Returning from the airport the next morning, I call out, “Zoe, you home?”

“In my room!”

We’ve got two kitties, Sally Ashes and Ralphie Rooster, with the former forever holding vigil at the front door if one of the three of us is gone.

Ralphie is the opposite — he cannot find the desire nor need, to ever leave the fresh air in our green thumbed cousin’s sanctuary.

Zoe created her own Garden of Eden inside the small bedroom she took over when she moved in with Lexi and I. It has very little space due to plants and flowers growing on every surface, making her room smell fresh, earthy, and sweetly fragrant.

I walk up the hall toward it while petting Sally’s charcoal grey fur. It’s how she got the ‘Ashes’ part of her name, and with her olive-green eyes, she really is a beauty. “Aren’t you girl?” I murmur, burying my face in the comfort of her.

“How was the airport?”

“Oh Zoe, it was so awful!” I rest against her sturdy doorframe, hugging our kitty close. “We walked with him through the security line until they told us we couldn’t go any farther. He waved from the other side, and even though he was cracking jokes, his eyes were dark, you know? The second he disappeared, Mom crumbled into Dad. Max was holding back tears. Mine were streaming. Hunter kept gnawing his cheek. Lexi just kept kicking the ground with her foot, fidgeting with her fingers and shaking her head. None of us can believe he doesn’t live here anymore. Caden’s gone! How wrong is that?”

Zoe is tucked into her comforter where she was reading a romance novel with zero sex in it, probably. “I don’t know what to say. If my brothers moved away, I don’t know what I’d do. Can you imagine how Gabriel and Elijah must feel? Twins, and they’re always separated!”

Sally claws out of my needy embrace, and dashes down the hall to our front door, ignoring Ralphie’s lazy gaze. Unfazed, he returns to the grueling habit of passing out.

Zoe jogs her chin, green eyes flicking from me toward our front door. “She thinks Lexi might come home next.”

“Fat chance.”

“Brad’s?”

I shrug, “Who?”

Zoe laughs.

I can’t talk about my sister’s lover to the men and parents in our large family. She forbids it. But in this apartment we know. Wryly smiling, I nod, “Yep. His drama will keep her mind off of Caden.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Zo,” I warn, tilting my head.

She glances to her paperback, turning its new pages. “Just worry about her sometimes.”

“At least someone is getting laid in this apartment.”

“Sam!” Zoe laughs, tucking brown hair behind her virgin ears.

My phone rings and I wave that I have to take this call. “Hi Mom.”

“How are you doing, hun?”

I trudge across the hall to my room and collapse onto my bed, staring at a poster of the Russian Ballet Company while I tell her, “I feel like a truck hit me and somehow I’m still standing but can’t remember who I am. It’s not like I saw Caden every day, but he was here, you know?”

“Yes. I understand that feeling all too well.” At a question from my father in the background, Mom answers him, “It’s Samantha, honey. She’s a little blue.” Returning to me, she asks, “Would you like to come over for dinner?”

“I’m going to watch tragic movies and cry it out.”

“Your father wants to speak to you.”

I chew on a nail as the phone exchanges hands. His deep voice relaxes my shoulders. “Sammy?”

“Hey Dad.”

“How’s my girl?”

“Sucky.”

“Same here. You kids are going on journeys of your own now. It’s natural, I guess. You turned down our offer for dinner?”

“Another night. I want to stay in and wallow.”

“That doesn’t sound like my Sam.”

“I screwed up that audition, Dad. The one I told you guys about?”

He exhales and I can picture him scratching his white-blonde hair. “I’m sorry kiddo. With all that was going on, I forgot to ask you how it went. Not well?”

“No, I was distracted by…you know.”

“There are more jobs, Sam. Trust me.”

Our dad should know. Jason Cocker is the talented music producer behind many of the past two decade’s top hits, including most recently my rockstar cousin Gabriel’s. If anyone understands the nature of artistic opportunities, it’s my dad.

Except he doesn’t understand one thing. How could he? There is no age limit on producing albums. You can sit behind a soundboard at eighty and still move those knobs around.

A dancer’s life is limited.

“Thanks, Dad. You’re right.”

“Samantha.”

“Dad.”

“Okay!” he laughs.

Mom raises her volume to be heard. “Call us anytime!”

“Tell her I love you guys.”

“We love you, too. Here for you, always.”

We hang up and I stare at the phone, sending a quick text to Caden:

Tell Kian hello for me. Have the best time! Send pizza!

He won’t get that until he lands, but I hope it will make him smile.

I set the phone on my nightstand next to the framed photo taken the day I was born. Lifting it up, a sad smile spreads on my face.

Five years old, Caden is sitting on one of those boring hospital chairs, holding tiny me like if he loosens his grip I’ll fall. Six-year-old Max is on one side of him, touching me, his back straight and dignified. Lexi is only three, red hair curly and her dimpled hand on me like she’s claiming me as hers for the rest of our lives.

Hunter came almost two years later so he always grumbles about this photograph. But I love it so much. My three older siblings are holding onto me as I began a life where I would someday become a dancer, even though in this picture I can’t even hold up my head.

Caden, you jerk.

I miss you already.