Before the sun had even set, he was on the first of the many flights needed to cover the saddest journey home of his life.
Chapter 3
Day -216: October 26
th
, 2016. World Population 7,324,473,285
Shaun worked his way through the city. The town was shutting down for the night, all but the coffee shops and restaurants. He didn't have anywhere he wanted to go, but didn't want to be home by himself. He wasn't afraid of running into his dad because he'd have to be home for that to be a possibility. He knew that there would be no worry about that for hours. There were too many memories and personal ghosts to deal with when he was by himself. He could never get over losing his mother, but over the years he'd learned to cope with it somewhat. He replaced how much he missed his mother with the blame he put on his dad. He never got over the fact his dad wasn't in his life when he truly needed him the most. Shaun hated that, with each passing day, the short and precious time he had with his mother before she passed was getting more and more difficult to remember.
Meanwhile, Ellie was doing her homework while picking at a plate of spaghetti. She thought about playing it dumb for the next day and skipping her homework, but she figured the teachers would ask why it wasn't completed when she had a perfectly good syllabus with all the course work and daily assignments outlined.
She was only half focused on her assignment. In the back of her mind was Greg smiling at her, and the memory of him making a scene in the detention room. Her delicate finger lingered over the mouse on her desk unsure what she should do. Greg Thompson's profile picture was smiling at her on the screen. She was contemplating hitting either the friend or message button, telling herself that it would only be polite if she thanked him for helping them with Principal Peterson earlier. She couldn't ignore the fact that being gorgeous wasn't a deciding factor why she wanted to talk with him.
Just as she was applying pressure to the mouse, a light knock on the window startled her, making her heart skip. She moved to the corner of her room gazing out the shade, she saw someone was there and slowly made her way to the window. She pulled back the shade quickly and screamed at the figure outside.
The look on Ellie's face, and the volume she was capable of screaming at caused Shaun to stumble backwards, landing on his back, and knocking some of the air out of his lungs. He looked in bewilderment at her and smiled nervously. "Hi, Ellie. Bad time?"
Ellie reached up unlocked the window and slid it open. She leaned out. "You effing scared the hell out of me! It's a good thing that my mom isn't home right now! Anyway, I figured the way you were running from the school, you were already home."
Shaun pushed himself up off the leaf covered ground. "I haven't been home yet.... My dad and I didn't see eye to eye at the school earlier."
Ellie looked worried. "What was it about? Was it because you stuck up for me? I'm so sorry if I got you in trouble with your dad!"
Shaun shook his head. "It's not your fault Ellie. I could've pissed him off all on my own. I don't think that he really cared about that. He and I have some long term issues that we've been working on for a while."
"Like you've been trying to fix something between you guys?"
"The tension between us has been more like a balloon that's on the verge of exploding. Well, that last bit of air must have been today, because the whole damn thing exploded. Usually it's my job to be sick of him, and he tries to do the fatherly thing just often enough to try and make me think he really cares."
"Why don't you climb in? You look kind of creepy sitting outside a teenage girl's window in the dark." She tossed a wink as she took his backpack and stood back while he awkwardly climbed through the opening. Shaun came in and sat down. Chills ran up his spine as he looked around the room at the bed, the dresser, and garments in a dirty laundry bin. He was pretty confident that the top label of a pair of underwear were sticking out. Sometimes it doesn't take much to make a teen male happy.
"Ok," Ellie continued, "now that we don't have to worry about the cops being called, spill your beans! I don't want you blowing up either."
Shaun stared around the room for a while trying to think how he'd try and explain his story. He took a big breath. "You already know that when I was four or five my mom got sick?"
"Your mom had breast cancer right? That can't be easy for a family to go through."
He looked at her remembering she wasn't really in his life at that time. "Well actually it wasn't a sickness where everyone in the family was there to help deal with the stress. I didn't know what was really happening at the time. I understood getting sick, but to that depth had no clue. I never dealt with a death in the family at that age. She had her right breast removed and the prognosis was good. My dad left a week afterwards while she was still healing and getting strong enough for chemotherapy."
Ellie looked concerned. "What do you mean your dad left? Like my dear beloved father who couldn't put the bottle down and left, or did he had a valid reason for leaving?"
"He got recalled to his old unit in the Army and basically disappeared in the middle of the night."
Ellie smiled for a second. "Is your dad a spy? Hot guys are always spies.... I bet he was like 007!"
Shaun shook his head. "My dad's a bio nerd. He's not cool enough to be a spy. Nobody named Francis is a spy, and God, please quit calling him cute! You see, when I ask him now and back then what he was working on, all he told me was that sometimes we have to put the good of others before the good of yourself. I asked him why he couldn't have used that back then and picked my mom instead of his job, but he told me it was for the greater good. Try explaining that to a four-year-old though, but I still don't understand today."
"Wait.... Who was taking care of you and your mother during that time? There's no way she could manage that on her own."
Shaun nodded sitting down on the bed and took in a big breath. "Yeah, no way for her to handle that. With dad gone we were forced to move in with her parents, my Grandma and Grandpa Thomas. If you thought that my distaste for my dad left a bad flavor in my mouth, then you should have seen my Grandpa. He'd say on more than one occasion, 'How in the hell does a young man with a family go play with test tubes all day in some god forsaken desert?' Mom stuck up for him when she wasn't too exhausted from treatments. All I really remember is her saying how dad needed to do it ... that it was part of a bigger picture and not to blame him."
"So the treatments didn't go on forever. Did it come back, or did it just not work?"
"Well it worked, but the cancer cells can regenerate like any other cell. I don't know what else they could've done for her, but I'd like to think that there was something they could've done to save her." He fought back a tear as he thought about the last time he got to see his mother.
Chapter 4
Day -3165: September 29
th
2008. World Population 6,696,637,725
She took his hand and stared deep into his young tired eyes trying to think of what she could say to tell him it was okay. This was only a small part of his life and she didn't want him to be traumatized forever because of one horrible time. She didn't want him to hate his father for not being there. She knew very well what he was working on and if it could save tens of thousands of lives, maybe what he was working on was more important as part of the bigger picture. Trying to explain that to a four-year-old was all but impossible.
His mother rubbed his hair gently and pulled him in for the last hug she would possibly ever give. The problem with cancer is its unpredictability. It puts doctors in optimistic positions to say that it looks like she is going to pull through, or she's only looking at one to three months and then she'll live another year. A precious year filled with memories, pain, and sorrow. Marie spoke softly, "Shaun, how are you feeling baby?"
Shaun looked up. "I don't mind staying with Grandma and Grandpa, but why can't we just stay at home? I miss my room, my toys, and my friends."
Marie shed a little tear as she brushed an IV-filled hand across Shaun's. "Well, honey, if your dad could be here then you wouldn't be staying at your grandparents. It's not that bad, is it?"
Shaun shook his head. "It's not that bad. I miss everyone. I miss dad, too. You keep saying he's doing something too important, but then Grandpa calls him a bum who ran out on us and then Grandma agrees. What does that mean when he calls him a bum, mom?"
Marie looked down at her son. "Your dad told me that sometimes you have to put others before yourself and your own happiness. That was something that your dad was forced to do. He is too good a man to leave us in distress and pain, but the job he is doing is going to help so many, honey, that he had to go. He loves you and me very much and would never leave if he had a choice. He's going to be gone a while longer, but by the time I finish the therapy he'll be home. Try not to blame him. If he could be here he would be, honey. I promise."
Shaun nodded his head resting it on his mother's bedside, but the promise she made faded away after he realized his mother had just said her dying words, and they were about how it was okay his father wasn't there, and that he was going to have to go through with all of this on his own.
Yeah, he'd try and not blame his dad too much.
Chapter 5
Day -126: January 24
th
, 2017 World Population 7,343,640,585
Over the last few months there had been a lot of rough waters. Frank and Karen had been seeing more than their fair share of each other. Shaun was at a point where he couldn't take it any longer. Having a big get together with the Fox men and the Randall girls over Thanksgiving had been really awkward. It was fun spending an entire day with Ellie during break, but it wasn't as much fun having to watch her mom and his dad pretend like they didn't want to be all over each other.
He couldn't talk to many people about it. His friend Greg had been more of a staple at the Fox household, and lately seemed to be the only one he could talk to about the changes. He wouldn't complain to Ellie how he'd like to be dating her, and how, instead, their parents were being the ones hooking up and making them closer and closer to being related every day. Ellie didn't seem too worried about her mom and Francis falling for each other.
When the two of them had been together it started slowly, but, by the end of November, it was clear that her once-in-a-while random thoughts about Greg were becoming more regular. It was beginning to grow on Shaun's nerves that she was falling for Greg and she was hoping Shaun would help play cupid. He didn't have the heart to tell her that Greg was interested in a special somebody, too. Unfortunately that was Tina Bunning. Greg, as a trouble-making bad-boy type, was the opposite for the most part of Shaun. It was not uncommon for Greg to describe in detail the acts he intended on doing with Tina, given she had aspirations of being an adult movie star.
Shaun stared at the ceiling, tapping his pencil on his journal, thinking how he could put his thoughts down on paper correctly. It wasn't that he hated his dad but felt that a few years after his mom passing would have gone more smoothly had he have been there when she had passed away.
A sharp knock on his the door removed him from his deep thoughts. It startled Shaun who was trying to lose himself in his journal. He picked up the pencil and looked up to meet his dad's eyes. He rejected the smart ass pull to call his dad Francis and simply sighed. "What's up, dad?"
Frank was thinking hard about the coming day and the knock-down drag-out verbal war which was sure to come on their annual hunting trip. Frank thought about canceling it this year, something he was pretty sure that Shaun would not be worried about. He kept it because it was a family tradition going back to when he was a young man. The lessons he felt it taught about wilderness survival, learning to use a firearm and be productive with it, and a cut off from all the damn technical advances cell phones, music players, and video games wouldn't hurt him a bit.
He looked around Shaun's room at the game console, a laptop sitting opened, and a cell phone next to it making weird noises. "So are you all set for Saturday morning? We need to get up bright and early to get on the road."