Point Hope Read Free

couple seconds passed, and his cell phone rang in the other room. He debated if he should answer it for too long, and it stopped.
    Rosette sighed. “Trey…”
    The landline started ringing again. He grabbed it, saw Sinclair on the Caller ID, and still barked hello, knowing it was his sister-in-law.
    “Tre-ey-yy,” Amanda sobbed his name into three syllables.
    He didn’t panic right away, but instead slipped into EMT mode, pulling up his soothing voice.
    “Honey, calm down.” He met Rosette’s gaze. She could hear the wailing over the phone too. “Amanda, just take a breath, okay? And tell me what happened. We’ll walk through it together.”
    “Oh, God, they came in uniforms to the door.”
    He visualized the two Marines in front of him, in full dress uniform. The horrible news hit him. It reflected in his wife’s eyes.
    Ricky should be coming home from deployment in mere weeks—in time for his first child’s birth. Not this. God, not this.
    There were sparks in front of him, like Fourth of July sparklers, and Rosette’s voice mixed with Amanda’s crying. He even heard himself telling Amanda everything was okay (how was it okay?) as he fell back against the wall and slid down to the floor.
     
    Was that only a week ago?
    A week since his brother died and his wife asked for a divorce?
    Trey stopped at the end of the jetty, startled to find himself there. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember turning onto the jetty in the first place. The ocean moved on both sides of him, slapping the rocks. It was time to turn around, or past time, but he kept watching the waves reach up and the sunlight turn the water green; then each wave would crash with magnificent anger onto the sand.
     
    ~  ~ ~
     
    Rosette paused in the middle of the walk-in closet, looking down at the dusty suitcase. She’d walked in here at least ten times and stared at it, thinking about picking it up and packing. That was before they’d gotten the call about Ricky, of course. Once that happened, she knew she couldn’t just up and leave. But who was she kidding? There was no way she could simply pack a suitcase and solve things. What would she do, pack up the kids and take them with her? Leave them here with Trey? How would she explain all this to them in the first place?
    She batted a tear off her cheek and set her mouth. This wasn’t a time for weakness. Instead of giving into the tears and the urge to crawl into bed and hide, she impatiently pulled her black suit off the hanger and got dressed for the funeral. When she left the bedroom, the house was quiet. No TV. No fighting kids. No teenager talking on the phone. The silence gave her the heebie-jeebies.
    She wondered if everyone was outside, but as she walked down the hallway, she saw Candice and Jake playing together in Jake’s room, dressed in the church clothes she’d laid out last night for them. Even with the door open, they weren’t making any noise. Though Candice was seven and Jake was five, they were the same size. Jake wasn’t overly tall for his five years, but Candice had always been small because she was born early. With the same dark hair, they looked like twins. Watching them made her heart warm with love and pride, but it was tinged with the pain of knowing the recent deaths had already eroded their innocence, and now she was thinking about splitting apart their family.
    Rosette had painted Jake’s room blue, and Trey had picked out the sports-themed accents. It’d really touched her when Trey had joined in and taken such a big part in decorating. Candice had a light pink room, dotted with Precious Moments figures, but she would have probably preferred an outdoor theme, if she’d picked it out herself. Rosette hadn’t planned on such a free-spirited, nature child—not that she’d change her daughter for anything.
    She didn’t pause long enough in the doorway to see what kind of game they were playing. There was a jumble of action figures and Barbie dolls on