Chapter 3
Leo
My arms spread wide as I hold up the crumpled instruction sheet in front of me and try to make sense of the diagrams and drawings.
"Fucking Christ!" I mumble under my breath. As soon as I utter the words, my head quickly snaps in the direction of the door. I breathe out in relief.
Thank god Brent didn't hear that because I'd have to explain to him again why he isn't allowed to use those naughty words while I can't seem to stop spitting them out every few minutes. It's hard to go from the brutal, adrenaline-driven environment of the battlefield to the life of a civilian, a father, a role model in the blink of an eye.
But that's no excuse. I have to set a good example for him. He’s already been torn away from his mother with little explanation. If I don’t step up to the plate, he'll lose his faith in humanity as a whole at the tender age of four. I can't allow that to happen.
He’s the single light in my dark life. His innocence is the flicker that keeps hope alive in my chest. I have to protect him, not just from the cruel, harsh world, but also from the darkness that has all but swallowed me up. Even as my anger, my guilt, my overwhelment threaten to overpower me, I have to show up every day and fight for that little boy’s future. I don’t know how I’m going to pull this off, but I’ve got to. I’m all he has.
This town is as good a place as any for a fresh start. With its quiet, tree-lined streets and its two-story single-family homes. The perfect place for playing in the backyard and riding bikes on the quiet roads and reading books in a tree-house. The perfect place for giving my son the kind of childhood I never had.
I turn back to the IKEA disaster on the floor in front of me. I'm almost positive that this isn't what the dining table on display at the store looked like. Why are the legs sticking out of the top of the table instead of underneath it? I rotate the diagram 90 degrees and it still makes no sense.
Scratching the back of my head, I sigh. Maybe I should have read the instructions before I started building instead of waiting until I fucked up.
I stick my head out the back door to check on Brent. He's sitting on the grass beneath the big oak tree with his Iron Man action figure in hand, mumbling animatedly to himself as he waves the thing around. His superhero cape is fastened securely around his shoulders. I feel a pang in my chest and I'm not sure if I'm touched by his innocence or if I'm jealous of his cluelessness.
"Enjoy it while you can, buddy." Because one day, life will give you a series of swift kicks in the ass and you'll long for the days when you could just strap on your cape and pretend that you can stop the world from crumbling down all around you.
I step back inside. Man—this house is hot as hell. I didn’t expect that April in northern Illinois would be this muggy. Leaving the door open for air to circulate, I turn back to my IKEA project. As soon as I'm done with tablegeddon, I've got to figure out the air conditioning system. In the meantime, I tear off my shirt and kneel down with the tiny wrenches and screws that came in the box and begin disassembling the table.
This needs to get done tonight. I'm determined to sit my son at the table for dinner. It's what families do. They sit at the table every night and they share a home-cooked meal. For us a home-cooked meal means packaged ramen but I digress. I want to give the child some semblance of normalcy even though our whole world has been flipped on its head.
I get lost in the project, bent on figuring this puzzle out. I'm a military-trained weapons technician. I put guns together and take them apart in the blink of an eye. I can build a bomb using a rubber band, a nylon sock and the contents of my vegetable drawer. I'm about to start work on a general contractor’s team the day after tomorrow, for crying out loud. There's no way I'm letting an IKEA kitchen table take me down.
"Daddy, look at me!" I hear Brenton call out from the back porch.
"Yeah, buddy. Really cool," I say, barely glancing his way before he's scampering down the stairs again, his cape flapping behind him.
I'm down on my knees, taking another shot at screwing that leg into the table. I think this thing is finally starting to come together. But a few minutes later, a flash of red catches my attention as it zooms across the back porch.
What the..? Am I seeing things? Every now and then, my PTSD causes my mind play to tricks on me. But when the red bolt zips by again, I know for sure that this is no optical illusion. I stumble to my feet as fast as I can, bolting toward the door.
It's too late.
My son giggles wildly as he charges up the neighbor's back porch and presses both tiny hands to the glass pane of the door. There's a pair of enormous red panties covering his face.
I cringe all the way down to my toes when I hear a woman's shrill scream rip through the air.
.