Chapter 4 #2
When we were kids, he couldn't sit still for five minutes.
I remember him at twelve, doing a backflip off the rope swing at the quarry while Jack yelled at him to stop showing off.
Racing bikes down our street so fast Mrs. Tucker threatened to call his mother.
He had this laugh—loud, infectious—you could hear it from three rooms away.
Now look at him. A gentleman. The kind of steady that only comes from years of showing up when it matters.
"How's Anna doing?" I asked somewhere around Meeting Street.
Sam glanced at me, then back at the road. "She's good. Greg got stationed in Virginia last year, so they're up there now. Kids are getting big—Emma's seven, Lucas just turned four."
"Four. Same as Rosie."
"Yeah." He smiled, soft. "Anna sends pictures every week. Lucas is all Greg, but Emma's got the Reeves stubborn streak. Arguing with her teachers already."
"That sounds about right."
"She asked about you, actually. When I told her about Jack." His voice quieted. "Said she was sorry. That he was one of the good ones."
My throat tightened. "He was."
The conversation drifted after that. Nothing heavy, just the kind of talk that fills the space when no one has the energy for silence.
Mark mentioned a restaurant he'd noticed on the drive from the airport.
Sam pointed out a new coffee shop where an old bookstore used to be. Small things. Safe things.
Sam turned off the main road. The building was white with black shutters, tasteful in that way funeral homes always were—designed to look like a place you might actually want to visit.
I took a breath and tried to steady myself.
The funeral home smelled like lilies and carpet cleaner.
A woman in a gray suit walked us through options I didn't want to think about. Oak or mahogany. Satin or velvet. Brass handles or bronze. Every question felt obscene.
Mark's arm was around my shoulders. I leaned into him, grateful for the weight of it.
"Classic. Nothing fancy," Sam said. "Jack would've hated fancy."
He was right. I nodded, and the woman wrote it down.
We spent an hour in a back office writing the obituary with Sam and I passing sentences back and forth while Mark rubbed slow circles on my back.
How Jack dedicated his life to protecting others.
How he was a loving father, a devoted brother, a loyal friend.
When the woman printed the draft and slid it across the desk—Jack Donovan, 31, of Havensworth, South Carolina—I stared at the words until they blurred, and Mark's hand found mine under the table.
Then photos for the memorial display. Sam pulled one from the pile—Jack in his firefighter uniform, the day he graduated from the academy.
"That one. He'd want that one."
By late afternoon, we'd made every decision there was to make. Casket, flowers, obituary, photos. The woman shook our hands and said she'd be in touch about final details.
We climbed back into Sam's truck. Havensworth slid past the windows as we headed home. The oak trees the same as ever, draped in Spanish moss, indifferent to everything happening beneath them.
We pulled into the driveway as the sun started to set.
One day down. More to come.
Sam cut the engine but didn't move to get out. The three of us sat there for a moment, the truck ticking as it cooled.
"Thanks for today, Sam." My voice came out rough.
He shook his head. "It's for Jack."
He held my gaze a second longer than he needed to, and something shifted in my chest before I made myself look away.
"Stay for dinner," I said. "It's the least we can do."
He hesitated. Glanced at Mark in the rearview mirror.
"Stay," Mark said. "Please. We'd like that."
Sam looked at me, then nodded.
A neighbor had dropped off a casserole. The first of many, probably. That's how Havensworth worked. Death meant casseroles and covered dishes and more food than anyone could eat.
We sat around the kitchen table, the four of us plus Rosie in her high chair. The conversation stayed light. Safe. Loretta told a story about her grandson's first steps. Mark asked Sam about the fire station, and Sam gave easy answers about shift schedules and the guys he worked with.
No one mentioned Jack directly. It was too raw. But he was there in the empty chair, in the photos on the fridge, in the way we all kept not looking at each other for too long.
After dinner, when the table was cleared and the dishes put away, Mark excused himself to shower. "Long day," he said, squeezing my shoulder. "I'll be upstairs."
Loretta left shortly after to grab more clothes from her place, kissing Rosie's forehead on her way out.
The house went quiet. Sam and I stayed at the table, cups of coffee gone cold between us. Rosie was in the living room with her blocks.
Sam's eyes drifted to the ceiling above the stove. "Is that still there?"
I followed his gaze. The faint pink shadow, almost invisible unless you knew where to look. "Mom repainted twice. It never fully went away."
"The volcano."
"Jack's science fair project. Which we were absolutely not supposed to touch."
Sam leaned back in his chair. "We were just testing the hypothesis."
"You wanted to see if pickle juice would work."
"It did work. It worked great." He was smiling now, the first real smile I'd seen from him in days. "And then you said we should try ketchup."
"Because the lava needed to look more realistic."
"And then someone added dish soap."
"That was you."
"That was absolutely you."
I was laughing, my hand pressed to my mouth like I could push it back down. "It just kept growing. It wouldn't stop foaming."
"And you grabbed the food coloring—"
"To make it red—"
"The whole bottle—"
"It was supposed to be lava!"
Sam shook his head, but he was laughing too now. "It was on the ceiling, Jamie. It was on the ceiling and the cabinets and the floor and we had red foam in our hair—"
"And then Jack walked in."
The memory sharpened. Jack, thirteen years old, standing in the doorway with his backpack still on. Taking one look at the two eight-year-olds covered in pink sludge, the kitchen looking like a crime scene. He didn’t say a word. He just dropped his bag and grabbed the mop.
"He cleaned for an hour," I said. "Tried to get the food coloring off the ceiling with Windex."
"Made it worse. Turned everything purple."
"And when Mom came home, he told her he'd done it. That he was showing us how volcanoes worked and it got out of hand."
"Got his allowance docked for a month."
"He never told them it was us."
The laughter faded. Sam was watching me across the table, lamplight catching the tired lines around his eyes.
"That was Jack," he said quietly. "Always cleaning up our messes."
The kitchen felt smaller. The air between us shifted into something I didn't dare name.
Then Rosie appeared at my elbow with her stuffed rabbit clutched to her chest.
"Auntie Jamie?"
"Yes, sweetheart?"
She looked up at me with Jack's eyes. That same steady gaze.
"Where's Daddy? When is he coming home?"
The kitchen went still.
I knew this moment was coming. You can't hide death from a child, no matter how much you want to.
I thought of Jack a year ago, kneeling on this same floor, explaining to Rosie that her mother had grown wings and started working in the clouds.
I'd stood in the doorway and watched him find the words—gentle, simple, full of light instead of darkness.
He'd made death sound like a promotion instead of an ending.
I looked at Sam. He looked as lost as I felt.
I knelt down until I was eye level with her and took her small hands in mine.
"Rosie, sweetheart. Do you remember what Daddy told you about Mommy? About where she went?"
Rosie nodded slowly. "She grew angel wings. She's in the clouds now."
"That's right." My voice was steady. I didn't know how.
"Mommy and Daddy are working in the clouds now. Keeping the sun shining and the rain falling."
Rosie looked up at me, her rabbit pressed to her chest. "Together?"
"Together." I smoothed her hair back. "To go that high, you need special angel wings."
"Like birds?"
"Even better than birds. But those wings only grow very, very slowly." I held her small hands in mine. "One tiny feather at a time, for every year you grow big, and kind, and brave."
She considered this. "That's a lot of feathers."
"It is. By the time you have your wings, you'll be an old lady with a whole life of stories to tell them."
"Stories about what?"
I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Everything. School. Friends. Adventures. All the things that happen while you're growing those feathers." My voice caught. I steadied it. "They’ll want to hear every single story."
Rosie considered this. Then nodded, serious.
"I'll have lots of stories."
"You will, sweetheart. So many stories."
She tucked her head under my chin, her small body warm against my chest. The rabbit pressed between us.
Over her shoulder, I saw Sam. He was watching us, his eyes bright, his jaw tight.
I held her tighter and let myself be grateful for the story Jack had given her. He'd been trying to help his daughter make sense of losing her mother.
Now it was helping her make sense of losing him too.