Page 49 of Operator
Even face the one thing I’ve been running from for the past year.
My brother.
I pull up to the tiny white church, my heart beating a steadythump, thump, thumpin my chest. The church sits on a spit of land bordered by two fields, towering oaks, and a pasture of horses. Black wrought iron fencing runs around the cemetery and a pair of beautiful horses graze on the other side. It’s peaceful, serene even, but waves of grief and anger battle for dominance as I park the truck and wait for Gwen to retrieve the sleeping baby from the backseat.
“You go on,” she says. “I’ll give you a minute alone.”
I don’t argue with her because I need a minute. Of course she would see that and recognize it. My boots crush mounds of overgrown grass underneath each step to an ornate gate with the name of the cemetery emblazoned at the top arch. It gives a protesting squeal as I push it open. It’s not a large cemetery, maybe six or so acres. The older gravestones are up front, closest to the church. Some of them are so old the names on the discolored stones are nearly worn smooth or almost completely covered in moss, mildew, and God only knows what else. One day, Ian’s stone will be the same and he’ll be like so many of the others laid to rest here—forgotten.
I find his name under one of the big old oak trees nearest to where the horses are grazing. It’s with a half-dozen other Reece’s and even my plot has already been designated, the one next to Ian…and Gwen’s. Fitting that even in death, she’d still be between us.
A twisted feeling tightens my insides as I move to the closer to the graves marked with an angel depicted with broken wings. It stands watch over a cluster of headstones with the name REECE engraved at its base. Ian’s is the freshest plot, maintained to near perfect conditions. Mom’s doing, no doubt. I bet she comes here once a day to weed, trim, and polish it to perfection. She may have blacked out parts about his death, but she’d never let him be forgotten. Not even his grave.
I stand at the foot of the one marked with Ian’s name.Beloved son, brother, father, and husband.Which is true. Ian was loved by everyone. A fact I used to resent him for. One that contributed to my scorn when he married Gwen instead of me.
Rubbing at my burning eyes, I don’t know what I expected, coming here. I won’t find any answers among the dead. Or absolution. For the rest of my days, I’ll have to live with the knowledge that my brother will never know how much I loved him and that he went to the grave thinking I’d hated him—or at the very least, didn’t give a damn about him. Which seems silly now. I didn’t hate him. I never could.
The person I hated was myself.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to the wind. “I wish I could change so many things. I hope you knew I loved you.” I feel like an idiot saying these things out loud without the help of a pint or two.
But part of me needs to say them, even if he’ll never hear them. Then it hits me like a sucker punch. He’s never coming back. I’ll never see him again. I’d lost Tate, and I lost my brother, too. I’d been running from everything for so long I’d been a fool to think I could run forever.
“He knew,” comes Gwen’s voice from behind me. The scent of her gardenia shower gel fills my nose on a gentle breeze, the familiarity providing my raw edges a bit of comfort.
A breath shudders past my lips. “I hope so.”
She moves closer to me now, her footsteps careful in the soft, uneven earth. “I don’t know if you want to hear this, but he talked about you all the time. You were his hero. He loved you very much. You were the reason why he joined the military.” Coming into my peripheral, I see her touch the top of the smooth white stone for a moment, her expression drawn and closed. Her eyes close for a brief second, and then she moves to my side with Violet asleep in her arms as we both stare at the grave at our feet.
“I thought he did that because of Dad,” I murmur as I pull her against my side, needing the solidness of her body against mine to keep me grounded.
Gwen shakes her head, keeping her voice low, so as to not disturb the baby. “No, he only said that because he didn’t want you to make fun of him when you were younger. He joined because he looked up to you. Wanted to be just like you.”
A breath shudders out of me. The honesty tastes like bitterness, but I can’t be disingenuous with her, not ever, but especially not here. “I’m not sure if that makes me feel any better. That means he’d still be alive if it weren’t for me.”
In the distance, a car kicks up dust and the horses trot away from the commotion, the sound of their footsteps filling the silence until Gwen says, “You know, I’ve been telling myself the same thing. That if I had loved him as much as he loved me, maybe he would have talked to me. I could have stopped him. Helped him. Done something that would mean he’d still be alive with us today.”
“It’s not your fault,” I tell her, holding her tighter against me. The sudden irrational fear that she could end up in the grave right next to Ian grips me like a vice, tightening and tightening until I have to remember to breathe. Just breath. The same scent of gardenias fills my nose, bringing me back to reality. She’s here, and she’s safe. I won’t let anything happen to her.
Gwen turns to face me, her expression fierce and determined. “It’s not yours either. I don’t know exactly what happened to Ian, but I do know the last thing he’d want is for either of us to blame ourselves. All he ever wanted was to protect and care for the people he loved.”
I shake my head, dropping my gaze to the grass at my feet. “Dumb bastard. He was always too nice for his own good.”
“Neither of us deserved him,” she says.
My eyes go to his headstone again. His name etched in the stone screams at me.Beloved son, brother, father, and husband.“I’d trade places with him if I could.” I am none of those things.
“No,” Gwen says adamantly, startling a perturbed cry out of the baby. She soothes Violet by swaying gently until she quiets, then Gwen’s moving in my line of sight until I can’t look away from her earnest expression. “That’s the one thing I can’t survive. I can’t lose you, too. Do you hear me?” Her voice cracks on the end of the question. A lawnmower cranks up somewhere down the road, but I can barely hear it over the buzzing in my ears and the loud thudding of my heart.
My tongue wets my dry lips. “What about everyone seeing us? Bunny and Dad?”
I’m almost afraid to have her answer the question. Afraid I’m imagining this whole scenario. Having her tell me she wants me just as much as I want her after all the pain I’ve caused her feels like heaven—too good to be true. But I can smell her, can hear the emotion in her voice and her hand coming up to grip my arm like she’s afraid to let me go. This is real. There’s never been anything so real.
The sun bursts from behind a thin, gauzy cloud and bathes us in its warmth. I’m not a man for superstition, but if I were, I’d say it was Ian giving me his blessing. Because if he were here, if he could see me now, I have no doubt he would. At the root of it all, it’s what I would do for Gwen. It’s what I did do. Maybe the permission I was looking for was my own. Permission to have the one woman I’ve loved for what feels like my whole damn life.
Her eyes flash with the fire I love so much. “I don’t care. You said you were sticking around, so consider yourself stuck.”
“What are you saying?”
