I think about her then. For a moment, images drift through my head. Her smile. Her blue eyes. I hold them there, freeze them, and I wait for the burn to surface. The sting of tears I know will come and the pain that follows soon after. But they don’t. Her memory whips through me like a storm, destroying everything in its path, scattered for miles.
Dad comes around the corner, a Nerf gun strapped to his chest, and two more in his hands. Atlas grins at me. “I gotta go. We’re on a mission.” Squirming out of my arms, he intentionally flops to the ground on his belly and then begins to army crawl across the floor. Once behind the couch, he giggles.
Dad smiles. “I love having him here with me.”
I snort. There’s not much else I can say to him. Not with Atlas nearby. I know my dad wants to make up for lost time. I get it; he wasn’t around much when we were younger, but it doesn’t mean I want Atlas with him permanently.
Atlas runs wild through the house and down the hall, screaming, “I’m never going to bed!”
He’s five. In his world, bed is a bad word.
I move to the kitchen and pour a cup of coffee. I stare out the window. Nothing but pitch black and my reflection. The bags under my eyes, the wrinkles forming at the corners, the weathered expression… I don’t like what I see, but have I ever? Have I ever been completely content with my life and the decisions I make? No, I haven’t.
I run my hands through my hair, wanting to smash my head through the window. Maybe then relief would come in the form of pain. I’ve suffered unimaginable losses compared to most. The hurting, the breaking, nothing compares to the destruction I’m causing now.
Dad comes into the kitchen. I turn to face him, my arms crossed. “Why’d you have to push it? I told you I didn’t want him to know.”
He knows exactly what I’m referring to. His eyes narrow, a slow shake to his head. “He deserves to know.”
Silence spreads between us. “No, he doesn’t.” My hands fall to my sides. “This only complicates things for him.”
“You complicated them by sleeping with her.”
He has no way of knowing that I did, an assumption on his part. And he’s not wrong. “Stay out of it,” I warn, setting my coffee up on the counter.
“Does she know?”
I stop, my heart thudding in my chest. I can hear it in my ears. “No.” I keep walking down the hall to where Atlas is in my old room. It hasn’t changed much from when I slept here. Bear’s boxes of yearbooks are still stacked in the corner, and my old baseball trophies remain untouched, collecting dust on the shelves. On the nightstand, a picture of Rhett, our oldest brother. Dad must have put it there. I know I wouldn’t have, or perhaps Atlas dug it out.
I stare at the photograph for a moment, remembering the man who taught Bear and me more about being men than our dad did. I hate that Atlas never got to meet him. One minute he was here, and then next, it’s as if he’s been gone so long I can’t remember what he looked like, until now. I see a lot of Atlas in him. His energy, his laughter.
While I’m distracted, Atlas nails me with a foam bullet to my head. “Got you, Daddy!” he shouts, barrel rolling onto the bed and right off the side of it with a thud. His laughter rings through the room, innocent, and instinctively triggering my own.
I lay on the bed, peering over the side. “You okay?”
I’m hit with another bullet. This one misses my ear. “Freeze,” he tells me, trying to fight back laughter and narrowing his eyes on mine. “And I’ll spare your head.”
I crack a smile and reach for him. Hauling him over the side of the bed, I bring him to my chest, my hands finding every ticklish knobbly bone in his body. He wiggles, screaming out, “I give up! Stop! Stop—” More laughter. “Daddy, please!”
I hold my arms tight over his chest so he can’t get away. “Never admit defeat.”
He moves out of my arms and sits next to me, his legs folded up in front of him. “I have to when you’re tickling me.”
Brushing his hair from his forehead, I cup his cheek. “You know I do all this for you, right?”