bring Deck home, and how much I couldn’t wait to get my woman in my arms. I knew it was selfish to think that when my daughter couldn’t do the same with her man, but I wouldn’t lie to myself either. I missed Lucy while I was out on the road.
“Luce?” I called out into the empty house. It was strange because I saw her car in the driveaway and I could hear the soft sound of music playing upstairs, but it felt cold and unoccupied inside. I checked the rooms downstairs, just to be sure and she wasn’t around. I took the stairs almost two at a time thinking maybe I’d catch her in a bath. “Lucy, love? Where are you?”
The door to our bedroom was cracked and I realized quickly that the music I’d heard playing had actually been her ringtone. It cut off while I was still in the hallway and then started once more. That was odd. Lucy was almost never without her phone when I was out of town, but especially now that Ever had the baby. “Lucy, babe, your phone is ringing,” I called out as I rounded the corner and pushed the door open. She was there, in her cozy reading chair, gripping onto a piece of paper. I smiled at the sight. She had obviously fallen asleep reading something. When I glanced down, I noticed a very familiar box and groaned out loud. She had one of my boxes. The old letters I’d written her every single time we were apart. There was one in each of those boxes for each day we’d spent separated, plus two more for good measure. The one I wrote to her before I went out on the road in search of Deck and the other that I wrote her the day before we left on our RV trip I’d reminisced about earlier.
I moved across the room quietly, so as not to wake her, and bent down to retrieve the piece of paper that had fallen to the floor. I glanced down at the writing there. Well, she definitely had the one I wrote to her prior to our trip. I grinned as I remembered how nervous I had been to be with just her. From the moment we truly got together, we had a family to care for, and never really got that all-encompassing alone time most couples get before they start a family together. I had honestly thought she’d end up hating me and having divorce papers ready before our trip was done. That hadn’t happened though. Instead, we ended up closer than ever and even after Merc and Tiger Lily had joined us, we still managed to grow even closer.
“Aw, babe,” I cooed as I leaned in to take the other page from her fingers. That’s when it hit me. Something wasn’t right. I looked up from the page and stared, waited, counted the seconds, and nothing. She wasn’t moving. Not in the sleepy stillness kind of way, in the way that signified something far more final. Her chest didn’t move with each breath. There was no noise, no sound of her breathing, just quiet until her cell phone rang from over on the table beside her. I glanced over and saw that it was Ever calling and Lucy had more than a few missed messages.
The door downstairs banged open. “Dad!” Anna shouted.
“No,” I whimpered. I took Lucy’s hand in between my own and knew immediately that it held no warmth there. “No, baby, no!”
“Dad, where are you?” Anna again, closer this time.
“Please,” I begged. I didn’t know who the hell I was begging here. Lucy to come back, God not to do this to my family again, Anna not to see her mother like this. Me to leave and come back to a different scenario. I didn’t know. “No! No! No!” I moaned as I dropped my head into Lucy’s lap while still holding her hand in my own. “Baby, no. You can’t go. You can’t leave yet,” I cried.
“Daddy?” Anna called out, so close that time I knew she had to be in the room with me now. With us. “Oh God!” Her gasp of surprise forced my head up and I turned to see my daughter standing there with her hand hovering over her mouth as she took in the room around her. “Daddy? Momma?”
“Anna, did you find her?” It was Joker’s voice, and came from downstairs.
“Don’t bring the kids up,”