“It’s the coolest thing ever. I can’t wait to see how much weight it takes to break it!” His eyes lit up.
Mom made the universal quiet-while-I’m-talking-on-the-phone hand gesture that looked like she was conducting assault maneuvers. Gus and I both stifled a grin and complied.
“Sure, that’s not a problem, Chloe. We’re just having some turkey. Why don’t you bring the boys over and eat with us?” Mom paused, listening. “Oh, we could care less what you’re wearing. Just drive over.” She leaned back to check the time on the clock. “I’m expecting you in fifteen minutes. No excuses.” With a smile, she hung up. “Gus, add three more places to dinner.”
“Mrs. Rose is coming?” I pulled down the plates from the higher cabinet for Gus.
Mom smoothed the lines of her apron, a habit I’d learned meant she had more on her mind than what she let on. “She doesn’t sound well.” Distracted, she went about the kitchen, stirring gravy and pulling the turkey out to rest.
I jumped in to help Gus, who asked, “Who is Mrs. Rose?”
I readjusted his fork to the correct side of the plate and centered it. “You remember. Her husband was with Daddy?”
Recognition lit his eyes. “Yeah! Carson and Lewis’s mom!”
“Exactly.”
April danced into the dining room as we set the dishes on the table. Thank God that outfit wasn’t new. She’d quit shopping once Mom had put her into therapy. “Nice to see ya, Ember.” She smiled and took her seat.
“Nice to show up and help, April,” Mom sang back.
April shrugged at me. “How are things up at your place?”
I knew what and who she meant. “There’s nothing new to report.”
“Damn shame that is, to let someone like him just walk—”
“April.” My voice was sharp even to my own ears. “No.”
“Someone needs to set you straight.” She ran her hands down her hair.
“What, like you’re a relationship expert?” She’d barely been back with Brett for two weeks. I was shocked he’d taken her back at all.
“You’re unhappy.” Her eyes bored into mine, resolute to getting her point across. “You deserve to be happy.”
My voice softened with my temper. “I don’t need a guy to make me happy. I haven’t been single since I was seventeen. These last few months have sucked, yes, but I’ve learned so much about myself that I wouldn’t have.” She arched a skeptical eyebrow. “No, really. I can repair a garbage disposal, and change a tire, and spend Friday night with my girlfriends or alone. I have missed Josh; I still miss him every day, but I have to be okay alone before I can ever be with someone else.”
“So good to see my girls getting along.” Mom tossed a skeptical look our way and handed me the bread bowl.
“You know us,” April chimed in with a wink, dispelling the last of the tension.
In that moment, everything seemed so normal, so peaceful. I thought about telling Mom about Vanderbilt. It was on the tip of my tongue for the next ten minutes while we listened to the details of Gus’s science project and April prattle on about prom. When Mom asked me what I thought about my classes, I opened my mouth.
The doorbell rang, and Gus was out of his seat, anxious for his friends and yanking open the door with all of his body weight.
“Gus! Cool! Did you see the new Bakugan we got?” The boys were immediately lost in conversation.
They looked . . . unkempt, which was saying something for the normal Pottery Barn look the Rose kids sported. Dirt covered their shirts and holes consumed the knees of their jeans. Their hair had grown long enough to brush out of their eyes.
“Chloe?” My mom gasped, standing.
Mrs. Rose wore a pair of yoga pants with a torn Colts sweatshirt. Her hair frizzed every which way until it culminated in a knot on top of her head, and her makeup ran down her face. For someone who normally looked like she just stepped out of Ann Taylor, seeing her like this scared me.
She walked in, her dead eyes searching for Mom. “June.”
Mom rushed around me, taking Chloe by the arm. “What’s going on?”
“God, June. It’s supposed to be next week, and I don’t think he’s coming home!” She crumbled, Mom only slowing her descent as they fell together to the floor. Ugly sobs tore through the room, ripping a hole straight through me to the part that hadn’t healed yet from losing Dad. “I just kept pushing through . . . I never realized . . .” Her words were punctuated with hiccupping cries in my mother’s lap. “The unit comes home next week. When those planes come in, he won’t be on one. He won’t be on one! It’s supposed to be over, but this is never going to end because he’s not coming home!”
April covered her mouth with her hand. I shuddered through a deep breath and forced a smile to my stricken face. “Boys! Let’s have a special dinner in the den! The Avengers looks great on that big TV!”
Carson and Lewis looked at each other with wary eyes, and I recognized that look all too well. It was the same one April and I had just exchanged, the glance between siblings that spoke without words. They were so small, only Gus’s age, and they didn’t have bigger siblings to look out for them.
“Gus, why don’t you take them to the den?”
Gus’s somber eyes dragged away from Mom and Chloe, who was still sobbing on the floor, leaving wet, dark streaks down Mom’s chevron apron. “Yeah, it’s really cool.” He faked a smile that didn’t reach his little eyes and pulled the boys away. “I love Iron Man!”
I sighed at the sheer perfection of Gus’s heart.
“Captain America all the way!” Carson answered as they raced the opposite way into the den.
“Hulk! Dude, he like tears off his clothes he’s so massive!” Lewis added from a distance.
Mom moved Chloe to the couch, cradling her head against her chest as the younger woman let out sobs that ripped through the scar tissue I’d grown over my grief. Chloe had held everything together, and I’d been so jealous that she was functioning while Mom was basically catatonic. This was nothing to be jealous over now.
April and I gathered up plates, making open-faced hot turkey sandwiches instead of the traditional fare Mom had intended. She carried them in to the boys while I traded their glasses for juice boxes. Comforting another widow or not, Mom would flip if they spilled open glasses of juice on the den carpet.
We situated the boys, turned on the movie, and left them to their Marvel heroes, softly shutting the door behind us to lock them into their world. April sagged against the wall just outside the room. “Jesus, Ember, is this ever going to be over?”
I leaned next to her, drawing her under my arm. “I think it’s always going to hurt. It’s always going to be there.” I blinked back tears. “But we’re getting better at living with it every day.”
“Just when I think I’m getting past it, something happens and it jumps in my face again, as bad as that first day.” Her voice broke.
“I know.” I looked up at the family pictures hung along the opposite wall, a collage of school years and events that made our family what we were, and it hurt because we wouldn’t be that way again. “It still floors me, too, April. I promise.”
Chloe’s sobs echoed through the house, reminding us that grief had no mercy, time limit, or expiration date. I held my sister as Mom held Chloe, unable to give any advice or utter a word that could lessen the blow we’d been dealt. We were stumbling through, even all these months later. I rested my head against April’s, thankful we weren’t alone, that we had each other.
“I told Chloe to sleep in your room, Ember. I hope you don’t mind,” Mom said, tossing her apron into the hamper.
“Not at all.” I slid the last dish into the dishwasher as April wiped the counters. “We put Lewis and Carson down in Gus’s room.”
“Good. I’m glad they have one another.”
There wasn’t much else to say, so we cleaned up the rest of the kitchen in comfortable, sad silence.
“I’m headed u
p to bed. Ember, are you going to your place tonight?” April asked.
“Yeah, I have class in the morning.”
She hugged me. “Thank you. I know I don’t say it enough. Thank you.” Before I could respond, she skipped out of the room and up the stairs.
“She’s getting better,” I said.
“We all are. I think these next couple weeks might be a little rough on us, but we’ll get through.” Mom quirked her eyebrow as I sanitized the counter April had only used a sponge on, and straightened the knife block. “How are you doing? I don’t get to ask you as often as I’d like.”
I leaned back against the cabinet. “I’m okay. I feel like I’m in this excruciatingly long period of adjustment, but I’m okay, under control.” She waited for me to talk, as was her way. She never pushed me; she knew better. Dad, I could open up to in a heartbeat, but Mom and I had always struggled with communication. Too much alike, I suppose. “My grades are good, and living with Sam is great.”
“I’m glad you two reconnected.”
“Me, too. You always think these are your forever friends on graduation day, when everyone is signing yearbooks, but only a couple really stay. Everybody just sort of . . . fades away.”
Mom pulled two K-Cups down and turned her back to brew a couple lattes. “The people stay when you make an effort for them.” Her hand paused on the coffee cup as she sucked in a deep breath. “Ember, there’s been so much going on for you this year, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.” A mocking laugh slipped free. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for myself. If I had realized what was going on with Riley . . .”
“There’s nothing you could have done. His mistakes were his own. If anything, his cheating showed me how much of my life I’d wrapped around him. I changed everything for him, for this plan we’d created together that I never really liked to begin with.”
She handed me a cup of chai latte, and I took a tentative sip. Delicious, and enough caffeine to power me through the homework that waited for me at the apartment.
“I liked Riley,” she admitted. “I liked that he fit with our family, that you two seemed to have everything worked out. If I had known what he was doing, I’d have put his balls in a vise.”
I sputtered, leaving a trail of latte droplets on the kitchen island. We both burst out laughing and Mom recovered enough to clean up every spot. “In all seriousness, I never would have pushed you toward him.”
“I know. On paper, he was perfect.”
“And Josh?” She slipped it in so easily, but it still sent a streak of pain through me.
“Josh is in the army; well, the Guard.” It had been over two months, and this was the first I’d told Mom. “If he was getting out, then maybe, but he’s going commissioned after graduation. I can’t do it, Mom. I won’t do it.”
She quietly sipped her coffee before answering. “Do you love him?”
I swallowed, struggling for words. “Yes. More than I ever thought was possible. I can’t seem to get over him, but I will. Once he’s gone, I will.” It was more of a promise to myself than a statement to Mom. “Besides, he’s more than moved on.”
“You can’t work through this?” A fire came into her eyes that I hadn’t seen in months. She gave a damn about something. “Love isn’t something you throw away lightly.”
“I’m not living this life, Mom. I want stability, and roots, and one house for the next twenty years where my kids can mark the door frames as they grow. The army is a deal breaker.”
She slightly narrowed her eyes, as if judging whether or not the subject was closed. Wisely, she moved on. “You sacrifice too much, December.” Her eyes darted to the refrigerator, the counter, and the floor before she brought them up to mine. “I need—” Her voice sounded clogged, and she cleared her throat. “I need to say thank you. Thank you for what you did. Thank you for being here, for taking care of everything when I couldn’t.”
“No problem, Mom.” The answer was so easy now, automatic.
“It was a problem. You gave up your school, your life, your plans. Don’t you think I know what your plans mean to you? You gave up too much.”
“Yeah, and it sucked. But we’re family, and someone had to do it. So I did, end of story. Anyone else would have done the same.”
“No, they wouldn’t have!” I cringed as she raised her voice. “You carried this whole house. You carried me! No daughter should have to carry her mother.” She slammed her cup down on the counter.
This had to stop. “What do you want, Mom? Do you want me to tell you I was angry? That I regret leaving Boulder? What’s going to make you feel better?”
“Yes! I need to know how you felt. I never asked how you felt!” Color rose in her cheeks. “I want you as angry about it as I am!”
Something snapped, setting me free. “Fine!” My cup clanged into the sink, my forgotten latte draining. “Yes, I was angry! I was jealous that Chloe Rose held it together for her kids, but you couldn’t manage to get out of bed! I was lost, and confused, and everything went from ordered and perfect to this giant fucking mess of . . . shit!” My chest heaved, trying to keep up with my racing heartbeat. Oh God, I was going to be sick. “You lost your husband, but I lost my father and my mother. I lost my boyfriend, and my plans, and my home, and you couldn’t be bothered to show up for me, for any of us.”
“I know.” Her admission was soft, but I was too far gone to pause my reckless tirade.
“You know why I can’t be with Josh? Because I can’t do this again!” I circled my arms around my head. “I can’t be you! I can’t open that door and see them standing there, ready to end everything I ever knew. I can’t.” The tears I’d fought all night, no, the tears I’d fought since December, overflowed and streaked angry paths down my face.
Mom took a step toward me, but I fended her off with an outstretched hand. “No. You don’t see the worst part; that everything was to try and make up for what I did.”
“What could you have possibly done?” She stepped forward tentatively.
“God, Mom! I opened the damn door! You said not to because you knew! And I opened it and let them in. They destroyed our family, and I opened the damn door!”
She closed the distance between us, pulling me against her tighter than she had since I was a small child. “No, Ember. No. There’s nothing you could have done to stop this. Nothing. No part of this is your fault. I should have opened the door. I’m so sorry I wasn’t stronger. So sorry.”
I sobbed against my mother until there were no more tears to be had, not over Dad, Riley, the plans, the colleges, or even Josh. I cried myself clean.
Then I stopped.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I waited almost a week, until Saturday morning, before I decided the price of my integrity was hearing from my dad. I leaned forward in my computer chair, staring at the blinking cursor on the Gmail account. I typed slowly: [email protected].
Password. Right. This was going to be a bitch. I typed in his birthdate and the server spat it back at me. I tried my mom’s name. Declined. A little white box popped up in the center of the screen. “Would you like your hint?”
“Hell yes, I would,” I murmured, clicking on the “ok” button.
The page loaded, and the hint popped up.
Glowing dim as an ember
Things my heart used to know
Chills raced down my arms and legs, as though he was standing right behind me, singing to me again. “Daddy,” I whispered. I clicked on the sign-in again.
Password: OnceUponADecember
His e-mail opened and relief rushed through me, tingling every nerve in my body. I had more of him. The letter wasn’t the last piece anymore. These e-mails weren’t enough, but they would do. Here were his letters, his words. A primal need to claw through the screen gripped me, crying to bury myself in what was left of him, snuggle down among the typed words and find my father.
I looked through his inbox, only glancing on the unopened ones. I di
dn’t care what other people said, only Dad. There was Grams, Mom, Gus, April . . . me. I clicked on my last e-mail to him, a few days before they came to the door.
Hey, Daddy,
Everything’s great, stop worrying about me. I’m headed down to the Springs tomorrow to spend Christmas with Mom, April, and Gus. No worries, I remember where you hid Mom’s special present, and I won’t let her fall asleep before it’s Santa time. I really wish you could be here. It’s not the same without you.
I love you,
December
My last words to him had been of love and our family. I was good with that. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would. He’d been concerned about me giving away all my dreams for Riley, especially the second year when I dropped my English/History double major pairing and picked up education instead.
But it’s not like I could tell him he’d been right.
I scanned his sent box, my breath catching. Josh Walker.
My finger clicked it open before my conscience could stop it.
Hey Josh,
I’m glad you got the files. I’m sorry I had to scan them in, but I know how fast you needed them, and I didn’t know how long they would take if I used snail mail. I’m glad you’re playing again; you’ve always been a sight out there on the ice. I’m so proud of what you’ve accomplished, and you should be, too. Checking our return dates, I’ll be flirting with the timing, but I might be able to make it back to commission and pin you. I’m so honored that you asked, and I would like nothing more than to see a man like you become an officer. Oh, and thank you so much for uploading the video of the game. Gus is growing too damn fast.
VR,
Justin Howard
I sat in stunned silence. He hadn’t just known Josh, they’d been friends. I knew they’d chatted during hockey practices and such, but never imagined he’d corresponded with him. No wonder Josh had looked so shaken up at the funeral.
I glanced through the e-mail again, my eyes catching on the word “file.” What had Dad sent him from Afghanistan that he couldn’t get back here? I dropped my scruples—hell, I’d already checked them at the door—and opened Dad’s “sent” file, and filtered it to Josh’s e-mail.
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