Authors: Rebecca Yarros
The phone went and wrecked it while I was mid-Boston-cream bite. “Hello?” I swallowed, hoping I didn’t sound too garbled.
“December? This is Captain Wilson.”
I knew it was routine, and he was just checking up on us, but my stomach still plummeted. There wasn’t a single pleasant event I could associate with that man. “What’s up, Captain Wilson?”
Mom’s head snapped to attention, her gaze burning into me.
“Some things came in for you. Would it be okay if I dropped them off in about fifteen minutes?”
“Yeah, no problem. See you in a few.” We hung up, and I looked to Mom. “Captain Wilson will be here in about fifteen minutes. He has a few things to give us.”
Panic walked in and sat on my chest. I swallowed with difficulty. What was so important that it couldn’t wait until Monday? Papers? More insurance work?
“How kind of him to give up his Saturday morning,” Grams commented when Mom couldn’t.
I didn’t want to know.
I pushed back from the table and headed upstairs to wake April. I swung open her door, and the scent of alcohol and vomit assaulted me. “Holy shit.” I covered my nose with the sleeve of my fleece and shook my sister’s still-dressed body. “April, wake up.”
She mumbled incoherently and dug deeper into her nest of blankets. I tried again, gently moving her shoulders. Then she breathed on me, and I almost wished I hadn’t moved her.
Death. She smelled like death that had been rolled in crap and a bottle of Cuervo. I grabbed ahold of her covers and yanked back with one hard pull, leaving her sputtering. “What the fuck, Ember!”
“Get your ass up and into the shower! Captain Wilson is on his way, and Mom is going to need us.” I threw her blankets into the hamper. They smelled suspiciously like puke.
“Give me back my blankets and leave me alone. I don’t feel good.” She burrowed into her pillows.
I calmly walked across the hall to the bathroom, poured a large glass of water, and snagged two Tylenol from the cabinet. I lowered myself to her bed and rubbed her head. “I know you don’t feel good, honey. Take these.”
You stupid, stupid girl.
She sat up and gave me a sleepy acknowledgement, swallowing the Tylenol and hitting the mattress with a thud. “Thank you. Now leave me alone.”
I stood quietly and took stock. She was pale, clammy, stinky, and hungover. Grams would have a field day in here, but I couldn’t do that to either of them. I lifted the glass of water high into the air and poured it down over her face. She came up spitting and shrieking. “You bitch!”
I shook the final droplets out of the glass and set it down on her nightstand. “Yup. Now get your ass out of bed.” I threw the latches and slid open her window, letting the rancid room breathe the frigid Colorado air. “You want to drink like a big girl? Then you deal with the big-girl consequences. Now get in the shower, and for the love of God, brush your teeth!”
I waited until she marched out of her room and into the bathroom, flipping me off as she closed the door behind her. Too damn bad. She could be pissed; I really didn’t care.
Gus was already in the dining room and on his third donut before I made it downstairs. He was freshly washed and covered in chocolate. “Em-buh?” he called out with his mouth full.
“Yup?”
He swallowed. “Can I have your strawberry glazed?”
I looked at the donut I’d bought because it reminded me of how Josh tasted last night and nodded. “Go for it, buddy. Do me a favor and go watch a movie in your room? It’s not going to be fun down here for a bit.”
He nodded, already consumed with his strawberry donut, and headed up the stairs. With the three of us at the table again, there was no noise except the ticking of the pendulum from the grandfather clock.
It started to sound like the clicking of a roller coaster, dragging me up the first hill. The problem was that I didn’t know what was coming, how far or fast the drop to the bottom would be. How far my heart would fall out of my chest again.
But there was beauty in not knowing what was coming my way, in being unable to brace for impact.
The doorbell rang, and I jumped, despite knowing he was coming. We all three stood, and this time, Mom answered the door. “Captain Wilson.”
“It’s good to see you, ma’am,” he answered, removing his cover as he entered the house. “Where would you like it?”
She pointed into the living room. Two soldiers walked in tandem, carrying a large, black Tough Box. Then another pair of soldiers did the same. They set the black boxes in front of the couch, on either side of the coffee table. What the hell?
The men stood back, shifting their weight awkwardly as I took a closer look. On the top of the boxes, white writing stood out in dark contrast. “Howard. 5928.”
These were the things my father had taken to Afghanistan with him.
Chapter Twelve
No. No. No. How much more could we take?
Grams sat Mom down on the couch. She’d deserted us again, retreated into her mind and left me to stand in her place. I swallowed the bitter pill and stepped up. “This is all my dad’s, right?”
Captain Wilson nodded. “It came in late last night, but I didn’t want to make you wait any more than you had to. Would you like to go through his inventory?”
“Just let me sign for it.”
“December, it would be best to verify that it’s all here,” he urged.
I snatched the clipboard from him. “Unless you have Dad in there, it doesn’t matter what the hell is in these boxes.” I furiously scribbled my name over yet another government form that threw Dad’s death in my face. I signed, dated. Flipped to another page. Signed. Dated. Flipped again. Signed. Dated. I could have been giving April up for adoption for all I knew. I didn’t bother reading anything anymore.
“Would you like us to open them, or leave the combinations with you?”
Mom was in no position to answer.
Grams raised her eyebrows, asking me. It was always freaking up to me.
I raked my hands through my hair and took a breath, getting control back. “Open them now, please. Let’s get this over with.”
Two soldiers stepped forward, careful not to jar Mom and Grams, and opened the locks with nearly simultaneous pops. Without further preamble, the hinges squeaked as they ripped off the scabs we’d fought so hard to grow and opened up new crates of grief.
“Is there anything else?” I asked the captain, unable to take the vacant look on Mom’s face for another minute.
“No, ma’am. These are all of his belongings sent home by his unit.”
All of his belongings meant his journal! “His laptop is in there, right?”
“Yes, ma’am. We had to wait for the computer to be cleared, which is why it took so long.” He looked down at the floor and I grasped his meaning.
“Cleared his computer?” I asked, trying to misunderstand him. “You mean checked for viruses, or classified data, right?”
He grimaced and took a breath. “No, ma’am. Official policy states we have to wipe the hard drive before returning it to the family.”
You had to be fucking kidding me. “You wiped his hard drive?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He was having trouble holding my gaze.
“His pictures? His journal? Everything we had of him? You just erased it like you were taking out yesterday’s trash?” My fingernails dug into the palms of my hands, desperate to draw any blood they could. Even mine.
“Please understand—”
“No! You stole from us! You took something you had no right to!” I shook my head, trying to dislodge this nightmare. “We’ve done everything you’ve asked for! Everything! Why would you do this to us?”
“It’s policy.”
“Screw your policy. You erased what was left of him! His thoughts! This is wrong, and you know it!”
Mom’s low wail ripped through me, finally letting loose the very sound bottled inside me. Her misery echoed my own, and I dismissed Captain Wilson by turning my back.
Mom knelt in front of one of the boxes, one of his army-tan T-shirts held up against her face, breathing him in on the inhale, screaming on the exhale, calling out his name. My throat closed up, but I found my voice. “Get out.”
I didn’t need to say it twice.
The soldiers filed out into the fresh air and left us trapped within our own grief.
“What’s going on?” April struggled down the stairs, and I didn’t have the energy to yell at her about her hangover anymore.
“Dad’s stuff,” I answered, gently lifting Mom to the couch by her arms. Grams rocked her like a baby as she kept the shirt against her nose, soaking it in tears and gut-wrenching sobs. She hadn’t cried like this before, not that I’d heard. She’d been too numbed, too full of shock to grieve like this a month ago. I almost wished I could shove her back into her catatonic state and spare her all of this.
I picked up another T-shirt and brought it to my nose. It smelled like him, like rainy days and reading on the couch. It smelled like hugs and scraped knees and comfort over first heartbreaks. It smelled like him so much that he could have been wearing it. But that was impossible. He was buried twenty minutes from here and couldn’t wear this shirt again.
I would never have another hug, another laugh, another Sunday crossword.
All I had was this damned shirt, and I understood Mom’s wailing. It echoed the screams building in my heart that I didn’t dare let escape. Instead, I took another breath of Dad’s scent and wondered if they had been thoughtful enough not to wash it.
“What do we do?” April’s voice shook next to me.
I’d seen Mom do it for every deployment, and this was no exception. “Get the Ziploc bags. The big ones.”
She came back a moment later with the gallon-sized bags. Soon, these shirts wouldn’t smell like him anymore, and we really would have lost every part of him. “Start smelling the shirts. If it smells like Dad, bag it.”
“Why?”
I swallowed back my tears. “When you were two and Dad deployed, you had night terrors. No one knew why, but Mom couldn’t get them to stop.” I nearly laughed. “God, they told me this story over and over. Anyway, Mom never washed Dad’s pillowcase, so she slipped it over your pillow. It smelled like him, and you slept. Once that smell wore off, she un-bagged some of his shirts that she’d saved and covered your pillow with those.”
Silent tears tracked down my sister’s face. “Okay.”
I squeezed her hand. No words would do.
While Grams let Mom cry it out, April and I sorted the things that smelled like him from the things we knew had been washed, bleached, or never worn. After the second box, we had seven shirts that smelled like Dad.
I gathered up the bags and took them upstairs and into Mom’s walk-in closet. The bottom drawer of the tall dresser was empty. It’s where he’d kept all these shirts. I slid them into the drawer and shut it.
I stood, taking stock of the top of the dresser where he kept his treasures, as he had called them, the little things we’d made for him over the years out of rice and macaroni and egg cartons. My handprint in plaster from his first Father’s Day sat next to a picture of all three of us we’d given him for his last.
My knees gave out, and I sank to the floor. I gave myself ten minutes and cried out everything I could, letting the sobs rack me and wreck me, giving in to the utter misery of losing him. This had to be it, right? This had to be the last big moment of pain.
How did we get here? We’d been doing so well, healing, moving forward, and now it was back to square one, feeling like the army walked in and notified us today. Why couldn’t there be a clear path out of this mess? Why did everything have to be so garbled and undefined and utterly fucked up?
Would this end before it broke me into unmendable pieces?
I wanted someone to hold me, to tell me it was going to be okay, to assure me that my life hadn’t ended with Dad’s. I wanted solace, and comfort, and not to think about it for a while. Wasn’t there anyone else who could help carry the weight of this house?
More than anything, I wanted Josh’s arms around me, and that alarmed me more than any of my other desires. But as scary as wanting him was, at least I knew wanting him would never bring me here, he’d never be a soldier, never be draped in a flag.
“Ember?” Gus’s voice came into the bedroom, breaking me out of my pity party.
I wiped the tears from my eyes, thankful I’d started wearing waterproof mascara since Dad was killed, and walked out of the closet. “Hey, little man.”
“Mom is crying again.”
“We got Dad’s stuff this morning, and it’s hard for her right now.”
He nodded slowly. He held out his hand, and I took it, walking downstairs with him. Dad’s things were stacked neatly on the furniture, waiting for Mom to tell us what to do with them.
I found his patrol cap on the coffee table and fought with myself momentarily before I placed it on Gus’s head. It didn’t mean he was going to be a soldier, and I knew that, but it hurt to see the multi-cam pattern on his sweet face.
The diamond of Grams’s wedding band caught my eye in the sunlight. She had lost both her husband and son. Tears watered her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall as she rocked Mom back and forth, like she was trying to absorb some of her pain. I didn’t see how Grams could have room for any more than what she already carried.
I sat down next to my mother, who’d begun hiccupping now that the wailing had stopped. “Mom, do you want us to sort this out or just put it back in the boxes? We don’t have to do this now.”
Her eyes skipped around the room until they landed on the boxes. Then she made her first Dad-related decision. “Return the army gear to the boxes, leave the personal stuff out. One thing at a time, right?”
I forced a smile. “Right.”
We loaded the scrubs and uniforms back into the boxes but left out the pictures he’d taken with him, his shaving kit, and the odds and ends. The computer would make a great door stop. I picked up the hardback copy of his favorite book, Kahlil Gibran’s
The Prophet.
He nearly had the whole thing memorized, and the cover was worn in spots from his hands. I thumbed through the pages, smiling at my favorite passages, feeling the rush of pain as I came across his.