Chapter 5
Chapter 5
A melia and Ethan and Ridge and Maggie showed up together, bearing food. No one was hungry, except maybe the kids, but Maggie doled food anyway. And everyone ate, regardless of the fact that everything tasted like sawdust.
Jordan fussed over the kids, making certain their food was arranged and cut just so, their cups filled with milk, their chairs arranged properly at the table.
Maggie set a plate before her and she stared at it as if unable to fathom what to do with it.
“Try to take a few bites,” Amelia urged, rubbing her back gently.
Jordan nodded and dutifully picked up her fork.
Charlotte chattered nonstop throughout the meal, which was a blessing for everyone because no one was ready to talk yet. The shock was still too palpable. She asked questions about Smokey. Maggie and Ridge took turns showing her pictures and videos on their phone.
“Can we get a doggie, Mommy?” Charlotte asked, turning wide eyed toward Jordan.
“We’ll ask Da…” Jordan began before breaking off midsentence and staring into space, the shock hitting her anew.
“Maybe we could start with a doggie stuffed animal,” Ribs suggested. “Something to practice on so you can show your mom how good you are at taking care of it.”
Charlotte nodded, eyes brimming with excitement.
“Here, you pick out the one you want, and I’ll buy it today. It will be here in a couple of days,” Ribs said, handing her his phone. He had no qualms about her knowing how to use it. Everyone under the age of five these days seemed born already knowing how to implement technology.
Frog and his wife showed up. Ribs let them in and answered a call from Jones who was planning to fly home as soon as possible. When he returned to the kitchen, Amelia and Maggie were cleaning up while Ridge held his baby and Ethan held Nash. Charlotte brought Ribs’s phone to him and crawled into his lap.
“This one, I want this one,” she said, pointing to the dog she’d selected. It was a giant stuffed dog from some German company that cost three hundred dollars. Unbidden, he barked a short laugh. Everyone paused their dreariness to smile at him, except Jordan who bit her lip, concerned.
“You don’t ha…” she started, but he cut her off with a wave of his hand.
“Absolutely yes, it’s perfect.” He pushed the button and ordered it. Charlotte ran off to get paper and a couple of crayons, either to draw a picture of the dog or to draw a welcome picture, he wasn’t certain.
Thank you, Jordan mouthed.
He smiled and leaned forward to squeeze her hand. She gripped it like a lifeline, grasping it tightly between both hers with a shudder, telling him her act of holding herself together was merely that, an act.
He stood and pulled her up beside him, shepherding her from the room with an arm around her shoulders. She allowed him to lead her down the hall and to her bedroom. They sat on the edge and she unleashed again, sobbing with a fresh wave of tears as she pressed her face to his chest and held on tight.
These tears came to a natural and healthier end, slowly dwindling to sniffles. She leaned her ear tiredly against his chest.
“How?” she whispered.
He took a steadying breath and squeezed his eyes closed, not wanting to tell her. She both wanted and needed to hear it, however. “They found his car in an abandoned lot by the river. One shot in the head.”
She paused, absorbing that. “Murder?”
He paused, forcing the word through rubbery lips. “No.”
She darted off the bed and into the bathroom, heaving into the toilet until there was nothing left. Ribs stood beside her, hand pressed to her back to keep her steady. When she was finished he wetted a cloth and pressed it to her forehead.
“Thank you,” she said as she sank wearily to the tile.
He sat gingerly beside her, out of words, out of everything. Later there would be time to talk, to pick apart the details and figure out where everything went wrong. But for now it was enough to sit and be. Sharing the misery of grief together somehow took a weight off both of them. Jordan leaned against him and he put his arm around her, resting his head companionably on hers.
An unknown time later, Amelia arrived with Nash. “Sorry, but this guy’s getting pretty adamant about wanting his mama.” She handed Nash to Jordan. Immediately he clutched at her and started to root, whimpering to nurse. Ribs started to get to his feet, but Jordan grabbed his forearm.
“Just stay. Please.”
He sank down and put his arm back around her. She leaned against him while Nash nursed, so noisily and cheerfully that they laughed. “Kids are the best,” she whispered, sighing.
“Your kids, maybe,” he agreed, giving her a squeeze.
They sat in companionable silence a few minutes before Jordan sat up, staring at him in alarm. “I have to call his parents and my mom.”
“I can call his parents,” Ribs offered.
“Shouldn’t I be the one?” she asked.
“I’ve known them as long, and they’ll understand.”
She sat back, relieved. “My mom is going to want to come.”
“Sorry,” he said.
She giggled and shook her head. “That’s terrible. But true. I just…don’t know how to do this. There’s everything, absolutely everything.”
“Take it a minute at a time, and we’ll help. We have resources to sort through all the legalities and insurance, so we’ll work on that. Amelia and Maggie will set you up with meals. Everything else we’ll deal with as it comes, okay?” He paused and took a breath, tamping down his own emotions. “He had a plan, right? For the burial and service and everything?” They’d all done it as newbie SEALs, given the high likelihood of their deaths. It was only practical. Shimmer’s danger level hadn’t diminished much since he shifted to intelligence. Ribs assumed he would have updated his plans over the years, from a practical standpoint.
“I think everything’s in place,” Jordan said softly. “He’s had those plans for so long, and somehow I never thought we’d use them.”
“I know. The shock and pain are going to mix for a while. They’ll probably take turns being more potent.” For him the shock was winning. He knew Shimmer had been struggling with unseen ghosts for a while, and even so he couldn’t believe he’d done it, couldn’t believe he’d actually leave Jordan and the kids behind, to say nothing of all of them. A stab of anger tried to surface; he pushed it back down. Later, there would be time to deal with his own stuff later. Right now it was about supporting Jordan.
Nash finished nursing and lay in Jordan’s lap, beaming up at them with a gummy smile. He had a few teeth now, but not all of them.
“He’s so happy after he nurses,” Jordan noted.
“Can’t say that I blame him,” Ribs said before he could even think about it.
Jordan’s jaw dropped and her cheeks flushed. “Gaines, my lands.”
“That came out wrong. What I meant was that obviously after he… With a full belly…There’s really no way to rebound, huh?”
“’Fraid not, but it’s okay. I mean I sort of did nurse him right in front of you, so that line probably got a little blurry. It’s just that’s kind of how I feel, a little blurry, like I’m trying to see and do everything through a thick wooly cloth right now. Sorry if that was awkward or uncomfortable.” Her cheeks flushed again.
Ribs’s arm was still around her. He used it to give her a reassuring squeeze. “Jordy, come on. It’s part of life. I’m not one of those dinosaurs who thinks women and babies have to don a burqa to nurse. Babies get hungry, they eat. You’re in your own house in your own bathroom. If anything I’m the intruder here.”
“You could never be that,” she said with her usual earnestness. “You’re our family.” Her smile dimmed. “My family, I guess. I mean I know you were Jay’s first but…” she trailed helplessly away, as if realizing for the first time everything would need reassessed now.
“We’re family, always and forever,” he assured her, resting his head on hers. “And I am here for you, always, for anything you need. Call, and I will be here.”
“I just…don’t even know where to begin,” she said, her gaze sliding around the bathroom as if only now realizing where she was, with no idea how she wound up there.
“Let’s make our calls. I’ll call Jay’s parents. You call your mom.”
“Right, okay,” she said, reaching in her pocket for her phone. Ribs gave her shoulder a little squeeze as he reached for his own phone, then stood and walked out of the bathroom, perching on the edge of the bed.
Jordan started to cry almost immediately. The sound was distracting because it tugged something in him, something primal that needed to take action. He couldn’t, though, not with his own call looming. So he turned his back toward the bathroom, squeezing his eyes closed until the moment Jay’s mom answered the phone.