1. Luc
1
LUC
HOMECOMING
“ S o this is it.” I set Billy’s car seat on the kitchen counter inside my nineteen-sixties fixer-upper on the very edge of town, unsnapping the straps and freeing the too-small infant from her cushioned safety. Then I pull her to my chest and hope, pray, beg for the emptiness I feel to fill with something else.
Something not quite as painful.
I’ve held a thousand babies in my life. Starting with my twin sisters, six years younger than me, then their kids, our friends’ kids, my godson, plus the few I’ve delivered over the years on the job as a paramedic.
Babies don’t scare me, not even the small, slightly early kinds.
But bringing this one home without her mom by our side— terrifying .
I study Billy’s cheeks, chubby despite her prematurity. Her long lashes and wispy, blonde hair.
“This is home,” I murmur, turning a slow circle, though I watch only her. “The kitchen, where Mom makes her coffee and kisses me on the head. Right…” I bring my hand up and tap at the back of my skull, precisely where my spine begins. “Here.” She drops those kisses without thinking, a little gift just for me. They’re my favorite kind. “And over there,” I drag my focus up and glance toward the ratty couch in the living room, still a little messy with unfolded laundry. A tea towel, draped over the arm to dry a spot of water I’d spilled the same day we ended up in the hospital.
Seems like a lifetime ago now .
“That couch is where Mom was sitting just last week.” I gently bounce the sleeping baby and wander closer. “You were swimming around in her tummy, kicking her ribs and searching for more space to stretch your legs. So we pointed a flashlight at her belly to make it fun.” I lean in and press a kiss to the tip of her button nose. “You chased the light like you were in on the game all along.”
Billy is just eleven days old. Still new. So she doesn’t open her eyes to hear me chatter.
She doesn’t coo or make a lot of noise.
She’s just… silent. Unimposing. Exactly like her mom.
I move into the living room and kick a pair of boots to the side, so they don’t become a tripping hazard later when the world leaves us alone and it’s just me and her and a whole house to navigate on our own.
“Do you wanna see your room?” I wonder. Though I ponder the panic that races along my throat. The ache in the base of my belly, and the grief I feel at the idea of heading upstairs.
Why does it hurt so much?
Because it was Kari’s domain. The nursery was her design. Her execution. Her hard work. And in the end, it was supposed to be her prize, where she could bring her babies home and rock in the chair she selected from the store in the city.
“We could see the wall Mom painted for you,” I rasp. “The cute little clouds and the tree she sketched with her belly getting in the way. She did it all on her own,” I admit, gulping down the dread that attempts to eat me up. “I wasn’t around very much,” I whisper. “Because I wanted to work extra shifts and save money for you. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
I move out of the living room and ignore the shopping bags by the door. The jumbo packs of diapers I never purchased. The wipes, stacked by the box. I pass gifts, some still in wrapping paper, because we didn’t get time to open them yet.
And though my heart pains, I place my foot on the first step and start up. Slowly. With an anvil sitting on my chest, and yet, obligation toward my daughter.
She exists, and she deserves a father who is coping, even when it feels like he left his soul inside a hospital.
“I’ll put safety gates on these stairs in the next month or two,” I mutter, the familiar sirens of a fire truck wailing in the distance. There’s no smoke in the air. No flames to be seen outside my windows. Probably a cat in a tree, or a car turned on its head out at Piper’s Lane. Neither of which are problems I need to worry about. Not today, and not for another month or so. “Mommy and I already bought them,” I tell Billy. “They’re packed in a box and ready to go. But we figured there was no point putting them up until you could at least crawl. No need to create a tripping hazard until you were on the move.”
She dozes. Completely and totally at ease, though I wonder how that could be. She grew in her mother’s stomach for eight months. Existed only within Kari’s body. Slept to the sound of her heartbeat. Swam in the warmth she won’t ever know again.
And now she’s on the outside. In the cold. The draft. Where clothes itch and stomachs rumble.
There’s no way this world is as comfortable as the place she was before it. But she snoozes in my arms now, none the wiser that the heartbeat she knew is now…
It no longer beats where we can hear.
“You’ll let me know when you’re hungry, right?” I crest the top of the stairs and spy the gates perched against the wall, in their boxes, just like I said. “You just say so, Billy. Tell me, and Daddy’ll get you a bottle.”
My phone chirps in my back pocket. A trill I have no desire to listen to. A bleating that grates on my nerves. There’s only one person on the planet I want to hear from right now, so I reach back and free the device from my pocket. But I find Kane’s name on the screen. My brother-in-law. My family. He’s a damn good guy to know. But he’s not who I want to talk to right now. So I silence the call, and the device, then I drop it to the carpeted floor and continue toward the nursery.
“Even if you don’t like the colors,” I whisper, repositioning the baby in my arms and holding her impossibly closer, “don’t tell your mom, okay? She worked really hard for months. She didn’t even stop working until the day you were born. So everything she did, she did it when she probably should have been resting.”
My phone continues to vibrate, humming against the floor as I put more space between it and us. But then I pass the main bedroom. The scent of tulips playing in the air. Kari’s perfume, tickling my nose as I wander by the door. The curtains are still drawn; the room, dark. We haven’t slept in there in almost two weeks, and as proof, my back still aches, because I chose a shitty recliner chair instead of coming home.
They made me leave Kari.
There was no way in hell I was leaving Billy, too.
“Can you smell that, beautiful?” I lift my nose and inhale the sweet floral scent that shrouds our home. “You would recognize that smell, huh? It’s your mommy.”
I stop in front of the nursery door, the plain white paint a lie when I know what exists on the other side. We didn’t want bright colors in the communal spaces. Pink or blue, clashing with everything else we have. So the door is bland and boring. The secrets it holds, so wonderful in contrast.
But it was a secret Kari and I got to share. A future we got to be excited about.
Licking my dry lips, I wipe my moist palm on the leg of my jeans. Then I reach out and wrap my hand around the knob.
The last person to enter this room was Kari. The last person to exit, Kari.
She dedicated countless hours to transforming what was once a guest bedroom, with an ugly, second-hand bed and a desk with a squeaky chair no one ever used, into a baby wonderland. She tore up the nineteen-sixties carpet, restoring the hard wood beneath. On her hands and knees, she replaced nails and smoothed out imperfections. She donned a mask and re-sealed the wood.
And then she painted the walls to create a garden of peace. With magical trees and mushrooms a fairyland creature could sit upon. She hand drew, then hand painted, fairies whose magic spread from wall to wall. She dabbed on fluffy clouds using a kitchen sponge. Draped fairy lights from the ceiling to simulate a starry night. Hung curtains that created a whimsical look. And when she realized they were too near the crib—dangerous for a baby—she stopped, rearranged, and moved everything around to make sure her vision worked.
She was determined to bring her babies home to a wonderland.
And in the end, she didn’t get to come home at all.
Broken, exhausted after weeks in hell, I twist the handle and push the door open, and expose that colorful brainchild of the woman I swore to always protect. I breathe through the pain slicing up through my stomach. The loneliness that eats at my soul. The lost time, already too much, and still more to come.
But Billy sleeps. Comfortable in her daddy’s arms. Warm, wrapped in the same pink blanket her mother came home from the hospital in. “This is your room, Bill.” I twist to give her the best view, though her eyes remain closed and her sleep, unencumbered. “That’s your bed, baby girl. And your bookshelves. Your changing table.” My voice catches, the emotion lodging in my esophagus and taking my breath away. “And Mommy’s chair. ”
I head toward the recliner, far and away more comfortable than the one I’ve slept in for weeks. Suede fabric, soft brown, kind of the same shade as Kari’s hair. A little yellow blanket hangs over the back, and pockets in the side hold hidden treasures. Teething rings; though we were aware those won’t be required for a while. Rattles; she won’t be able to use those yet. Diapers; we’ll change those at the table, anyway. Butt creams; table.
Everything this chair holds is useless for now. But we’re over-preparers. Both of us. We work in the medical field—me, an EMT, and her, an RN—which means we like to make sure we have a bit of everything, just in case.
It’s who we are in our souls. Prepared. Over-thinkers. Worriers. But usually calm in an emergency.
All except that one time.
Billy stirs in my arms, for the first time since before we left the hospital. She scrunches her lips and tenses her belly, and somewhere in the base of her throat, she growls.
“You gotta poop, Bill?” I move closer to the chair and stare down at the suede. At the cushions already molded to Kari’s shape. The few strands of hair she’s already left behind.
This is her place.
Her domain.
This was her claim, and her dreams, all wrapped up in a rounded belly and a welcome pregnancy. But she’s not here. She didn’t come home. So I turn at the chair and back up until my calves touch the fabric. Drawing a deep breath and exhaling to rid my body of the anxiety swirling in my blood, I lower onto the cushions and readjust Billy until she’s vertical, her cheek on my chest and her feet in my lap.
“Let’s let gravity help you out a little, beautiful. Push down on that gas and get rid of it.” Reclining back, I reach across to the lever on the side of the chair, and flicking the footrest up, I kick my boots off and snuggle in.
I’m not sure we’ll leave this spot for a while.
“Do you miss her too, Bill?” I bury my nose in the warm spot behind my daughter’s ear and inhale. “Does it feel like half of you is missing? Because,” my voice catches. “Same.” I sniffle and count on my willpower alone. To remain whole. To not break down and ruin what is supposed to be a happy day for my baby. “Do you want Daddy to tell you a story? Because I can. I can tell you everything.” I press a kiss to her plump cheek. “Why don’t I start with the first time I laid eyes on your mom?” Slowly, a shaky grin works its way across my lips. “It was a good day. I met my best friend and your mom. I had no clue that would be the day that would change my whole world.”