Chapter 1
1
HOPE
Sitting on the wooden bench, I watch Wyatt push Evan on his favorite swing. Evan’s giggles echo through the park, joining the other sounds of children playing, and I grin. This is what contentment feels like. Watching the love of my life play with our son.
“Higher, Daddy!” Evan squeals in delight, kicking his little legs.
Wyatt looks over at me with raised brows, asking me if I’m okay with our son wanting to go higher on the swing. We’ve always been able to read each other’s thoughts and communicate silently; I guess it comes from knowing each other for such a long time.
“Not too high,” I call out, getting more comfortable on the bench. I know we’ll be here a while.
Wyatt pushes him a little harder, and the swing goes higher. Evan cheers, his eyes sparkling beneath the morning sunlight, his hair going every which way as he swings back and forth. He loves flying through the air. I wouldn’t be surprised if he becomes a pilot when he grows up.
“I wanna go on the slide,” Evan sings, so Wyatt slows the swing to a stop and helps him climb down.
Standing, I hold out my hand to Evan, and he wraps his tiny fingers around mine. Wyatt’s too wide to fit through the tunnel at the top of the slide, so I always end up going with Evan because he’s too little to go on his own. When we climb to the top, I glance at Wyatt and see him speaking with a boy wearing a backpack. I smile at my husband as he helps the young boy onto the swing and begins to push him.
Peeling my gaze away from my kind-hearted husband, I situate myself behind Evan at the top of the slide inside the tunnel. A huge explosion bursts through the bird song and children’s laughter, shaking the slide and making it unstable. With my heart racing like a wild horse, I quickly scoot us forward, slipping down the slide so we can get to safety before it collapses.
Flames and charred playground equipment become visible as we clear the tunnel, and terror-filled screams pierce the air. I snap my head toward the swings where I last saw Wyatt, but he’s not there. As soon as my feet hit the sand at the bottom of the slide, I scoop Evan into my arms and take off at a break-neck sprint toward the swings. Charred limbs send long, ribbon-like fingers of smoke upward, and the stench of burning flesh has me doubling over, crushing Evan against me as I scream until everything turns black.
Jolting upward, my heart pounding like a herd of elephants in my chest, I realize I’m no longer at the playground, but safe in my bed. My throat is raw, my body dripping in sweat, and my sheets twist around me, trapping me in place. My gasp echoes in the silent room as I try to draw a breath that doesn’t carry the terror of my dream into my starved lungs. I gulp down air like my life depends on it and tear the sheets from my body with furious hands, then drop back to my pillow, squeezing my eyes closed. When the visual remnants of my dream continue to linger, I snap them open again and stare unseeing at the ceiling.
My chest heaves with a sob, and tears stream down the side of my face, soaking into my hair. Over the years, I’ve repeatedly had some version of this dream, as if my subconscious is filling in the blanks of my husband’s death, even though he was thousands of miles away in Syria when it happened. It’s not like I was there. All I know is what the officers told me when they knocked on my door in the middle of the night, almost six years ago.
Not even Shane, Wyatt’s best friend, who was also impacted by the blast, could fill in the blanks. Nix, Wyatt’s commanding officer, refused to discuss the horrific moment when a young boy carrying a backpack concealing an explosive device asked my husband to play soccer with him.
In the beginning, I had dreams almost every night. Over time, they’ve lessened, but they still happen occasionally.
This is what living with grief is like.
It’s a weird thing. Just when I think I’m beginning to live around it , it comes up, slaps me in the face, and I land on my ass in proverbial quicksand that sucks me in and won’t let go. I can fight it , but the more I do, the deeper it drags me into its depths.
Weeks—sometimes even months—can pass while I live life like everyone else, and then, out of the blue, it hits.
Grief .
There’s no rhyme or reason. No explanation. No trigger that I can pinpoint. But I’ve returned to where I was a year after losing Wyatt. The father of my son. My best friend. My future.
We made promises, and he broke his. I didn’t.
Our promises were meant to be everlasting. Or so I thought.
I was wrong.
I never quite sink back to the depths of despair I experienced during the first year after losing him, but almost six years later, I can’t seem to escape its clutches completely. Its claws latch onto my flesh, tearing at my soul and ripping apart my heart, yet there’s nothing I can do to combat it.
I’m helpless. At its mercy.
For the last two weeks, I’ve cried myself to sleep every night and woken every morning with tears soaking my cheeks. This morning is no different as I swipe angrily at the moisture on my face. I know I’ll always carry pain in my heart and a heavy ache in my soul, but feeling this way all the time is exhausting. I’m tired down to my very marrow.
Curling into a ball around Wyatt’s pillow, I make myself as small as possible beneath the burden that’s become too much to carry.
In my heart, I know Wyatt would be disappointed. He’d be pissed that I’m not moving forward at a pace he’d deem appropriate. He was never one to surrender to negativity, but he’s not here. He can’t comfort me, and he certainly can’t tell me that everything will be okay.
Because it will never be okay.
“Mom, are you awake?” Evan calls softly through my door.
“Yeah, big guy.” I swipe my cheeks again, trying to remove the evidence of my pain.
“Can I come in?”
I smile wistfully. Ever since he walked in on me dressing, he’s started knocking to check if it’s “safe” to enter, instead of walking in unannounced like he used to. I appreciate it. I do. I’m just sad he’s already at that age.
I place Wyatt’s pillow back on his side of the bed, wipe beneath my eyes, and then sit up. “Sure.” When the door opens, I pat Wyatt’s side of the bed and encourage Evan to step beyond the doorway. “Come and sit with me for a minute.” He climbs onto the bed, and I wrap my arm around him, sliding my fingers through his soft hair. “How are you feeling about starting middle school tomorrow?”
He shrugs. “Okay, I guess.”
“Did you and Elliott work out a place to meet?” I hate the thought of him being all alone, but what I hate more is that Wyatt isn’t here to see his son moving onto the next stage of his education. He missed Evan’s first day of kindergarten—and first grade—because he was deployed, but we video chatted so he didn’t miss out completely. Now, though, we can’t even do that.
“Yeah, sorta.” He looks up at me with his big brown eyes, just like his dad’s. It doesn’t get any easier to look at Evan and not see Wyatt. The older Evan gets, the more he looks like his father. Even some of his mannerisms are like Wyatt’s, and I would’ve thought that, with the limited time they had together and Evan’s young age, he wouldn’t be so much like his dad.
I was wrong.
About so many things.
I muss his hair a little, noting the length. “I think I’ll trim your hair after breakfast.” I meant to do it last week, but it totally slipped my mind.
He dips away from me, swatting my hand with a frown marring his young face. “I don’t need a trim.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “You do. All the kids have fresh cuts for the beginning of the year. I’ll only tidy up the ends a little, but I’m cutting your hair.”
He pouts and climbs from the bed, and I follow suit on the other side, grabbing my robe. “Dammit. Having a hairstylist for a mom is the worst,” he snaps over his shoulder.
I chuckle to myself as I pull my hair free from my robe. “Watch your mouth.” I raise a brow at him. “Meet me downstairs. I’m making pancakes.”
He pops his head back around the doorjamb with a hopeful expression. “Chocolate?”
“I guess I could be persuaded.” We head downstairs, and when Evan sees me place the chocolate chips on the counter, he whoops loudly. He sets the table for two while I mix the batter, and then he stands beside me while I cook the pancakes. “So, what would you like to do on your last day of freedom?” I flip the pancake over, waiting for his answer.
He shrugs. “I was just gonna play Fortnite with my friends.”
I glance out the window. “It’s a nice day. We should do something outside.”
He huffs, folding his skinny arms across his chest. “You always make me go outside just because the weather’s nice. I don’t wanna.”
I press my lips together, hiding my grin at his adorable pout. “I’ll tell you what. After breakfast, I’ll cut your hair.” His frown deepens, but I ignore him. “Then, humor me and join me on a bike ride, and I’ll leave you to do your thing with your friends for the rest of the day.”
His eyes narrow as he contemplates my offer. “Hmmm, you drive a tough bargain, but okay. That sounds reasonable.”
“Fantastic,” I say as I carry the pancakes to the table. Evan wastes no time dropping a couple onto his plate and diving in, as if I haven’t fed him in a week. “Hey, slow down.”
“I can’t! They’re too good,” he mumbles around a mouthful of food.
I can’t argue there, this batch tastes exceptionally delicious for some reason.
We clear the table, and Evan wipes the dishes as I wash. Then, I set up a chair on the back porch and trim his hair.
As the brown strands slide through my fingers, I flash back to a time when Wyatt would let me cut his hair while I was training to be a hairstylist. I chuckle under my breath. Some haircuts I gave him were hideous, and he’d have to wear a hat to cover the disaster, but he never once denied me when I asked to practice on him. My heart flips in my chest as I remember his steadfast support, which never wavered during the time we were together.