15. Fiji
Chapter fifteen
Fiji
The reception winds down around nine, and nobody calls it a night.
We all walk over together to the open lounge we have booked for our private Thirteen celebration after the wedding reception.
It's a beautiful venue, fully open on one side looking out over the ocean, the sound of the gentle waves serenading us, strings of Edison bulbs strings criss-crossing everywhere, casting a pale yellow light, and the smell of the island flowers is amazing.
We pull chairs together while Admiral and Stone find glasses and start pouring. The easy rhythm of a Thirteen reunion breaks out, complete with our latest versions of our past exploits and current day accomplishments.
Status quo. And we love it.
I look over and Herc's got Bella tucked under his arm, exactly where he wants to be. I’m so happy for him, for them. Finally finding their way back to each other. I can’t say it doesn’t tug on my heart though.
God, I miss my wife.
Beth would be so happy to see this. She always thought they belonged together.
It’s not a sad thought. Just true.
Beth had known these guys as long as she’d known me. We met out in a bar in Annapolis one Saturday when we were allowed out from the Naval Academy. She was with some of her friends from Hood, a women’s college nearby.
We spent an hour laughing and talking with the guys. When she got up to go to the bathroom, I told these idiots I was going to marry her. They laughed the whole way through school and right up to the altar when I married her during June Week in the Academy’s chapel, right after graduation.
These guys were her friends too. Some of them more than mine at times. She and Bella were close.
If she were here she'd be oohing and aahing over Max’s baby pictures and would be two drinks into planning Bella's baby shower before the rest of us finished clapping at the adoption news. She'd be calling Admiral out, trying to pretend he wasn't moved at the news.
And Stone most definitely would have had her riled before midnight by telling stories about her. She would’ve been right in the middle of all of it, not off to the side the way I am.
That was all over a quarter of a century ago. And another lifetime.
I'm the only one here who buried his wife.
Nobody says it. They don't have to. It’s always here, simmering just out of sight. Tonight it's calm. I can sit in a room full of my people and be happy for them.
And I can let her be happy about it too, wherever she is.
Stone drops into the chair next to mine and hands me a glass I didn't ask for.
"You've got the face," he says.
"I've got one face."
"You've got two. That one, and the one where you're actually here." He pours without asking. "Be here. Groom's orders."
"You're not the groom."
"Groom-adjacent. Close enough." He taps his glass to mine. "She'd have loved this, Doc."
"Yeah," I say. "She would've been so happy for them."
He doesn't push it further. That's Stone.
“So, how is our girl really doing out west?”
“You know we’re not living on a prairie, right?”
“Brother, you live past the Mississippi, you should be happy I even acknowledge it as existing.”
We both laugh and clink glasses. “I really think she’s doing well. She likes school, is making friends. Isn’t sulking around anymore. So, progress.”
Across the room Sara's showing Bella something on her phone and they start laughing. Eli has Admiral pinned on some airframe argument and Admiral is tolerating it, which, from Admiral is a genuine act of patience.
And Herc watches all of it, still half-amazed this wedding happened. I flew six thousand miles to be with him and witness this finally happening. For him to get what he waited too long for.
Worth every minute in the air.These are my people.
Beth used to say she married the whole crew and I was just the one she slept with.
She wasn't wrong.
Stone tops off my glass without asking and starts in on a story I've heard forty times.
How Beth talked her way onto a flight line with a borrowed lab coat and zero authorization just to bring me lunch.
He tells it wrong on purpose, so I fix it.
He grins. That's the whole point of the story.
It's his way of keeping her with us, gently.
They all do it. But it’s getting easier. Herc drops her name into stories now without flinching. Admiral always makes her a drink and sets it near the bottle. He winks at me now when he does it. I didn’t just lose my wife. They lost a friend.
I forget that sometimes. That I'm not the only one who misses her.
Stone stands and raises his glass. "To the great adoption news."
"Herc and Bella with a baby." I shake my head. "Yeah. It's good."
"Six months." Admiral sits back. "Damn."
"Max doing okay with you two being gone?" I ask Sara.
"We dropped him at my mom’s on Thursday and he was fine.”
"Didn't even cry when we left." Stone sounds mildly bruised.
"That's a good thing."
"It is. I know it is." He swirls his glass. "Still stings a little."
Eli surfaces from his argument with Admiral long enough to lean over. "Max is fine, Finn. He's not even one yet. Sara’s mom practically FaceTimes you two on the hour."
"It’s not that bad."
Sara comes over and kisses Stone on the top of his head. "I love you to death Finn Walsh, but you know it is.”
She kisses him again and goes back to Bella. Stone shakes his head slowly. "I love that woman so much it's maddening."
"Yeah," I say. "I know what that's like."
He picks up his glass and we toast silently to one another.
Eli drops back into his chair and stretches his legs out. "Somebody should've filmed Herc at the altar. That face he made."
"I was not making a face," Herc says.
"Herc," Eli says. "You were making a face."
"It was an expression of appropriate solemnity."
"You looked like you were going to pass out," Stone says.
"I was not going to pass out."
"I had a hand on your elbow," Admiral says, without looking up from his glass. "Just in case."
The whole room loses it. Even Herc. That's one of the things I love about my Thirteen brothers. Almost thirty years from the day we met, and we’re still breaking each other open laughing over nothing.
***
At midnight, Sara's the one who says we should call Ellie. “Already tomorrow back home, the kid's up, and a fourteen-year-old who turned down Fiji deserves to hear about it from every single one of us.”
“It’s five in the morning at home,” I remind them.
“And? She didn’t come to my wedding. The kid can suck it up.” Herc laughs.
Eli and Stone fight the Wi-Fi for a solid minute, and Admiral tells them both they're useless, grabs the tablet and then Ellie's face fills the entire screen. She always holds it too close.
Dad?” she says, rubbing a hand over her eyes. “Are you okay?"
Sara sees me start to choke up and swings the tablet over in front of Herc.
“He’s just fine. I’m the one six thousand miles away from you with a broken heart.”
"Oh, Uncle Herc. I’m sorry, but congratulations.” She stops for a second. “Wait. Did you actually get married or did Bella finally come to her senses?"
"She married me. Officiant had us repeat a part of it, so technically more than once."
"He forgot his line," Bella says, leaning in. "Nervous."
"I wasn't nervous."
"Eight thousand miles, Ellie. Your Uncle Herc forgot his own name in front of God and everybody,” Bella snarks.
"That's going on the record," Ellie says.
"It won't," Herc says.
"Uncle Admiral already has the video. I can see him holding up his phone right now."
"Insurance and leverage."Admiral holds it up to the camera, guilty and delighted. “I’ll send you a copy of it now, El.”
"Traitor," Herc says.
"Thirty years, sweetheart," Bella says. "He has plenty of insurance and leverage."
The whole group crowds in.
Stone says, "Ellie. There are fish here the color of highlighters and you wanted to fish in the muddy waters of Washington state?”
"I picked not flying eleven hours next to you."
"Smart," Admiral says.
"Gets it from her father," I say.
Ellie's grinning now, the real one, the wide one she doesn't give to many people. Sara blows her a kiss. Eli tells her he's teaching her to fly the minute she's old enough and they're not going to tell me.
"You'd hate it here El," Admiral adds. "All sunshine and no responsibility."
"Sounds terrible," Ellie says. "Tell me more."
"She's definitely yours," Herc says to me, and I can't argue it.
I watch all of it and let the love my brothers have for my daughter pour out.
Ellie thinks the Thirteen is my thing. Something she got folded into by accident of being born to me. She's too young yet to understand, she didn't get folded in so much as she was always already part of it.
These men have been a part of her life, and she has been a part of theirs since she was born. They showed up the week Beth died and didn't leave. They carried the two of us and held us both up until we could stand on our own again. And they’ll keep showing up just like we show up for them.
Right now they're giving my daughter a hard time from eight thousand miles away.
They're telling her she's theirs. She always will be.
She doesn't know that's what this is yet. Someday she will, and when she does it's going to register, and I want to be around to see it happen.
"Okay, I actually have to sleep. I’m a growing teen," she says. "Uncle Herc I'm glad you’re not going to die alone."
"She's perfect," Bella says.
"Love you too, El,” Herc says.
"Daddy,” she says, rolling over with the phone. “You doing okay?”
“Much better now, kiddo. Much better now. I love you. Get some sleep.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
The screen goes dark and I sit with it a second before I put the tablet down.
***
The night begins to slow after that. Eli nods off in his chair and nobody wakes him. Sara starts checking her phone for Max updates and Stone stops pretending he isn't watching over her shoulder.
Herc comes and sits beside me.
"Everything good over here?"
"Yeah. It was a good night, Herc. I mean that."
"I know you do. Give me the real answer."
I turn the glass in my hand. "Missing Ellie."