Two Years Earlier

 

I watched them walk through security, their uniforms pristine despite the long flight, their faces intensely familiar, but changed at the same time. Gentry cracked a smile when he spotted me, that same charming smile that had always pulled me out of whatever tantrum I was having for whatever reason. It was like a soothing balm on my broken heart.

I moved into his arms when he finally reached me, six months and thousands of miles later. He’d come home for a funeral the last time, too. It seemed like there would never be anything but grief in our lives from this point on.

Both our parents were dead. I couldn’t even begin to wrap my mind around that reality.

“How you holding up, kid?” he asked, brushing a heavy thumb over my cheek.

“As well as can be expected.”

“When did you get in?”

“Yesterday. Just in time to listen to Jack and Brent argue over the casket Dad chose for his burial.”

Gentry lowered his head just slightly, a dark cloud marching across his handsome features. It was surreal, really, the idea that Dad was gone. He was a strong, healthy man, the kind of man who commanded everyone’s attention whenever he walked into a room. We’d all been prepared for Mom…the cancer was not a surprise. But this was.

“Who found him?”

“Madeline.”

Another pained look. Everyone loved Madeline.

“We should go.”

Bo, Gentry’s best friend since…well, since as long as I could remember, moved up behind him and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, Bo,” I said softly, afraid to look at him, afraid I’d give away all my secret thoughts. I’d had a crush on Bo all my life it seemed. And who wouldn’t, really? He was tall, blond, and polite to a fault. My mom used to tease him for being the quintessential southern gentleman. And he was. I can’t remember ever seeing him be anything less than polite to every woman he’s ever met. And here he was in his Air Force uniform looking like a Hollywood hunk playing a role.

“How are you, kid?” he asked, drawing me into his arms.

I didn’t answer. If I was honest, I wasn’t doing very well at all. To lose my mother and my father in the stretch of six months was probably the hardest thing I’d ever gone through. But having to watch my brothers—my big, tough, older brothers—struggling with their grief made this thing so much harder.

Bo didn’t seem to require an answer. He just held me until Gentry made a rude sound, drawing us out of the bubble of comfort we were drawing from one another.

I drove them to Brent and Madeline’s house. Josie was a ray of sunshine, playing on the carpet in the living room, chattering away as an eighteen-month-old was wont to do. She giggled when she saw me. It seemed like every time I came home we had to get reacquainted with one another, but we were best friends today. I picked her up and found myself inappropriately laughing as she dropped kisses on the tip of my nose.

“Is this Josie?” Gentry demanded as he came over.

Josie buried her face in my shoulder, but then she peeked at him and giggled when she saw the face he was making.

“This is Uncle Gentry,” I told her. “And Uncle Bo.”

“Oh, I’m not your uncle, sweetie,” Bo immediately corrected. “Just a good friend of your family.”

“You are an uncle,” Gentry announced in his no-nonsense tone of voice. “You’re as much a part of this family as any the rest of us.”

Madeline came into the room then, a soft smile breaking a little when she saw us. Gentry immediately went over to her and pulled her into his arms, holding her close for a long moment while he whispered something close to her ear. When she pulled back, she was crying, but she was nodding and there something like gratitude in her eyes.

My soul hurt for Madeline. I did as much as I could after Mom died, staying with Daddy over the summer instead of doing an internship between semesters at school. But I had to go back—Daddy insisted I go back. The burden fell on her, the constant vigil over a man who’d just lost his soulmate. It wasn’t her fault she missed the signs of his impending suicide.

We all missed it.

*

The funeral was almost identical to Mom’s. The same people attended, the same people spoke quiet words of condolence to us. The same priest spoke the same kind words despite the fact that the church did not condone suicide. Fifty years ago, we wouldn’t have been able to bury him beside her. Thank God things had loosened up a little.

I was so cried out that I felt like a piece of leather, standing there watching them lower the casket into the ground without a single tear on my cheek. Madeline had plenty of tears. I think I saw Brent and Aiden brush away a few, too. But I couldn’t produce a single one.

Back at the house, I watched people sit around and talk about what wonderful people my parents had been and I wanted to scream at them, tell them they didn’t know anything at all. They weren’t there when I had nightmares and my dad would come sit on the floor beside my bed, holding my hand all night even though his arthritis caused pain in his shoulders and hips. They weren’t there when I desperately wanted Bo to ask me to my senior prom and he completely missed every one of my hints. I cried on my mother’s shoulder for hours and she never told me I was a fool to set my sights on Bo, that he was much too old for me at five years my senior, that it was inappropriate to love someone who’d practically grown up as one of my brothers. She only stroked my back and told me that it would be if it was meant to.

They didn’t know the kindness and the patience and the love my parents showed to each other and to each of us kids.

I walked out, wandering down to the lower rose garden my mother had loved so much. She used to bring me down here when I was a toddler—not unlike Josie was now—and talk to me about the flowers while she got down on her hands and knees to pull the weeds from their beds and to prune the bushes. She knew every breed of rose that grew there, planted each one herself. As I grew older, I would help her there (despite the fact that I hated the work!) and we’d work out all the struggles I suffered through as a high school student and later as a college student.

It was there that I felt closest to my mom.

“I knew you’d be down here.”

I didn’t ask how he knew. I liked to think that it was simply that he knew me that well.

Bo sat beside me on the stone bench my father had specially made for my mother so that she could still enjoy her roses even when she was too sick to work the soil. He took my hand and pulled it onto his lap, holding it between both his own.

“I hate that he did this,” I said softly. “I think she’d hate it, too.”

“She probably would. But I think she’d also be happy that they’re back together.”

I nodded, unable to deny the logic in that. My parents had had one of those loves that made everyone else feel excluded whenever they were together. As a child, I should have been annoyed by it, should have felt neglected. But I didn’t. I admired what they had. I wanted what they had.

I sighed, laying my head on Bo’s shoulder. “Do you think there’s a heaven? Or an afterlife of some sort?”

“I do.”

“You think they’re together?”

“I do.”

“I hope so.”

“Some religions believe that once you connect your soul to another person, that’s the person you spend all of eternity with. I believe that.”

I was quiet for a moment. “Then I suppose we should be very careful who we hook up with.”

Bo chuckled lightly. “Hooking up is not the same as connecting your soul to someone. I meant the person you eventually marry.”

“How does God know the difference?”

“He does. He knows your heart better than you know your own.”

“When did you suddenly get religious?”

“I haven’t. I just…it’s comforting at a time like this.”

I nodded, thinking if anyone should understand that, it was Bo. His mother died when he was twelve and he never really knew his father. He grew up moving from relative to relative, eventually settling with his aunt here in Memphis. I often wondered how our lives would be different if his mother had lived or if he’d remained with one of his few other family members. I was incredibly grateful to have him in my life even though his aunt was a difficult woman who refused to show him any affection, but wasn’t afraid to discipline him as violently as possible. She died, too, just a year after Bo graduated high school. No one wept for her except Bo.

“I guess you’re going back to Stanford?”

“Tomorrow. We’re a week from midterms—my last midterms. I can’t miss too many more classes.”

“You graduate in a couple months. Then you’ll be a full-fledged lawyer.”

“Almost. I still have to take the Bar over the summer.”

“You’ll pass with flying colors.”

I rolled my head against his shoulder. “I don’t know. I’ve heard that even people at the top of their class sometimes have to take it more than once.”

“Not you. You’re the smartest person I know.”

I smiled, pleased with the compliment.

“And after graduation?”

“I hope to come home to Memphis. I’ve got an internship lined up with a law group that’s affiliated with Grant and Fredrick out here. I hope it’ll lead to a full-time position.”

“That would be great.”

I nodded, thinking about my brothers. We were all orphans now. It was important that we band together. And Jack was already talking about moving back to Memphis months ago after Mom died. Gentry and Aiden were both still serving in the military, but their tours would be up soon. It just seemed right that we all come back home now.

“What about you?”

Bo shrugged, bouncing my head a little with the movement. “I don’t know. My time’s up soon. I could re-up if I want, but I’m thinking it might be time to concentrate on something else.”

“Like?”

He glanced at me. “I don’t know if they’ve talked to you about it yet, but Jack and Brent are thinking they might take the money your father left them and start a new business. A security firm.”

“Yeah?”

“Jack pulled me aside last night, asked if I’d be interested in being a part of it.”

I straightened and stared at him. “Jack asked you before telling me?”

Bo blushed a little, the color only highlighting the bronze perfection of his face. “Maybe he didn’t think you’d be interested.”

“Daddy left me as much as he did them!”

We knew exactly what Daddy did with his worldly goods because he left a very detailed letter that spelled it all out on the dining room table. Brent found it when Madeline called him over after finding Daddy.

We were to split the family fortune evenly, five ways. The business—Mom and Dad ran an antiques dealership in downtown Memphis—had already been liquidated. And the house, the one true bone of contrition, was to go to Jack.

And now Jack wanted to start a business, but didn’t feel the need to include me in it.

“What’d you say?”

“That I’d think about it.”

I studied his familiar face, tried to keep my mind on my outrage instead of how incredible his green eyes truly were. I sat back hard against the stone bench, convinced I probably broke a vertebra or something, and crossed my arms over my chest.

“If you didn’t do it, what would you want to do?”

Bo shrugged. “I don’t know. It crossed my mind to become a cop like Brent and Jack.” He was quiet for a long moment, his eyes moving over my face slowly in that lazy way he had about him. “There’s nothing else I’m really suited for. I’m not even sure why I went to college. It seems like a waste of time.”

“You’re just as smart as I am.”

“Yeah, but my smarts are less the book kind and more the street kind.” He stared down at the ground for a long moment. “I’m good at the military. I’m good at firing weapons and working as a team, helping people. I’m not sure I would be that good at anything else.”

“Have you thought about making the military a career?”

“I have. I like flying those jets. I like the respect I get when I’m in uniform. I like everything about it except for the fact that it’s a nomadic sort of life and I’d rather set down roots somewhere.”

My heart did a shimmy at those words. I bit my bottom lip, wondering if he had someone in mind with whom he’d like to settle down. I knew he never found it difficult to find female companionship, just like my four impossibly conceited brothers. None of them had trouble when it came to women. But my emotional health wouldn’t handle it well if Bo fell in love with some random woman and got married. Not now. Maybe not ever.

“And you want to do that here, in Memphis?”

“This is the closest thing I’ve ever had to a home, thanks mostly to your family.”

I nodded. “I’m just not sure working with Brent and Jack would be the safest option in the world.”

He chuckled softly. “Working with Gentry hasn’t exactly been safe, either. But I survived.”

“Gentry’s term of service is almost up too, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he going to come home and work with Jack and Brent, too?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t had much time to talk about it.”

‘Maybe if he did, he and Amelia could get back together.”

Bo tilted his head slightly. “Amelia was pretty clear that she wasn’t going to ask him back if he left for boot camp. And he did, so…I think that train might have left the station.”

I hated that. Gentry and Amelia dated all through high school and college. Everyone was convinced they’d get married. It was a shock when he announced one night that they’d broken up and he’d enlisted in the Air Force with Bo.

Family drama!

I moved back against Bo, resting my head on his shoulder again.

“So many things are changing. I don’t know if I can get my head around it all.”

“I know.”

“I just…I always took for granted that there was a strong foundation here, a safe place where I could always come back if I needed to get away from reality for a while.”

“There is, Remy,” Bo said softly, turning a little so that his mouth was just a hair from my forehead. “It doesn’t look the same, but your brothers will always be here for you no matter what. And so will I.”

“Will you?”

“Always.”

He kissed the top of my head and my heart began to pound. I closed my eyes and said a little prayer in my head that I’d been saying for years:

Please God, please let him see me for who I am and not as Gentry’s little sister. Please let him fall in love with me as deeply as I love him.

I had no doubt Bo was my soulmate, the one person I was meant to be with for all of eternity, just like my parents.

I just had to convince him of that.