Touching Down

by Nicole Williams

  Some scars weren’t made to heal. Some were meant to be felt for the rest of our lives. Some scars defined us too much to ever be erased.

  Unfolding the picture I’d pulled from my pocket, I carefully placed it against one of the flower vases staggered around the room. It was a picture of my mom. Her sophomore school photo, the year she’d dropped out and gotten sucked into the world she’d died in. She looked so young, healthy, her eyes bright and her smile genuine.

  When my back shook, Grant’s strong hand lowered to my shoulder. He didn’t say anything or try to rush me out. He just waited with me, as unwavering as always.

  As I stared at the picture of my mom, I wondered if she would have done life differently if she’d known how young she’d die. If she’d been given the gift of foresight, would that have changed anything? I wasn’t sure, and I’d have to accept that I’d never know.

  Few of us will ever know of our imminent demise as I did, but I supposed the message was the same for all of us—live as though you were dying, dream as if you’ll have forever.

  “Bye, Mom,” I whispered to the quiet room. “I forgive you.”

  Grant’s hand curled into me. “Come on, baby. It’s time.”

  Rising, I took one final look at the ten-by-twenty-foot apartment that had been my hell on earth. It looked entirely different now. The wallpaper was still peeling from the walls, bits of the ceiling were still crumbling, the same stains still scarred the old floors, the same acrid scent lingered in the air, but it was clean. Scrubbed from top to bottom of the dirt and scum that had stagnated within these walls for decades. The windows had been washed, letting in the first light of day I’d ever seen in this room.

  Grant had stayed by my side, scrubbing every last crack and corner of this place until we’d sent our last bucket of filthy water down the drain. Then we’d filled the place with flowers. A flower for every bad memory. A piece of life where hope had died.

  Thousands of flowers were scattered around the apartment, maybe tens of thousands. And now, there was only one thing left to do.

  “I’m ready,” I said, slipping my hand into his and letting him lead me out of the room one last time.

  Grant moved quickly, as he had that first time, like he was as superstitious as I was when it came to waking sleeping demons.

  It wasn’t until we reached from the doors on the first floor of the complex and stepped outside that I realized the heavy coat I’d been wearing inside. It fell away the moment I breathed free air.

  At the road, a large crowd started to cheer now that we’d emerged and were making our way to them. Most everyone gathered was probably from The Clink, because few people who weren’t or hadn’t been residents dared to come within its boundaries, but there was a handful of media vans and reporters too.

  It had made headlines when football legend Grant Turner decided to blow up the very apartment building he and his wife had met in. The circumstances of our meeting we kept to ourselves, but the public knew enough about The Clink to understand why a couple would be keen to reduce their past to a heap of dust and rubble.

  I wound my arm behind his back and glanced up at my husband. “Will we ever be able to go anywhere without having the media document your every move?”

  “With a face like this?” Grant teased, circling his face with his hand. “Probably not.”

  “You’ve been retired for two years, and I swear the press has only taken more of an interest in your life.”

  The crowd cheered louder when we got closer, and Grant and I waved.

  He winked at me. “Legends never die, baby.”

  “This is what happens when they induct someone in the Hall of Fame. They lose touch with reality and what it’s like to be humble every now and again.”

  His hand went to his chest. “Hey, I’m the most humble person I know.”

  I laughed. “Thank you for proving my point.”

  We were almost to the barricade running all the way around the apartment complex when my foot jerked. Just enough to rock me off balance. Grant caught me, swinging me into his arms as a few more tremors jerked my legs. I thought this was why he stayed so close to me all of the time, to catch me when I fell. God knew he’d done plenty of it my whole life.

  “Looks like we timed our European vacation just right.” He looked down at me in his arms with the same kind of affection and devotion he had for the past two and a half decades.

  It took me a minute to form the words. “I think . . . you’re right.”

  The miracle drug I’d found in Europe had turned out to be an actual miracle. No, it hadn’t healed my HD, but it had given the disease a less pivotal role in my life. It had lessened my symptoms and delayed the advancement of those symptoms.

  Every few years, we had to make a return trip to get my dosage adjusted as the disease continued to fight, but thanks to Grant and his quest for a real-life miracle, I’d lived well beyond what I’d hoped. I’d lived well beyond what I’d hoped.

  “It will be our first time going without Charlie,” I said after the last tremor passed. Grant didn’t set me down though. “I’m kind of sad.”

  “Maybe she can come if she talks to her professors.”

  I gazed up at him. “I don’t think there’s a homeschooling option for college students, unfortunately.”

  He made a face. “Well, there should be.”

  Twisting my head, I glanced into the crowd now that we were close enough to make out faces. “Do you see her?”

  Grant was doing the same thing I was. His chin lifted. “There she is. Right there by Cruz and . . .” Grant sighed, his mouth pulling into a snarl. “And him.”

  I stifled my smile, trying to remember how difficult it was for any dad, let alone a dad like Grant Turner, to accept his little girl having a boyfriend. “You mean Carson? Her very nice, goal-oriented boyfriend she’s been with for three months now?”

  Grant’s eyes only narrowed on the boy beside his daughter. I guessed it didn’t help that Carson had his arm around her and was whispering something in her ear that was making her smile.

  “No, I mean him. And that’s three months too long.”

  “Grant . . .” I lifted my eyebrows at him, but he didn’t see. “He plays football.”

  He set me down when we were close to the barricade, his ever-present arm winding around me. “He’s a quarterback. A fucking quarterback, Ryan.” I shook my head as he seethed. “I did not raise my daughter to date quarterbacks.”

  “What? One of those kids who comes from a good family and had the kind of dad who’d take him out back to throw a football before dinner? We didn’t raise our daughter to date someone family-oriented like that?”

  He sighed, giving me a look like I was no help at all.

  “He’s a nice guy. Give him a chance.” I patted his stomach, knowing this wasn’t easy for him.

  Carson was the first guy Charlie had been serious about, and it was like a knife in the gut every time Grant saw them together. He still saw Charlie in her overalls and ponytail, not as the nineteen-year-old woman she’d become.

  “Sure, I’ll give him a chance. Once I bury him in the ground.” When I groaned, Grant thrust his arm in their direction. “He’s standing too close. He’s touching her.”

  “I seem to remember you doing a whole hell of a lot worse than just standing too close when we were a whole lot younger, Grant Turner.”

  “That was different. We—”

  “Were in love?” I let that sink in. “We raised a smart, capable daughter. Calm down. She’s not going to let some random loser into her life.”

  Grant huffed, staring into the crowd again as the roar picked up. “You did.” His hands slipped around my waist before he lifted me over the barricade where Charlie, Cruz, and him were. Grant was big enough he could just step over the barricade, his eyes on Carson the whole time.

  “Mom!” Charlie shrieked, throwing her arms around me. She’d taken after her dad in the height department, blossoming into on
e of those tall, leggy beauties, so I was towered over by my whole family. I’d had time to get used to it though, since Charlie had passed me the summer she was thirteen.

  “Charlie-Bird.” I held her tight, wishing I never had to let her go and knowing I had to. It was the plight of parenthood. “How are you, sweetie?”

  “I’m great. How about you?”

  I heard the unsaid question in her voice. She knew all about HD now, and I knew that, like Grant, she worried about me more than I wanted either of them to.

  “I’m fantastic,” I said, not needing to play it up. “Best day ever.” Glancing over my shoulder, I found Grant behind me, a stone wall with his arms crossed, not so subtly standing between Charlie and Carson. “Right?” I nudged him. Then again when the first nudge didn’t get his attention. “Right?”

  “Dad!” Charlie leapt at Grant, who caught her like he’d been expecting her.

  “Love you, baby girl.” His gruff voice softened in the wake of his daughter’s embrace. He was the toughest guy I’d ever met, and as weak as they came where his daughter was concerned. It was one of the things I loved about him most.

  “Look who I brought to see the big event.” Charlie stepped out of Grant’s arms to tug a marginally-frightened-looking Carson toward us.

  “Good to see you again, Mr. Turner.” Carson extended his hand toward Grant and smiled when I could tell he was half terrified.

  Rightly so. Grant wasn’t totally joking about burying him a shallow, unmarked grave. If Grant ever found out about Charlie being intimate with a boy, I’d have to lock him up to keep him from going to prison for premeditated murder. The actual murder might be in the heat of the moment, but I knew for a fact that Grant had been scheming ways to torture and kill any boy who touched his daughter that way.

  I had to elbow him in the ribs to get him to return the handshake.

  “How’s the season going?” Grant asked stiffly.

  Carson started to wince as Grant’s handshake continued. Another elbow to the ribs had him letting go.

  “Pretty good so far,” Carson answered, giving his hand a shake.

  “Yeah, if you consider undefeated ‘pretty good.’” Charlie slid up beside Carson and leaned her head on his shoulder.

  Grant’s face started to go red. “Undefeated? You could do better.”

  Charlie and I shook our heads.

  “You never had an undefeated season, Dad,” Charlie added with an elevated eyebrow which made Grant grumble and me silently laugh.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Turner?” Thomas, the general contractor we’d hired to see this project through from start to finish, cut through the crowd toward us. “If you’d like to have the honor, we’re ready whenever you are.”

  He slid the barricade open a couple of feet to pass through. Grant grabbed my hand in one of his and Charlie’s in the other as he led us through the barricade.

  “Would Carson like to join us?” I asked Charlie as Grant started to close the barricade behind us.

  Grant’s nostrils flared, but when Charlie waved Carson over, Grant reluctantly opened the barricade to let him pass. I gave Cruz a quick kiss on the cheek before following Thomas over to a box with a handle coming out of the top. Running from the box was a handful of wires.

  “You’ve double-checked the building?” Grant asked Thomas as we approached.

  “We’ve quadruple-checked, Mr. Turner. You and your wife were the last people inside.”

  Charlie glanced at me, knowing I’d been equally looking forward to and dreading this day. She didn’t know the particulars of my life in The Clink, but she knew the tenor of it.

  “Blow the sucker up, Mom.” She gave me a quick squeeze before stepping back toward Carson, keeping a smart distance between him and Grant.

  Thomas indicated the handle attached to the box and stepped aside. “Mrs. Turner. Ready when you are.”

  I found myself staring at that handle—the instrument that would bring a whole building to the ground. The very building that had seemed impossibly large and imposing as a child was the one I was about to bring down as a woman.

  Looking around me, I realized that from that building, beauty had been created too. The man beside me after all of these years, the daughter we’d brought into this world, the life we’d created together.

  “Come on, Mom! The sooner this comes down, the sooner the new one can go up.” Charlie, my perpetual cheerleader, gave me a nod of encouragement. My perfect daughter who looked like her father but had half of my DNA.

  The good half of my DNA. Charlie had decided to get tested shortly after her eighteenth birthday, and her results had come back negative for HD. I’d never felt relief and gratitude like I had that day. Despite the miracle of life I’d been given, I didn’t want my daughter to have to depend on a miracle for her survival.

  I wanted her to be the miracle.

  And she was.

  Grant was the miracle. The life we’d created was. Time. Every new memory and moment was a miracle. Life was the miracle. Cured or not, I’d found my miracle—them.

  “Grant?” I looked back at him. “Together?”

  A smile spread across his face as he moved toward me. His hand found mine as we stepped up to the box.

  “Together,” he said, laying our joined hands on the handle.

  “Get them started on the countdown, Charlie,” I said.

  Charlie spun around, tugging Carson with her, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted, “TEN!” The crowd had caught on by the time she’d hollered, “NINE!”

  Grant and I looked at each other, and as those last few seconds counted down, I saw the eyes of the boy in the man I loved. I saw the look on his face after he’d burst through that door. I remembered the way his hand had felt in mine as he led me away. I remembered the way his blood had looked running from his battle wounds.

  I remembered the way I’d never known peace until I’d fallen asleep with his arms around me. I remembered the way he’d looked into my eyes the first time we’d made love. I remembered the things he’d whispered in my ear.

  I pulled all of those memories from that building as the final “ONE!” rung around the crowd. The rest I left to die inside.

  Grant’s eyes held mine, his head giving a slight nod as our hands pressed down on the handle, time slowing right before the ground started to quake.

  Coming behind me, Grant wound his arms around me, tucking his chin over my head as we watched the complex quiver a few times, right before the whole thing came crashing down, one level at a time.

  I didn’t think I blinked once, not until the last of the building had collapsed, leaving a cloud of dust where a tower had just been.

  As my silence continued long after the cheering had started to dim from the crowd, Grant nuzzled me. “Ryan?”

  “I’m okay.” I let go of the breath I’d been holding. “I’m okay.”

  “Yeah, so wow.” Charlie came up beside us, Carson in tow as she blinked at the rubble. “And when are you planning on opening the door to May’s House?”

  Grant wrapped an arm around her neck and pulled her in. “Nine months. Just in time for summer.”

  Charlie motioned at the mess in front of us. “It’s going to take that long to clean that up.”

  “It’ll happen. If your dad has to be here every day sweeping up that mess, the center will be open on time.”

  Charlie and I exchanged a look, both of us familiar with Grant’s degree of determination.

  “So this is going to be a kind of shelter for kids once it’s built?” Carson asked, daring to creep a little closer. When Grant’s gaze cut toward him, he stopped.

  “It’s going to be a big house, not a shelter. It’s going to be exactly like the house of the woman who helped us, but bigger. A place where kids like us can escape for a while,” I explained, able to see it now that the complex had come down.

  It had been Grant’s idea, once Cruz had informed us that the needs of the community had outgrown Aunt May’s h
ouse. Instead of twelve-hundred square feet of refuge, the new building would have twenty thousand. There’d be places for kids to sleep, get a meal, do their homework, or just play and forget their lives for a few hours or days. Cruz would run it, and we’d make as many visits as we could to make sure the place was living up to the standards Aunt May would be proud of.

  “She must have been one great woman,” Carson said, sliding closer when Charlie reached for him. Like a certain someone I knew, Carson couldn’t let Charlie out of his reach for too long.

  “That woman managed to turn my sorry self into something,” Grant muttered, winking at me.

  “So you’re saying she’s a saint,” Charlie suggested, totally straight-faced.

  Grant gave her an unamused look. “Ha. Ha.”

  “Do you guys have time to grab a quick bite with us before heading back up to school?” I asked, twisting in Grant’s arms to smile at my daughter and the boy she was quite in like, if not in love, with.

  Carson glanced at Grant like he was trying to gauge how he felt about the matter. Poor kid. Grant was his idol . . . and his girlfriend’s father. As if Carson didn’t have enough to be nervous enough around him.

  Charlie checked the time on her phone. “Carson has practice tonight.”

  Grant shrugged. “Surely he can miss a practice every now and again.”

  I lifted an eyebrow at him. Grant had missed one practice in his twenty-plus years of the playing the game.

  Carson rubbed the back of his head. “I suppose I could let Coach know I’ll be a little late.”

  Grant’s brow lifted. “So showing up late to practice is a habit of yours?”

  Charlie and I shared a groan.

  “Come on.” I motioned at Charlie and Carson. “We’ll swing by Mickey’s and grab a bite, so you don’t have to miss or be late to your practice.”

  “I still can’t believe you’re at A&M.” Grant shook his head as we walked away from the pile of rubble. “The first thing your mom and I wanted to do was escape this state, and it’s the very first place you wanted to go.”