Aunt Pat gave a knowing nod, clasped Kat by the elbow and led her down the hall.
After a few seconds of silence, his mom suggested, “Try to be a little understanding with your sister right now. She’s only fourteen.”
“And most of the time she acts like ten.”
His mom’s face was drawn as she told him, “We all have our own way of coping. Yours and Kat’s are different.”
His way of coping started with shots from those bottles in the toolshed. “How do you cope, Mom? How have you coped all these years knowing what Dad did? How have you lived with that?”
He hadn’t meant to bring the matter up again now, but the questions were doing a slow burn in his stomach. Gary had shown him the article in the paper at baseball practice. Maybe his dad’s heart attack was really about the article being published. But what did he have to do with that?
“Was that article in the paper true or was it a lie? Did he kill women and kids?”
For once in her life his mother was at an absolute loss for words. Finally she answered him. “I know you need to talk about this. I know you have questions. But there are two sides to every story and you have to hear your father’s.”
Maybe a part of him was glad this had happened. Maybe a part of him wanted to kick the pedestal out from under his dad’s feet. But another part…
Sean suddenly realized Kat wouldn’t be here and he’d have to visit his dad alone. Panicked, he asked, “What am I going to say when I go in to see Dad?”
“You don’t have to say anything. Just be with him. Let him know you’re there. If you do want to talk, just tell him you’re sure he can fight through this.”
When his mom’s voice cracked, Sean felt something breaking inside him. He glanced away and told himself his dad would be all right. His dad had to be all right.
As the monitors beeped, Brady floated, trying not to think or even feel. There had been times over the years when he’d blocked out all feeling. In Nam, for sure. As well as after he returned home. After Laura’s miscarriages. After Jason died—
He didn’t want to go there.
He wished there was a clock in the cubicle. But doctors probably thought patients shouldn’t think about time or count the minutes until their next visitor. Would Laura come back? Or would Sean or Kat visit?
In spite of his struggling to stay in the here and now, his mind wandered. To the day he and Laura had moved into their first house—one with a mortgage instead of a landlord. She’d discovered she was pregnant one week and they’d found the split level the next. They’d been so happy…so ready to prepare a nursery.
But then he’d returned home from work one night and—
“Laura! Laura, are you home?” he’d called as he’d set his briefcase in the kitchen. There was no answer. Yet her purse sat on the counter.
Returning to the living room, he called up the short flight of stairs. “Laura.”
A sixth sense urged him to climb them, even though she didn’t call back. At the top of the stairs he heard her crying coming from the bathroom.
Rushing in, he found her on the floor by the bathtub, with blood on her white summer dress. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong? What happened?”
She was sobbing now. “I lost our baby. Oh, Brady. I lost our baby.”
He had to get her medical attention. But her tear-stained cheeks, the sense of loss in her eyes, had him holding her and rocking her. “It’s okay. It’s okay. We’ll have another baby.”
“I wanted this one. I wanted this child. What if I can’t get pregnant again?”
“You’re young and healthy. You’ll get pregnant again. We’ll have lots of kids. You’ll see. I love you, Laura.”
Then he scooped her into his arms and carried her to his car to drive her to the hospital.
The doctor had performed a D&C. Visiting Laura and holding her through her grief had been difficult for him. He’d tried to bury his. When she’d returned home, they’d talked about trying again as soon as the doctor said they could. He’d brought her daisies. He’d bought her her favorite perfume. He hadn’t bought a charm. Charms were for the happy times. The times they wanted to remember.
Eventually her smiles had become natural again.
Until the next miscarriage. There had been a third. Then she’d become pregnant with Jason.
His son.
“Mom?”
An hour later, Sean’s strained voice told Laura she’d been staring into space for at least ten minutes. “How’d it go?” she asked.
Her son dropped down onto the sofa beside her and raked his hands through his hair. “He was sleeping. He didn’t know I was there.”
“He might have.”
Now Sean stretched out his legs and slouched against the cushion. “Tell me something about Dad you’ve never told me. Not about now, but—” he pointed to her bracelet “—tell me what he was like when he was in college. He wasn’t that much older than me.”
“He was twenty-one when I met him.”
“Did he always want to make robots?”
She smiled. As an engineer, Brady had been ahead of his time. “Yep. When he took me to meet his parents, he showed me his workroom. Uncle Matt and Uncle Ryan had an HO train set up year-round.”
“They would have still been in high school.”
“Right. Your dad did all the electrical work on the trains, but on his side of the room there were electronics kits.”
“What about Aunt Pat? Did she have a space in the workroom?”
Laura laughed at the thought of Pat playing with trains or experimenting like Brady. “No. She wanted no part of it. She liked it when her brothers were busy down there because they weren’t annoying her.”
“That sounds like Aunt Pat.” Sean was quiet for a couple of seconds, then murmured, “When you talked earlier about the way you and Dad met and all, he seemed so different from the way he is now. Was he?”
How much should she tell Sean?
Maybe that was the problem. She and Brady had always filtered everything they’d told the kids, instead of just laying it all out. At eighteen, Sean could vote, he could enlist, he could fight in a war. When should parents stop protecting children from heavy truths that would color the rest of their lives if they understood them?
“When I met your dad…”
Her voice trembled and tears blurred her eyes, but she blinked them away. “He wasn’t like anyone else I’d ever met. The first time I looked into those blue eyes, I wanted to stay there. When he took my wrist and dragged me from the demonstration, I felt safe being with him. He knew where we were going even if I didn’t. It was so odd, really, because I’d learned not to depend on anyone. I’d learned I had to make my own way.”
“You were only twenty.”
She nodded. “Losing my parents made me feel so alone. Even though my aunt Marcia took me in, I still felt…abandoned. Your dad changed that. He opened this great big window for me. He let in light and love and warmth. He had this amazing sense of humor and he knew how to relax. We’d sit for hours—”
“Making out?” Sean asked with a smile.
Her cheeks warmed. “Just being together. Before he left, we took walks in the park and fed the squirrels. We flew kites. We went to a party with his friends.”