Jill was more like the fun aunt who always brought presents than she was a mom to her boys. They didn’t even call her mom and she liked it that way.
“It will be nice to see her again,” I told them. “She’s fun.”
“Yeah,” Heath said in agreement. “But I’m glad you’re our mom.”
“Thanks, buddy,” I smiled over at him and then ruffled his hair, which he hated. “I love you, too.”
“Can we walk over to the park and play on the courts when we’re done?”
“Homework finished?” I asked them.
“Almost, I’ve still got to…” The doorbell interrupted Joshua and, in unison, all of us looked toward the sound.
“I’ll get it!” Adam was running for the door before the rest of us could even blink, probably hoping it was the new kid that had moved in down the street a few weeks ago. I heard the door open and then Adam say, “Hi, Uncle Luke”
I smiled, glad that my brother had made time to visit before he was sent off again next week. Even though he lived on base just a few miles from our house, he didn’t get over to see us as much as either one of us would like.
I was in the kitchen grabbing another plate and some silverware when Luke walked in. I could tell by his face that it was something bad and I set the plate on the counter with a thump.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered, my eyes already filled with tears.
“Sissy,” Luke started and his voice broke. “Come in the living room with me.”
“No!” I shook my head. “Luke, no!”
“Jamie, what’s wrong?” Heath asked, alarmed.
“Honey,” Luke reached for my hand. “Come on.”
I followed my brother already knowing what I was going to find. When I passed Adam in the doorway he reached out and took my other hand, the tears streaming down his face.
When I stopped walking, my three boys crowded around me. Adam, holding my hand, and Joshua and Heath both in front of me, each with an arm around my waist. Luke still held my other hand and he reached out to pull the boys toward him as tears started rolling down his cheeks
The base chaplain was standing next to an officer I didn’t recognize and my little family already knew that they were there to tell us, Wyatt was dead and our lives would never be the same.
1.
JAMIE
“He’s just acting worse and worse, Neva,” I told my friend. Neva Grayson was not only my best friend, she was my boys’ aunt and she was just as worried about them as I was.
“There were some problems before Wyatt died, but that was just teenage stuff. Add his grief to it and now this is where we are.”
“I took him to the counselor on base that the chaplain suggested, and he sat there in complete silence through every single appointment.”
“Stubborn, that one,” Neva sighed and reached for another weed. “I thought parenting would be easier once they were potty trained. That’s some naive bullshit, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure that’s fair. You got them when they were little and snuggly. I got them when they’d already started to smell and they were always on the move.”
“It was hard. Taking care of three kids under four years old with two of them still in diapers was exhausting and I was only 19. I see women with a passel of kids that small and I just want to give them a glass of wine and a gift certificate for a massage.”
I laughed at her, knowing she was completely serious.
“Speaking of, did you talk to that lady about renting a workspace?” Neva was a massage therapist, so when I decided to move to Rojo to be closer to my dad and brothers, she’d picked up and moved with me. Her husband had died in the same company as Wyatt, so she didn’t have any reason to live close to base anymore. Since both of her parents had died years earlier, it wasn’t a problem for her to move away with me. “What did she say?”
“She said that she’s going to have three sections available for massage and I’m welcome to one of them. I got to see the space this morning and it’s awesome. Completely refurbished, new walls and flooring. It’s a blank canvas. I signed the lease!”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“When I got here, you and Adam were yelling, the other two boys were agitated and ready to get out of here, and it just wasn’t the time.”
“I’m sorry,” I frowned at her. “I ruined your good news.”
“Nah, Adam did that when he called you a bitch.” Neva shook her head. “If Wyatt was here, he’d tan his hide.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, at a loss for how to handle the problems with my oldest son. “The boy is already as tall as I am, he’d probably just laugh at me.”
“You could take him,” Neva laughed. “I’ve seen you scrap before, sister, and you’re a force to be reckoned with.”
“I have three brothers. Self-defense was mandatory.”
“It’s so sad that you didn’t get to live with them after your mom died, but I’m glad you grew up with me.”
“Dad had his hands full,” I laughed. “I understand that even better now. He had the three boys, who were all young. Eli was just one and I was a newborn. He still feels guilty, but honestly I think that’s what was best for me at the time. Dad brought them to see us every chance he got and we talked on the phone quite a few times a week. They spent most of the summers with me at Grandma and Grandpa's house. You remember all those summers.”
“They picked on you a lot? I don’t remember that.”
“Not bad, really, just dumb boy stuff. Levi and Luke thought it was funny to hold me down and fart on me. I swear that’s why my sense of smell is so warped. They damaged my nose.”
Neva laughed, “I do remember the farting.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw my neighbor playing fetch with a huge dog. He was out on his lawn in a t-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts and I watched the muscles play in his arms and legs as he threw the rope toy and then wrestled with the big beast.
“Damn,” Neva whispered, watching the same thing I was. “Would you look at that? Our new neighborhood comes with pretty scenery.”
“Yes, it does,” I whispered. “That dog is huge.”
“I was talking about the man, you goob.”
“Yeah, he is, too,” I laughed. “Good lord, look at those tattoos.”
I’d always loved tattoos and even had a few myself, but Wyatt hadn’t liked them. He couldn’t have any distinguishing marks because of his position in the army and he really didn’t like it when I got my first one while he was on deployment. The only thing that had made him moderately happy about it was the image itself.
On my right bicep, I had three large stars in a line down my arm. Until Wyatt died, all three were filled with a little spot of blue with white dots for little stars and the rest red and white stripes, as if the stars were cut out of an American flag.
Each star had initials embedded in the scrollwork around it.
A month after Wyatt’s death, I had gone back to the same tattoo artist and he had put the date of the day Wyatt died inside his star.