left the moment we were able. They called us ungrateful. Selfish. Spoiled.
If only they knew.
“Mom’s calling in the cavalry. It’s time to circle the wagons, brother,” Wyatt said, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“I expected as much.”
There was a pause and then, “I didn’t know whether or not to count all of us being together again as good or bad.”
“It’s probably a little of both,” I said, though the thought of seeing my family sans Dad had me smiling. My siblings and I used to be close, before we learned how to duck and cover when Dad was around. When was the last time we were all in the same place at the same time? If Harlow had been there, it would have been when I was in the hospital. But she pulled the no-show, so the last time I could remember all five of us being together was right after I enlisted in the Marines. “Everyone coming?”
“Far as I know.” Wyatt coughed, and the faint rustle of shuffling papers sounded in my ear. “Flights are being planned. Armor is being donned. Lines are being drawn.”
“You make it sound like getting ready for war.”
“Isn’t that what happens when all of us come home?”
I closed my eyes and leaned against my car. Living with Dad had turned life into a battlefield. Now that he was gone, I hoped our family could heal. I said as much to Wyatt who snorted, but agreed. As the only one of us to stick around, he knew what Dad was capable of, better than anyone.
“Mom has rooms set aside at the resort, by the way. You just need to get your bionic ass down here and it’ll be like old times.”
“My bionic ass, huh?”
“You’ve got so much metal in that backside, you might as well be Robocop.”
I shook my head. Only Wyatt would turn his brother getting blown up in Afghanistan into a joke. He made it sound like I’d lost my leg instead of the pins, rods, and shrapnel embedded in my abdomen, hip, and thigh. I told him as much, but as usual, he didn’t seem to care, claiming it was so much more fun looking at things the way he did. We finished our call and I dropped my phone into the cup holder in my car. A gust of wind blew as I pulled my T-shirt over my head and breathed in the salty air.
Dad was gone.
After all these years, after all we’d been through and run from, the news was anticlimactic. The sun still shone. The ocean still roared. The gulls still squawked and circled.
Life still ticked by for the rest of the world, their existence unaffected by our tragedy. While I fought for my life in a hospital bed in Germany, the Pats won the Super Bowl. Fans celebrated. Babies were made. No one but a small circle of people knew or cared about my struggle.
As of last night, my mother’s life was shattered, my siblings and me dropping whatever we had going on to help her figure out how to move forward. While we scrambled, life kept on keeping on for the rest of the world. The realization, while sobering, also freed me from a shit-ton of anxiety. Even the most groundbreaking events of our lives were nothing more than blips on the radar. No matter how hard things seemed while we were living them, we would move past them and find better times. We all carried scars. We just had to learn not to limp.
The thought of going home intrigued me. Some of my best and worst memories lived in the Keys, trapped in the walls of that old house. As much as I liked the thought of seeing Mom, Eli, Caleb, Wyatt, and Harlow again, I wondered how being around them would affect me. How it would affect all of us, really.
Can you survive a war and return to the scene of the bloodiest battles without consequence? I thought of explosions. Of smoke. Of the bodies of friends flying through the air. Of pain spreading like ice and fire in my side, my leg, my hip. I pushed the memories away as I shivered, even as a fresh sheen of sweat broke across my brow.
A car pulled up beside me. The doors opened and teenagers poured out, laughing and joking in their swimsuits and sun-streaked hair. They had so much in front of them. So much to learn. I sent a silent prayer to anyone listening