Chapter 1:
Anniversary
It was a simple
stone. He hadn’t wanted anything overly fancy—he’d vehemently vetoed
Leighanne’s desires to get an extravagant stone decorated with baby
angels. What he’d finally agreed to was a strong granite slab with the
least fussy detailing he could get her to go along with, and a simple quote
scripted across the top.
Two years after
that horrible day, he stood, the spring breeze blowing gently through his hair,
fluttering the greening grass, and looked down at the most painful piece of
land in the world. All of his hopes and dreams for the future lay beneath
him. The hole that had been carved in his heart ached like a wounded limb
and, he knew, always would for the rest of his life.
Nothing could take
away this pain.
He sensed the
moment she came and stood next to him. There was no need for words.
Everything that needed to be said between them had been said and done nearly
six months earlier.
“He would’ve been
twelve this year.” Her voice was steady, but he could hear the tears she was
suppressing. “He probably would’ve chopped off those curls of his.
I bet the girls would’ve loved him no matter what.”
He didn’t resist
when she threaded her fingers through his. Instead, he rested his head on
hers, taking comfort and giving what he could. They stood there that way
for long minutes, as though they were listening for the sounds of the boy who’d
hadn’t been given the chance to grow up.
“Did you go see
Nick yet?” Her voice was muffled, but she knew he’d heard her when he
stiffened. She leaned back to look into his face and nearly sighed at the
hardened expression. “He asks for you all the time.”
“He’s wasting his
breath.” His blue eyes were cold as he spoke, and his voice flat. “You
can waste your bleeding heart on him if it helps, but that doesn’t mean I ever
will.”
Her eyes widened a
little in surprise, though she supposed she really shouldn’t have expected any
different. He’d made his decision in the time that had followed the worst
day of their lives, and she was sure he meant to follow it for the rest of his
life. “It’s strange,” she began after several moments of tense
silence. “It used to be that you spent so much of your time with Nick,
while I kept my distance. Now, it’s me who spends hours of my day with
him, while you refuse to even acknowledge his existence.”
His response was
silence.
She waited a few
minutes before she spoke again. “Remember how much he adored Nick? How
Nick’s was the first name outside of the family that he learned? He would get
so excited just hearing Nick’s voice on the phone.” She smiled to herself as
the memories flooded through her. “The best part was that Nick loved him
just as much. He was never annoyed, never needed a break from what had to
have been an annoyance at some points to him. He was so good with him-”
“Give it a rest!”
The words exploded out of him as he wrenched his hand away from his ex-wife and
paced away as though to give himself space from the barrage of emotions that
beat at his insides like rock-hard fists. “I don’t care! I don’t care how
he was or what he did before! Maybe you can forgive him, maybe you can forget
what he did, why he’s the reason that—that-”
And he
broke. Dropping to his knees before his son’s gravestone, Brian Littrell
fell apart in a way he hadn’t, not even when the light of his life had been
extinguished.
“He’s gone, he’s
gone.” The sobs wracked his body, shuddered through him forcefully. When
Leighanne knelt and wrapped her arms around him, she felt that his bones might
break from the mixture of his grief and anger. “Oh, God. Oh, God,
why?”
They sat that way,
curled together above where their son lay. Minutes passed, maybe
hours. He wasn’t sure how long it took him to finally sit up and pull
away from Leighanne’s familiar and soothing arms. His bones felt
old. He felt old and worn down.
He pushed himself
to his feet and helped her to hers. Shoving his hands in his pockets, he
studied the smooth granite stone listing Baylee’s years of birth and death, too
close together.
“It will never be
okay. What happened, what Nick did…I can’t get past it.” He rubbed a hand
over the ache in his heart. He’d lost his son and the next thing he’d had
to a brother in the same day. “Maybe you’re stronger than I am if you can
stand to be in his presence.”
“Brian-”
“I can’t do it,
Leighanne. Maybe I’m going to hell for this fury that is trapped inside
me, for my inability to forgive, but I can’t forgive and I can’t forget.
For the rest of my life, I will never forget that Nick is the reason my
son is gone.”
***
