It took her a moment to find her voice. “Children?”
With a cry, Jacey pulled out of her brother’s arms and hurled herself at Rosa.
“It will be all right, niña,” Rosa said over and over again, holding her granddaughter.
Bret sat quietly on the couch, sucking his thumb.
Rosa eased away from Jacey and went to the sofa. In front of Bret, she knelt. “Hola, my little man. ”
Bret’s red-rimmed eyes looked huge in the tear-streaked pallor of his face. “She’s dead, Grandma. ”
“She is alive, Bret, and she needs us now. ” Slowly Rosa took hold of Bret’s right hand, tugging gently until the thumb popped out of his mouth. Then she pressed her hands against his in prayer. “These hands of ours, they are for praying. ”
Jacey layered her hands on top o
f theirs.
Rosa bowed her head and began to pray: “Our Father, Who art in Heaven …” She let the words fill her aching heart. It was the prayer she’d offered to God every day since her First Communion more than five decades before.
At last Bret and Jacey joined their voices to the prayer.
The house was quiet now, not like it should be at nine-thirty in the evening, but the way it had become.
Jacey was in Mike’s office, surfing the Internet for a school report. Liam came up behind her.
“How’s it going?” he asked, squeezing her shoulder gently.
She looked up. Her eyes were still a little puffy; he knew she was like all of them, prone to sudden, unexpected tears. “Okay, I guess. ”
“We could move the computer into the living room if—”
“No. I … like being in her office. I can feel her in here. Sometimes I forget and think she’ll poke her head in here and say, ‘That’s enough, kiddo, I need to use the computer. ’” Jacey tried to smile. “It’s better than the quiet. ”
Liam knew what she meant. “Well, don’t stay up too late. ”
“Okay. ”
He left her there, in that room that held Mike’s presence like a favorite scent, and headed to Bret’s room.
He knocked on his son’s door. There was a scuffling noise from inside, then a quiet “Come in. ”
He opened the door. The room was dark except for a small Batman night-light that tossed a triangle of golden light toward the bed, and a skylight cut into the sharply angled ceiling that revealed the starry night sky, making the room seem almost like an astronaut’s capsule.
“Heya, kiddo. ”
“Hi, Daddy. ”
It was a baby’s voice that came out of the darkness, not at all the voice of a nine-year-old boy who’d hit his first home run last spring, and the sound of it brought Liam to a halt.
When he realized he wasn’t moving, he forced a watered-down laugh. “Sorry. I think I just stepped on Han Solo. ”
“His legs were missing awready. Joe Lipsky bit ’em off last summer. ”
Liam folded himself awkwardly onto the narrow bed. He brushed a lock of red hair from Bret’s eyes. “You know you can sleep with me anytime you want. ”
Bret nodded but said nothing.
“You used to come into our bed whenever you had a nightmare. You can still do that … even if you haven’t had a nightmare and you just feel like being with me. ”