Jake

Something starts drilling into the side of my skull.

A low mechanical grind stops, then starts again, rattling hard enough to make glass knock against wood somewhere near my head.

I squeeze my eyes shut and drag a couch cushion over one ear.

The sound keeps going.

It takes several seconds for my brain to catch up.

My phone.

It is vibrating against the hardwood beneath the coffee table, half covered by the jacket I threw over it last night.

"Christ."

I reach blindly toward the sound and knock an empty bottle onto its side. It rolls across the table, bumps the ashtray Callahan used last night, then drops onto the rug without breaking.

My hand finds the sleeve of my jacket instead of the phone. The buzzing stops before I can dig beneath it, and I let my arm fall.

Weak morning light pushes through the blinds, striping the living room in gray. My jeans are wadded beside the couch. One boot lies near the front door, the other beneath the coffee table. Callahan's bra hangs from the arm of the lamp, one strap moving slightly beneath the air-conditioning vent.

The clock on the cable box reads ten thirty-eight.

I have night tour on Wednesdays, so I set my alarm for three. At least I think I did. Right now, reaching the phone feels like a larger problem than going to work.

Upstairs, the shower runs. Water strikes tile in a steady rhythm, and Callahan hums beneath it, off-key and unbothered. She has stayed here often enough to know which towel is clean and which bottle in the shower is shampoo. In twenty minutes, she will come downstairs in one of my shirts, drink whatever coffee I make, and leave before either of us can accidentally turn the morning into something personal.

The drilling starts again.

I shove the blanket from my waist and lean over the side of the couch. Pain drives through both temples. My mouth tastes like old whiskey, and every muscle in my back objects when I stretch toward the floor.

My fingertips brush the phone and push it farther away.

"Son of a bitch."

I slide down until one knee hits the rug, catch it on the next vibration, and drag it toward me. The screen is too bright to read. I swipe my thumb across it and press it to my ear.

"Tropper."

There is no answer.

I sit back against the couch, squeezing my eyes shut against the spinning room. "Hello?"

"Jake."

The voice is so thin I barely recognize it.

My eyes open.

I pull the phone away and squint until the letters sharpen.

SAMMY

Eleven missed calls sit beneath her name.

The first came a little after one in the morning. Another three minutes later. Then another. Then another.

The phone kept ringing at Dugan's.

It rang while Lauren and I waited for the cab.

It rang beneath my jacket after we came inside.

I heard every one and never looked.

"Sammy?"

She pulls in a breath that catches halfway.

I grip the edge of the couch and push myself upright. The room tilts, and I wait for it to settle.

"What happened?"

She tries to answer, but a sob tears through whatever she meant to say.

"Sam?"

"It's Brendon."

I stop moving.

The shower runs upstairs. Water strikes tile with the same rhythm it had before I answered. A truck passes outside, tires humming over the street.

Everything keeps going.

"What about him?"

My voice comes out quiet. Almost calm.

Sammy makes a sound I have never heard from another person before.

"He's gone, Jake."

I stop breathing.

"What do you mean, he's gone?"

"There was an IED." Her words break apart beneath another sob. "The Humvee—he didn't make it. They came to the house last night and told me he was dead."

I stare at my boot lying on its side near the coffee table.

"No."

"Jake—"

"Fuck."

My hand drops into my lap with the phone still pressed against my ear. Sammy keeps speaking, but the words no longer sound like language. They blur together beneath her crying until all I can hear is the water upstairs and the blood pounding behind my eyes.

Brendon called yesterday morning.

Static cracked behind his voice while he told me about the heat and the food. He asked for five minutes. Thirty seconds. Anything.

I just want to talk to my brother.

I stood beside my bed and listened without answering.

Later, the phone kept ringing.

I never checked the screen. I assumed it was Brendon trying again.

It was Sammy.

"Jake?"

She says my name once.

Then again.

I cannot answer her.

The grain in the hardwood stretches across the floor in uneven lines. One ends beneath a black shirt caught under the leg of the couch. I follow it with my eyes as if it leads somewhere, as if concentrating hard enough might carry me out of this room and into a different morning.

Upstairs, the pipes groan.

The shower shuts off.

The silence afterward is worse.

"Jake, please say something."

I swallow, but nothing moves past my throat.

The last time Brendon stood in this house, blood ran from his split lip.

A chair lay on its side between us. My right eye had already started swelling shut, and my knuckles were split from hitting him. We had spent an hour fighting about our father before the argument became the same thing every argument in our family eventually became—two men trying to hurt each other badly enough to win.

Brendon wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at the blood.

"You feel better?"

"Get out."

"You hit me over him."

"I hit you because you stood in my house and defended the man who destroyed our family."

"I didn't defend what he did."

"You forgave him."

"That isn't the same thing."

"It is to me."

He looked at me for a long time. His chest rose and fell beneath his shirt, and one side of his mouth was already beginning to swell.

"I don't want to hate you, Jake."

"Then leave."

He picked his jacket up from the floor. At the front door, he stopped with one hand on the knob.

"I'm still going to call you."

"Don't bother."

"Too bad." He looked back at me. "You're my brother."

That was a year ago.

I never called him after that.

He kept calling me anyway.

For months, I let his name light up my screen and disappear. He left messages about Sammy, the girls, work, and whatever game he thought I might have watched. He never mentioned the blood on his mouth or the things we had said. He just kept talking as though, sooner or later, I would get tired of being angry.

Usually, I listened to the messages after midnight, when the house was quiet and there was nobody around to see me replay them.

Then, the Sunday before he deployed, he called three times.

The first rang while I was filling out reports. The second came while I was driving home. The third caught me sitting alone at my kitchen table with a beer going warm in front of me and his last voicemail still open on the screen.

Leaving Tuesday. Figured you'd want to know.

I stared at his name until the guilt finally outweighed my pride.

I answered.

"What?"

Brendon went quiet for a second.

Then he laughed softly. "Good to hear your voice too."

I leaned back in the chair and rubbed my thumb over the wet label on the bottle. "You said you're leaving."

"Tuesday afternoon."

"For Afghanistan?"

"That is generally where they send you when your orders say Afghanistan."

"Still a smart-ass."

"Still answering the phone like somebody held you at gunpoint."

I almost hung up.

Maybe he heard it in the silence, because his voice changed.

"Don't, Jake."

My hand tightened around the phone.

"I'm not trying to start anything," he said. "I just wanted to talk to you before I left."

Noise moved behind him—one of the girls shouting, a television playing somewhere in the house, Sammy telling somebody not to climb on the furniture.

"Sammy's making us go to Mass in the morning," he continued. "We always go before I deploy. I was hoping she might let me sleep in this time, but apparently God keeps office hours."

"Oh, yeah? Gonna take your God wafer before they drop you in the middle of the desert?"

He laughed, louder this time. "Just because you can't grasp the concept of a higher power doesn't mean one doesn't exist."

"For the record, communion isn't stopping shrapnel."

"Good thing I've also got body armor."

"Brendon."

The laughter faded from his voice.

"What?"

I stared at the beer between my hands. "Don't get yourself blown up, kid."

"Yeah, I was planning to avoid that."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

"You act like nothing can touch you."

"I don't act like that."

"You always have."

"Having faith isn't the same as thinking I'm bulletproof."

"It looks pretty similar from here."

He exhaled into the phone. For a second, I thought we were going to do it again—find the same raw place and tear into each other until there was nothing left.

Instead, he said, "I'm careful, Jake."

"You're fucking naive, Bren. That doesn't get you far over there."

"I'm not naive. I know exactly where I'm going."

"Then start acting like it."

"I called to say goodbye, not so you could tell me how to do my job."

The chair creaked beneath me as I leaned forward. "I'm asking you to come home."

"I'm planning on it."

"That isn't a promise."

"No. It isn't."

The answer shut me up.

A little voice came through the line. Poppy, asking Brendon to open something. He told her to give him one minute, then came back quieter.

"Can I count on you to watch out for Sammy and the girls while I'm gone?"

My jaw tightened.

"When have you ever had to ask me that?"

"Lately, I don't know what I can ask you."

I looked down at the table.

"I'm here for them," I said.

"All right."

"And you know that."

"I used to."

The words sat between us.

I could have apologized then. He had given me the opening, and some part of me knew it. All I had to do was admit I had gone too far. Admit I missed him. Tell him I did not want the last thing between us to be blood on my kitchen floor.

Instead, I said, "Be careful."

"I will."

Another pause.

Then Brendon cleared his throat.

"I love you."

I shut my eyes.

"I know you have a hard time saying it," he continued, trying to make it sound like a joke. "So I'll do it for both of us."

My throat tightened, but the words stayed trapped behind my teeth.

Somewhere on his end, Sammy called his name.

"I've got to go," he said. "Girls need baths, and apparently I'm the only qualified person in Texas."

"Brendon—"

"Yeah?"

I could have said it.

Two words.

Instead, I stared at the ring of water beneath my beer.

"Come home."

His breath moved softly through the line.

"I always do."

Then the call ended.

I sat at the kitchen table with the phone pressed to my ear long after the screen went dark.

It was the last time I ever spoke to him.

After he deployed, he kept calling.

And I went back to letting it ring.

"Jake?"

Sammy's voice pulls me back to the couch.

I blink at the floor.

"I'm here."

The words barely make a sound.

"I don't know what to do." Her sentences tumble over one another, broken and breathless. "The girls are here, and people keep coming in, and they gave me papers and numbers, and I can't—I don't know what any of it means. I can't do this, Jake."

I close my eyes.

"I can't do this by myself."

My lips feel numb.

"Can you come?" she asks. "Please?"

I sit without moving.

The question has to pass through the pressure inside my skull, through Brendon's last call, the vibration beneath my jacket, and the picture I turned toward the wall.

"Jake?"

"Yeah."

"You can?"

"Yeah."

I rub my tongue across my dry lips. "I'll come."

"When?"

I look toward the stairs.

Callahan stands at the bottom wearing one of my white button-downs, the hem reaching the tops of her thighs. Her wet hair darkens the shoulders. A towel hangs from one hand.

She looks at the clothes on the floor, then at me.

Her face changes.

"I don't know," I whisper.

Callahan crosses the living room slowly.

"I'll get there."

"The girls keep asking for him," Sammy says. "Cady knows something's wrong. She saw them at the house. Poppy thinks he's hurt and somebody's fixing him, and I don't know what to tell her. I don't know how to say it."

My chest tightens, but the feeling seems far away, trapped behind several feet of glass.

"Tell them..."

I stop.

Nothing comes.

Callahan crouches in front of me. Her knees press into the scattered mail beside the couch, but she does not seem to notice.

"Jake," she says softly.

I look at her without really seeing her.

She glances at the phone against my ear. "Is that Sammy?"

I do not answer.

Callahan wraps one hand around my wrist. Her palm is warm from the shower.

"Let me help."

My fingers do not move.

She waits, holding my wrist instead of pulling.

"Jake."

My grip finally gives.

Callahan takes the phone from me.

"Sammy?" Her voice shifts into the level, steady tone she uses over the radio when everyone else has started shouting. "This is Lauren Callahan. I work with Jake. I'm here with him."

Sammy says something I cannot make out.

"Yes. He heard you." Callahan's hand closes around my knee. "He's in shock."

I stare at my empty palm.

"I'm going to get him on a flight," she continues. "He's coming to you. I need a little time to arrange everything, but he is coming."

Sammy begins crying again.

Callahan looks up at me. "Jake, tell her."

My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

She raises the phone toward me. I stare at it until she takes my hand, turns it palm-up, and presses the phone into it.

My fingers do not close.

Callahan folds them around the case one at a time, then guides my hand back to my ear. Her other hand stays firm against my knee.

"Tell Sammy you're coming," she says.

I listen to Sammy trying to breathe on the other end.

"I'm coming, Sam."

The words scrape my throat raw.

"I promise."

Callahan stays crouched in front of me while I hold the phone. Sammy says something else, but I cannot follow it. I look at Lauren, and she must see whatever is left of me slipping away again, because she reaches for the phone.

This time, I let her take it.

She asks Sammy whether someone is with her and listens while she struggles through an answer. I hear fragments—chaplain, neighbor, girls upstairs—but none of them stay long enough to mean anything.

My eyes settle on the phone screen in Callahan's hand.

Brendon's call from yesterday morning sits farther down the list.

Every call after one belongs to Sammy.

She called while I was still at Dugan's.

She called while Lauren and I waited for the cab.

She called after we came inside, while the phone vibrated beneath my jacket and I kissed Lauren harder so I would not have to hear it.

Eleven calls.

I ignored every one.

Callahan ends the call and sets the phone on the coffee table.

"Jake."

I keep staring at the screen.

She shifts closer. "I need to know where your wallet is."

I do not answer.

"Jake, where's your wallet?"

"Jacket."

She reaches beneath the couch, pulls out my jacket, and finds the wallet in the inside pocket. Then she picks up my discarded jeans, checks them for my keys, and lays both on the table.

I watch her hands move through the wreckage of last night. My clothes. The bottles. The jacket that covered the phone while it rang.

"Lauren."

She looks at me.

"What did I do?"

The question comes out small. I barely recognize my own voice.

Her face crumples for half a second before she gets control of it. She crosses back to me and crouches between my knees.

"You didn't know."

"I heard it." My eyes drop to the jacket in her hand. "The phone kept ringing, and I heard it."

"You didn't know who it was."

"I thought it was him."

Lauren goes still.

"I thought Brendon was calling again." My throat closes around his name. "And I still didn't answer."

She puts both hands around mine, but I cannot make my fingers close over hers.

"Jake, listen to me. You could not have known what was going to happen."

"He asked me for thirty seconds."

My voice breaks. I stare at our hands because I cannot look at her.

"I wouldn't even give him that."

Lauren's grip tightens. "This is not your fault."

I shake my head once.

"He kept calling me."

"I know."

"I told him not to bother, and he kept doing it anyway."

"Because he loved you."

That lands harder than anything else she could have said.

I pull one hand free and press my knuckles against my mouth. My chest jerks once, but no sound comes out. Lauren stays crouched in front of me, one hand resting against my knee, waiting for something I cannot give her.

After a moment, she rises slowly and takes my wallet and keys from the table.

"I'm going to find a flight," she says. "Then I'm calling Rhodes."

My eyes drift back to the call history.

"Your captain," she adds, giving me the words one piece at a time. "You're not going in tonight."

Brendon's name remains on the screen.

I could touch it and hear his voicemail. I don't.

Lauren walks toward the stairs, then stops and looks back at me.

"I'm going to pack a bag for you."

I do not move.

The weak light through the blinds crawls farther across the floor. The bottle beside the couch settles against the table leg. Somewhere outside, a lawn mower starts, and a dog barks twice.

The whole world keeps making noise.

I sit with my elbows on my knees and my hands hanging uselessly between them, staring at the calls I did not answer.