Etching Our Way (Broken Tracks 1)

“Catch,” she says, throwing me her car keys. “Her present is hard to miss.” She chuckles as I catch them and carries on letting Izzie drag her up the stairs, no doubt wanting to show her the tea party set that she has.

“Don’t stay up there too long, Izzie,” I tell her, knowing that she’d stay up there for hours playing with her tea set if she could.

“Okay, Daddy!” she shouts back, already disappearing down the hallway toward her room.

I push Harmony’s car keys into the front pocket of my suit pants and walk back into the kitchen so that I can start on the potato salad. But when I get back in there, Amelia is standing stirring the mayonnaise into the bowl, staring off into space.

“A?” I ask, concerned when she jumps at the sound of one of the girls squealing in the backyard. “You okay?”

“Huh? Yeah.” She plasters a smile on her face and shakes her head. “I’m fine, thought that I’d make this for you.”

I study her for a couple of seconds, my head tilting to the side. The last few weeks she’s become jumpy and paranoid. She may think that I haven’t noticed, but I’m not blind. She’s on edge, worse than she had been when I asked Nate to see if he could find out what was going on with her.

I’ve been so caught up in Harmony, the kids and myself these last few weeks that I haven’t even thought to ask Nate if he’d found out what was going on with her.

“Just gonna go and get Izzie’s present from Harmony’s car,” I tell her, not getting a reply before I push back through the house, across the marble floor and out the front door.

Heading toward Harmony’s car, I grimace. The metallic blue paint is peeling in places; rust showing around the tire arches. It takes me several attempts to open the door and I wince at the squeak it emanates.

This thing can’t be safe for her to drive, surely? My protective instincts have me wanting to buy her a brand new one. Only I know that wouldn’t go down well at all.

She’s always paved her own way, not willing to let anyone buy her things or help her out. There were so many times in college where she’d end up pissed at me for paying the food bill, and nothing has changed. She’s still as stubborn as she was back then, if not more so now.

“Sup!”

I turn my head as I’m pulling the present out of the car. “Hey.”

Nate shuts his car door, his eyes widening at Harmony’s as I lock it. “What is that thing?”

I chuckle. “Harmony.”

“Ahhhh.” He nods his head, her name explaining so many things as he walks toward me. He’s dressed in a dark red robe that covers his white t-shirt and light blue board shorts, the white Converse he’s wearing completing his mismatched outfit.

“You were meant to be a prince, not a king,” I berate him, looking up at the giant crown on his head that is full of fake jewels.

“I am a prince.” He rolls his eyes as he opens the front door but I stop him with a hand to his arm as my eyes look inside.

“I forgot to ask you.” I move the present—which I suspect from its size and shape is a canvas—under my other arm. “Did you ever find out what was going on with Amelia?”

He looks away, his jaw clenching as he shoves his hands inside the pockets of his shorts. “I… she told me something.”

I frown, thinking I heard him wrong at first. “What?”

His shoulders droop as he looks inside the house in the same way that I just did. “She thinks she’s fooled me, but I could tell that she was lying.” He huffs out a breath. “But I’m working on it.”

I’m about to demand that he tell me what she said—even if it is a lie—when Harmony and Izzie catch my attention as they skip across the entryway together. Now isn’t the time or place, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t be telling me what she told him. Now that I’m sure there is something going on, I’m determined to find out exactly what it is.

I don’t say anything else as I walk past him and through the house, into the backyard where I place the present with Izzie’s other presents on the table off to the side.

Mom is sitting next to Harmony, both of them talking with a smile on their faces as Clay jumps up and runs at Nate, colliding with him.

“Ooft!”

I smirk before stepping toward the grill and pulling the top up, placing the burgers on there with some corn.

The chatter continues around me, the laughter louder than it has been in a long time and I can’t help but think about how much Natalia would have loved to have seen Izzie turn six.

Today is a day of joy: of fun and laughter, but it’s also a day of sadness, of grief. It doesn’t matter how many times I try not to think about it, or how many times I try not to look at the clock. I still do. As soon as the clock strikes 9 p.m. and the kids are in bed—asleep after they’ve run around and exhausted themselves out—I’ll be heading to the place that I only visit once a year.