Chapter 6
JESS
How lucky was I?
Due to a scheduling change I hadn't seen coming, I had the entire Fourth of July weekend free. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it — and exactly who I wanted to spend it with.
I called him that same evening.
"Do you have plans for the Fourth?"
A pause. "Nothing special — was going to work out in the morning, then catch the fireworks by the Arch. Why?"
"Because Chicago does the Fourth of July better than anywhere else in the country and I have a free weekend and Justin has been asking about you and I thought—" I stopped. Started again, more honest. "I thought maybe you'd want to come back."
The pause was shorter this time. "Yes," he said. "Absolutely yes. What time do you want me there?"
I smiled — at the phone, at the warm July evening, at the fact that I'd stopped trying to talk myself out of this. "Saturday," I said. "Fly in Saturday morning. Fly into Midway. I'll pick you up."
"Sounds like a plan to me," he said, and I could hear the grin in it. "See you Saturday morning."
I picked him up from Midway Saturday morning, and when he came through the arrivals door and saw me he smiled — that real one, the one that wasn't for anyone else — and crossed straight to me and pulled me in like we'd been doing this for years.
"So glad you're here," I said against his shoulder.
"So glad you asked." He pulled back just enough to kiss me properly, right there in arrivals, and I let him because it was the Fourth of July weekend and I had decided to stop being careful about things that didn't need to be careful about.
He'd brought a bag over one shoulder and a box of Garrett's popcorn under his arm — the Chicago Mix, caramel and cheese, which I had mentioned exactly once in passing and which he had apparently committed to memory along with everything else I'd ever told him.
I pulled up to the brownstone and parked on the street, and before I'd even cut the engine we could both see Justin in the front window — nose pressed to the glass, Carter Junior tucked under one arm, practically vibrating.
"He's been there for forty-five minutes," I said.
Carter laughed. "Good to know where I stand."
He was out of the car before I'd gotten my seatbelt off.
Justin hit the door the second Carter made it up the front steps, launching himself forward with the full-body enthusiasm of a kid who had been waiting approximately his entire life for this moment.
"You came back!" he announced.
"I said I would." Carter crouched down to his level. "Where's Carter Junior?"
Justin produced the bear from behind his back with the showmanship of a magician. "He's been practicing."
"Show me."
Justin demonstrated the Flip — Carter Junior's small arm moving through the motion with practiced conviction. The wrist snap was cleaner than it had been. Carter watched with complete seriousness and then looked up at me over Justin's head with an expression that undid me a little.
"He's got it," Carter said. "He's actually got it."
Justin beamed like he'd been told he'd been drafted.
We had a few hours before we needed to leave for Grant Park, which meant Carter ended up on my couch with Justin climbing all over him while I got ready and Rosa packed the bag for the evening.
Justin, apparently, had been saving up a comprehensive debrief of everything that had happened at camp since Carter's last visit.
Carter took in all of it — the water balloon incident, the ongoing rivalry with a kid named Marcus over who was better at kickball, a nature walk where they'd seen what Justin was fairly certain was a coyote but which his counselor had insisted was just a large dog — nodding along, asking follow-up questions, hanging on every word like there was nowhere else he'd rather be.
I stood in the doorway of the living room for a moment, watching them, and felt that thing again — the quiet, slightly devastating thing I'd stopped trying to name.
Rosa appeared beside me with the cooler bag and followed my gaze to the two of them on the couch. She was quiet for a moment, watching them.
"I liked him that last time he came," she said. "I like him even better this time, Mija."
"I know," I said softly. "So do I."
She squeezed my arm and went back to the kitchen, and I went back to getting ready, and by the time we all piled out the door for Grant Park the evening felt like exactly what it was — a perfect summer night, finally, with all the right people in it.
Rosa took the L train home after getting Justin settled, with a plan to meet us later at Buckingham Fountain after the fireworks.
By the time we got to Grant Park that evening the lakefront was already packed — families staking out blankets on the grass, kids with sparklers tracing bright lines in the early evening air, the electric hum of a city that knew how to celebrate.
Justin rode on Carter's shoulders most of the way from where our Uber dropped us off, which he had decided was the only acceptable mode of transportation and which Carter had agreed to without being asked.
I walked beside them and watched my son point out everything he found interesting from his elevated vantage point — a dog, a man with an enormous hat, a toddler who had inexplicably covered himself in mustard — and Carter responding to each observation with appropriate gravity.
We found a spot on the grass near the band shell, spread out the blanket Rosa had packed, and ate — sandwiches, bread and cheese with salami, a peanut butter and jelly for Justin — and watched the sun go down over the lake while Justin worked his way through approximately his body weight in Garrett's popcorn.
"This is the best day," Justin announced, at some point around sunset.
"Yeah?" Carter said.
"The best day I ever had." He thought about it, clearly weighing this against a serious field of competitors. "Except for the parade, when I got to ride on your shoulders. That one's tied."
"Tough competition," Carter said seriously.
Justin nodded, satisfied with his own reasoning. "They're both my favorite days," he explained, with the diplomatic generosity of a boy who had clearly been thinking hard about fairness. "Because I was doing my favorite things with my favorite people."
Carter looked at me. I looked back at him. Neither of us said anything, because neither of us needed to.
The fireworks started at nine-thirty.
Justin lasted approximately four minutes before he crawled into Carter's lap, wrapped both arms around his neck, and watched the rest of the show from there — head tipped back, mouth slightly open, eyes wide with the pure wonder of a child experiencing something too big to contain.
Carter held him without being asked and without making anything of it, one hand steady on Justin's back, watching the sky with the same quiet attention he brought to everything that mattered to him.
I watched both of them instead of the fireworks.
We'd arranged it all beforehand — Rosa would take an Uber down after the fireworks ended and meet us at Buckingham Fountain, which was lit up beautifully for the holiday and easy enough to find in the crowd. I texted her our exact location when the finale started so she'd know where to look.
She appeared right on time, Uber already called, and Justin transferred from Carter's arms to hers with the sleepy compliance of a child who had officially used up every bit of energy he possessed.
"Say goodnight," I told him.
"Goodnight, Carter," Justin said, already half-asleep against Rosa's shoulder.
"Goodnight, bud." Carter touched his hair once, light.
Rosa caught my eye over his head and said nothing, which said everything, and disappeared into the crowd with my son.
Carter and I walked along the lakefront after Rosa left with Justin — the city skyline lit up behind us, the lake dark and wide ahead, the last of the fireworks still echoing somewhere in the distance.
His hand found mine the same way it always did, easy and unhurried, and we walked without any destination in mind and without needing one.
"When I was little," I said, somewhere along the path, "my grandmother had this porch swing.
And every Fourth of July, the whole family would pile onto it and the steps around it and watch the fireworks going off all over town — little bursts of color in every direction, near and far, the whole sky busy with them. " I smiled, remembering.
"And every year she'd tell us the same story.
How when she was a girl she'd been terrified of fireworks — hid under the bed, hands over her ears, the whole thing — until one year she made herself sit out on that swing and actually watch.
And she said the second she stopped being afraid of them, she couldn't believe how beautiful they were.
That she'd spent all those years hiding from the most beautiful thing in the sky. "
I hadn't thought about that story in years. Standing there on the lakefront with the last of the fireworks still drifting down over the water, I understood, suddenly, exactly why it had come back to me tonight. I didn't say that part out loud.
"That's my favorite memory of being a kid," I said instead, and glanced up at him. "What about you — do you have any Fourth of July memories from when you were little?"
He was quiet for a moment, and I could feel the question touch something careful in him before he answered.