Epilogue
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— Colt —
Imight have slightly overestimated what a seventh birthday party required.
The bouncy castle had seemed reasonable when I’d ordered it.
Purple and orange, the size of a small house, anchored to the ground with industrial stakes.
I’d looked at the spec sheet and thought, yeah, that’s about right.
The food for twice as many people as were coming had also seemed reasonable.
The cake Indira had helped me commission, the boys’ names in blue frosting with seven candles.
The mechanical bull I’d rented from a company whose website had not asked a single question about the context.
The snow cone machine. The fake tattoo station—flash sheets of skulls and flames and eagles, the kind of thing that would look right on any brother’s arm, scaled down for a bunch of kids.
The photographer I’d booked to make sure we got all of it. All reasonable.
Lilac came over from the house at eleven, walked to where I was standing at the edge of the property, and took in the full picture in silence. “Colt.”
“Yeah, baby.”
“There’s a fake tattoo station.”
“I know.”
“All their school friends are going to go home with skulls on their faces.”
“They’re going to love it.”
She turned to look at me. I kept my eyes on the bouncy castle. After a moment she put her hand on my arm and when I finally looked at her, the expression on her face—somewhere between you’ve lost your mind and it’s perfect—had me ready to defend every single item.
“I talked to Dutch about the party,” I said. “He said go big.”
“Dutch would say that.”
“He said—” I stopped. Started over. “They only turn seven once.”
“Every kid only turns seven once.”
“They’re seven and it’s their first birthday with me.” I said it evenly. She held my eyes for a moment and then nodded, once, and squeezed my arm and didn’t say another word about the fake tattoo station. Or any of the rest of it.
She went to get drinks after that. Came back with two cups of lemonade, pressed one into my hand, and stood beside me.
“You’re going to cry again,” she said.
“I’m not going to cry,” I scoffed.
She laughed and leaned into my side, and I put my arm around her and we watched our sons lose their minds in real time.
Knox had been in the bouncy castle for forty-five minutes without stopping.
He came out only to eat half a hot dog, then immediately went back in.
Luca had gone in for approximately six minutes, decided it was beneath his dignity, and was now sitting at one of the picnic tables explaining something to Graham with great intensity, gesturing with a plastic fork for emphasis.
Graham was listening. He had that quality—he actually listened, like what you were saying was the most important thing he’d heard all day. I’d noticed it with the boys early on. They loved him, which hadn’t surprised me once I understood what he’d done for them.
He caught my eye over Luca’s head and smiled. I raised my cup.
By noon, Handful had discovered the snow cone machine.
He was supposed to be helping set out more food.
Instead he’d been at that machine for twenty minutes, working through every flavor in sequence, and was now standing in a patch of grass that had turned a deep, catastrophic red from everything he’d spilled.
He had a cherry snow cone in each hand and appeared to have no awareness that anything was wrong.
Knox had clocked him from inside the bouncy castle, abandoned the castle entirely, and sprinted over.
Handful handed him one of the snow cones without hesitation and they stood there together, a seven-year-old and a grown man who should have known better, surveying the ruins of the grass.
“He’s going to have a red tongue for a week,” Lilac said.
“Which one?”
She looked at me. “Both of them.”
The mechanical bull drew a crowd. Glitch went first, lasted six seconds, and landed on his feet.
Dutch got on next and managed eight, which he would not stop mentioning for the rest of the afternoon.
Handful—after finishing his third snow cone—climbed on, lasted two seconds, before being thrown sideways into the mat.
I watched all of this from the fence and felt nothing but deep satisfaction.
Luca found the fake tattoo station. He studied the flash sheets with the focus of someone choosing a tattoo he would have for life, selected a small black skull, and had it placed on the inside of his forearm.
He spent the next ten minutes showing it to all my brothers.
Knox had a bolt of lightning put across his cheek and a small flame on each wrist.
Later, I called both boys over to the shed at the edge of the property.
Luca came at a walk, suspicious. Knox came at a run, because Knox always ran these days.
I opened the shed.
Two small dirt bikes stood inside, side by side. Red for Luca. Blue for Knox. Both with a small racing stripe.
For a full three seconds, neither boy made a sound.
Then Knox let out a noise I’m shocked could come from a human child, flung himself at me so hard I actually staggered, then pulled back and sprinted to the blue bike like he was afraid someone would take it. He grabbed the handlebars. He looked back at me. He grabbed the handlebars again.
“Dad,” he said, voice pitched somewhere between reverence and hysteria. “Dad. Dad.”
“I heard you.”
“It’s mine?”
“It’s yours.”
He made the noise again. Several brothers near the fence turned to look.
Luca walked to the red bike slowly, like he was approaching something sacred. He put his hand on the seat. Ran his palm along the frame. Then he turned to me and said, very quietly, “This is the best thing that’s ever happened.”
I had to clear my throat twice before I trusted my voice. “Yeah, buddy. It is.”
I caught the photographer’s eye and nodded. She’d already had her camera up.
Then the dog arrived.
One of the prospects appeared from around the corner of the clubhouse carrying a crate with a blue bow tied to the handle on my signal.
I crouched down and opened the latch, and a black Labrador puppy stumbled out onto the grass, enormous paws, ears too big for its head, and absolutely no idea what was going on.
Knox saw it before the puppy had taken two steps.
What followed was a collision of two forces of nature. Knox dropped to his knees in the grass and the puppy launched itself at him, and they rolled around together while everyone watching started laughing.
Luca stood back for a moment, watching his brother and the dog with that serious face. Then he sat down cross-legged in the grass, quietly, like he didn’t want to spook it. The puppy noticed him, scrambled free of Knox, and trotted over on its enormous feet, sat down, and looked up at him.
Luca looked down at him. “Hi,” he said, very solemnly.
The puppy put its head on his knee.
“What were you thinking?” Lilac whispered to me.
I shrugged. “The boy wanted a dog. I got him a dog.”
“You said dogs were a big responsibility. You said that. I remember it.”
“Yeah.” I watched the puppy plant its enormous front paws on Luca’s chest and go after his face with its tongue, and Luca tipped his head back and laughed. Knox grabbed the puppy from behind and got licked instead, and then both of them were laughing, rolling in the grass.
“A dog is a big responsibility,” I said. “The boys should have one.”
Lilac looked at me. “That is not a counterargument.”
“I know.”
She made a sound that was almost a laugh. We watched them for a moment.
“What’s his name?”
Knox had apparently already given this thought. He sat up, grass-stained and red-tongued and lightning-bolted, puppy in his lap, and announced, with complete authority, “Gunner.”
Luca considered this for approximately two seconds. Then he nodded.
Lilac buried her face in my shoulder.
The cake came out around four. Indira carried it, seven candles lit, and someone started singing and then everyone joined in—brothers who’d never voluntarily sung anything in their lives, belting it out across the compound while Luca sat very straight and Knox—
Knox started crying.
Not sad crying. The overwhelmed kind, the kind that happens when something is too good and your body doesn’t know what to do with it. He blinked hard and his lip went and then two tears tracked straight down his cheeks.
Luca noticed. He reached over and took his brother’s hand under the table.
“Make a wish,” Lilac said.
Both boys leaned in and blew.
The photographer got it. She got all of it.
The party wound down slow the way good things do—not all at once, but in stages.
The fake tattoo station packed up. The bouncy castle deflated.
The mechanical bull got loaded back onto the trailer.
Brothers drifted off in ones and twos, full of hot dogs and satisfied in the way that comes from a day done right.
The boys lasted until seven-thirty. Knox went first—mid-sentence, slumped sideways against Luca’s shoulder with Gunner sprawled half across his lap. Luca lasted another twenty minutes.
I carried Knox. Lilac took Luca’s hand and half-walked, half-carried him, and Gunner trotted between us with his ears up, uncertain but game. The compound was quiet as we walked the short distance to our home. Knox didn’t stir the whole way.
Lilac found me on the porch after the boys were in bed. She’d brought two mugs of something warm and sat beside me and we looked out at the compound in the quiet.
Gunner pushed through the screen door, turned two circles, and lay down across our feet.
Seven years I’d been without them.
I sat on the porch with Lilac’s hand in mine and the dog across our feet and thought about Luca saying this is the best thing that’s ever happened.
He was right.