“We need to stop confusing ourselves.” Her husband’s next smile wasn’t as wide. His wink was gone. But there was love in his gaze. “We’re at a crossroads. We can do anything we want from here, and we should.”
“We should what?” Her heart stumbled at the thought of the limitless future he was describing.
“We should figure out what our next… everything will be, instead of being so careful all the time and settling the way we have been. I learned that about myself through all of this.”
“From your therapist?” she asked.
He shook his head. “From you.”
“What?” What had she taught him?
“We’re not meant to settle. You’re right. We belong here, on Mimosa Lane and in Chandlerville. But not like this. Not like we’ve been living. We’ve let so much slip away, Samantha. It’s time for us to take the best parts back.”
Samantha.
Us.
Sam nodded.
It was magic, hearing her husband talk about searching and wanting again—dreaming of who they’d become, instead of clinging desperately to the life they’d lost.
There might still be broken things between them, but it felt so real, standing with Brian at sunrise and talking about what could be. The numbness, the separateness that had protected Sam for so long from the fear of letting her family down, was gone.
“I…” I love you, she wanted to say.
She’d already told him that when they’d made love. She hadn’t been able to hold the words in. They’d been so close, and it had felt so perfect, being in her husband’s arms again. But this was a different kind of awakening. This morning, something beyond their physical reconnection was pressing to the front of her mind. A truth. A need. A realization that had been three months—maybe even twelve years—in the making.
“I miss you,” she whispered instead. “I miss you and me so much.”
“I know you do.” He checked his watch. He dug his hand into his pocket, pulling out his smartphone and checking his appointment app. “I have to get on the road.”
“Where are you going?” The question gushed out before she could swallow it.
He’d half turned already toward his car, which he’d left at the end of Julia’s driveway. He pivoted back, a knowing gleam in his eyes, and he pulled her into a rib-crushing embrace. He kissed her, wet and wild with tongues mating, until she was clinging. She moaned when he set her away, his expression assessing and in control while she breathed too heavily to take in any real air.
“I’ll tell you all about it tonight,” he said. “Go mother our boys until they relent. I’ll take care of dinner and homework this evening. Then meet me here at sundown. Be my girl again tonight, Samantha, and I’ll tell you everything. I’ve been missing you, too.”
Cade stopped outside his brother’s door on the way down to breakfast.
Friday was usually the best day of the school week, only he wasn’t going to real school today. He hadn’t gone back since Monday. And that was great. It should have been great. Or at least it should have been better. Better than seeing the doctor Mom and Dad had taken him to on Wednesday, or going back to Chandler, where he didn’t want to be—not without Nate on the bus again, or in Mrs. Baxter’s class. He’d heard Nate wasn’t coming back at all this school year. They might not see each other again now until junior high.
His mom and dad had been serious about Cade being able to work at home, too. Mom had lesson plans and everything, like a real teacher, which was what she used to be, they’d said, when she’d never, ever talked about teaching before. Wasn’t that lucky?
Except… Cade didn’t feel lucky. Dad seemed a little better. And so did his mom. And Joshie was as happy as ever, even though he’d mostly stayed away from Cade all week. Because Cade was still mad… or something, and his brother wasn’t stupid enough to mess with him right now.
Cade didn’t know what he was. Which was okay, Dr. Mueller had said, as long as Cade figured out how he was feeling eventually, and then he figured out why. Only he didn’t want to know why. He just wanted it to stop. He missed Nate. He knew that. He missed how he used to not worry about anything except his family. And how school didn’t used to feel so scary. He missed how he didn’t used to be a jerk to everyone whenever he was feeling so bad.
He missed it all, he’d told the lady doctor who’d only wanted him to talk, when he’d wished Dr. Mueller would just tell him what to do or what to think or what to say to make everything better again. Because staying home wasn’t working, and Mom being there wasn’t working, and not seeing Nate still really wasn’t working, especially after their fight. Cade even missed pushing his little brother around, and then making Joshie laugh again, and then pushing him around some more.
It felt like he was missing everything, everyone. Only he didn’t really want to do any of the things or be with any of the people he was missing. Which was weird. And it was making him more mad than sad. All completely normal, the doctor had said, which was even weirder, an adult telling him to be mad about the stuff he didn’t want to feel mad about anymore.
Maybe Dr. Mueller was the one who needed to talk to someone.
She’d said feelings could be awful, but he had to feel them anyway and get them out. Otherwise, how was he ever going to make the worst of them leave him alone?
Cade knocked on his brother’s door.
He pushed it open.
“Joshie?” he said when the door snagged on a pile of clothes on the carpet. “Are you up?”
Joshua was dressed for school and on the floor near the end of his bed playing with his LEGOs. The kid was obsessed—more than usual after Monday. Cade wished he hadn’t been such a pain, and that his bratty brother wasn’t so quiet around him now. Joshie mostly just played by himself and stayed out of Cade’s way once he got home from school.
He was going to build big things for real one day, their dad always said. While Cade had always wanted to… write. Writing was what he used to do when he needed to think things through, the way his brother was doing more of his LEGOs this week than ever before.
Only writing didn’t make Cade feel better the way it used to. He hadn’t been able to write anything, even school stuff, since the shooting. Writing was his thing—his thing that he’d wanted to do big one day. It used to be his way to say how he felt. But even though Mom and Dad were acting like they were getting better, and they were saying that things with school would be better, too, and they said that things with him and Nate wouldn’t always be so lame if Cade just gave it time… Cade would look at a piece of paper, feeling awful and wanting to get it out the way he used to, and he… couldn’t.
And when he’d told the doctor that, all she’d done was ask if he thought he knew why.
Wasn’t that what his parents were paying her to tell them?
The only thing Cade knew as he sat on the floor next to his kid brother, who didn’t look up from the spaceship he’d been building and taking apart and then building again all week, was that he was sad all the time still. And mad. And lonely. And it wasn’t getting better for him the way it was for everyone else.
“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it.
It made him feel a little better, getting that out. Then things felt a little more like a real Friday, when Joshie glanced up at him and smiled through the gap that used to be his front teeth.
“For being a butthead?” his buttheaded little brother asked.
“For scaring you on Monday.” Cade looked at Joshua’s half-finished spacecraft, guessing which piece from the pile of scraps around them the kid might want next. He handed it over.
He used to be good at being a big brother. His parents had said so, over and over. He wanted to be good at it again. He’d thought a lot about it, since talking to Dr. Mueller about how his brother had tried to break up the fight between him and Nate, and how Joshie had cried when he’d begged them to stop, and then how he’d run to their mom. Cade had thought a lot since Wednesday about how fi
xing things with Joshua might make some of the sad go away.
“I wasn’t really scared,” Joshua said, leaning against Cade’s shoulder a little. “Not like when you almost got killed at school. That scared me more.”
“You know what scares me a lot?” Cade asked, just realizing it for sure himself.
“What?”
“Thinking of how much I’d be missing my snot-nosed little brother if Mom hadn’t stopped Troy from taking me and Nate out. I don’t ever want to miss you like that, Joshie. I don’t want any more weeks like this week, like we can’t do anything together and stuff, because I’m being such a dork.”
Joshua looked as sad now as Cade felt. “You’d have missed Mom and Dad, too, right? Even though you’re still kinda being weird with them?”
“Yeah. Them, too.”
“But Mom did stop Troy.” Joshua snapped the LEGO piece Cade had found onto his spaceship. “So there’s no reason to be scared now. Mom stopped him.”
“Yeah,” Cade said. But some of the mad was coming back, just because they were talking about her. “Mom can be really cool about some things.”
“She wants to come home.”
“Except she’s not home. Not all the way.”
“She wants to help you with school.”
“Except she’s not. She’s not helping me with the essay.” He’d begged her to get Mrs. Baxter and Ms. Hemmings to give him another assignment.
“You’re being mean to her about it.”
“I know, all right!” he yelled, probably scaring his little brother all over again. Because it felt scary, not being able to write. And not being able to be with his mom like before, even though she was spending even more time with him and letting him be however he was and not acting like it was making her feel bad, even when he was a pain.
“Why don’t you want to do Expressions?” Joshua asked, which made Cade feel lonely again, because no one in his family understood.
“I just… can’t.”
“Well, then I don’t want to do the contest this year, either.”
“You never want to do the contest.”
“Well, this year, if you don’t, I won’t.”
Cade laughed. “Thanks, but you should probably stop making Mom mad about that. Let me take the heat. You don’t have to.”
“You write all the time,” his brother said.
“Not anymore.” Not this essay.
“It’s just a stupid contest.”
“The topic is about heroes, okay?” Cade yelled at his brother. Why was it so hard for everyone, especially his mom, to understand why he didn’t want to write about that. “What do you know?”
Instead of yelling back, Joshie picked away at the LEGO piece that hadn’t worked on his spaceship after all.
“What do I know about heroes?” Cade said, a lot softer.
Joshie stared at him weird, scared, like he knew Cade was trying not to cry.
“You know Mom,” his kid brother said. “And I think she knows a lot about heroes. People are talking all the time about what she did to save you and Nate and Sally. And about stuff from before the shooting, the stuff from before she and Dad moved here that they don’t talk a lot about. The 9/11 stuff.”
“Yeah.”
The 9/11 stuff.
The hero stuff that made her mad and sad and scared, just like hero stuff made Cade now. Only she’d never talked to him or Joshua or anyone about it. At least not about what it had been like or why she was so messed up about it.
Every kid had studied 9/11 in school and watched the videos everyone else in the world had seen. But it wasn’t something his parents ever wanted to talk about, except to say that they’d lived in New York then, and that Mom had worked near Ground Zero, back when she had a job like so many of Cade’s friends’ moms.
But Cade had thought for years that 9/11 was what had made Mom so sad. And maybe even mad, too. Dad had slipped up once and said Mom had been a hero the day the Twin Towers fell, but then he wouldn’t talk about it when Cade had asked what he meant. Dad had said that Mom would be upset if they ever brought it up, so they shouldn’t. They should just leave it alone.
That was when Cade had known that something about being a hero that day was why she wasn’t like the other moms on the lane. Like Cade knew it was part of why she’d been living next door since she’d been a hero with Troy. It was part of why she and Dad weren’t getting along like before.
And she didn’t want to talk about it. Like Cade didn’t want to write about heroes. Only Mom didn’t have to talk about anything she didn’t want to, while he didn’t get a choice about his essay. And every time he tried to write it, all that came out was stuff about Nate and Troy and Bubba and that day. And he really, really didn’t want to think about that day, or write about that day, or feel anything from that day again—just like his mom and 9/11.
“Cade?” she called from downstairs. He’d heard her come in half an hour ago to make breakfast, after he’d heard Dad pull out of the driveway. “Joshua?”
“We’d better get down there,” his brother said. Joshie headed for the door, stopping to look back when Cade wasn’t right behind him. “You comin’? It’s Friday. One more day and it’s the weekend.”
“Yeah.” Cade followed. And for his little brother, he tried to sound like he wasn’t about to hurl again. “It’s Friday.”
“Wahoo!” Joshua cheered, running ahead and down the stairs. “Friday!”
“Wahoo.” Cade stared after him, getting madder and madder at their mom and the stupid essay she was going to hound him about doing all day.
Chapter Sixteen
Sam smiled down at the yellow piece of paper stuck on the counter beside the stove.
You’re the best woman, wife, and mother I know.
It’s time to make our dreams come true.
Now get to work, Teach!
Love, Brian
Lifting the oversize Post-it by its corner as if it were the most fragile of priceless possessions, she cupped her husband’s words to her heart.
She’d almost missed it. She’d been busy setting up for breakfast, whisking eggs and milk and cinnamon, warming her favorite frying pan, pulling out the thick slices of bread she used for French toast. She’d been distracted by that morning’s walk with Brian, in a wonderful place she hadn’t been in for so long. A better place, even, than after they’d made love Monday night.
The thought of walking with Brian again tonight was making everything brighter and lighter and exciting. She’d forgotten what it was like, being at the center of her husband’s attention—beyond his drive to take care of her. He wanted to spend more time with her, talk with her, and tell her everything he hadn’t about whatever he’d been doing this week. He was so proud of her sticking with their plans for Cade, even if their son was still struggling. He was encouraging her to do more, not less.
And he missed her, too. He still loved her. Despite everything they’d been through since January, if felt as if they were closer as a couple now than they’d been in years.
Love, Brian
He’d never, in their entire marriage, written her a note. Her husband knew numbers and dimensions, and he could create awe-inspiring buildings with them. But not so much with the putting words on paper, the way she’d put her heart on the line with each loving thought she’d scribbled to him. He’d bought her flowers and candy and precious little trinkets to show he cared, for important occasions and sometimes for no occasion at all. He’d always been thoughtful and kind and loving, in his own special way. But it was as if he’d wanted to speak her love language this morning.
Now get to work, Teach!
He was challenging her. But he was also fighting alongside her, leaving a part of himself there with her, his confidence filling her up until there was no room left for doubt. She patted his note against her heart. She was slipping his faith in her into the pocket of her sweats, determined to once again be that fearless teacher from her past, when she heard footstep
s thundering down the kitchen stairs.
Joshua hurtled toward her, his arms wide for the hug he demanded every morning.
“You’re making French toast!” He knocked her back a few feet with his enthusiasm, his arms wrapping around her waist. “With powdered sugar on top?”
“Is there any other way to eat it?”
“I’ll get the syrup.” And he was off to the fridge to dig out his bottle of maple, and the artificial blueberry concoction that Cade loved, though everyone else in the family thought it tasted like cough syrup.
“Ready for your test today, buddy?” She dropped the first slice of toast into the cast-iron skillet she’d bought at a tag sale, smiling down at the sizzling, bubbly goodness.
“I’m always ready for math.” Joshua owned his father’s confidence with all things numbers.
“How about your essay?”
As part of their overall grade, each student at Chandler, no matter the grade level, was expected to enter one of the categories for the national Expressions contest. It was actually a privately sponsored competition, but school districts all over the country challenged their kids and communities to participate. The goal was to express yourself as creatively as possible, to represent what was best about your community, and to compete for a spot in the digital “album” of award winners that was posted to the Internet each fall, which intermingled the work of entrants from all over.
A beautiful tapestry of sorts resulted—a feast for the eyes and ears that spotlighted the very best of what it meant to live in the United States, blending ages and regions and experiences and backgrounds until there were no barriers left. There were countless options to choose from, with each competition category linked to the arts in some way. And the least objectionable for both of Sam’s boys had always turned out to be the essay contest.
“Have you decided what you’re going to write about?” she pressed her youngest.
Joshie shook his head. He sat on his stool and looked down at the island, his playful excitement gone.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong?” she asked, trying not to sound as if she were begging. “You seem to be having an even harder time with the competition this year. I really want to understand.”
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