the front porch steps waiting for that last moment with my older brother, my best friend. The sole person in the universe who kept me sane in a house full of chaos.
The humidity of the night left a dew on the ground and on the bushes. The curls I had straightened the night before reappeared within minutes. The porch light flipped on, the front door opened and, dressed in fatigues, Aires paused when he saw me.
With his lips thinned out, he closed the door behind him and motioned for me to stand. I did, and I was still small next to his massive frame. He resembled our father with his brown hair and height. I favored our mother.
“You don’t listen,” he said.
“I don’t like it,” I answered. “That you’re leaving when the sun’s not even up. It feels...” Unlucky. Wrong. “Early.”
He offered a sympathetic half smile. “It’s a Marine thing.”
“Are you happy?” I asked. “Being a Marine?”
“I love the traveling,” he admits, and I hear what he doesn’t say. Aires couldn’t live here anymore. Because Mom and Dad couldn’t speak to each other without raising the decibel level to earsplitting, Aires became the go-between as he always tried to bring peace. That part of his personality sentenced him to a life of presenting each of their arguments to the other like a courier pigeon.
Before he had signed the papers to join the Marines, he confessed to me that he felt trapped.
Aires peered over my shoulder and down the street. Like he had asked, the cab waited at the corner. He didn’t want the headlights or the idling car to wake any of us. “I’ve got to go.”
I threw myself at him. So hard and fast that he rocked on his feet. He dropped his duffel bag and hugged me in return. “I’ll be back soon.”
Hot wetness burned my eyes and I swallowed, hoping it would help me form a sentence or a word, but all I could do was squeeze him tighter.
“I’m coming back home,” he said. “I promise. There are too many important things here for me not to.”
Because I was pathetic, I craved to hear him say the words. “Like what?”
“Well...my car’s here.” His 1965 Corvette. He found it in a scrap yard, and it had become the love of his life as he pieced it back together. “I’m not going anywhere until my baby is working.”
I released him and rolled my eyes, even though I heard the tease in his voice. “Of course. Love the car more than your sister.”
He grinned. “Priorities. Be good, Echo.”
Aires started down the driveway and into the shadows. My heart beat faster as he merged into one more dark image in the unforgiving night.
“I love you,” I yelled out.
“Back at you.” His voice seemed too distant, too far away. Then the night became too black and my brother was gone.
Gone.
And Noah is fading into a shadow. It’s like a steel knife lodges into my throat. I can’t lose him. Not the person that I love. Not again. I jump to my feet and run through the field as if my life, as if Noah’s life depends on it. “Noah!”
He keeps going, and this frantic panic pummels my bloodstream. Don’t lose sight of him. Don’t. “Noah!”
On the edge of light, Noah stops and pivots to me. His face falls as he notices my arms pumping, the air puffing out of my mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
He grabs on to me when I skid to a halt, and I try to bend over to breathe again.
“You’re trembling.” Noah rubs his fingers over my hands. “Damn it, tell me what happened.”
My mouth dries out, and I shake my head because the words solidify into concrete. I search for a way past the block. The last time I saw Aires was three years ago this month. Goose bumps rise on my arms, and a shiver snakes up my spine. Three years. Oh, God, I’ve been without him for three years.
“Echo,” he urges.
I could tell him. He’d probably understand. Noah lost his parents.
“I...just...” Huge, shaky breath. “I need to go with you.”
Noah’s eyes narrow with worry, but he nods as he tucks me under his shoulder. “Okay.”
He surveys the field as if he could catch sight of the ghosts tormenting me, but in order to do that, he’d have to crawl into my brain, and I’d never want that. My thoughts are a terrifying place to visit.
“We’re staying in the tent tonight,” he says.
My stomach sinks. “Noah—”
He presses a hand to the small of my back and urges me to the campground. “Another time. Another night. But not this one.”
If Aires had left at another time or on another day, if Noah had chosen another time to return home the night of the fire or another day to go on that date, would the worst moments in our lives have happened?
Even worse? There’s a dark part of me that’s grateful for the way life has turned out because without any of that, I wouldn’t have the man walking beside me.
Hurt rages like a flash flood, and I edge closer to Noah, hoping his strength can keep this new demon away. “Okay. Another time. Another day.”
I try to pull myself to the present. Tomorrow will be a new destination. A new adventure. But my past beckons to me, this time in the form of guilt.
Echo was silent on the way back to camp and has remained that way as I gather everything we need to start a fire. Dark fell fast over the campground because of the thick clouds hanging overhead. Unfortunately, clouds aren’t the only thing dangling over us.
It’s been a long time since I’ve lost Echo to her mind. Possibly since the first week after we took to the road, and I can’t say I’ve missed it.
Sitting on a blanket next to our tent, she becomes a shell of the girl I love. Overall, she looks the same—same beautiful green eyes and red silky hair. Today she wears a white lace tank that shows a hint of the gifts God gave her and because I’m a lucky man, a skirt that ends mid-thigh.
But in the light of the neighboring campfire, Echo’s green eyes possess the life of a dollar-store plastic doll, and she’s paler than normal, making her freckles stick out.
In the span of a minute, something flipped in Echo’s brain. Only her brother and her mother have the power to haunt her. I’d like to serve them both with eviction notices from her mind.
I drop the milk jugs I filled with water harder than I meant, and Echo switches her focus from the pine needles on the ground to me. Her brother’s ghost doesn’t bother me as much as her mother’s. Aires died, and I understand that type of pain, but I still hate to see Echo anything but happy.
A breeze blows through the thick forest surrounding the campground, and a group of children runs past us on their way to the bathrooms. A few feet over, a boy around my youngest brother’s age plays with a toy fighter jet. Complete with the appropriate noises for war.
I wish he’d shut the hell up. Echo’s brother died in Afghanistan.
Since I entered foster care at the end of my freshman year, I’ve never been the boyfriend type, but Echo deserves the best. I scratch the back of my neck and try to do that making her feel better shit. “You okay?”
She nods. “Just thinking about Aires.”
Good. I still don’t handle her mother baggage well and after our fight at the Sand Dunes, I’m not eager to revisit