Coming Home

My mom was exactly twenty-six and one-half when I died. I know exactly cause her birthday is the first of July, just like Canada. I died on January one. Shitty way to start the year, my grampy said while they cried together. My family was me, my mom, my grampy and grammy. But my grammy died when I was a baby, from shame Missus Thompson said. She's our neighbour and she's mean. Grampy said she was the town busybody and working on being the town drunk. Mom would tell him to hush his mouth and not to be mean. But Grampy wasn't mean, Missus Thompson was.

Mom married Eldon Ryan when I was in grade one. I got to be the flower girl and the maid of honor, which means I got a pretty dress and got to stand by Father Mac who's really Father Mackenzie but everyone calls him Father Mac. Mom asked me one day if it would be okay if Eldon was my new dad. I said how could he be my new dad, cause I didn't have an old one did I? Mom's eyes got real sad, and Grampy told me we were going to go wash up for dinner, and if I was good we could have ice cream for dessert.

When Grampy and me went for ice cream, I asked him if Mom thought I was lonely and that's why she wanted me to have a dad. Grampy got quiet for a minute, then he told me that sometimes grown-ups got lonely, and they needed someone to talk to and hug and kiss like the grown-ups on the TV. When we got home I told Mom it was okay if she was lonely and wanted a boy to talk to and kiss. So Mom kissed Eldon in front of Father Mac and me and Grampy and Eldon's mom and they were married.

Tommy Ryan who was Eldon's little cousin, but he wasn't little cause he was the biggest kid in the fourth grade, told me that his mom told him that I was a bastard child which is why my eyes are different from everyone. My left eye is blue and my right eye is greenie-brown. I didn't know for sure what bastard child was, but I knew it wasn't good from how he said it, and how everyone went ooooh. So I punched his nose bloody, and got sent to Principal Wood's office. Everyone laughed at Tommy cause he got beat up by a girl and a second grader at that.

Principal Wood called Grampy cause Mom was at work, and Grampy was his fishing buddy. Grampy was pretty mad at me until I told him what Tommy Ryan said. Grampy asked me if I knew what it meant, and I told him I didn't. I hadn't seen it in any of the books he gave me, and I read a lot. Grampy taught me how to read when I was three, and every morning I used to read him the first page of the newspaper while we were waiting for the school bus. He told me that a bastard was a child who didn't know who their father was, and I got real scared and started to cry.

Principal Wood wanted to know why I was crying, and I said that now I had to apologize to Tommy Ryan. I said I punched him 'cause I thought he was lying. But he wasn't, cause I didn't know who my father was, so now I had to apologize; it wasn't right to punch people when they were telling the truth. Grampy smiled and said that just this once it was okay, and I didn't need to apologize. I was glad, 'cause Tommy Ryan was a big jerk. He’d always been a big jerk, ever since kindergarten, when he made fun of my eyes. He said only dogs had eyes that were different colours. My grampy said that some dogs do have eyes of different colours, but only the really special ones. Just like people with different coloured eyes are special too. But this isn’t really a story about me. It’s a story about my mom and my real dad, and how they met again when my mom was twenty-seven.

**********

Fat October snowflakes danced a lazy foxtrot, coating Thomas Edward Nickerson’s head, shoulders and duffle. It wasn’t unusual for snow to come off the bay in late October, but the occasional bolt of lightning from a further off storm served to eerily light the sky. If Ten, as he’d always been called, was slightly more superstitious, he would have thought it a bad omen. If he were slightly less, he’d be wearing a coffin rather than civilian garb for the first time in four years. As it was, the scars ached from the drastic change in temperature, scars both physical and not.

The news had taken its sweet time getting to him, and his dad had been in the ground for two months at least, buried before the trees had thought of turning, let alone shed their leaves. Two days prior he’d gotten news that his mother had died three weeks earlier. There was no chance his father had died of grief for a lost spouse - they’d all hated the woman with equal levels of venom.

The house was his sister’s now; being the only one left. He hadn’t seen her since he’d left eight years earlier, though they’d stayed in constant contact by letter and email up until he was deployed. They hadn’t really communicated much since then.

Best to rip it off, rather than linger, he thought, climbing the steps.

“Leave the beer on the back porch Hope,” the tall man puttering in the kitchen announced on hearing the door open. He moved with practiced ease, though Ten knew he’d lost his eyesight to shrapnel three years earlier.

“Not Hope Jude.”

“Sunnova… when’d you get back?” Jude Marr turned, eyes covered with pirate style patches with deep blue eyes painted on them.

“Just now. What are you doing in Sophie’s house?”

Jude kept taking dishes from the caddy beside the sink and putting them in the appropriate cupboard. “Your sis and I have been shacking up since I got back, more or less.”

“More or less?”

“More more than less.”

In the way that men with a common bond do, Ten got right to the point. “Is she happy?”

“As much as can be expected, you know, considering.”

“And he’s a lot to do with that,” Sophie announced from the doorway. She looked her brother up and down, and cracked a smile. “You’re getting snow on my clean floors.”

Where her brother embodied everything that was conservative in appearance, Sophie Elise Nickerson was the opposite, and had been since puberty. She was the wild (looking) child in town, with variously purple, red and gold hair. She was currently sporting a platinum blonde coif more reminiscent of Billy Idol than anything.

“Looking good kiddo.”

“Nice to know you’re still alive,” she replied crashing into her elder brother, enveloping him in a breathing restrictive hug “I missed you,” she whispered.

“Nice to still be alive,” he whispered back.

A long moment passed, until Jude cleared his throat. “Don’t keep the blind guy is suspense, okay. Did one of you kill the other or what?”

“Beatings will start tomorrow,” Sophie replied. “Can you keep him out of trouble while I finish up upstairs?” It wasn’t clear who she was talking to or about, but didn’t bother to clarify, whirlwind that she was.

“Beer?”

“Beer.” Ten took the proffered beverage, marveling at Jude’s ability to adapt to his blindness. “You, uh… Have you been, I mean have you and Soph been thinking about, settling down or anything like that?”

“I talked to your dad before he died, and he was happy that Sophie and me were together. He gave me permission to ‘do right by her’ the day before... Sorry man, it’s gotta suck coming back to this.”

Ten sighed. What sucked was coming back at all. To say that he’d left on bad terms with his parents was the understatement of the decade. There were others that had been left in the lurch as well, including…

“Wait, did you call me Hope when I came in?”

The blood drained from Jude’s face and a glass crashed to the floor.

**********

Hope Elizabeth White slammed the door to her old clunker, moved to the passenger side, opened the door and grabbed the case of beer she’d been tasked with picking up. Like a hundred times before, she got a brief feeling of Natasha; a scent, a whisper in the dark from her dead daughter. Like a hundred times before, the weight of that loss crashed down on her. Like a hundred times before, she steeled herself seconds too late.

As the wracking sobs subsided to merely heaving, the requisite second wave hit her. It had been three hundred and one days. Three hundred and one days and she didn’t have enough left to mourn for the man that had been her husband.

Her father had died at the beginning of the summer, broken-hearted and listless having lost the light of his life and his best friend. He hadn’t had tears left to cry for his son-in-law either. Hope had no tears for him, just a deep ache in her heart for having no one to share the loss with.

Wiping her eyes with the heels of her mitten clad hands with a practiced motion, she was set. She’d stopped wearing mascara to avoid raccoon eyes, at least until some time, likely in the distant future, where she wouldn’t burst into tears at the drop of a hat. Any hat, any time, anywhere.

Gritting her teeth, she headed for the back porch. She’d promised Sophie that she’d pick up beer on the way home for the party, though she didn’t think she’d be good company. Soph had insisted that she move in after her dad died; having lost her own father a few months later.

Sophie had Jude to lean on, and Jude, Sophie. Jude was not the same man Hope had grown up with. Being over there had changed him in ways more profound than taking his sight. The acid tongue and sarcastic retort were tempered now, the formerly well-hidden caring heart more often visible.

None-the-less it had been strange moving into the house that she’d spent so much time in growing up, especially during their teenage years. Sophie was a few years younger, but still managed to mostly fit in. Mainly because Ten wouldn’t have it any other way.

She mounted the stairs carefully, slowing her breathing and hoping that it wouldn’t look like she’d been crying. Sophie wouldn’t say anything, and Jude usually couldn’t tell so long as she kept her voice steady. It was still embarrassing to be bursting into tears a couple of times a day, regardless of how justified it was.
She slid the case under the bench, and tapped the snow off her boots, and slid through the door.

Reflexively, Jude’s head swiveled toward the door, and as Hope took her boots off she noticed he was holding a broom.

“That part of your costume? And yes, I left the beer on the porch to cool.”

A tall lean man, almost unrecognizable stood from behind the kitchen island, holding a dustpan with the remnants of a glass in it.

“Hi.”

“Hi Ten.”

“Oh shit,” Sophie skidded into the room, having heard the back door open. There was no chance to cushion the blow. “Hey, I didn’t think you’d be back for another couple of hours.”

“And you were going to sneak your brother out of here before I got back?”
Ten cleared his throat. “Look, you’ve got every right to be pissed at me. That’s why I’m back, to try and make amends.”

“You have no idea Ten. I’m glad you’re not dead, but you can go back to wherever the hell you came from.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You can shove sorry up your ass.”

“Minefield man,” Jude muttered quietly, praying Hope wouldn’t hear him.

“Shut up Ray Charles.” No such luck. He could tell from Hope’s tone that she was more pissed than usual.

Sophie placed her pinkies in her mouth and let out a loud whistle. “Enough. Hope, go upstairs and get ready for this party. I’ll be up in a minute.” She pointed to Ten, “You park your ass in the living room; I’ll get to you in a minute.”

“And me?” Jude asked.

“Stand there and look cute sweetie. And try not to break any more dishes.”

“You’ve got it luv.” Jude sighed as he heard Hope and Ten leave the room, slowed only by a brief and awkward dance at the door. It seemed like Hope won out as he heard her climb the stairs before the sofa cushions creaked. Sophie kissed him on the cheek.

“I know you’re trying to help him, but they’ve got to sort this out.”

He wrapped his arms around her small frame. “Shouldn’t we tell him what’s been going on?”

Sophie lowered her voice. “He needs to know why she’s a mess, but not his part in it. That’s hers to tell him if she wants.”

“Sweetie, it’s the most open secret…”

“But he hasn’t been around. He couldn’t know. And if she doesn’t want to tell him, that’s her decision.”

Jude grinned. “Got this all planned out don’t you. You’ve been thinking about this a lot?”

“It was bound to happen, and it’s better to prepared than not. It’s gonna blow up in someone’s face, I’d just prefer if it weren’t ours.”

“Is it any wonder why I love you?” He kissed her noisily for a moment before a voice drifted from the living room.

“Still my sister, guy.”

**********

An hour later Ten had been briefed on the events of the last year, particularly relating to Hope, and New Year’s Day. He felt terrible; who wouldn’t? It explained a great deal about her behaviour. They’d always been on the same wavelength when they were younger, it was part of the reason that they’d worked so well together. The running joke had been that they shared a brain, so often were they able to complete each other’s sentences.

She felt like a stranger to him now. The part of his life that was missing, the biggest reason he had come back, was still missing. And he was probably a stranger to her. He’d seen and done so many things he’d never imagined during the long nights they shared a hammock and stared at the stars.

The walks by the harbour in the fog, the nights so cold, the air so clear you could see across the bay, these were things enjoyed by someone else. He wasn’t that angry kid any more. He hadn’t been that angry kid in a long time. It seemed she wasn’t that effervescent girl with the sardonic smile who could draw him out of any funk.

“Jesus Jude, how the hell is she still standing?”

“She's a tough chick man. She loved that kid like... hell there's no comparison to anything. That kid was life to her. And a sweet kid too. Everyone loved her.”
Ten felt there was something more to the story. Something else that he wasn't being told; he couldn't trust that feeling though, he was just too overwhelmed.
The doorbell interrupted that train of thought, and Jude motioned for him to get the door. The first of the guests had arrived.

It took less than an hour and a half for Ten to become chronically tired of explaining where he'd been for the last seven odd years. The issue with a town as small as the Harbour was the fact that it was so damn small. He'd reflected on that fact a number of times in his life. There was a complete lack anonimity.
Everyone was up in everyone else's business as his father had often said. There were really no secrets in a town of this size, at least not any that lasted a significant amount of time. The reason for a lack of secrets ranged from idle chatter to malicious gossip and everything in between.

When he was younger, he had hated it. He'd been called to task, caught doing things he shouldn't have been, and seen in the company of those that were verbotten to him. The longer he'd been away, the more he had missed it. The anonimity in the cities he'd been in and in the military had led to a feeling of disconnect. At first, it had been exhilerating, a feeling of freedom, like a kite that has broken it's string, and he soared without restriction, without outside control.

That euphoric sensation had faded as of late, starting with the fateful patrol. Two inches and a half second was the difference between life and death. After that day, he'd lost the stomach needed for grand adventure.

He watched the mingling at the party from the safety of the outside. Though he'd given up on adventure in favour of what he thought of as the familiar, this place wasn't familiar any more. True, he knew these people, he'd grown up with them. And some hadn't changed in the time that he'd been gone, still living and behaving as they had in high school.

But others, like Hope, had changed significantly.

He watched her as she mixed with the others; they all knew what had happened, but treated her much the same as they always had. He was the outsider now, treated with kid gloves, treated as though he was From Away.

From Away was a hard concept to pin down. There were those that had moved to the Harbour and whithin a generation were considered as locals. There were those born and raised there, their parents born and raised there, but were still considered as outsiders.

He'd never understood it, but had instinctively known. Known that he was From Away, despite the fact his father had been born and raised in the Harbour. He'd gone away to school, and come back with a wife from elsewhere, a wife who had never fit into the town, and had resented being stuck in what she saw as a backwater. His father had lost his local status, and both Ten and Sophie had been labeled as From Away.

Hope hadn’t ever cared about that. The vast majority still did; even those of his generation. It was an oddity of small towns.

Ten watched as she moved to the kitchen, and he trailed behind. He needed to talk to her. Sophie intercepted him.

“If you’re going to do what I think you’re going to do, then don’t screw it up.”

“I’ll do my best sis.”

Ten squeezed through the crowd, threading the needle to make it through the kitchen door. There was no sign of Hope there, but he knew where she would be. The old swing on the porch, as clichéd as it was, was a spot where they’d spent a lot of time.

“Figures I’d find you here.”

“I thought you might want to talk. I don’t have the energy to be pissed at you Ten.”

“Look, I’m sorry…”

“Don’t. You don’t get to say that. You lost the right to be anything about me when you took off.”

This was taking a decidedly downward turn, he thought.

“I am though. More than you can ever know.”

They sat in tense, not even remotely companionable silence. There was a gulf between them, one that had grown in the years apart. Absence, apparently, did not always make the heart grow fonder. For two people who had been so close, it was painful for this gap to exist between them. The scab had grown over their relationship, and proximity was ripping it off.

For Hope, already raw, it could have been too much to bear. But she had faced so much, so quickly that she was simply numb.

“Would you tell me about… her?” It occurred to Ten that he didn’t even know the little girls name.

“What do you want to know?”

“What she was like, her likes, dislikes. I’d like to know her.” Ten could feel the words taking over. It was his habit when nervous, to fill the empty spaces with conversation. He was more nervous than usual now; empty spaces were new to their relationship. “She was important to you, and…”

“She had your eyes.”

“…I want to know her. Sorry, what did you just say?”

Hope blinked twice, holding in tears.

The seconds drew out like so much taffy, exquisitely sweet with pain as Ten processed the bombshell that left him gobsmacked. The ice pick driven between his eyes was rivaled only by the pain of his shrinking heart.

“She was… She was...” One blue eye and one hazel one darted back and forth, trying to comprehend.

“She was ours.”

The thought of being a father had never crossed his mind. Unlike Sophie, Ten had never wanted to be a parent just to prove to his own that he could do it better. He’d always thought that was a pretty rotten reason to be a parent, and wasn’t willing to subject another human being to being raised in that environment. Despite that, he knew that Sophie would be a great mother. He wasn’t sure that he had the self-sacrifice necessary to be a parent.

To find out that he was, or had been, a father, without knowing took some time to process.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You took off without a word, and I knew how you felt about kids. It was easier to just deal with it on my own.”

“So you married Eldon Ryan?”

“Shut up. You never liked him, but he was there for me when no one else was. And he was a great dad.”

“Did you love him?”

The furrow in her brow said no.

“Then why…”

“You get to ask that question when I get a good answer to why you took off.”

Ten nodded, that was fair enough.

“So where do we go from here?”

**********

They tried to make it work, they really did. But my Mom and my real Dad just couldn’t get it together enough to stay together for a long time. Grampy says it’s ‘cause sometimes people love each other too much, and it just makes it too hard for them to be together.

My real dad went back to being a soldier, though he didn’t really want to. He was different though, at least that’s what everyone said. He was quieter, calmer, and not as sure of himself.

Mom didn’t really do anything. She kept living with Sophie and Jude, kept working, and kept crying. It got harder for her after she found out that Sophie was going to have a baby. I guess she misses me a lot. I miss her too, but I want her to be happy. Grampy says that she just doesn’t know how to be happy any more.

After Sophie’s baby came, Mom got a little better. But she was still sad a lot of the time.

Then my dad came back again. He said that he was in the middle of a firefight, and that was the first time that his head had been quiet enough that he could hear his heart.

“I want to come home,” he told her. “Home is where you are. I'm sorry that I...” Well, he said a bad word there, one that I'm not allowed to say. “... but you are home to me.”

Maybe this time they’ll make it work. Grampy says that love is hard. I don't know about that. I think that love is only as hard as you make it.