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“I’ll tell you, but in there,” she responded, pointing back to the living room.
I walked over to the couch and sat. “Will someone tell me what’s going on?”
“Charles and Rosie were in a car accident this afternoon.”
“Oh my God. Are they okay?” I could understand now why Harper was so upset.
“I’m sorry, baby,” my mother started to say, before she swallowed her sob. I knew in that moment what she hadn’t said.
“No,” I said, and she flashed me a watery smile.
“They didn’t make it, Gabriel. They died.”
I stared numbly in front of me. It was all so surreal. I had just seen Charles a few nights earlier when I’d walked Harper home. Unlike other times, he actually asked me to stay and we talked over a sports drink on the stone steps of his home. I loved her parents as much as I loved my own, but I knew the aching in my chest was nothing compared to Harper’s. Remembering my girl, I stood up and started to pace until she darkened the doorway.
Harper’s earlier smile was all but gone. Her eyes were red and bloodshot from her tears, and I wanted nothing more than to go to her and take away every ounce of hurt she was experiencing.
What could I actually say? I’m sorry for your loss?
No, I shook my head slightly, then just pulled her into my arms. Harper was stiff and very silent, which was very uncharacteristic of her. I couldn’t do nothing more than hold her, which I did, and once or twice kissed the top of her head.
My father’s phone rang, and I heard him whisper something to my mother about George, who I knew was her uncle. He was her mother’s only living relative. Her father had been an only child and had already been preceded in death by his own parents. I had no idea what would happen now. Harper’s uncle lived all the way in Oregon, and I wasn’t sure if he would want to move to Chicago to take care of his niece.
Oh God. If he didn’t, he would take Harper away. A wave of possessiveness filled me, and I tightened my hold on her as if that would keep her in my arms forever. It was foolish to think I could stop her from leaving because she was a child still, even if only for another year and a half. I heard the doorbell again and knew it had to be the aforementioned George.
The man looked over at Harper, and other than a sneer or two at me, he looked contrite enough. “Harper Rae,” he said, and her head rose.
My shirt was soaked from her tears, but I didn’t care. She gave me a squeeze of reassurance, and I loosened my hold on her. She launched herself into her uncle’s arms. Seeing her cry on the other man’s chest as she tried to make some sense in her emotional rambling, I turned to my parents.
“Is she going to stay with us?”
“No,” came the male voice behind me. “I’m taking Harper back to Portland with me tonight.”
“No,” Harper and I both cried out simultaneously. “You can’t,” I added.
“My life is here,” she told her uncle. “Please don’t make me go.”
“Don’t be foolish, girl. I got a career and family in Oregon. You’re my niece, and with no one else to take care of you, you’re coming back with me.”
“We’ll take care of her,” I blurted out, then stared at my father hoping he would back me up.
“We have the room, George, and she would be —”
“No, she’s coming home with me. That is final.”
In a matter of an hour, she was gone. We had nothing more than the promises we made each other during a tearful goodbye, one which included me giving her my prized jacket. We would talk all the time. I would make sure of it. I just knew it wouldn’t be the same, and she did as well which was why we held each other a little tighter and a little longer than we usually would.
HARPER
PORTLAND, OREGON
TWO MONTHS LATER
My life as I knew it had changed so dramatically since that November day when I’d lost everyone and everything that mattered to me. My parents had been killed in a car accident; the bodies too badly burned after paramedics arrived on the scene to even see one last time. I had no idea if they suffered or not, and when voicing that thought aloud, Jayson had callously and cruelly remarked that they had.
“I bet their flesh burned right off of their bones,” he’d told me the first time I had mentioned it, and it was something he refused to let die.
“Stop antagonizing your cousin,” George would tell him, but he never did.
