I took a breath and squared my shoulders as best as I could under the weight. I didn't answer her question. There was no way to be ready for any of it, but I opened the door anyway and stepped into that room to face fears I hadn't even known were real until a few minutes ago.
When the door closed behind us, he opened his eyes, turning his head to the sound. And half of his face came alive with joy and pain and fear when he saw me.
"My boy," he said, the words thick.
"Hey, Dad." My voice was rough, and I cleared my throat as I walked over to him, reaching for his hand. He squeezed it hard and let it go with tears in his eyes, and when I bent, he cupped the back of my neck and pressed his forehead to mine.
"Long time," he muttered, the words shaky.
"I'm here now," I answered, begging his forgiveness.
"Glad," he whispered, and I pulled away. Sophie stood back, her fingers pressed to her lips, tear-stained cheeks shining as she watched us.
The door opened behind me, and I turned, unprepared for who I found.
Her cheeks were flushed, eyes big and shining, wet with tears, chest heaving from running or from proximity to me, I didn't know.
Elliot.
Her name in my mind was a curse I couldn't escape, a ghost that haunted me day after day, year after year since I'd seen her last so long ago.
Time stretched out in the moment, the two of us caught in it like a web, but we didn't struggle, didn't fight. Instead, we witnessed the past standing in front of us, alive and intact. She was the past I'd been running from for seven long, lonely years.
Dad cut the tie, saying her name with reverence, and I stepped back as she stepped forward, keeping my pain in front of me, as if it could shield me from her.
She tried to smile, forehead furrowed and brows pinched with her sadness as she turned all of her attention to him.
"Rick," she whispered, bending to kiss his forehead, and he looked at her just like he did my sisters. She'd been a part of our family from the second she crossed the threshold of our home.
"Sadie?" he asked, wondering after our youngest sister.
Elliot glanced at me, just a flick of her eyes to me and back to my father, but I felt the burn of her even in that small moment.
"She's at home. Sophie and Wade haven't told her yet."
He closed his eyes and nodded, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I'm sorry," he tried to say, but the words were muffled and slurred.
"No," Elliot said, her voice shaking, her lips smiling sadly. "There are no sorrys, not for anyone. Especially not for you. Everything in its time. Now let the night be dark for all of me / Let the night be too dark for me to see / Into the future. Let what will be, be."
He smiled. "Robert Frost."
She smiled back, though her chin flexed, trembling as she held his hand. "Don't be afraid. You exist. You'll never cease."
He nodded again, a tear slipping down his temple on his left side, and she wiped it, knowing he couldn't. And I broke, not able to show it.
3
As Air
For every breath
And every beat of my heart
Carries me farther away
From you.
* * *
-M. White
Elliot
I squeezed Rick's hand and backed away, slipping into the background as Sophie and Wade took my place by their father's side. Sophie sat on the edge of the bed, caging Rick's hand in both of hers as if she could hang on to him forever, if she were strong enough. Wade pulled up a chair, his profile cut out against the shadows behind him, jaw firm, throat working, brow low. He'd changed so much, aged into a man, hardened into stone and muscle. I didn't recognize him, and yet the familiarity of him sang to me, called to me.
But he wasn't mine. He hadn't been for a long time.
And he didn't want to be.
So I sat in the back of the room in the shadows, shouldering my pain and all of theirs, wishing I could take it from them. I could be strong for them. I wanted to be strong for them — I had a feeling they'd need that in the days to come. It was a small offering, but an offering I had to give nonetheless.
The proximity to Wade was stifling, the shock of seeing him stripping me bare every few minutes, over and over again. I thought I'd find my footing and lose it, my feet slipping out from underneath as the undertow dragged me beneath the surface.
I'd loved him since the second I first saw him, and though time had passed, though I thought I'd buried that love, it sprang fresh the second I saw him again. The moments I kept locked away broke their chains and pressed themselves into my mind.
Long nights with his lips against mine, my body entwined in his, our hearts wrapped in each other. Simple, happy moments of his smile, his laughter, his love. It had always been him, from the first. There had never been anyone else.
The pain of our last words slipped in like a fog, banishing the warmth of the good. He'd asked the impossible of me, but that it was impossible didn't stop my regretting everything.
But it wasn't supposed to happen like that. We had a plan, a plan that he redrew without me.
Enlisting in the Army had always been part of that, a part that had never been contested. I was to stay in New York and graduate from high school, and then we would get married, start our lives together. Where he would go, I would go.
The night before he left, he came to me with his grandmother's ring and changed the rules. He couldn't leave without me, he'd said. He needed me to promise him, to come with him. And I wanted to.
But I was seventeen, too young, too afraid, and I didn't have my father's blessing. Why couldn't he wait? I asked him the question, begging him as he begged me. He wanted me to choose him.
I didn't know how to walk away from my life. And my biggest regret, my biggest shame, was that I wasn't brave enough to do it anyway.