Page 1 of Reclaimed Dreams

Chapter1

5 years ago

The evening had begun like every other Friday night in recent memory. Jo Valenti had turned her Alfredo sauce down to low and dropped the fettuccine into the boiling salty water. Dinner was almost ready. Sofia was on the phone in the living room. Enzo and Frankie were already curled up in the family room in front of the TV. She sighed and looked at the one chair at the table that would not be filled tonight. Maybe Christmas, he’d said on their last call.

When Gabe and her nephew, Seth, had joined the army together, she knew they’d be stationed far away for a few years. In the end, she’d sent them off with hugs and smiles, because she knew what it was to have dreams that needed chasing. So even though her heart was breaking, she’d pushed her fears aside and given what was needed. The fact that the cousins were as close as brothers and wouldn’t be going alone had brought a small measure of comfort.

But that didn’t mean her heart didn’t still pinch when she looked at Gabe’s empty seat. She still set his place, because often his high school friends or army buddies would drop by for dinner. Her Friday dinners were famous among her children’s friends. Others might sit in it, but it would always be Gabe’s spot, waiting for him to come home.

The doorbell rang, announcing guests, and when Dom walked in to the kitchen with two men in uniform, Jo assumed they were friends of Gabe’s, come for dinner. Her son usually tried to give her a heads-up when people were going to drop by, but it wasn’t always possible due to his deployment. He was currently stationed in Iraq, and to say it was remote was an understatement.

She turned to the sink to fill a pan with water to steam the vegetables and called into the living room. “Fi, come add some places to the table. Welcome, boys. I hope you’re hungry. Did Gabe send you?”

The two servicemen stood silent in her kitchen, hats in their hands. Dom waved a hand toward the table.

“Come, sit. Can I get you boys a drink?” he asked.

“No, sir. Thank you. Maybe you and your wife should take a seat.”

Jo registered the serious set of their faces and slowly lowered herself into the nearest chair. It would occur to her later that she’d chosen Gabe’s chair.

“The Secretary of the Army regrets to inform you that your son, Gabriel Valenti, was killed yesterday in the Ninewa Province, Iraq…”

Her ears stopped working after that. She could see the man still talking, as though his words hadn’t just shattered her world. She saw Dom collapse into a chair and cradle his head on the table, shoulders shaking. Sofia, Enzo, and Frankie came running, and when the taller soldier spoke to them, they burst into tears and circled the sibling wagon into a tight hug. The shorter soldier stepped close and placed a hand on Jo’s shoulder. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear anything over the buzzsaw in her head. Her baby, the boy who’d made her a mother, was dead. What more could he say?

The child she’d held in her heart had died, and Jo felt the severed connection pulsing through every vein in her body. Part of her was dying along with him, and it burned.

Jo closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear it. She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to see this. Even the feel of the hard wooden chair against her back overwhelmed her. Everything was too much, too real. But how could any of this be real? She opened her eyes to double check and the two soldiers were still sitting at the table. The soldier that she wanted to see wasn’t ever coming home.

It was too horrific to be a nightmare. The pain of this new reality was too much to handle all at once. Jo felt a little click in her brain as it shifted to protect her, a brittle wall forming around her heart, containing her emotions so they couldn’t swirl out and level the room like a hurricane. Numb was the only way she could get through this day. Later, she would let it all out, but this grief was too raw, too painful to share.

She had to do something, so she did what she always did. Jo pushed herself up from the table. She pulled a tray of cheese and salami from the fridge and placed it on the table in front of the men. She filled water glasses for everyone. She dumped the overcooked pasta into the strainer and filled the pot with fresh water.

Step by step, she pulled herself into her reality by doing the next right thing. The things she did every day of her life. The things that formed the structure and routine of her life. The things she could do without thought.

She allowed her mind to stay far, far away from the unreality that Gabe was gone.

By the time she served up warm noodles in a scorched Alfredo sauce, the two men had gone and the rest of her family sat stone-faced around the table, completely still as if movement would make them all shatter. She understood that stillness. It felt like a kind of death in itself. It mirrored the feeling in her chest.

No one ate.

No one spoke.

The spark had blown out of her family.

That night in bed, she let the tears come. She cried as memories of Gabe’s too-short life cycled through her head like a highlight reel. She wept for all of his present moments she’d missed with him so far away. She sobbed for the memories she would never get to have. She’d never dance at his wedding, hold his children in her arms, or even just see him walk through her front door again. They wouldn’t be together at Christmas this year or any year. He wouldn’t take over Valenti Brothers. He wouldn’t watch Sunday football with Dom and his siblings. He wouldn’t wrap her up in a bear hug and tuck her head under his chin ever again.

Tears soaked her pillowcase as her brain tortured her with loss after loss. She turned to Dom for comfort, but he had already escaped into sleep.

She was alone with her thoughts and prayed for oblivion. She also prayed for God to watch over the child he’d taken home again too soon. God had made a mistake. Jo knew it, just as she knew it was blasphemy to think it.

So little time… Nothing was guaranteed. She had planned on having years and years with her family to experience all of those milestones. But she could die tomorrow.

Would she be content with her life’s highlight reel if that happened?

No.

She was proud of the family she’d raised, but this had just proven how fragile it all really was. What had she done beyond tying shoes and packing lunches? All of the goals and plans she’d once had, all of them had slipped to the side as her family had needed her. She’d accomplished nothing. Now, when grief was weighing heavily on her heart, she had nothing, no life raft, no buoy to lift her back up. She sank deeper and deeper under the weight of her thoughts, until sleep finally claimed her.

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