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We spent the day making phone calls. Telling people that Henry was dead didn’t become any easier no matter how many times I did it, though none of the calls I’d made that day hurt nearly as much as the call I’d made to Alex.
I picked him up from the airport at noon, and by the time we got to the house, Mike and Ellie had made their way over. My aunt looked like a zombie as she puttered around my mom’s kitchen, refilling coffee mugs and wiping down countertops. She didn’t stop moving, even fidgeting as Alex and I went over to give her hugs. It made my stomach churn. She was there, but her mind was far away from us.
Uncle Mike was the opposite. He sat silently on the couch, looking at nothing. He wasn’t even pretending to be paying attention to the things happening around him.
“Where’s my baby?” Alex whispered to Ani the minute she walked into the kitchen.
I ignored the flash of annoyance that hit me.
“She’s in Katie’s old room in the playpen,” Ani said. “Hey, asshole.”
“Hey, pretty girl,” he replied, a small smile on his face. He pulled her in against his side as she wrapped her arms around him. “How you doing?”
“Shitty.”
“Yeah, you and me both,” Alex said on a sigh.
“Has anyone heard from Trev?” I asked, interrupting their conversation.
“He called Ellie a little while ago,” Ani said, leaning her head against Alex’s chest. “He’ll be by later.”
I nodded, then turned on my heel. I needed to get away from them for a bit. I needed to get away from all of it. The emotion filling the house was stifling in its intensity, with everyone talking in hushed voices, their eyes hollow.
I made my way back to my sister’s old bedroom and quietly let myself inside. On the far side of the bed, Arielle slept in one of those little portable cribs that were so popular, her arms flung out to the sides of her head. I moved closer to her and sat on the edge of the bed, watching her chest rise and fall.
She had no idea what was going on. Her life revolved around bottles and diaper changes and baths. She slept when she was tired and cried when she was hungry and had no clue that the adults around her were falling apart at the seams. I envied her that, but was so fucking grateful that she’d never remember any of it.
I silently slid my boots off and lay down on the bed, messing with the pillow underneath my head until I could see her. I ignored the way my eyes watered as I got comfortable and my body relaxed into the bed. I’d stay with her for a while.
“Uncle Bram,” a little voice whispered sometime later. “Uncle Bram, wake up.”
I opened my gritty eyes to find my nephew Keller’s face just inches from mine.
“Hey, when did you guys get here?” I asked groggily, glancing at Arielle’s crib to find her gone.
“Just now,” he said solemnly. “Uncle Hen died.”
“I know, bud,” I said, reaching out to run my hand over his head.
He sniffled a bit and raised his chin.
Ah, hell.
I reached out with one arm and pulled him onto the bed with me, and it was a testament to how shitty he was feeling that he didn’t try to wrestle with me. Keller was a scrapper. He liked to wrestle and fight and be physical in any way he could, but right then, he lay down quietly beside me. We stared at the ceiling side by side.
“Mom keeps crying,” he said into the quiet of the room.
“Yeah, my mom does too.”
“But I don’t cry,” he said stubbornly.
“I do,” I grumbled. “Sometimes.”
“Really?” he asked in surprise, still staring at the ceiling.
“Yep.”
Keller went silent, and a few minutes later, Kate came quietly into the room, crawling into bed with us on the other side of me.
“Hey, sis,” I said, kissing her hair as she laid her head on my shoulder.
“Hey,” she replied, sighing.
We didn’t need to say anything else. The reason for her visit was obvious, and I knew exactly how she was feeling. So instead, we just lay there quietly, lost in our own thoughts.
* * *
The rest of the day went by slowly. The women cooked. The men didn’t do much of anything. The Marine chaplain came out to my parents’ house to talk to us about how and when they’d send Henry home and explained that some Marines would be around to help us with anything we needed.
We had dinner, but by unspoken agreement, none of us sat at the dining room table. A family dinner would only highlight the fact that Henry was gone.
Katie put her kids to bed for the night.
I held Arielle against my chest, leaning back in my dad’s recliner. There wasn’t anything for me to do. All of it seemed to be a hurry-up-and-wait game. We waited to hear when they were going to fly Hen’s body home. Waited to know when the funeral would be. Waited for my aunt to lose her shit as she grew more and more agitated as the day went on.
