by Hagen, Casey
Me: Not a chance, flyboy.
Smiling down at the screen, I bit my lip while the dots waved longer this time, wondering what he’d come back with.
Falcon: Hawk’s about ten feet away and you’re not riding his dick so try again.
Oh, that had to hurt to type.
Good.
Me: Didn’t you have a flight today? Why are you bothering me?
Falcon: I did have a flight and completed it. Where. Are. You.
Me: Home
Falcon: Liar
So he’d already stopped at my house. I’d bet my savings on it, as meager as my savings was. Too bad he’d only done it to micromanage how I cared for my injury and not to fuck. Who the hell did he think he was popping up whenever he wanted and activating all my damn hot spots anyway? Especially now. I needed my hot spots on full lockdown with my parents around. Because ick.
Me: How did you get my number?
Falcon: Stole it.
Well, surprise, surprise. Fine, he wanted to know where I was, I’d show him. I snapped a picture of the basketball hoop by the garage, the same hoop he and Ethan used almost every night after dinner, rain or shine. I hesitated after attaching the photo, my thumb hovering, my mouth running dry.
This might hurt him. I had no way of knowing if he’d been back here since the funeral. He certainly hadn’t visited my parents, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t rolled through town to…to what? Reminisce? Grieve? A wave of nostalgia?
Yeah, right. At least, it’s not like he ever worried about me if he had.
I snorted and clicked send. I had a hard time picturing him roaming over old stomping grounds when closure seemed to be the furthest thing from his mind. My guess, the raw anger coursing through him now had as much to do with Ethan as it did his dad, and he relished gripping relentless angst in his strong hands. Some people had security blankets, a favorite stuffed animal, a good luck charm from their childhood—but Falcon, he clung to animosity. He hadn’t dealt with shit, and I was done worrying about his feelings. Time for him to put on his big boy pants and face it like the rest of us.
I stared down at the screen, watching for three wavy dots to appear, and nothing.
Say something, damn you!
Biting my lip, I waited. The realization barreling into me that my ability to let the past go and reach for the future might be inexplicably tethered to his ability to do the same. My stomach clenched at the idea I might not be in full control of moving on.
“Emory!” my mom shrieked as the door flew open.
I jumped, my guilty heart shooting into my throat, and my cell phone clattering to the steps. “Shit.”
“Language,” she admonished as though I were fourteen again.
I snatched my phone and shoved it in my purse. “Sorry.”
Amazing how all it took from my mother was the one word to suck the professional wedding planner living in the city right out of me and thrust me right back into my place as Amy and Mike Brooks’ child.
“All forgiven. Now hug me, girl, and tell me what brought you all the way up here to surprise us,” she said, wrapping her arms around me.
I hugged her back and held my breath. The tightness in my heart eased when her arms squeezed me with motherly love and not the desperation I’d grown so used to in her embrace. Her curly hair tickled my cheek, and I turned into the brush of familiar comfort.
“I just—I needed to escape the city for a while, and my schedule lightened up a bit so it seemed like the perfect time,” I mumbled into her hair.
“Your dad is going to be so excited. How long can you stay?” she asked, pulling back, framing my face with her soft hands, examining me the way mothers always did.
I’d only planned on dinner, but after his hug, a few hours wouldn’t cut it. I needed to wallow in some feelings for a while. And when I went back to the city, I’d be stronger again. Maybe that’s what hit me so hard last night with Falcon. When he arrived on my doorstep, he’d marched our past right into my safe place, and now I desperately needed to contain it.
Only he texted me—one more sure sign we weren’t done with one another and there might be a whole lot more to follow.
I’d do everything I could to forge a divide between past and present. My sanity depended on it.
“I can spend the night and head back to the city in the morning,” I said, taking her wrists and ducking my head, hiding the turmoil lingering inside. This fight for my career, for my peace of mind, it belonged to me and me alone.
“Excellent. I’m so glad you surprised us, honey,” she said, giving my shoulders a squeeze as she led me inside and closed the door. “Miiiiiiike!”
“Yeah!” her dad called from the back of the house.
“Get your butt out here and hug your daughter,” she called.
The sound of metal clattering to the counter echoed from the kitchen. Without another word my father strode down the hall, wiping his hands on a towel. The minute he looked at me, his eyes full of longing, I didn't know what happened, but the thread of control I’d been white-knuckling snapped.
His arms swallowed me whole, wrapping me in his quiet strength. I closed my eyes and breathed him in while I clutched at his shirt and absorbed the woodsy scent of his aftershave. This was the man who’d held me together when my mom couldn’t. The man who stayed strong while my mother broke. I didn’t blame her for it. I couldn’t begin to imagine what burying a child had done to her, and she’d never tell me. I recognized her stoic silence for what it was, her way of making sure her unique pain never became a reality for me.
But when my nightmares came, the constant replay of her refusing to let go of my brother’s still body, my dad made sure I didn’t break too. Those nights, when those memories robbed me of air, with my hair drenched in my own tears, lying in a pool of sweat in my own bed, he kept me from shattering under the onslaught.
He may have broken, but he never let me see it. And we both hid the unspoken secret of how watching my mother grieve delivered a soul-crushing blow to any hope for my own peace after Ethan’s death.
My father changed for me then. He’d proven it didn’t matter what happened; he could shift and change, be what I needed him to be. The last man standing when I’d lost the other two men I looked up to the most in this world.
“My girl,” he whispered into my hair.
“Daddy,” I whispered back, the sound full of everything I wished I could confess to him. I didn’t usually call him that, not after I’d become an adult, but I needed him to know how much it meant for him to hug me like this. Like I was still his princess.
Like our family hadn’t broken into jagged pieces.
As though there might be hope for our future. God, I needed a flicker of hope so damn much right now.
His arms loosened and he pulled back, his damp eyes a darker shade of mine. “What brought this surprise on?”
“Just needed a break and I’m at a slow point with work so I figured why not?” My gut twisted at how easily the lie slipped from my lips especially when I hadn’t been able to conjure up a lie to get out of my date the night before.
Even if I changed my mind and wanted to come clean, I sensed something different in this house since the last time I’d been here. The energy arced between the three of us, and the curiosity in me spiked to sleuth levels.
He cleared his throat and swallowed hard. “We’ve missed you, angel.”
“I’ve missed you guys too. More than you know,” I said, my words not only referring to the four months it had been since they spent the day with me in the city, but the years they’d been just out of reach, slogging through their own misery.
I followed them into the kitchen where my dad had been working. A cookie sheet lay on the counter next to the cutting board piled with chunks of onion, peppers, mushrooms, and pineapple. A glass bowl held teriyaki marinated steak tips.
I breathed in the sweet scent, and my stomach growled, breaking the silence.
“I take it you approve
of the menu,” my mom said with a laugh. “Now sit. Tell us about your work and why you’re hobbling on your foot.”
I pulled out the stool along the island and kept my back to the table where we used to eat our meals as a family. The oak once gleamed in the light. The scent of orange oil clung to the wood. We’d drop our backpacks in the chairs next to us and do our homework there while Mom and Dad asked us about our day and worked on dinner.
Now it sat covered in craft projects and junk mail separated for recycling. Tonight we’d eat at the island, the same way we had every night after Ethan died.
Ten years and I still struggled to reconcile how it all went so damn wrong. My battle to make sense of the past—I had to wonder if at some point the unanswered questions became what bound me to this house instead of the happy memories I should be holding on to.
Logically, I knew what led to disaster that night. Ethan got drunk and got behind the wheel. But what the hell was he thinking? He had it all right there in the palm of his hands. He’d made it into the single most elite flight school in the country, his best friend by his side. He knew better than to drive drunk.
The years since hadn’t offered any clarity, and I had to admit the time had come to accept no measure of time would.
I had to let go.
Larger than life, Ethan had been my hero. He shined so damn bright he filled our family up with charm, humor, and an unintentional high standard which only had me fighting a flash of panic over my recent failures. The pressure to succeed, the drive to fulfill my dreams for myself and for the sibling who’d never get the chance to fulfill his own suffocated me.
My idyllic home and upbringing cracked under the strain of his death and the weight of expectations that climbed on my shoulders after. The paint curled away from the wood. The shutters faded under the assault of the sun and dangled askew from rusty nails. Weeds rose from the dirt, choking out the beauty of the blooms. Replacing my view...the bottomless well of grief in my parents’ eyes.
But now, finally, a content happiness surrounded my parents and I should be grateful—I mean, I was. It was childish, but I just wanted my old life back. Clearly, that was one of the pieces remaining I also needed to pack away.
I should tell them the truth about my job, but I just couldn’t. They’d been through so damn much and slowly, in the past two or three years, their smiles had started reaching their eyes again and lingered longer because they’d become genuine and not simply veneer.
I couldn’t let them down. Maybe they’d thrust expectations of success on me, or maybe I’d taken them on myself. I didn’t really know. Either way, I wasn’t willing to test the fragile peace.
I dragged myself out of my funk and turned my attention to the question. “The toes are bruised. I stubbed them good the other night, but nothing serious. The hobble is more from the gauze wrapping them than actual pain. As for work, the worst of the wedding season is over,” I said, licking my dry lips as I straddled the line between truth and lies. “Now a good friend of mine is hoping I’ll branch out on my own and take her on as a silent partner.”
“Really? Doesn’t that require a lot of planning and money to get going?” my mom asked, grabbing the skewers out of the drawer.
“Well, her wallet won’t be silent,” I said with a laugh to dismiss my mother’s concern, the one that mirrored my own. “It’s a risk, but I haven’t decided anything yet.”
Technically not a lie since we hadn’t moved much beyond the one buzzed conversation and a few texts the next morning where Soraya left me hanging with instructions to hold tight because she might have something interesting for me to check out in the new venture department.
Her three little waving dots had come to a standstill like Falcon’s did after I dropped the photo of the basketball hoop. With Soraya, I knew she liked to have her information straight before she got my hopes up.
With Falcon, those missing dots could mean anything: a snit, broken fingers, or I’d freaked him out. And men thought women were hard to figure out.
“I wouldn’t jump into anything, honey. Be careful. It sounds like you have a lucrative setup right where you are and room for advancement. A business of your own will suck away all of your free time for years potentially,” my mother said, the ever practical one.
If she only knew my room for advancement had been sucked away by an entitled twit wit of a niece with zero experience in the wedding business, and a newly installed plastic rack up top. I knew guys liked to give good motorboat and all, but how did you get up in between two flesh boulders and not walk away with black eyes or a head injury?
Petty alert.
But at least I owned it.
“I get it, but it’s not always like that though. Look at Daddy; he’s got his own business, and I don’t remember a time he wasn’t there for us—me,” I said, stumbling through my words, never sure if I was supposed to acknowledge there had been two of us or default to only child status.
“Yes, I was always there for you and Ethan, but…”
I wasn’t ready for the sound of Ethan’s name coming from my father’s mouth. I studied them both, the way they leaned into one another with the statement, how he searched my mom’s face and she reassured him with a soft smile.
“Well, I don’t expect you to remember since you were so young, but my business went from a corporate position, to a contractor position, and finally to self-employment,” he said, giving the meat a final stir in the marinade. “I didn’t have to build it from the ground up. You would and it takes time.”
I propped my chin in my hand. “So you don’t think I should do it?”
“Not saying that at all. I don’t know anyone who’d be more tenacious going after something they want. I’m just saying it will take most of your time. Know what you have to give up to make it successful. Go in with your eyes wide open.” He shook his head and pointed the dripping spoon at me with a smile. “I don’t know what your social life looks like since you never tell us, but building a new business will cut into any relationships you might have.”
“Subtle, Dad,” I said, rolling my eyes.
He glanced back at me, his eyebrows raised, fake-ass innocence all over his face. “So there are no guys I need to know about?”
“I’m twenty-six.”
“And still my little girl,” he said.
“No guys right now, Dad.”
“And no girls?”
“Ummm, no, but thanks for being so progressive. I think.”
“Mike, leave her alone. She wouldn’t hide anything from us. If there’s something to tell, she’ll speak up.”
Thanks, Mom, for crawling right into my guilt bank and tapping on my secrets. Shit. They’d given me the perfect open to bring up Falcon. But the minute I tried to say his name, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and the words died in my throat.
“Listen, I know my worth. I know what I deserve.” After all, hadn’t I left a job because I finally reached the limit of bullshit scraps I was willing to munch on? Not that my parents could know that, but I knew, and despite the fear, putting my foot down bolstered my confidence. At least for the moment.
I slid off my stool, rounded the counter, and leaned into the man I admired so much. Propping my chin on his biceps, I peered up at him. “I’ll know when the right man comes along, because he’s going to make room for me to chase my dreams. He’ll be filled with pride when he watches me shine, just like you.”
My dad’s throat worked, and his eyes grew damp all over again. I loved that about him, the special way his unwavering strength included showing his emotions.
He nodded and kissed my forehead.
I closed my eyes, absorbing his affection, knowing later, when the time arrived to reflect, I’d need it to draw on.
“Tell me about work,” I said, tired of my own problems. After all, they sure as hell weren’t going anywhere.
“Well, I recently set up a security system for Dunn & Monroe Law Offices in Clayton.”
&n
bsp; “The best security system he’s designed yet,” my mother said, whipping past us on her way to the sink to wash her hands.
We settled into a rhythm working side by side while my mother flitted around the kitchen and they filled me in on their work, the new seafood restaurant on Main Street, the closure of my mom’s favorite secondhand store next to my favorite indie bookstore, and the death of Mrs. Cane, the head librarian at our local library for the past thirty-six years.
We grilled kabobs and my dad surprised me by lighting the tiki torches on the deck and taking the food out there. We savored the meal while catching up, drinking beer, and for once I got through the conversation without a lump jammed in my throat and tears burning the backs of my eyes.
But the best part…my parents held hands again. My dad settled back, his beer propped against his knee, and without even looking at my mother, he reached for her. I watched her fingers slide into his, a small piece of me slipping into place with it. The three of us, we weren’t what I thought we’d be together, but maybe we weren’t the pieces left behind anymore either.
My muscles slowly relaxed. I leaned my head back as orange streaks chased out the few thin clouds left in the sky. The dip of the sun had Falcon’s words from the other night echoing through my mind all over again. I took a deep breath and decided it was time.
“I ran into Falcon Friday night,” I said, the words tumbling out in a rush.
I glanced over in time to see the faraway look creep into my mother’s eyes and although slight, I noticed my father’s jaw tighten a fraction.
For a brief moment, I wished I could suck the words right back out of the air. But I didn’t want to pretend anymore. I didn’t want to rack up lies by omission, turning them into more balls in the air to juggle, and giving them power to steal my pride.
“Oh, where did you see him?” my mother asked, her voice wobbling on the words.
“Rigby’s Pub. You remember Soraya?” I was reaching for something to infuse into the story, something normal for my mother to focus on. “You guys met her, Graham, and their kids when you came to the city. Anyway, she took a bunch of us out to celebrate my leave—uh, celebrate the end of a successful wedding season.”
