The Current Between Us

He and Sophia were shoved from the birthing room as the crash carts slammed past them in an attempt to save his sister, Em’s mother. Later, the doctor told him, Lynn had found out about the abdominal aortic aneurysm a few weeks after learning she was pregnant. She’d kept it from her family, opting to have Emalynn before going under the knife to repair the damaged artery, but she hadn’t made it. Instead, she died instantly when it burst, sending the birth into a frenzy.

To this day, it truly bothered Trent that he hadn’t picked up on the clues. Now, he understood the intense grieving during her pregnancy wasn’t just about Lynn’s lost husband, but also the fear she faced of leaving her own children. Lynn had insisted on creating a will and went into detailed explanations on how her children should be raised if anything happened to her. She left the children and everything she owned to Trent. He had sat through hours of her coaching him on how to be a father, what her finances were and the military benefits left to the children.

Never once did Trent think he would ever use the information she forced on him. At the time, he was pacifying his grieving sister. He’d even refused to listen to any more talk of death; telling her he was done with that nonsense and life was for the living! Lynn had just smiled at him and kissed his cheek. Boy, he’d gotten every bit of it completely wrong.

Trent missed Lynn. She’d been his best friend. They were the only children of a single, older mom who’d spent her life devoted to them. Trent was the oldest, but not by much. Lynn came along eleven months after his birth. The only time they were apart were the years they spent in college when Lynn met Aaron, got pregnant, and married him within a few months after their meeting. Aaron focused solely on his military career. Trent saw it as Aaron putting as much space between him and Lynn as he could, but he never said anything about her marriage. He had just been glad she moved back closer to him.

Emotion choked him as he turned and beat his forehead gently against the damp tile. Trent tried hard to hide all of this from the kids. Childhood should be filled with fun memories, snapshots to take into their adult lives. Frustration coursed through him as he grabbed the bottle of shampoo at the same moment the pungent aroma of coffee filled the steamy air of the shower. A smile spread across his lips, helping to pull him from the melancholy of his thoughts like nothing else could. Rhonny was already up and making coffee.

If there could be a silver lining to the dark cloud surrounding his life at this time of year, it centered right in on his live-in nanny. Rhonny classified as his dream come true and he thanked the good Lord for her every single day. He wouldn’t have survived the last four years without her. She had come in as his first and, as it turned out, only interview for the nanny position.

Em had been barely a few weeks old, screaming in the middle of a major crying fit when Rhonny came through the front door. He remembered the moment as if it happened yesterday. Completely out of his element with the non-stop crying baby in his arms, he had opened the front door utterly flustered. There stood Rhonny, all Brazilianly beautiful and the breath of fresh air he needed in those dark, dark days. She took Em from him, calmed her down almost instantly, while explaining she was the oldest of eight children. She came with bottle, diaper, and play time experience down to a science. She could even cook a meal or two and turned out to be everything he needed. He hired her on the spot and she started that very afternoon.

All these years later, they had a solid working relationship, which he honestly considered to be more like a family than employee to employer. Their only complication: Rhonny was part of the study abroad program and graduated from college next year. They were already working on the visas needed to keep her in the country, but who knew how it all would turn out, and it worried him. The government didn’t seem overly interested in how Rhonny worked her way into a necessity of his life or how the kids needed her with them.

Trent dried himself quickly and swiped the towel over his bathroom mirror before tossing it over the shower door. Daily grooming never took him too much time, and the coffee called out to his soul, speeding his process faster than normal. Not wanting to wake the kids in the other room, Trent kept the freshly grown stubble on his face, but brushed his teeth and ran a comb through his short light brown hair. He scanned his gaze over his hair, then his face, and took the moment to stare at the bright green eyes looking back at him in the mirror. They were one of the only traits he shared with his sister.

Tall, muscular, and thick, Trent played football all the way through college and kept the build into his adult life. Lynn stayed short, petite, and blond. If she ever developed a true muscle on her body, he never saw it. These eyes and their smiles were the only things they shared as adults. Em and Hunter shared them too. Now, his stared back at him all red-eyed and exhausted.

Trent slapped himself hard on the face. The jolt surprised even him, but it did the trick and woke him completely. The goal was to keep this awake thing going for the next sixteen or so hours ahead of him.

Leaving both his image and all the mental self-reflection behind, he turned to his closet. The best renovation he’d made to this house involved relocating the door to his closet and placing it in his bathroom, instead of the bedroom. It afforded him more privacy. Trent pulled on his blue jeans and T-shirt before quietly making his way back into the bedroom to pick up his work boots by the bed. The kids slept as he tiptoed out the door and down the hall where all three of their rooms were located. He continued the silent tiptoe all the way to the kitchen at the other end of the house. Sizzling bacon filled the air, competing with the strong smell of coffee. Both made his taste buds water.