Blood was everywhere, but all I could do was stare at my father’s face and beg for him to wake up.
It wasn’t to be.
Hours later, he was pronounced dead at the hospital.
And my faith died with him.
“It didn’t die.” Ashley kept her arms around me. “Your dad will always be with you in spirit. Always.”
I didn’t believe her. Not even a little. To me, being there meant you were there physically. Having lost my mom when I was young after a long battle with cancer, I leaned on my father to be both parents.
“He’s gone,” I whispered to her. “I’m officially parentless.”
I was nearly an adult, but not quite. And I didn’t feel ready to take on the world with no one out ahead of me breaking my falls.
Over the next couple of months, I fell into a state of indifference. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want to be here if Dad wasn’t here with me. All I could do was go out every day after school and try to find his killer. Liam and I went together—Hunt was too young, and we all wanted to protect him as best we could, and Max left New Orleans to do a PG year in Minnesota and focus exclusively on hockey.
Not having Max around was hard for me. Harder than I ever let on. Max was my twin, my mirror, the one who’d been with me always, even in the womb. And him leaving right after Dad’s death felt like another kind of loss. I would never tell him that, of course, but I damn sure wished I could have gone with him. Liam wanted to send me too, but I’d never been a good student. Max had the grades to get him accepted into a school out of state, and I didn’t.
Once Max left home, I put all my energy into searching for Dad’s killer—and ice hockey. What little time I had left over went to partying with people who wouldn’t get too deep on anything.
But Ashley didn’t give up easily. She showed up every Sunday morning at my house and dragged me to church with her. I was often hungover and always complaining, but she insisted it would be good for me. The only thing I won on was that we could take my truck. For the first month, I sat next to her numbly, barely listening to the pastor.
Then, one Sunday, on the drive to church, a familiar song came on the radio.
Ashley bounced up and down in the shotgun seat and pointed at the dashboard.
“That’s your dad’s favorite song!”
I swallowed hard.
“It’s a message from him, J,” she said softly.
It was hard to argue her. This wasn’t some current pop tune; it was an oldie about love and loss and not one I’d heard on the radio in years.
Emotion hit me.
But I held back the tears.
“That was a request by Fran,” the radio DJ said as the song ended.
Chills went down my spine.
Fran was my dad’s nickname.
“Fran lost his truck in the storm last week, and that’s his favorite song,” the DJ continued.
Ashley’s small hand took hold of my large one and held on.
“Fran. Storm. That’s your daddy.”
Since we buried Dad, I felt like I’d been carrying around a boulder’s worth of guilt that I wasn’t there to stop the bastard from killing him. I was numb and walked through my days like I was barely present. Nothing felt like it mattered anymore.
But that day, when we sat together in church, I listened. To the sermon. To Ashley whispering little jokes to me. To the organ music and the people around me and the birds above as we walked out and back to my truck.
“Thank you,” I said to her as I dropped her off at her mom’s. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
She winked at me as she stepped out. “You’ll never have to find out.”
