar, sweetening her coffee as well.
“Grams, I think we’re out of food.”
“What do you plan to do about it?” She sipped her coffee and went to catch up on the news. Her point was made; I was old enough to deal with this.
Five minutes and a hundred deep breaths later, I gently cracked open the door to my mother’s bedroom. “Mom?” I called out gently, not wanting to alarm her. Not that much could. She was speaking now, but only when spoken to. She never offered anything to a conversation, nor did she seek anyone out. Mostly, she slept. If she had dreams like I did, the ones where Dad came and told her everything would be okay, I understood. I’d rather be asleep, too.
I crouched next to the bed. She looked like hell. Maybe today I could get her to shower or brush her hair. “Mom?” I touched her wrist, which was turned up in sleep, her palm open like a child’s. Her brown eyes fluttered open for just a moment. She was there with me. It was the smallest of seconds, less than a heartbeat, but then I saw it take her, the knowledge that he was still gone, that this was real life, and her eyes glazed over.
“Mom, I have to grocery shop today. The house has no food and the kids went back to school.” I could tell she processed what I said, but she didn’t respond. “I think Gus has hockey this week, but I don’t know. January’s wall calendar isn’t complete.” Usually, her calendars were meticulous, her appointments punctual.
I had to try again. She had to respond. “Mom, I don’t know if I should use your debit card, or the extra cash lying around, but I have to shop today. Is there anything I can get for you?”
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