Today is just the day before, that's all. It should be a harmless day but instead it's loaded with hollow points and it will bring nothing but death. Death and pain that always seems sharper and more final right now, each year and time keeps passing but it still feels the exact same. Sam can't explain it, Lochlan can't help it, Ben can't fix and Caleb can't have it. It isn't their place. This time is for me and Jacob and it feels like it did right at the beginning.
I took the children out for lunch and shopping and we laughed and I could feel myself starting to slide toward the end of our time out together. I brought them home and then it just rushed away like an avalanche and I can't keep it up anymore, and so PJ made me a drink so stiff it mightn't have needed the glass and August came over to 'hang out' and so did Joel, so I put on the hockey game and retreated to the library to look out the window and have my drink. Lochlan and Ben have taken up positions on either side of the library door, out in the foyer.
Sam is sleeping. When August heads home across the driveway, Sam will take night duty. They're trading twelve hour shifts, which is unnecessary but it's what they have worked out.
Caleb paces at the boathouse and calls Ben or PJ every half hour to see how tonight is going.
How is the night going?
Okay, actually. I'm feeling sad. Defeated, actually. As if I couldn't do enough and then I was forced to stop, because there wasn't anymore I could do, not then. I would have done anything he asked but he never asked. He just left and then he was gone and I didn't get a chance to fix the holes.
OH.
This is how they feel.
Holy smokes.
