There were fitful gurgling sounds coming from Colin’s crib but the second he saw me he erupted into a full blown wail. I lifted him while saying soothing words and willing my heart not to break into a million pieces over the thought of how much this sweet baby had lost.
“Somebody has a stinky diaper,” I said with forced cheer and I tickled him after I laid him down on the changing mat. He smiled at me.
When I returned to the kitchen I found my mother feeding Emma a plate of chocolate chip cookies but I figured this morning I could refrain from arguing about the virtues of a healthy breakfast.
I took a bottle from the fridge, one that had been prepared by Heather, and settled into a chair with the baby. He eagerly latched onto the bottle and gazed up at me with wide blue eyes that reminded me of someone else. Heather had brown eyes. The blue eyes came from Chris’s side of the family and it looked like Colin was going to keep them.
“How long are you going to be able to do this?” my mother asked.
“Do what?”
“Take care of that baby. You’re already stretched thin between your job and school and taking care of your daughter.”
I gritted my teeth. “Are you offering to help?”
She avoided the question. “Chris’s parents are dead as is Heather’s mother. Her father is alive but trust me, he certainly isn’t going to pitch in. And don’t get me started on Chris’s hot mess of a sister. Jane can’t even take care of herself.”
Emma was watching us with wide eyes as she chewed her cookies so I didn’t snap back that this was not the time to be slandering people who were devastated.
“I’m just thinking of you,” my mother sniffed when I didn’t respond.
“Then help me out by handing me my phone,” I said. “It’s right there on the counter.”
At some point while I napped in the kitchen chair Jane had texted. I raised my eyebrows over the message although the news should have come as no surprise. Of course he’d be coming here. Chris had been his father and although I knew they weren’t on the best terms I imagined the news still must have been a terrible shock.
“Nash is on his way,” I said.
“Who?” my mother asked.
I sighed. “Nash Ryan. Chris’s son. You remember him, right?”
She scrunched up her face. “Yes, vaguely.”
“He’s driving straight here from Oregon. Jane thinks he’ll be here by late tonight.”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t count on him for help either if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Actually I was thinking about Colin. I was thinking about how he had a brother he’d never met and how that brother was now his closest living relative.
Colin waved a small fist in the air as he finished his bottle and I propped him up on my shoulder for a burp.
I had no idea what to expect from the return of Nash Ryan. There’d been a time when his name provoked all kinds of volatile feelings inside of me. For some confusing adolescent years I’d thought I was in love with him, before I understood that love doesn’t mean trailing a guy’s every move while consumed with obsessive lust. It was nothing, just a pathetic infatuation I’d barely thought of in ages. I just hoped for the sake of the little boy in my arms that Nash would take an interest in him. Colin would need all the love he could get.
More than anything, I hoped Nash had turned into a better man than the rumors implied.
Twilight was settling again by the time I crossed the border into Arizona. Roxie lifted her head and stared out the window as we careened through the barren moonscape of the Mohave desert.
“I think we’re due for a break,” I said and pulled over into the sand about a mile down the road.
My dog was very well trained but I kept her on the leash as she went about her business. The full moon was starting to rise over the horizon and the colors of the sky combined with the vastness of the desert made the scene look like something out of a Star Wars movie. When I was a kid I’d been out this way once, with my dad. We were going to Lake Havasu. I could remember being fascinated by the open treeless spaces, full of sand and desolation, so different from the greenery of Hawk Valley, even different from the cactus-dotted stucco urban sprawl of Phoenix. It seemed impossible we were still in the same state. This is what people think of when they think of Arizona, this desolate desert. But it wasn’t all like this.
Roxie lapped up the water I gave her when we returned to the truck. I swallowed a bottle of water myself and gazed up at the stars that were just starting to appear. My dad had been very into astronomy. He’d taken some classes at the local college but abandoned his studies after I came along and he knew he’d be working forever at the small family store in Hawk Valley, where an astronomy degree was about as useful as nipples on a man. But he’d never lost his love of the sky, often driving up to the big observatory in Flagstaff.
“That’s the thing about the stars, Nash. Whether you can see them or not, they’re always up there. Not many constants like that in this world.”
I flattened the empty water bottle and tossed it in the glove compartment so Roxie wouldn’t chew it up. After Jane’s phone call I’d launched into furious action, hastily packing up so I could get on the road. It kept me from thinking. The last thing I wanted to do was think too hard. Driving made sense because I didn’t have anywhere to leave the dog and anyway there were no direct flights to the tiny regional airport forty miles outside Hawk Valley. If I flew I’d have to get to Portland, wait around for a flight to Phoenix and then rent a car for the two hour drive to town. Or I could bite the bullet and drive straight through, avoiding all that hassle.
As for lodging arrangements, I’d figure that out when I got there. There was no telling how many days I’d be staying. I’d be there at least until the funerals, and until I knew the baby was taken care of.
Once I was on the road I found out there was no escaping my thoughts no matter how hard I tried. The empty miles gave me too much time to think. And too many fucking memories to think about.
The last time I’d talked to my father was four months ago, the day my brother Colin was born. We didn’t speak for long and we hadn’t spoken since. He regularly texted pictures; pictures of the baby, pictures of Heather and the baby, pictures of the three of them together as a perfect happy little family. Maybe he figured all those pictures would motivate me to take a trip out there and meet my baby brother. I thought about it. But Chris Ryan and I had always been oil and water. I believed I was doing their family a favor by staying away for now.
I knew how things would go if I took a trip to Hawk Valley. My dad and I would inevitably launch right into some petty argument or continue old competitive patterns. Heather would be uneasy about her role in the discord between us, though my father and I had been at odds long before she came along. And the baby was too young to know who the hell I was anyway.
So instead of visiting and stirring up problems I sent the kid a five hundred dollar savings bond plus a sappy card about happiness and blessings and shit.
Anyway, I was sure I had nothing to offer a brother at this point. We were twenty-five years apart for crying out loud. All over the place I saw men my age who were becoming parents themselves. My own father had a kid in kindergarten when he was my age. He and my mother were practically kids when they met at a party down in Phoenix and my dad began driving down there every weekend to see her. They sure as hell didn’t plan for me. They couldn’t even legally order a drink when I was born. They also didn’t stick together for very long. I didn’t remember Chris Ryan as an affectionate father. He could be harsh, unyielding. Sometimes he said things I found it tough to forgive him for. It was true that he’d mellowed out in recent years but by then the distance between us was too wide. I knew he saw Colin as his second chance, the chance to start all over and raise a child the right way. I didn’t want to interfere with that.