Chekiss breaks their hug to rub their arms. “You two are making me cold. Are you hurt? Is that blood??”
“Is everyone okay?” Warrose asks.
Our family looks to my children for answers. But their eyes are magnetized to the ground. My family looks to Dessin and myself all at once.
Marilynn steps out of the house, staring firmly into my eyes. She has always had that all-knowing stare about her. Her eyes are archives—star-deep with unrecorded history lying dormant. But this gaze is much different.
She knows.
She knows what I haven’t said.
What I am about to say.
And grief needs no language as we share these last seconds. It sits between us, enormous, heavy, and breathing death into our souls.
“Wait…” Ruth says.
“Where is Niles?” Chekiss’s tone changes drastically.
There it is.
That three-worded question cleaves me in place. A question so razor-sharp, I am desecrated and pulled apart like an old doll.
Dessin’s hands steady me, acting as iron crutches. That support, that stability as I stare at Niles’s wife sends blood rushing to my face.
Chekiss is suddenly next to me. “Where is Niles?” he asks again.
I hear Ruth gasp.
Warrose looks to Dessin for confirmation.
“No…” Chekiss steps back as my eyes begin dripping.
“Niles?!” Ruth shrieks.
“Oh my god…” Warrose covers his mouth and turns away from us with his other hand on his head.
“No!” Chekiss’s scratchy voice rakes over us. “NO! Not my boy!”
Chekiss was the father neither of us had. Niles and I were the children Chekiss never got to raise.
I blink more tears in his direction but cannot bring myself to say anything. I hear my children sob behind us. But it’s Chekiss’s howl that makes me lose it. It’s raspy and dragged out to a long, raucous moan.
His sun-spotted hand spreads over his chest in shock, denial, then another collision of reality sinking in. He cries out as though a sword is lodging in his ribs.
“How did it happen?” Ruth cries.
“He was—executed,” I tell them in a faint whisper.
Ruth squeezes her eyes shut as Warrose drops to a knee and hugs her.
Krimson holds his grandpa up, murmuring reassuring words as Chekiss sobs.
I find Marilynn still standing, watching me with streams of tears drizzling over her freckled cheeks. “My son…” she gets out.
I turn my head to Niklaus. Sapphire lets him go as he bolts to his mother, back shaking against her arms as she whispers in his ear, nodding and crying along with him.
Dessin is behind me now, arms a protective wall around my upper body. And my head falls back against his shoulder for just a minute. I look up to the vast sky, at the shifting clouds, and rustling leaves. Niles is here somewhere, watching his family fall to pieces over him. And I know that must hurt far more than his death.
