Epilogue Bring Him Home #3
He looked shocked that I agreed, but recovered, smiling and nodding once.
For a moment nobody said anything. In the other room, Micah and Zhaire were losing a battle over a toy with Zaria.
“Ow! She bit me!” Micah hollered, and Raschad was up out of his chair, crossing to where Zaria came toddling towards him wailing, with the disputed toy clutched in her hands.
He scooped her up and covered her wet face in kisses. “It’s okay, baby girl, it’s okay. How about we just let her have it, huh?” He looked back at the boys, negotiating a surrender on her behalf. “You can find something else to get into.”
“Raschad!” Simone got up. “Absolutely not. She does not get to sink her teeth into somebody and get rewarded because she’s got her daddy wrapped around her finger.” She plucked the toy out of Zaria’s fist, and handed it back to the boys. “There. Play.”
Micah and Zhaire high-fived, a vindicated united front. Zaria, deprived of the toy and justice, took a breath that pulled all the air out of the room, and then detonated. Back arched, fists balled, the works. Raschad looked down at his screaming daughter like he’d been handed a live grenade.
“Here, you want Daddy’s phone?” Raschad muttered, showing her his phone as an offering. The table lost it with laughter.
Micah abandoned the toy the second it was his again and came trotting over to us, planting himself at Alyssa’s elbow.
“Mom.” He glanced at shrieking Zaria in Raschad’s arms, then back at us. “When you have the baby. Can it be a brother?”
“We don’t get to pick, Micah,” Alyssa said.
“Okay, but can you try.” He looked at Zaria, mid-meltdown. “Because girls bite. And they have tantrums. And they take your stuff.” He shook his head. “I just think a brother’s the smarter move.”
The whole table howled.
“See?” Taryn said, gesturing at the chaos. “This right here is why me and Zion are good with being the fun auntie and uncle. We get to hand them back.” She turned to Zion. “Ain’t that right, baby?”
“Every time,” Zion smiled, pulling her in under his arm, kissing the side of her head. “We show up, spoil ’em, buy the loud annoying toys, then go home to a quiet house and sleep in. Best deal in the family.”
“The best deal,” Taryn agreed, and clinked her glass to his.
I put my hand over Alyssa’s under the table. Then I laid my other one over the small rise of her stomach.
My son was still lobbying for a brother across the table. My other child was growing under my hand. My wife was beside me. My brothers and my sister were bickering about life with kids. My father was up on a mountain, still alive, unaware that his baby boy was preparing to bring him home.
I had never had more to lose in my life. The thought came with a wash of anxiety.
I would love to tell you that therapy erased it. That Alyssa loved me so well my fear disappeared. That walking up to my mother’s grave and touching my father’s piano cured the part of me that still knew exactly how fast a life could splinter apart.
It didn’t. Love did not make me less afraid.
Some mornings, I still woke before the sun and listened for breathing.
Some nights, I checked the locks twice and then made myself not check them a third time.
Sometimes Alyssa touched her stomach and winced, and I had to breathe through the part of me that wanted to call three doctors and cancel the rest of the day.
Fear was still there. I had just stopped letting it run my life.
I had lived a long time with nothing I could not afford to lose, and I called that peace. It wasn’t. It was emptiness with good lighting. It was a quiet house, a controlled calendar, clean counters, closed doors, and no one close enough to ruin me.
I was safe and I was starving.
Now there were multiple shoes by my door and toys under my couch.
Hair products on my sink. A woman in my bed who stole my covers and my breath.
A son who called me Dad like he’d been mine since day one.
A baby coming by winter. A family loud enough to shake the walls.
A father to bring home. A life so full it scared me if I looked at it too long.
That was the work now. Not controlling it, or outrunning it. Just staying present long enough to feel the fear and choose this life anyway.
I thought about the man I had once planned to die as. Useful and untouched.
Then I looked at the life around me, loud and fragile, and knew I would rather have this and be afraid, than go back to being safe without it.
For the first time since I was nineteen years old, I let myself not be in control.
And I let my brother go bring our father home.
The Wade Legacy concludes with two books, releasing the same day.
Book 4: Always Home. The Prequel. Isaiah and Niecy Wade’s love story. The founding love beneath everything you’ve read, and the meaning of the three words their children never understood.
Book 5: Always the Melody. Tre’s story, and the homecoming of the father who walked away.
The melody’s been playing the whole time. They just might finally hear it.