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“Is Mommy home now?”
Bree’s heart sank, and she wondered how they could fully explain death to the twins. Maybe everyone needed a pet to pass on when they were three. Then again, no child, until they were fully grown, should have to hear their mother was never coming home again.
Ice pulled into Bree’s driveway and threw his truck in park. Before turning off the engine, he settled himself, then turned to the kids already unbuckling their seat belts.
“Aiden, Jane, Mommy isn’t coming home again,” he said. “She’s not going to visit you. She’s dead. Remember how I showed you pictures of my Granny and told you that you can’t meet her?”
The kids nodded, then glanced at each other in hopes the other understood.
“Mommy isn’t sleeping for a long time. Mommy is asleep forever,” he said. “The guys are going to put her in the cemetery. Not right next to Great-Gran, but as close as I can get her.”
“But she’s gotta come with us to the farm,” Aiden said. “She promised the principal. You can’t make promises to Ms. Lightfoot and not do them. That’s bad, and my mommy isn’t bad.”
“Your mommy isn’t bad,” Bree said while an overwhelming urge to fix an unfixable problem rolled through her. “How about I call Ms. Lightfoot on Monday and say I’ll go to the farm? I need to call her anyway to let her know you guys are taking a few days away from school.”
“Why?” Jane asked. “I don’t want to skip school. You get a prize if you come every day, and I’ve gone every day.”
“We both have,” Aiden added, and Bree was at a complete loss.
Never before had she needed her mother by her side to help get through to these children.
“Maybe they could go?” Ice offered, and Bree sat shaking her head.
“This is insane. Their mother was murdered, and all they can think about is getting a fifty-cent fair prize like they tossed a ring over a bottle.”
“Murdered?” Jane’s voice softened and trembled a bit as she said the word. Had Bree accidentally clued the child in to reality? “You didn’t say Mommy was murdered. You said she was going to be asleep forever.”
“We said she died,” Ice corrected. “Mrs. Parker said she died. I heard her. She told you that you wouldn’t be able to see your mommy again.”
“No, she said she was sent to Heaven and we’d see her later.”
Bree covered her eyes with her hand, then slid it over her face. No wonder these kids were confused. Outside of John glad-handing for a new elected position, they didn’t know about church or any of the teachings. There was no Sunday school or talk of Jesus outside of annoyed howls from their mother when frustration hit. There was no foundation for the afterlife, but murder they knew. It was in the lexicon created over their short five years of life. Every part of their faces changed as they slipped into the reality the adults had been trying to explain to them.
“You have to think of Heaven as another planet you go to and never come back,” Bree said, grasping at a relatable allegory.
“Murder is forever,” Jane said, then turned to her brother, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Aidee, was Mommy murdered? Is she gone?”
Both kids turned and opened the back doors and ran across the street with Ice and Bree chasing after them. Bree caught Aiden at the edge of the driveway and wrapped him up in her arms from behind as Ice gathered Jane to him by the front door blocked off with yellow tape and a seal on the frame and doorjamb.
“No,” Jane howled, her legs wildly kicking Ice, but he clung tighter to her, saying sweet, calming words into her ears as the tears Bree had been expecting to fall finally did.
Aiden did his best to wrench away until he also gave in as the special day with Daddy came to a crashing end. His body transformed into a limp noodle in her arms, and he turned, needing her to comfort him as she lifted, shifting him to her hip, and carried him back to her house. The air was somehow different as a perfect sixty-eight degrees coated her, and she tried to find the words as Aiden locked his legs around her waist.
“W-Why, Aunt-ieeee Bree, is my mama gone?” Aiden choked the words out.
“I don’t know, baby,” she said, cradling the back of his head as he snuffed on her shoulder.
“Hey, kiddo,” Ice said, holding Jane in a similar fashion as he ruffled Aiden’s hair and leaned down to kiss the crown of the boy’s head. “I’m here now, and I’m not going to let anything more happen to you.”
“You didn’t save Mama,” he countered. “Where’s John?”
“John’s sick in the hospital,” he said. “Right now he’s sleeping, trying to get better.”
“He didn’t get murdered?” Jane asked, wiping glistening tears from her reddened cheeks.
Cold shot through Bree because Ice wasn’t answering. John was alive, but that didn’t mean if he died it wouldn’t be classified as a murder. How did you explain that to kids who barely understood life and death as it was? Ice stepped closer to Bree, cutting the space so the kids were able to be held and console their sibling.
Ice’s eyes found hers as he cupped the back of her head with his free hand, then stroked his thumb along her cheek, a tragic moment coming together in a way that had her envisioning a family. The little foursome had been thrown together. Yet, from the outside, and even in the center of her chest, they were as natural a family as any she’d grown up with in her manicured, pristine neighborhood. Every part of her wanted to touch the lips of the man with tattoos all the way up his neck, his sun-kissed skin peppered with the rough shadow of a beard and penetrating gray eyes.
