Every inch of my body tightened. All the joints that had been loosening themselves up since coming home and doing nothing more than working out and watching TV were back on high alert. She was right and wrong. It wasn’t about Fenway. Fenway had just been the final card to bring the stack down.
“Jesus, Bee,” Gabi swore. “Finish your drink before you say something you’ll really regret.”
Bee flushed again. She didn’t even see what she’d said or done wrong. In her mind, she was just helping her little sister. It had been the way of things my entire life. In the end, I’d be the one feeling guilty even though it was her words that had started it all.
I took a deep breath, in and out. Calming myself. Feeling the smooth surface of the wood table. Feeling the press of my heels into the floor. Holding my tongue. Wanting to storm off. Wanting to tell Bee to go to hell. But I didn’t. Instead, I did what I was good at. I was flippant and sarcastic, and I made peace with a tease.
“Yeah, Bee, drink up. I need to get some new pictures of you singing George Michael’s “I Want Your―”
Bee reached up and covered my mouth. “We don’t talk about that either, Gooberpants.”
Gabi laughed, Tristan smiled, and the tightness in my chest eased. For better or worse, they were my sisters. They loved me, and in their hearts, they were looking out for me—even Bee, in her own twisted way.
Nash
21 GUNS
“When you're at the end of the road,
And you lost all sense of control,
And your thoughts have taken their toll.
When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul,
Your faith walks on broken glass.”
Performed by Green Day
Written by Armstrong / Dirnt / Cool / Phillips / Jones
Hannah was cooing at me from her high chair. All smiles, babbling with the half words, half nonsense she was good at these days. She had two pigtails sticking out from the sides of her head with soft curls spiraling out of them. Add in her golden eyes and shiny hair, and she was the prettiest damn baby I’d ever seen. Not that I’d seen many. I’d certainly never been around them as much as I’d been around this little lady.
When I’d first started helping Tristan with the baby, I’d been all bumbles and mistakes, which had made me feel like an idiot. Give me a gun and a target, and I could hit my mark every single time, but getting one wiggling baby to stop long enough to close the tabs on a diaper had been nearly impossible. The pride I’d felt when I’d finally gotten her to take a bottle from me instead of only Tristan? That had been almost as big as the day I’d gotten my brown shirt at BUD/S.
Molly squirmed, tail wagging as she sat below the high chair’s tray, waiting expectantly for the next morsel to drop. She started to jump up, I gave her a look, and she sat her butt back on the ground. If only dealing with humans was as easy as training the dog had been.
Hannah, covered in spaghetti sauce and pasta, stuck her hand out to share the noodle which had just been in her mouth. “NaNa. You.”
Her name for me hit me in the heart every single time she said it. “I have my own, see,” I said, lifting my fork and scooping spaghetti into my mouth.
She shook her head. “No. You.”
I was not eating her spaghetti drool.
“Hannah, eat,” I told her, folding her tiny clenched fist with the gooshy noodle back toward her face.
She giggled but ate it, and I sighed with relief. Trying to get this girl off of a topic was nearly impossible until she changed it herself. She was focused. Like her dad. My heart clenched.
I took my plate to the sink, rinsed it, and stacked it in the dishwasher before turning back to the eighteen-month-old. Molly was dancing on her hind legs as Hannah dropped food at the dog who caught every piece.
“No more for Molly,” I said, smiling, and Hannah smiled back. She had Darren’s smile. I wasn’t sure how Tristan could deal with looking at it every day. Sadness hit me at how much Darren was missing. He’d loved this kid like nothing else. He’d loved her so much he probably would have eaten her spaghetti drool.
I cleaned up Hannah’s plate and tray before unbuckling her from the seat she was pushing herself out of regardless of the safety contraption. Once I had her in my arms, I couldn’t help smiling at the mess she was. Covered in sauce from her forehead to her belly button. “I think you need a bath, Bo Peep.”
She smiled and patted my face, leaving a trail of wetness that had me wiping it off with a shoulder. She squeezed my T-shirt with her sauce-covered hands, and I wondered if the stain would ever come out. Another shirt to toss in the rag pile.
Molly tagged along at my heels as we made our way upstairs to the bath in the main bedroom. Tristan had a baby seat that suctioned into the tub, and I got it set up with one arm. The whole while, Hannah was garbling at me and Molly. She kicked her feet and her hands, excited in a way that always took me by surprise. When was the last time I’d seen anyone full of that much joy? Never. No one past the age of three seemed to have this amount of uncontained love for everything in their life. Probably because, by then, they’d already had too many disappointments.
I got the warm water running, added some bubbles, and then tossed Hannah’s diaper in the trash before sitting her in the bath
