“Not a good idea, babe,” I told Ember over the phone.
I looked over to Kate in the passenger seat. She was facing straight ahead, her expression completely vacant. Yeah, a “welcome home" party was anything but a good fucking idea.
It was good getting some amount of response from Kate yesterday, but asking more of her today was too much. Today, she was moving into a home that wasn’t the one she and her husband had made. She might have left yesterday, but only to stay in a hotel. There was no permanence to that. Unpacking at the farmhouse was real in a way she wasn’t going to be able to avoid, and she knew it.
“We just want them to know they're welcome,” Ember explained.
I knew that. It’d been said more than once since I’d started sharing the news that I’d be bringing them back with me, it’d been repeated the night before at the clubhouse, but, most importantly, it had been made really fucking clear with the way they had set up rooms so Kate and Owen could settle right in.
Kate would get that when I explained, which was something I might have been waiting on until she was in a better frame of mind to hear it. Owen would feel that fact whenever he first got to be around the whole crew, particularly when the women started fawning over him. A party would just put Kate on the spot and stress her out.
“Get that, and they will too,” I assured Ember, “but now isn’t a good time.”
She caught what I was trying to avoid saying outright with Kate right fucking there.
“She’s not doing well,” she surmised.
“Would you be?”
“I know I wouldn’t,” Ember said in a haunted voice, and I felt like the lowest motherfucker. I hadn’t meant to be a dick. It didn’t even come to my mind that she—and all of us—had come way too fucking close to losing Jager.
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“I know you didn’t mean anything by it,” she replied, her voice significantly lighter, but not quite back to normal. “Even I forget about it sometimes. Things are so good, it’s easy to put it in the past.”
Christ, I hoped like fuck Kate could find her way to something even close to that.
I hoped I could too.
My mind strayed back to being in bed with Avery that morning—waking with the fucking sun and going back to sleep curled around her like I wasn’t in the midst of the worst time of my life.
Hold on to that one, fucker.
I nearly slammed on the fucking brakes in the middle of the highway. That was Joel’s voice, plain as fucking day. Like his ass was in the seat beside me handing me shit.
Fuck, now I was losing it.
“Daz, you okay?” Ember called through the phone.
No. I was anything but fucking okay. But even if I wanted to tell Ember about that shit, I couldn’t with Kate sitting there.
“Yeah, fine. Sorry.”
“I promise, I’m good. Don’t go beating yourself up, you big fucking softy,” she teased.
She had no idea.
“I’ll show you soft.”
Ember laughed. “Goodbye, Razzle Dazzle.” Then, she hung up.
I tossed my phone in the cup holder, all too aware of the fact that we were in one of the cars the guys loaned out at the shop when someone’s ride was getting repaired. I fucking hated being in cars. It caught me a lot of flack come winter every year, but I didn’t even have one. There was something about being confined to that tiny fucking space that did my head in. Goddamn cages on wheels.
Being trapped with my widowed sister-in-law, nephew, and the knowledge that I was losing my fucking mind and hearing my dead brother’s voice in my head?
That shit was unbearable.
I was so in my head, I could only guess about ten minutes had passed based on how far we traveled before Kate spoke, surprising the hell out of me.
“Who was that on the phone?”
I didn’t want to talk, seriously wasn’t in the head space, but I had to suck it up and be encouraging when she made an effort.
“Ember. One of the brother’s women. You remember Roadrunner?” I watched from the corner of my eye as she nodded. “She’s also his daughter.”
No reaction to that, but I pushed myself to see if I could keep her talking.
“She and the other women—with some help from the guys—they redid two of the rooms for you and Owen.”
“They…” she just trailed off, and I thought she’d checked back out. Looking her way, I saw I was wrong. She had tears moving slowly down her face.
Fuck.
“Katie,” I tried to calm her down, “it’s not a big deal.”
“They did that for us,” she whispered.
I couldn’t make heads or tails of her tone, so I just confirmed, “Yeah, they did.”
“Why?”
Why? Why wouldn’t they? They knew what Kate and Owen lost. What I lost. They knew the last thing the three of us needed was to deal with decorating rooms in a place that was a constant reminder they weren’t at home anymore.
I didn’t say any of that, but I said fucking all of it when I responded. “Because they’re family.”
“Most of them have never met us,” she pointed out.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“But—”
“They know you’re my family,” I cut in. “That makes you theirs. Simple as that.”
“That doesn’t sound simple at all.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Giving all that to people they hadn’t met—my family or not—was anything but small and insignificant. It was also just the way of our world.
In time, she’d come to understand that.
“Dis ma room?” Owen asked, wandering in.
Kate froze in the doorway behind me, her hands coming up to cover her mouth as her eyes watered.
I hadn’t made it back to the farmhouse the night before, so it was my first time seeing the room they’d put together. I should’ve known they’d go way over the top.
Fuck, I’d helped do the same when Ash and Emmy moved in.
“Yeah, little man, this is your room.”
He ran off to explore right away, heading for the bed first. Beside it, he turned around to me, pointed at it, and squealed, “Paw ‘trol!”
What he meant—I’d learned after trying to figure out what toy he’d been talking about—was Paw Patrol. According to Sketch, it was a show where these dogs run around being first responders or something like that. It was also hot shit among the ankle-biter crowd.
The blanket on his new bed was a giant picture of some of the dogs all geared up to save people—or other dogs? I had no fucking clue. All I knew was Owen’s reaction to a blanket made it pretty clear he was excited.
He was also three, so he was distracted by the cube shaped shelves on one wall that were meant for toys. This kept his attention longer since there were actually a few new toys shelved there for him. They hadn’t just put together a room with kid friendly furniture and decorations, and painted over the pink walls with a light blue, they’d also gotten those things for him to make sure he’d be thrilled about the new space.
I looked back to Kate to find her eyes fixed on one of the walls. There, in a frame, was a picture of Owen with Joel.
Kate took a few slow steps backwards out of the doorway, then turned to bolt. Hoping Owen was going to be fine in there on his own, I chased after her. Luckily, I was faster and got ahold of her arm before she got very far.
Without saying anything, for fear of setting her off, I pulled her into her own room next door. She hadn’t been inside yet. I'd just pointed to the door as we walked past it to go to Owen’s. As soon as we stepped in, I noticed the frame on the dresser.
Fuck. I should have come here before bringing them. What the fuck had they been thinking putting out pictures of Joel like that?
Where the fuck had they even gotten them? Kate posted a lot of shit, but Joel made sure it was all locked just for friends to see.
Jager. That fucker could hack into anything. He probably could have gotten the files right off their computers, let alone gotten into my accounts to see what Kate had posted. And it probably only took the motherfucker minutes to pull it off.
After closing the door, I moved away from Kate to grab the frame and take it down before it upset her too. The one they’d chosen was of Joel asleep on the couch with a newborn Owen knocked out on his chest. I started to lay the frame flat so the picture wasn’t on display when Kate spoke.
“No. Don’t take it.”
Wait. What?
She came over, taking the picture from my hand to look at it. Her fingers moved across the glass over the image reverently.
“We were so tired when we first brought Owen home from the hospital, but he never got cranky,” she whispered. “He was just so happy we had our little boy.”
Holy shit. She was actually talking about him.
I didn’t speak, didn't move, I barely fucking took a breath for fear of spooking her out of whatever place she’d gone to in her mind.
“Owen would wake up crying in the middle of the night, and he’d get out of bed with a smile on his face to check on him.” She gave a sound that was as much a sob as it was a chuckle. “It was crazy. He was crazy. I was barely holding it together, and he was smiling even though our baby was wailing after only getting an hour worth of sleep. Who does that?”
Joel. Joel did that. Because she was right. He’d never been happier than when they had Owen. He’d ridden that high from the day Kate told him she was pregnant. Him and the wife he fucking adored were growing their family. It was his dream come true, and he made no qualms about letting everyone know that.
“He spent so much time talking about all the things we were going to do with Owen. All the places he wanted to take him. Fun things like Disneyworld and shit we never got to do as kids. He was going to be the best father.”
She took a shaky breath as her tears came faster. “But now, he won’t get to do any of it. Not with Owen, not with any of the other kids he wanted to have that will never be.” She looked up at me, her face a mask of devastation I recognized. It lived inside me too. “How is that fair?”
“It’s not. It’s not fuckin’ fair at all.”
She pulled that picture close to her chest, hugging that bit of Joel she could hold onto and dissolved into sobs. I moved in and hugged her, giving her time to let it all out.
This was what she needed. Any thoughts of being pissed left. I wouldn’t have thought it was the right call, but someone else knew. I was guessing it was Ash, who knew exactly what this grief felt like after losing her dad.
I fucking owed her.
“Don’t take him away,” Kate finally said when her tears slowed. “I thought we needed to take him away, but I was wrong. I need him.”
“I swear, Katie. I won’t take him away from you.”
Her whole body seemed to give out, barely allowing me the chance to catch her before she hit the ground. Lifting her up, I carried her to the bed and lay her there. I sat with her another minute, keeping an ear open in case Owen needed anything.
While I did, Kate fell asleep, that picture still held tight in her arms.