I tried Mia and immediately got her chirpy voice saying something in German.
My brother-in-law's American number.
"You've reached James Hartley. Please leave a message or contact my assistant at…"
"Noah?"
I tried 'em all, over and over, but no one picked up the fucking phone. "Answer, goddammit!" I knocked back the stool and stumbled. My surroundings were blurry, and I heard voices, but I couldn’t decipher the words. Like a faint echo.
I started to hyperventilate.
My parents. My sister and James. Holy fuck, JJ, Linda, Julian…
"Noah!"
I turned toward that voice. I couldn’t get my head straight, my vision still fucked and my skull pounding, but I knew that one. Tennyson.
He knew. One look at his face, no matter how out-of-focus, made it clear this was why he'd insisted on meeting up with me. Daniel ran over too, not far behind. They both knew.
"I gotta call the airline," I rasped.
I needed to see the passenger list.
"Whatever you need, Noah." Tennyson squeezed my shoulder while Daniel grabbed my bag. "Come on, let's go home. Sophie and Brooklyn are at the loft, too."
"How did you all…?" I couldn’t speak past the lump in my throat.
Tennyson hesitated but didn't hold back, thank fuck. "Sophie saw the news right after it happened, and she managed to track down your eldest nephew. Julian?"
"Oh." My insides twisted again. Okay, so Julian was at home. "It's not true, is it?"
This time, Tennyson didn't answer.Chapter 3
Two weeks later
"Christ, not again," I whispered to myself. I wiped at my cheeks and headed for the living room. Felt like all I'd done lately was cry. I took a deep breath, waiting for some sense of relief, but it was nowhere to be found. The nightmare was true, and everything around me was real.
My parents' house just outside of Pittsburgh made it extremely difficult to believe the reality. The only thing that didn't fit was me—wearing a black fucking suit. My folks were blue-collar and casual. Had been.
Suits had no business in the house I'd grown up in. Family photos and Penguins memorabilia hung on the walls. Pop's chair stood in the corner, ratty and well-used. Ma had wanted to buy him a new one, but he'd always refused. Additions had been welcome, but no replacements.
"Don't fix what ain't broke, son."
I'd given him the universal remote and the surround sound system one Christmas. He'd immediately pulled out a VHS of the Stanley Cup final from '91 when the Penguins had won, and we'd watched the game together.
I brushed my hand over Lemieux's signed jersey that hung on the wall above the TV. Had Pop been here, he would've scolded me for going near it.
"Noah?" Sophie called from the kitchen. "Anything I can get you?"
"No thanks." I walked over to the window and stuck my hands down in my pockets.
The lawn needed mowing, a reminder that everything wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Pop always kept the yard groomed to perfection. Since he'd retired, it had been his pastime to make the backyard pretty for Ma.
She'd enjoyed bragging about her flower beds. At the time, I'd been bored to tears hearing about it, but now I'd give everything to hear it again.
The sun was out. Blue sky. No clouds in sight. The cherry tree would bear a lot of fruit this year.
I hung my head.
What a fucking waste of life.
They still weren't sure why the plane had gone down, but experts were speculating freely about several causes. I wasn't sure I cared. Good luck finding the black box in the Florida wetlands, anyway.
They had ruled out everything from terrorism to sabotage, leaving all the mechanical shit that could go wrong but usually didn't.
Regardless, my entire family was gone.
Not Julian, I reminded myself, but fuck that. I'd spoken to him over the phone once we'd gotten our fears confirmed, and then he'd gone off the grid. His father's assistant had visited their house in Berlin, and Julian had left it all in shambles.
It wasn't until yesterday he'd contacted me to say he'd be here for the memorial service today.
He'd sounded hungover as fuck, which…to be honest, I couldn’t blame him for. I'd been on a bender since I pushed Emma out the door.
Inhaling deeply, I closed my eyes and took myself back in time. The fragrance of home wasn’t likely to go away anytime soon, and it worked like the most painful comfort now.
These walls bore scents of decades of Ma's cooking, her perfume, and flowers. Pop's cologne and the soap he used. The house was essentially a bottle of memories, and if I concentrated, I could see flickers of film rolling. Mia and I chasing each other around when we were kids. All the pranks. Prom dates, fights, bitching, Pop yelling at the TV, Ma crying when I went off to college, Ma crying even more when Mia moved to Berlin.