When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul,
Your faith walks on broken glass.”
Performed by Green Day
Written by Armstrong / Dirnt / Cool / Phillips / Jones
Hannah was cooing at me fromherhigh chair. All smiles, babbling with the half words, half nonsense she was good at these days. She had two pigtails sticking out from the sides of her head with soft curls spiraling out of them. Add in her golden eyes and shiny hair, and she was the prettiest damn baby I’d ever seen. Not that I’d seen many. I’d certainly never been around them as much as I’d been around this little lady.
When I’d first started helping Tristan with the baby, I’d been all bumbles and mistakes, which had made me feel like an idiot. Give me a gun and a target, and I could hit my mark every single time, but getting one wiggling baby to stop long enough to close the tabs on a diaper had been nearly impossible. The pride I’d felt when I’d finally gotten her to take a bottle from me instead of only Tristan? That had been almost as big as the day I’d gotten my brown shirt at BUD/S.
Molly squirmed, tail wagging as she sat below the high chair’s tray, waiting expectantly for the next morsel to drop. She started to jump up, I gave her a look, and she sat her butt back on the ground. If only dealing with humans was as easy as training the dog had been.
Hannah, covered in spaghetti sauce and pasta, stuck her hand out to share the noodle which had just been in her mouth. “NaNa. You.”
Her name for me hit me in the heart every single time she said it. “I have my own, see,” I said, lifting my fork and scooping spaghetti into my mouth.
She shook her head. “No. You.”
I was not eating her spaghetti drool.
“Hannah, eat,” I told her, folding her tiny clenched fist with the gooshy noodle back toward her face.
She giggled but ate it, and I sighed with relief. Trying to get this girl off of a topic was nearly impossible until she changed it herself. She was focused. Like her dad. My heart clenched.
I took my plate to the sink, rinsed it, and stacked it in the dishwasher before turning back to the eighteen-month-old. Molly was dancing on her hind legs as Hannah dropped food at the dog who caught every piece.
“No more for Molly,” I said, smiling, and Hannah smiled back. She had Darren’s smile. I wasn’t sure how Tristan could deal with looking at it every day. Sadness hit me at how much Darren was missing. He’d loved this kid like nothing else. He’d loved her so much he probably would have eaten her spaghetti drool.
I cleaned up Hannah’s plate and tray before unbuckling her from the seat she was pushing herself out of regardless of the safety contraption. Once I had her in my arms, I couldn’t help smiling at the mess she was. Covered in sauce from her forehead to her belly button. “I think you need a bath, Bo Peep.”
She smiled and patted my face, leaving a trail of wetness that had me wiping it off with a shoulder. She squeezed my T-shirt with her sauce-covered hands, and I wondered if the stain would ever come out. Another shirt to toss in the rag pile.
Molly tagged along at my heels as we made our way upstairs to the bath in the main bedroom. Tristan had a baby seat that suctioned into the tub, and I got it set up with one arm. The whole while, Hannah was garbling at me and Molly. She kicked her feet and her hands, excited in a way that always took me by surprise. When was the last time I’d seen anyone full of that much joy? Never. No one past the age of three seemed to have this amount of uncontained love for everything in their life. Probably because, by then, they’d already had too many disappointments.
I got the warm water running, added some bubbles, and then tossed Hannah’s diaper in the trash before sitting her in the bath seat. I added a few toys and watched her push the rubber ducky around while I got the spray nozzle warmed up. Tristan said we were supposed to talk to her a lot because the pediatrician had said her speech was a little delayed. But what did you say to a child who could barely understand the concept of bubbles?
The silence in the house had been large enough to be its own being this year. Tristan was lost in her head as much as I was. Even when I was here, the words we spoke to each other were few. I wasn’t a babbler. I hadn’t ever been much of a talker unless I was smooth-talking a female into coming home with me. It was one of the reasons Angie had broken up with me. She said it wasn’t just the missions, or me being gone for months at a time with no correspondence, but the fact that when I was home, I still didn’t speak.
Out of my peripheral, I saw Molly make a lunge, and as I turned to catch her, she slipped by me into the tub with the baby. Hannah laughed, and the giggle settled itself into my veins like a tranquilizer. The dog licked her face, and Hannah shoved the stupid duck at the mutt. With all my heart, I wanted to give this moment, this image, back to my dead friend.
In the process of getting the dog and Hannah dried off, I got drenched myself. I tossed the sauce- and water-covered T-shirt in the hamper and picked up the baby from the changing table. I stopped at the sight of myself in the mirror. My dark hair, even as short as it was, was sticking up at weird angles. My green eyes were almost black from exhaustion, and the baby in my arms looked fragile against my muscled chest covered with tattoos and scars. It was like one of those “which of these things doesn’t belong” pictures. It was easy to see I was the odd man out.
I turned away from the stranger in the mirror, taking the baby downstairs to read her a book before putting her to bed. If I knew Tristan, she’d be home not long after Hannah’s bedtime, if not before. She could hardly keep away from the baby. In taking care of Hannah, she could forget everything but the basics of survival—Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at its simplest.
That was exactly why Tristan needed the night out. She actually needed a vacation from parenting all together just so she could figure out her own emotions. I certainly didn’t begrudge her the time. I wished I was around even more so I could force her out the door regularly.
Unfortunately, knowing she was out on the town with Dani had my body stirring a response that certainly wasn’t directed at Tristan. Mac would kill me for the thoughts I’d had over his sister ever since meeting her the very first time.
Dani was a force of nature all her own. A tornado. A hurricane. A gale-force wind blowing in and out wherever she showed up. The thought of her and Tristan out shaking their bodies together on some dance floor made me want to follow them. Made me want to give the stink eye to every man in the place who was looking at them. And, by God, there would be a lot of staring, because Dani was a knockout, and Tristan was damn cute.
Telling Tristan she was cute had only been the first of my mistakes before she’d gone out.
“Cute? Really? Cute is what you say about the dog,” Tristan had huffed. “This is ridiculous. I shouldn’t even be going out.”
She’d started back up the stairs when I’d caught her by the arm.
“Don’t,” I’d said, stopping her. She’d looked at my hand on her arm with shock, as if the human touch was something she didn’t understand anymore. “You look good, Tristan. I…I just don’t know how to say that to you when Darren would have put me in a headlock if I’d uttered it before.”
