“I swear I totally forgot it was your sister’s name,” she went on. “I really need to stop naming my kids after dead relatives before checking with you.”
“Stop.” I laughed. “I’m glad you did. The name could use a redemption arc.”
We sat in quiet for a moment before I reached across the table and rested my hand over hers.
“Thank you,” I whispered, surprised by the depth of gratitude I felt.
I hadn’t expected to find comfort with her, but there it was, along with something that felt like the beginning of a friendship.
Mitch and Aprilwere the last of Scott’s called-in favors to leave. But even days after they’d gone, the sense of order held. Homework was getting done. Scott stayed home, no more walking,and he seemed to have a renewed purpose. I wished I could get there too.
The new normal we were forming felt wrong. Like this—me standing in the kitchen, making sandwiches for the kids, going through the motions of moving forward without actually going anywhere.
Keith was the only one not crowded in with us. He’d healed enough from the beating to leave, slipping out the door the way he always had, without ceremony or permission. Graduation would proceed without him. His education, like so many things, had become collateral damage.
The phone rang.
I waited for Emma to answer, but when she didn’t, I picked it up. “Hello?”
Breathing. Ragged sounding.
“Hello?”
I was ready to hang up when a cough came through. Not a cold, not someone clearing their throat—this was wet, deep, and gurgling, like fluid was trapped where air should have been.
“Hello?” I said again, softer now. “Who is this?”
The coughing stopped, replaced by fractured breathing. It came in uneven, shallow pulls, as if the caller couldn’t get enough air, no matter how deep the inhale. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe this was a prank. Because who wouldn’t think it hilarious to imitate a missing child and torture his parents by pretending to be him?
“This isn’t funny.”
“Mommy?”
My vision tunneled, and the room slanted. I gripped the counter. Something in the way he said it sounded like Jake, only younger. “Jake?”
Kyle shot up from his chair, the hope in his eyes almost painful to see.
“Jake? Honey, please… if it’s you… please talk to me.”
Something scraped faintly in the background, a dull shift of movement. Then another cough tore through the line, violent and wrong. Even the best actor couldn’t fake that.
“Emma. Go get your dad.”
She turfed it to Quinn. “Quinn, you’re a fast runner. Go get Daddy.”
He bolted.
“Is it Jake?” Kyle asked.
“I… I don’t…”
Then that word again. “Mommy?”
He hadn’t called meMommysince he was Grace’s age. It made no sense, but my god, it sounded like him. And I desperately wanted to believe it.
“Yes, baby, yes it’s me. Where are you? Are you hurt?”
Scott came running in, his face alight. “Michelle. Is it him?”
