Owen looked around the kitchen, then out to the hall, where people were gathering. “This isn’t the time or the place.”
“Yeah.” Will didn’t move, though. “Adam, shut the door on your way out.”
“Both of you, get going to training. I’ve got clean up to do, then I’ll be in my office.”
Will shrugged. “I can skip the first part of training. Or all of it.”
Owen wasn’t sure he was ready to talk. But the thing was, this had been coming for months. He was never going to be ready. “Yeah. All right.”
Will waited until Adam was gone, then kicked another chair out from the table. “Have a seat.”
Owen dumped himself onto the chair and leaned forward, resting his face in his hands.
“So we’re going to be uncles,” Will said slowly. “Becca sounds pretty excited.”
“She is.”
“And you?”
He lifted his head and rocked his jaw to the side. “It’s not about me.”
“It is right now. In here, just between us. You carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, Owen. You always have.”
He never had a choice in the matter. “I do what any of us would do.”
“None of us were the oldest. You’ve been carrying the load since Dad died.”
“And now Adam wants to be a full time firefighter,” Owen hissed, flinging his hand toward the training room on the other side of the wall. “Everything’s…”
“What? Everything is what?”
Falling apart. Everything was falling apart, and Owen couldn’t stop it. He was watching his daughter and his youngest brother make the same mistakes of their previous generations, and he couldn’t do shit fuck all. “Everything is complicated,” he muttered. “And they don’t see the consequences of their choices.”
“They being Becca and Adam?”
And Josh, who was chasing his dreams around a race track and not getting anywhere. And Seth, flying all over the north. Owen was so tired. He shrugged. “You’re the only one who I don’t worry about on a daily basis.”
“I was thinking of getting a pet tiger,” Will drawled.
Owen didn’t laugh.
“Are you thinking about Mom and Dad?”
“I’m desperately trying not to,” Owen said dryly. But the muscles around his mouth twitched, betraying his attempt at humour as a cover.
Will always had been better about talking about them than Owen was. “Yeah.”
“You aren’t Dad.”
“Nah, I only had one kid, not five. And I was only a firefighter for a few years. I only work in a firehouse now, and I’m watching his youngest—who he never got to see grow up and join the army—want to follow in his footsteps.”
“You think Adam is following inDad’sfootsteps?” Will shook his head. “Not Dad. You.”
Owen groaned. “That’s even worse. I did what I had to do to stay close to Becca. Adam doesn’t have—”
“He has you. And me, and Becca too. Sure, he’s not a young father, but he’s as tangled up in family as you are. We only have each other, bud. You taught us that.”
He hadn’t meant it like this. He had never wanted his brothers to take on dangerous jobs the way he had. “Why couldn’t he be a house painter or something?”
