He chuckled after swallowing when I'd caught a particularly drippy bite. "I'm like a baby."
I smiled. "You're far too handsome to be a baby, Rick." It was true — he and Wade looked just alike, with a strong jaw, gray eyes, and dark hair, though Rick had shocks of gray at his temples.
"Nah. Need a bib. Reminds me of Sadie and the sweet potatoes."
Sadie rolled her eyes. "Oh, God. Not this again."
Wade laughed around a mouthful of ice cream, catching my eye with the spark in his, reminding me so much of days long ago spent just like this. I saw him, the boy I loved, in that moment.
"Man." He shook his head at Sadie. "I've never seen such a mess. I told you she didn't like them, Dad."
"You were right," Rick said.
Sadie pointed at him with her spoon, her gray eyes flashing. "Orange vegetables are unnatural."
Wade was still chuckling, poking at his ice cream with his spoon. "You were screaming like crazy, and Dad was doing the purple prose plane."
"What in the world is that?" Jeannie asked, amused.
Wade leaned on Rick's bed and crossed his ankles. "An airplane that runs on overly-descriptive prose. Here comes the silvery jet on the wings of the storm, into the gaping maw of the giant!" He laughed again. "Sophie hit the edge of the bowl with a screech, and it flipped around about a hundred times, slinging orange goop all over the kitchen."
"Hyperbole," Rick said. "Three times." He opened his mouth for another bite, and I heaped a spoon of double chocolate fudge in.
Wade shook his head, smiling into his ice cream. "Sophie just sat there with her mouth in a little 'o' and eyes as big as silver dollars, covered in orange slop, and then we all died laughing."
I switched out the bowl for mint chocolate chip and waited for him to finish his orange sherbet. Rick's brow quirked.
"Things taste different."
"Better or worse?" I asked.
"Neither, just … different. Farther away. Smaller." He opened up for a bite, and I fed him.
Jeannie stood and began collecting bowls. "Let me clean up, and then we should get going."
Rick smiled, and I noticed his lids were heavy.
"Tired?"
He looked to me when I spoke. "A little."
"It's been a big day. I should probably go too."
"Back tomorrow?" he asked hopefully, and I smiled.
"Of course."
He seemed comforted by that and refused another bite from Sophie. So we moved around straightening up in the library and kitchen. Jeannie and Lou left first, and I didn't miss Lou holding Wade close or touching his hand before she walked away. I said my goodbyes in the library, making plans for the morning before seeing myself out.
The sounds of the girls and Rick talking and laughing carried through the hallway and to me, setting a smile on my lips as I pulled on my coat and scarf. My hand was nearly on the doorknob when I heard my name softly, gently on his lips.
I turned and found Wade before me, but something had changed, something in his eyes. It wasn't forgiveness I found there, but layers of a newfound emotion, indiscernible to me. His hand lifted just a degree, and I imagined him reaching for me before it dropped again. He searched my face, the words he wanted to say warring behind his eyes.
"Thank you," he said after an agonizing moment. "Thank you for being here for Dad, for us. I know … I know it's not easy."
"It's not easy for any of us. I'm not alone in that."
"No," he said simply. "You're not."
"Thank you, too. For letting me be here."
His voice rumbled, velvety and solemn. "I wouldn't keep you from him, Elliot."
My name again, three syllables on his breath.
I nodded; my voice failed me.
He looked down at his shoes and back up, hands slipping into his pockets as he took a step back. "I'll see you tomorrow."
"Goodnight," I answered quietly and closed my hand over the doorknob, turning it to step into the cold night where I found a glimmer of hope caressing the moon.
9
So Easy
Hurt is so easy,
Loss so simple
In its complexity,
And to fall into
The arms of the dark
Is effortless.
* * *
- M. White
* * *
Wade
My sisters and I had spent the morning reading to Dad, hours spent in silence other than the cadence of verse and rhyme as he watched the window as if it held answers. I'd been reading Thoreau for an hour, comforted by the connection to Dad without the pressure of our own thoughts and fears.
The day before drifted in and out of my thoughts. He was home, and the anxiety of his homecoming was finally behind us after so much waiting, so much anticipation. We had all been left reeling. I hadn't expected to come home to Elliot's words, to the truth of the moment. It had opened me up, and I had spilled out, unable to find composure or control when my father held my face and called me his.
And she was there, by my side, as lost and broken as we all were, backing away, trying to disappear again when she held a place next to us. I couldn't let her do it, couldn't let her shrink away. So I stopped her, took her hand not knowing that it was me who needed her.
I didn't know until my eyes found her hands resting in my lap wrapped in mine, so warm, so soft, that connection to her like a breath of life.
When the moment had passed and were all smiling again, the ease and normalcy (that word, that feeling, a thing which I sought and feared) surprising me and somehow not surprising me at all. We slipped into it simply, the fight and anguish burned down and away.