Geo clenched his fingers on the steering wheel as he reminded himself that they’d turned a corner, too. That night at Scars & Ink, he’d felt it—something had shifted between them, something good.
Sighing, he turned into the parking lot of the pizza restaurant with a resolve to make sure they talked about it tonight, after the soccer game. He wanted a future with her, and he was more than ready to make some big changes to get it.
The stack of pizza boxes made the cab of his truck smell so good, Geo couldn’t resist sneaking a slice on the way to the soccer field. When he arrived, most of the team was already there, milling around, and a cheer went up when they saw him.
“Pizza! Pizza!” they chanted, swarming the boxes when he put them down on a nearby picnic table.
He gave Renae a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then looked around for Ari. She was a short distance away from the rest of the group, seated on the grass, doing some desultory stretches. Stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jeans, he wandered in her direction.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said softly as he approached.
She glanced up at him and shrugged. “Hey.”
He dropped to sitting next to her and leaned back on his palms, his legs crossed at the ankle. “How’s it going?”
“Good.”
These pre-game talks had become their own private ritual. Mostly Ari wanted to hear about her father, and it delighted Geo to dredge up all the funny and inspiring Cade stories he hadn’t thought of in years.
How could I forget for one moment how amazing you were, bud? Because you were, and I miss you.
He waited for her to ask, but tonight Ari was quiet for a long time. Geo didn’t push, just sat next to her, letting her take the conversational lead. At last she drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “Do you ever think it’s your fault?”
His breath froze in his chest. “Think what’s my fault, honey?”
“That your dad died.”
Geo paused. “My dad?” he asked carefully, wondering if he’d heard right.
“Yeah. Do you ever think it’s your fault he died?”
What?
“Some of Ari’s questions to you might be her way of expressing her own feelings,” Maura had said when he’d asked for her guidance early on. “Just listen, and use honesty and your best judgment when answering them. That’s all you can do.”
Tamping down his nausea at the thought of Ari blaming herself, Geo swallowed hard. “He’d been sick—”
Suddenly, a memory roared to life, the memory of a disappointed eleven-year-old boy and an impulsive, selfish prayer.
Just be honest.
“Well, a couple of months before he died, a friend’s dog had puppies, so I asked my mom if I could have one.”
He remembered how he’d been building up his courage for weeks, bolstered by the thought of having a warm, furry little creature to love, something that’d become a bright spot of hope and anticipation in those last days of his dad’s slow, inexorable decline.
“What did she say?”
At her hushed question, he drew his knees up and mirrored her pose. “She said no. Right away. Wouldn’t listen to my plan to take care of it, nothing. Just a big fat no. Period. The end.”
“Ugh. Were you mad?”
“I was furious. I thought it was so unfair.”
Looking back as an adult, Geo could recognize her decision as one of an exhausted caregiver who only saw a puppy underfoot as yet another burden, but in his childish selfishness and grief...
“I shouted that I hated her, and then I stormed outside and kicked some stuff over, like my bike and the garbage can. After that I ran to the park down the street and sat on the swings for a long time, thinking about my dad being sick, and I—”
He squeezed his eyes shut and blew out a long, slow breath.
God, help me.
“I prayed that he would just die already.”
“Oh, shit.” Ari clapped her hand over her mouth. “And he did?”
“He did, several weeks later.” Turning to face her directly, he waited until she met his eyes. “But because he was sick, Ari, not because I prayed that. Okay? That was me being mad, and for some reason praying that made me feel better, but I was a little kid. I didn’t have the power to make him die.”
Her lips trembled the tiniest bit before she broke their gaze and looked down at her knees.
Steeling himself, Geo asked, “Why, sweetie? Why did you want to know that?”
She shrugged. “Dunno.”
Despite her attempt at nonchalance, he could see her knuckles turn white as she clenched them together.
His instincts screaming at him not to let this go, he nudged her foot gently with his own. “You don’t know? C’mon, it’s me. We’ve had a lot of good talks, haven’t we? I won’t get mad, no matter what you tell me.”
Ari’s shoulders hunched in on themselves, and for a moment Geo thought she was about to bolt when suddenly she blurted, “I took Daddy’s lucky bear.”
His mind immediately flashed to the tiny tie-dyed bear Cade always kept in the front pocket of his ruck. Had he mentioned not having it on that last deployment? For the life of him, Geo couldn’t remember.
Carefully keeping his face and voice neutral, he said, “You took it out of his bag?”
“Yeah, I wanted to sleep with it before he left.” Ari dragged her head up to look at him, her eyes stark. “But I forgot to put it back. He went on deployment and he didn’t have his lucky bear...”
Lips trembling, she buried her face once again in her knees. His heart aching, Geo rested his hand lightly on her shoulder. “So you’ve been thinking that might be why he died?”
When she didn’t respond, he gave her a squeeze. “Honey, your daddy died because his brain got sick, just like my dad’s body got sick. Nothing we did made them die. Nothing.”
Another moment of absolute stillness, and then she shrugged his hand off and jumped to standing. “Gonna go warm up with the team.” Without another word, she jogged off.
Geo stayed where he was, his gut roiling with sorrow for the burden she’d picked up and carried all this time. Hadn’t he himself carried that exact same burden for years, until the wisdom that came from maturity and life experience finally convinced him otherwise?
He swallowed hard. But how much damage had that done in the meantime, damage to his psyche that in a lot of ways he was still dealing with today?
Guilt, responsibility, blame, anger...