The Long and Winding Road

by T. J. Klune

  He grew up. He stumbled, sure. We all did. But he grew up, and he’s found his way home again. The road may have been long and winding, but he’s here. We all are.

  We survived her.

  We would survive this.

  I breathe and breathe and breathe.

  Otter’s there, because of course he is.

  His hands are on me, rubbing up and down my arms, like he’s trying to see if I’ve been injured even though he knows I’m not. “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey,” I say back.

  “You okay?”

  I look up at him, at that face that’s so familiar and so loved. He’s concerned for me, brow furrowed, the lines around his eyes pronounced. How different things could have been. She didn’t give him to me, but I can’t help but think just how far the road would have taken me away from him if she hadn’t made the choices she did.

  “No,” I tell him honestly. “But I think I will be.”

  “Of course you will,” he says, lips quirking slightly. “We’ve got a lot to look forward to.”

  “We do, don’t we?”

  “Wanna go home?”

  I take his hand in mine and don’t look at the empty house again. “Yeah.”

  He leads me away.

  She’ll always be with you, it whispers in the back of my head. Whether you want her to be or not.

  IT’S AN eight-hour drive back to Seafare.

  We think about stopping overnight in Portland but decide against it as the call of home is that much stronger.

  The radio is quiet in the background, and we talk and talk and talk about what’s going to happen to us.

  “What do you think?” he asks me outside of Hood River.

  “About?” I ask, and I’m drowsy, his hand in my lap, palm up, and I’m tracing his fingers.

  “About what we’re having. The other one. Do you want to know?”

  I’m a little fuzzy, so it takes a moment for me to get what he’s talking about. “Oh. I—you know, I thought I would, now that we’re having two, but I—I don’t know. I still feel like I want it to be a surprise. We know one, but the other can be a surprise.”

  He nods slowly. “Me too. I don’t want to know until the day of.”

  “You sure?”

  “Think so. Won’t matter to me either way.”

  I roll my eyes. “Only because we already know there’s a boy.”

  He grins crookedly. “Nah. And you’ll never get me to admit it.”

  “Just our luck, it’ll end up being triplets.”

  A pained look crosses his face. “You just had to say that, didn’t you.”

  “Hell, maybe there will be quadruplets—”

  He laughs. It’s a wonderful sound. “Maybe next time.”

  “Uh, let’s just get through these two first, and then we’ll talk.” I don’t want to talk about after or next time. I don’t know if I can go through all of this again.

  “Bear.”

  I shrug, looking down at his hand.

  He laughs incredulously. “Bear. Hey. Look at me.”

  “You’re driving.”

  “Bear.”

  I raise my head again.

  He glances over at me, making sure I’m watching him. “It’s okay. Of course it is. I would have been fine with how things were before. We didn’t have to do any of this—”

  “Don’t.”

  He looks confused. “What are you—”

  “You get to ask for things,” I tell him, a little angry on his behalf. “You do. This isn’t just about me. Or Tyson. You don’t have to sacrifice things all the time, Otter. You get to ask for things. You deserve to. It may take me a while, but I’ll give you anything I can. So yes, this is something you wanted, and this is something I wanted with you, so yes. Yes. We had to. We get to.”

  His voice is rough when he says, “I only ever wanted to be with you. That would have been enough.”

  “You don’t get to just have enough. Not while I’m around. And since I apparently have super sperm, I’ll give you more than enough.”

  He pulls a face. “And… moment ruined.”

  “I can’t help it if I’m extremely potent.”

  “Moment ruined even further.”

  “Better be careful, or I might end up getting you pregnant.”

  He snorts. “So I can tell you that I’m fat with my love for you?”

  “Hey! That was a goddamn good story! In fact, I’m considering continuing it one day.”

  “You made me a pregnant were-otter.”

  “Our kids will need new bedtime stories,” I remind him.

  “That’s good that you already have plans to traumatize them.”

  “Traumatize? I told it to the Kid when he was little, and look how he turned—and that really doesn’t help prove my point at all, does it?” I hate it when I prove the points of others.

  “Eh. Not quite.”

  We’re quiet for a little while after that, talk radio murmuring and the miles melting away.

  Then, “I don’t care.”

  “About?” he asks.

  “If they’re both boys. Or if one is a girl. Or if they’re somewhere in between. We’re gonna love them, you know? We’re gonna love them a lot, I think.”

  “Yeah,” Otter says, glancing over at me and winking, like he doesn’t even know what that does to my heart. “A lot a lot.”

  “What about you?”

  “Any combination is fine with me.”

  “Because you’ve got your boy.”

  “Won’t ever say it.”

  “We have so much shit to do.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We have to duplicate everything.”

  “Yep.”

  “And we have to come up with names too.”

  “There is that.”

  I look at his profile. This man. This wonderful, wonderful man. “I can’t wait to do this with you. You’re going to be the best dad. These kids are going to be so damn lucky to have you.”

  He grunts like he’s been punched in the stomach and immediately signals to pull off on the shoulder of the small two-lane highway we’re on. There’s no one else around.

  He puts the vehicle in park, and I’m about to ask what the hell he’s doing when he unbuckles my seat belt and pulls me over. He’s kissing me, and it’s warm and wet and oh so fierce, his big hand on the back of my head, holding me in place. It doesn’t matter that we’ve done this for years. It doesn’t matter that I know every inch of him. He still sets my skin on fire, my heart stumbling in my chest. He’s whispering against my mouth, telling me he loves me, he loves me, and I’m laughing.

  It’s good. I never thought it could be this good.

  Eventually, we drive on.

  THEY’RE WAITING for us when we get home, standing side by side on the porch of the Green Monstrosity. It’s odd, really, to see her there. Not because she’s so new, but because of how she looks like she belongs.

  Izzie’s holding Ty’s hand, and her dark eyes are wide, and she’s nervous about something. Ty’s talking to her quietly, words I can’t make out, but I know he’s trying to soothe her. I don’t know if it’s working.

  “We can’t go back after this,” I tell Otter, watching them on the porch. “You know that, right? Once we get out of the car, this is it. We can’t ever go back.”

  “I know,” he says. “So what are we waiting for?”

  And he opens the door.

  I follow him. Of course I do.

  Izzie’s chewing on her bottom lip, her eyes narrowed a little, as we walk up the path toward the Green Monstrosity. “Did you get all my stuff?”

  “Yeah,” I say as we stop at the steps. “Everything you asked for.”

  She nods. “Was it…? I’m sorry. If the house was dirty. I didn’t—I tried to never let it get like that.”

  “It wasn’t,” Otter says easily. “You did a good job.”

  I don’t know that she quite believes him, but we’ll get there. “I can do that
here too. If you want.”

  I shrug. “We all help out. You’ll get assigned chores just like everyone else. And since Ty moved in with his lover, you’ll take over what he used to do.”

  “Oh my god,” Ty growls. “Why did you have to say it like that?”

  “Because I like fucking with you.”

  “If you want, I can tell you exactly how he’s my lover—”

  “It’s good to be home,” Otter says with a sigh.

  IT TAKES a couple of days. To get things right. Or at least on the road to it.

  She’s bossy and demanding and completely amazing. We unpack her life, mixing it with our own, and she’s unsure about how she fits. But we tell her again and again and again that this is hers too, all of this. Our house. Us. Ty. Everyone else in our crazy, stupid family. All of us are hers.

  She cries when we tell her about what Erica’s done for her so far.

  Then she punches us each in the arm and says she wasn’t crying, that it was just her allergies, but she’s okay with staying here with us if we really want her to. “You don’t need to beg,” she says, sniffling prettily. “I know I’m amazing and you would be lucky to have me.”

  We just smile at her.

  Ty’s room becomes her room, and it’s not quite the same, but so close it’s like the lines are blurred. She’s got books, so many damn books, and they’re all worn, like she’s read them over and over again, dog-eared and wrinkled. She seems to have a soft spot for Wuthering Heights, which the Kid and I tease her mercilessly over. Otter, of course, tells her that I cried while reading The Notebook, because he’s an asshole like that, and she laughs so hard that she bends over, hands wrapped around her stomach.

  She has her posters that she hangs on the wall, and it’s that weird dissonance again, because it’s not Einstein, it’s Nikola Tesla. It’s not Anderson Cooper, it’s 1970s Tom Brokaw. (“He was such a babe,” she says dreamily as Otter and I stare wide-eyed at each other over her head.) It’s all these little things that are almost the same but not.

  Ty notices it too but doesn’t say much about it.

  When we get to the pictures, the ones Julie McKenna had kept on a shoddy bookshelf, Izzie’s face tightens a little, and I wait to follow her lead.

  She only takes one frame out of the box. It’s her and Julie, and they’re smiling at the camera, Izzie maybe four or five years old. They’re happy, or at least some facsimile of, and it’s this one she sets on the nightstand next to the bed. “Is that okay?” she asks me, wringing her hands.

  “Yeah, kid,” Ty answers for us. “That’s okay.”

  The rest stay in the box. It goes in the attic, and I know that it’ll probably stay there for a long time to come. But whenever she wants them, whenever she’s ready for them, there they’ll be.

  Once everything is done, the trailer unloaded and returned, everything she owns firmly in place in the Green Monstrosity, the weight she’s carried on her shoulders since she showed up on our porch seems to fall away.

  “I’m tired,” she mutters, rubbing her eyes.

  It’s not late, but it’s getting there.

  She brushes her teeth, gets into her new pajamas that Anna bought her, and is in bed, comforter pulled up to her chin, when I come in to say good night.

  “You need anything else?”

  She shakes her head.

  “You know where we are if you do.”

  “I know.”

  I smile at her and say, “Good night, Izzie.”

  I switch off the light. I’m shutting the door when she says, “Bear?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I… ugh.”

  “Can you ugh? I’m sure you can if you want to.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  She sighs, like I’m the most irritating person on the planet. “I’m staying here. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Even though you don’t know me.”

  “We will. Know you. And you’ll know us.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “You’re my sister. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

  She starts sniffling again. “Stupid allergies.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “I should probably get that checked.”

  “Probably.”

  “All that salt in the air, I bet.”

  “That’s gotta be it.”

  “Bear?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m staying here.” It’s not a question this time.

  I wait.

  “You’re married to Otter. So you’re a Thompson.”

  I see now where she’s going. And I hurt, but it’s a good hurt. “I am.”

  “And Tyson, he’s a Thompson.”

  “He is.”

  “And Anna and Creed too.”

  “They are.”

  “D’you think…?” She clears her throat. “Do you think that maybe I could… if it’s not too much trouble….” She coughs.

  “You’re going to be a Thompson too,” I tell her, putting her out of her misery. “We’ll see to it. You’re stuck with us now, Izzie. Hope you’re ready for that. You came here, and now I don’t think we can ever let you go.”

  “Ugh,” she says again. “Fine. If you insist.”

  “I’m afraid I must.”

  “Whatever. You’re standing there like a weirdo while I’m trying to go to sleep.”

  “Am I? My bad. Anything else?”

  “No. Jeez, Bear.”

  “Good night, then.”

  And before I shut the door, I hear her whisper, “Thank you.”

  THREE DAYS after that, a package arrives.

  Otter signs for it.

  “She’s not going where Mrs. Paquinn is,” the Kid says with a glare. “You can’t do that, Bear. You can’t. It’s not fair. I won’t let you do it. I won’t—”

  “Never,” I tell him. And I mean it.

  He takes a shuddering breath.

  IT’S EARLY June, but it’s cold, the wind carrying a bite to it. We’re standing on a small cliff overlooking the gray ocean, the seagulls calling out above. Dom and Otter are waiting for us in the parking lot. Dom’s in uniform and has his patrol car. Izzie blushed and giggled when she saw him, and Ty was almost the same. Otter teased them both. Dom rolled his eyes fondly. I’d looked away when he bent down and whispered something into Ty’s ear, his lips grazing my little brother’s cheek. Whatever was said between them wasn’t any of my business.

  They’re waiting for us, just like they always do.

  We’re lucky like that, I guess.

  The urn is rather plain, a dull silver with a plastic liner on the inside. We’re as far away from Mrs. P as we can be while still being in Seafare. I asked Izzie if she wanted us to do something like we’d done for Mrs. P—making a marker that can stand where we leave Julie. She shook her head and said this was enough.

  I unscrew the lid to the urn, take out the bag inside, and hand it to Izzie. Ty refuses to touch any part of it. I think the only reason he’s even here with us is because Dom told him he’d regret it one day if he wasn’t.

  Izzie takes it from me, and we wait. Just a little while.

  It’s strange, really, that an entire person, a lifetime of memories and regret, disappointment and failed dreams, can be broken down into a pile of ash.

  It swirls in the air in front of us.

  And then it’s over.

  She’s in the wind and gone.

  None of us cry.

  The Kid’s face is pressed against my shoulder and Izzie’s arms are wrapped around my waist, but none of us cry.

  They leave first, heading back down the hill.

  “You can’t touch us anymore,” I whisper to the wind. “Never again.”

  And then I turn and follow my family.

  Otter says, “All right?” when I reach him.

  “Yeah,” I
say. Because it is. I am.

  This is just one ending.

  And in three months, something else will begin.

  9. Where Bear Goes to Lamaze Class

  “WHAT DO you mean you don’t want a baby shower?” Creed says a couple of weeks later. It’s a Saturday, and Anna had to go into the office for the morning, leaving Creed to come and bug me. “They’re the best part. You get so much free shit, you wouldn’t even believe.”

  “I know,” I say dryly. “I was there at the two for Anna. I was giving you free shit.”

  He waves a hand at me dismissively, picking a Cheerio off AJ’s head as he screeches gleefully from the old high chair they’d brought over to keep at our house for when they visited. “So take my word for it. You need to have one. You get registered at, like, Target or some shit and then invite a bunch of people to the party. That way, they’re required to buy you stuff. It really is the best. It’s like a birthday party where none of the stuff is for you and it’s really disappointing, but you need it anyway.”

  “Isn’t it more for the mother?”

  He shrugs. “Probably. But since the mom in this case is your baby factory, you don’t need to worry about buying anything for her. I mean, she’s getting paid for this, right? And she and her boyfriend have that pregnancy kink, so.”

  I grimace. “God, I really wish you would stop saying that.”

  “I know it’s hard to think about Megan and her dude boning while carrying your super-sperm babies, but it’s the cold, hard reality.” He chuckles, shaking his head. “Hard. Get it? Get it.”

  “Yes, Creed. I get it.”

  “Yeah you do. It’s because I’m hysterical, and you—JJ, get down off the kitchen counter and put down the knife, please.”

  “But—”

  “JJ.”

  He sighs. “Fine.”

  I stare at Creed with wide eyes. “How did you do that? You weren’t even looking at him. He’s behind you.”

  Creed shrugs. “It’s a dad thing. You know how Otter is already making awful dad jokes? It’s kind of like that, only better. It’s like a superpower. I know everyone says that the woman is all empowered and epic because they carry the kid, but I think us guys don’t get enough credit for all the shit we do.” He frowned. “But don’t tell Anna I said that. Because our couch sucks to sleep on.”