Chapter Text
Jonah sits up in the spongy gray chair, takes a deep breath, and blows with all his might into the white disposable glove he got from…TK didn’t see where.
TK, in the chair beside him, taps his knee. “Jojo, can you cool it?”
Jonah delightedly bats him back with the inflated glove.
“We are not in a duel,” TK whispers, giving Jonah’s rib a little tickle and seizing the glove by its puffed thumb.
The tickling makes Jonah let go, and the sudden release causes the glove to emit an unearthly sort of fart noise that has the kid almost falling out of his chair. TK grabs him and heaves him into his lap.
“Could you stop wrigglin’ and gigglin’ for five minutes, mister?” he says into Jonah’s ear, which makes him squirm more because it tickles too.
Over on the hospital bed, Carlos smiles politely at Nurse Anita, who is trying very hard to sensibly discuss the care of his multiple, albeit minor, wounds.
“Sorry,” Carlos says, “He’s a little restless.”
Anita is so gentle it’s like her hands weren’t even on him when she was dressing the wounds. Decades of skill have made her somehow un-physical yet comfortingly visible like an apparition, an angel. “Don’t worry,” she says just as gently, “How old?”
“Seven.”
“Mine’s twenty-seven,” Anita chuckles, “Enjoy every minute.”
“We are,” Carlos tells her.
She squeezes his uninjured left bicep for a moment of extra comfort, and turns around at a knock on the doorframe.
“Hi, all,” Dr. Moretz says on entry. He’s a middle-aged, graying man who gives off a cuddly-dad vibe, his eyes tired but kind.
Carlos stares at the doctor with desperation while TK goes rigid. Jonah looks up at him worriedly, the air in the room suddenly of the serious kind instead of that which could fill a fun disposable glove.
“Ranger Campbell is out of surgery – everything went well,” Dr. Moretz says, “His wife is here, she’s with him.”
“Thank God,” Carlos says, looking heaven-ward for a second. While he’s at it, he says a quick prayer that Ashlyn Campbell won’t finish the job and kill him herself.
“He’ll make a full recovery,” Dr. Moretz says, “Your action saved his life.”
Carlos glances down at his shaking hands, mutters a humble, “It was the least I could do.”
“Saved his life?” Jonah whispers.
The gravity of the situation hasn’t been explained to Jonah yet. Hence him trying to make a balloon rooster out of the glove, TK supposes. Jonah knows Papa Carlos got hurt at work – wounded in a vaguely gnarly way that Jonah is intrigued and astonished by – but also he’s upright and talking, and he told Jonah off for referring to his classmate Logan Wayne as a butthead (even though that is a fair assertion. Carlos knows it. TK knows it. Everyone knows it). So, everything’s fine really. Papa is coming home with them now. Dinner will be pizza.
TK strokes a hand through Jonah’s hair. “Remember when we visited the firehouse, and me and Auntie Nancy and Auntie Tommy told you about first aid? Which is when people give medical help to others in an emergency?”
Jonah nods. It’s not a memory so much as a harrowing flashback. The whole thing had involved a dummy that was just an eyeless head and torso.
“Well,” TK goes on, “Uncle Sammy needed a lot of first aid today, so Papa helped him before the paramedics arrived.”
“Wow,” Jonah whispers. The whisper travels the air like a blown kiss and lands on Carlos’ cheek.
There is nothing Carlos loves more than being a source of pride for his husband and their little boy. If the cause could be more…badass hook shots in their father-son group basketball matches, and less having to use himself as a human shield before controlling the bleed of his partner’s near-fatal stab wound…that would be preferable.
Jonah looks down at his striped t-shirt. Above his heart is a round sticker with a smiling cartoon lion on it. A Band-Aid for some reason is on the lion’s mane, as if a mane could bleed, and the words I Was Brave Today arch over his golden head. When TK and Jonah announced their arrival at the front desk, a nurse in pink scrubs took one look into Jonah’s worried, curious eyes and presented him with the sticker for being, she said, “A brave visitor.”
Jonah picks at the sticker’s gluey circumference, peels a little of it away before nudging TK.
Carlos watches Jonah and TK lean into each other so Jonah can speak to him quietly.
“You can do that,” Carlos hears TK say, “Go on.”
Tentatively, Jonah gets out of TK’s lap and crosses the speckled gray floor, which suddenly seems vast and exposing. He gets like this sometimes, unmoored from his papas or his friends or adults he knows well. A step forward in front of a stranger, like Nurse Anita, makes him almost woozy with nerves. His natural giggliness and mischief becomes the vanishing point on the horizon, and it’s like he can see himself as a tiny dot in the center of nowhere, out of reach. One day he will have the language to explain this, but right now he is seven years-old and all he can do is swim for Carlos like he's a buoy in the ocean. As soon as he touches him, he can stabilize and breathe.
“Hi, baby,” Carlos says, stroking Jonah’s soft cheek with his left thumb.
Jonah looks up at him with a shy smile, peeling the rest of his sticker away.
“Oh, is this for me now?” Carlos asks.
Jonah nods, bashful and proud all in one, the glee returning to his eyes when Carlos accepts the sticker and presses it to his green t-shirt, over his own heart. For an afternoon, the little lion will take the place of his Ranger Star, and means the same thing.
Within half an hour, TK is helping Carlos into a cozy black hoodie and leading his woozy husband out to sign his discharge paperwork. Carlos’ bandaged right hand is sore and clumsy as he moves the pen across the page, and he looks apologetically at the nurse for taking so long and the scrawl that should be an elegant signature. When wrestling for the knife, he accidentally sent the blade into his own face. The cut beneath his right eye feels particularly sensitive – tight with butterfly stitches and flaring hot. When he finishes the paperwork and crouches down to help Jonah with the tricky zipper of his yellow raincoat, Jonah tentatively pokes Carlos’ cheek by way of inspection.
“Come here,” Carlos says, lifting Jonah up, bright in his coat as a lantern that will guide the way.
Jonah is a bit too big for this really, and Carlos’ arms are too injured, but Jonah flops into him and Carlos hugs him as tight as he can.
It’s been a while since they’ve played the hug-me-til-I-pop game. They used to play it all the time, and it occurs to Carlos now that several weeks have passed since they last horsed around that way, with Carlos arriving home from work and Jonah tearing out of the living room to greet him. Sometimes literally bouncing off the walls.
“Hug me ‘til I pop!” Carlos always says, taking his boy into his arms.
This prompts Jonah to squeeze him with all his might. Carlos pretends to burst like a balloon. Tickling ensues as a standard.
“Hug me ‘til I pop,” Carlos whispers.
Jonah is instantly delighted to have been given a special task, and hugs Carlos with a small roar. Carlos pretends to struggle, rocking Jonah as if to fling him before whisper-shouting, “Ahhh….BOOM!”
It’s the least dramatic popping he’s ever done because they’re in public, but it’s enough to make Jonah giggle and snuggle him for real.
Bringing his face out of Jonah’s silky hair, Carlos catches eyes with TK. TK is at the vending machine, buying Carlos a granola bar and Jonah some strawberry PopTarts for the ride home. The way TK returns Carlos’ gaze from across the room makes him feel like he could melt into the floor. It’s a look of longing, admiration, sorrow, desire, all in one. Nobody, Carlos thinks, can have a whole conversation through his eyes like TK Strand-Reyes can, and nobody except Carlos knows exactly what to say in response with his own. For a moment, they aren’t in the hospital anymore. They are peering at each other through the rain at the scene of a car crash. They are badly line dancing at the honky-tonk off Shoal Creek. They are nose-to-nose, eyes open, making love on the floor of Carlos’ living room. They are glaring at each other across Carlos’ old desk at the precinct, Carlos unlocking the cuffs around TK’s wrists. They are smoldering at each other on a tense date. They are grinding in a wild nightclub full of beautiful people but only notice each other, like they’re dancing to the radio in the kitchen. They are turning away from aurora borealis so they can look at one another instead. Whenever there has been danger, an emergency, a near-miss, everything that began their relationship comes back to Carlos vividly. He knows that TK is replaying it all in his mind too.
The moment is interrupted by Jonah giggling out a shy, “Hi!” over Carlos’ shoulder.
“Hi, sweetie,” a familiar voice replies.
A chill runs down Carlos’ spine like ice water has dripped into his collar.
Carlos turns around with Jonah in his arms, Jonah turning around too and wriggling to be let down.
“Ashlyn, hi,” Carlos greets her with a barely-there smile, lowering Jonah to the floor.
Ashlyn Campbell stands in front of them with her arms folded. She’s wearing mud-splattered black leggings, a purple tank top and battered running shoes. Must have been out for a run when she got the call. Maybe she just ran straight to the hospital. Her long brown hair is crammed into a messy ponytail, which she’d probably hate if she looked in the mirror, and her eyes are pinkish and puffy.
“Carlos, we have to stop meeting like this,” she says.
Sensing tension again, Jonah hides behind Carlos and peers out at Ashlyn.
“I know,” he says, “Ashlyn, I’m so sor–”
“Hey, you,” TK greets her as he arrives behind Carlos, pressing a supportive hand to the small of his back. He passes the PopTarts to Jonah, who receives them gratefully, though fumbles with the foil packet.
For TK, Ashlyn manages an exhausted smile.
“The doctor told us Sam’s doing well,” TK says, stepping forward and giving her arm a squeeze. “But how are you?”
“I’m fine.” She shakes her head, as though in part to dismiss her emotions and in part to focus on logistics. She flicks her eyes away from TK and looks at Carlos’ right hand, the bandage disappearing up the sleeve of his black hoodie. TK had to bring a set of Carlos’ clothes with him when he got the call – a t-shirt, a hoodie, sweatpants – because Carlos’ white shirt and stone chinos were drenched in blood. Some of that blood was his own, some of it belonged to the man he ended up shooting in the thigh, but most of it belonged to Ashlyn’s husband.
“I understand from Chief McIntyre that those are defensive wounds,” she says, gesturing to Carlos’ arms. “And that you were defending Sam.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, “Always.”
She nods. Pursing her lips. “Look, I need to ask you a favor.”
“Yes,” Carlos says, immediate and eager like he’s talking to his boss’ boss, adjusting from a slight slump to his full height. “Anything – anything at all.”
He looks at TK for support. TK, helping Jonah undo the PopTarts packet, gives him a curious side-eye, but ultimately says, “Of course.”
“I want to come back here tomorrow with the kids and the in-laws,” Ashlyn tells them, “But everyone I’ve ever met in my life – and actually trust – is busy. So, I wondered if you’d come to the house for a few hours to watch Ruby? It’ll be easier than me bringing her to you, with everything going on.”
“Ruby…” Jonah whispers up at her, turning to Carlos and tugging on the hem of his t-shirt.
“Yes, mijo,” Carlos laughs, stroking his fingers through Jonah’s hair.
“Can I come?” Jonah asks desperately, letting go of Carlos and pulling on TK’s sweater sleeve instead – the sudden realization that he might not be included hitting him like a ton of bricks. Ruby is the Campbell family’s pup, a five-year-old, fuzzy black spaniel who they have dog-sat for a few times over the years. Jonah is madly in love with her. Sam sends Carlos photos of her all the time so Carlos can show Jonah what she’s up to. Jonah likes to study the photos carefully, zooming in on her wet nose and the curly tuft of fur on the crown of her head.
“Yes, you can come,” Carlos laughs, booping Jonah’s nose in a way that makes him snuffle. Turning to Ashlyn again with a militant seriousness, he says, “We’d love to watch Ruby. And anything else you need, you just say the word. I’m there. We’re there. Want us to water your flower beds? Done.”
Ashlyn squints at him. “It’s raining all weekend.”
“Right…” Carlos thinks for a moment, pushing through his overwhelm. “Groceries! We can pick you up groceries. Casserole! I’ll make one. With chicken! You can freeze it.”
This makes Ashlyn laugh in a sort of dazed, defeated way. “I won’t say no to that.”
“Done,” Carlos says definitively.
“Okay.” Ashlyn points over her shoulder. “Well. I better get back to Sam. If you can come over around midday–”
“Yes!” Carlos cheers.
“Great.” She gives them another polite nod, beginning to walk away. “And thank you again.”
Carlos watches her go, and turns back to his family with a satisfied smile.
TK, though, regards him with a quirked eyebrow. “What was that?”
“Hm? What?” Carlos hums innocently.
“Bending over backwards to dog-sit and cook a casserole?”
Carlos shrugs. “I like dogs. I like cooking. They need help right now. Can we get out of here?”
“Uh huh.” TK follows with Jonah as Carlos strides for the exit. “And you’re sure you don’t want to drop in to see Sam before we–”
“No. It’s fine,” Carlos says quickly, “I’ll come back when he’s awake, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” adds Jonah.
Together, they step through the automatic doors into cool drizzle. TK lifts the hood of Jonah’s yellow raincoat over his head while he bites into a PopTart thoughtfully.
The Campbells live over in Walnut Creek, their house a putty-colored modern bungalow with a turquoise door. Cacti, scrubby bushes and thin, twisty trees grow in the rocky front yard. It’s very them, very cool, Carlos thinks. As TK parks up in the driveway, Carlos studies the house through the rain-dashed windshield, and considers it in relation to their own. The Strand-Reyes house is forty years older, with stained glass details in the windows, a porch swing, a growth of creeper vine, a lush yard that TK keeps a little uncultivated and ragged as a haven for wildlife. They had a deer pass through the other morning. They’d all quietly gone out onto the porch in their pajamas to watch her, TK still with his foamy toothbrush in his mouth.
Out of the truck, they all put on their raincoats. This weekend is a cool relief for June, and all of them are wearing jeans and lightweight sweaters in different blue hues. Carlos, in navy. TK in a dusty lavender. Jonah in a royal blue sweater with a bright red fire truck knitted into it. Jonah struggles with his tricky zipper, but they’ll be indoors soon, so he leaves it and instead takes charge of carrying the canvas shopper that contains cooking apples and crumble mix. TK and Carlos carry the other groceries to the front stoop, where they wait for Jonah because he is proceeding very carefully with all the apples.
Before Jonah can reach to his highest and press the doorbell, the trendy, turquoise front door is opened by Madelyn, the oldest of the Campbell girls.
“Mom!” she yells over her shoulder with an air of nonchalance, “They’re here!”
“Well, let them in out of the rain,” Ashlyn’s disembodied voice yells back.
Madelyn opens the door fully, wafting an arm. “Mom says come in.”
“Thank you, sweetheart, how are you doing?” Carlos asks, giving her shoulder a little squeeze. Of all four of the Campbell kids, Madelyn is the one he has the least-developed bond with, and he doesn’t know why. He also doesn’t know why it bothers him so much.
“I mean, my dad is in hospital because he got stab…” she pauses, looks down at Jonah who stares up at her shyly., “Got hurt in the stomach.”
Carlos steels himself. Due to the angle of the knife, Sam’s stomach didn’t actually get punctured. It was the not-knowing-that-at-the-time, plus the blood loss, which made things scary. Really scary. But Carlos is not about to correct her, and is saved anyway by the appearance of Ashlyn and the rest of her brood – Archer, Erin and Parker, who is holding Ruby in his arms.
At the sight of her old friends, Ruby twists around excitedly, her pink tongue lolling out of her mouth and her brown eyes wide. Jonah gazes at her with familiar fascination. Dogs are incredible to behold. Every day, he asks the papas for a dog of his own, and every day he’s told, “We promise we’ll get one, but when you’re a bit older.” But he is getting older, bit by bit, every day(!), and bigger too. He’s almost a whole four feet and nine inches tall, which is almost at nose-level with the giraffe on his height chart. And he knows that Carlos had a dog in his family when he was six, which is younger than seven by one year.
“Would Jonah like to cuddle Ruby?” Ashlyn asks, giving Parker a little nudge to step forward with the dog, like an offering.
“He’d love to,” TK answers for him, because Jonah has now fully lost the ability to speak. TK crouches down by Jonah’s side, indicating for him to sit cross-legged where he is before helping Parker to place Ruby in Jonah’s lap.
She is soft and heavy and a force of wriggling, joyous life, all plump belly and beating heart, cold wet nose and tickling tongue that makes Jonah forget himself and squeal; all dark, sparkling eyes that match Jonah’s for mischief and wonder. Her ears are a soft flop of curly black, the little bouffant of fur on her head as adorable as ever. And her paws – her fuzzy paws! Jonah never knows what to do with himself over those fuzzy paws.
Ruby sniffs at the boy determinedly, every so often letting out a yap when she gets to an important point in his story. She knows a pure heart when she’s held against it. She knows what he had for breakfast (pancakes with maple syrup, a Saturday thing) and she knows that last night he couldn’t sleep and cried a little because one of the papas was tired and got frustrated, and then there was a big hug – a big hug between all of them in the big bed – because she can smell old tears and also what made the tears stop.
She knows, and has always known, that there is an empty space beside all three of them.
Ruby, like all dogs, can smell the empty parts where something or someone used to be.
Ruby, like all dogs, understands it is her job to do her best to fill those spaces a little bit.
“Hi, Ruby. Hey, baby,” TK talks to her sweetly, rubbing underneath her chin in a way that makes her close her eyes. She smells Jonah’s old tears on TK’s hand. He’d used this hand to wipe them away. “Oh, Ash. I never get over how gorgeous she is.”
“I know, right?” Ashlyn says as she puts on her chic cream raincoat and steps over to give Ruby a rub behind the ears. “Thank you for doing this. We all really appreciate it, don’t we?”
“Yeah,” three of the Campbell kids respond.
Madelyn silently stares out at the rain, slowly lifts the hood of her lived-in black hoodie, her thumb popping out of a tear in the cuff.
Ashlyn had already emailed over written instructions for Ruby’s care like she always does: When she should eat, what she definitely should not eat, how it’s okay if she gets a little muddy in the yard, just keep her to the kitchen and the utility room – but she spends some time going over everything anyway, to make extra-extra sure that TK, Carlos and Jonah know what they’re doing (even though they totally know what they’re doing so they all just smile and nod politely).
When the Campbells finally leave, Ruby whines for a moment at the lack of their presence and noise, and snuffles into Jonah’s chest. She’s getting heavy in his lap though. He needs her to get off for a moment because his foot is going numb, so TK helps shunt her onto the floor. As soon as Jonah stands up, Ruby does too, rising on her hind legs and patting her front paws against Jonah’s hip.
“She loves you, doesn’t she?” Carlos says, stroking Ruby’s ears before easing Jonah’s arms out of the sleeves of his raincoat.
Ruby spins around three times before shoving her face into Carlos’ palm. Lots of complicated information, coming from this guy. She can smell the blood of Sam, can hear the distant thumping of a heart, can feel the warmth of a jacket being laid over Sam’s body because he was getting cold. Very, very cold. The empty space beside Carlos – she recognizes it. Sam has the same space beside him. She pulls her snout out of Carlos’ palm, taking everything into consideration, and goes to sniff TK again, who seems particularly emotional in her presence today. When she first met them, she was only one year old and Jonah was only three, and she hadn’t recognized straight away that the empty space next to TK is the exact same empty space that exists next to Jonah. Their different dimensions had thrown her off. But no, they definitely share the same loss. The emptiness next to them smells like lilies and snow, while the emptiness next to Carlos smells like bonfire and gunpowder, horses and lime.
Now Ruby has got up to speed, she happily leads her friends to the kitchen. She is highly aware that they have brought food, which makes them all the more welcome. Among the foods they have brought is a bone shaped chewy. This must be for her.
“Ruby, come see what we have for you!” TK calls.
Yes, it’s for her.
Jonah gives the chewy to her with a happy laugh, and Ruby grips it nice and tight in her teeth.
The chewy tastes like a chunk of duck-flavored heaven. Ideal. Ruby runs away to eat it in the comfort of her crate as soon as she has the prize secured in her mouth. She isn’t sure why she runs away to eat things like this. Her legs just sort of power themselves – and when she runs away with food in her mouth, she has a peculiar memory. In the memory, it’s like she is a much larger dog, lean and gray, running fast through damp forest, and other big dogs are in pursuit. She always feels like this when she suddenly has the need to run, or bark at the mailman, or howl when she hears anything that sounds like a howl. The other day, there was a siren coming from a vehicle in the street, and she howled back conversationally even though she didn’t know what the siren was saying.
Ruby trots to the kitchen as soon as she’s finished her treat. There’s a lot of activity now. Cupboards and drawers are opening, closing. Carlos paws through a drawer and closes it before opening another and saying, “Ah ha!” with a particular shiny instrument held in his hand like a piece of treasure. TK is poking about at the oven.
“Should have asked Ashlyn how to work this thing,” TK says, blocking Jonah’s hand from pressing the buttons too. “Did they buy their oven straight from NASA? What’s going on? Oh–” he turns a dial and the oven light comes on, an amber glow in the heart of the kitchen’s rainy-day gloom. “Here we go.”
Carlos has a clove of garlic in hand and has seized an olive wood chopping board. On the gray marble kitchen island is the Campbells’ cobalt blue cast iron casserole dish, which Carlos has been coveting despite owning a Le Creuset dish in signature Volcanic. Tía Lucy bought it for him after the house fire so it has added sentimental value. Still. A man can never have too many casserole dishes in different colors…
Over by the fridge, Jonah drops all the green apples, so Ruby helpfully picks one up. Unfortunately, now she has an apple in her mouth, she has to eat it – it’s like a rule, she’s not really in charge. Off she runs again to her crate, her head full of snowy forests and craggy rocks and babbling brooks. This seems, however, to be highly entertaining to her friends, so she doesn’t get in trouble for taking an apple for herself.
When she returns to the kitchen the second time, her friends are less active, and there’s a conversation going on.
“Don’t worry about it – if it hurts, don’t do it,” TK says.
“I’m fine,” Carlos replies, looking down at his arms that are covered in bandages. “It’s just this is tight around my wrist.” He continues to chop at the garlic slowly. Usually, he’d chop so quickly and so finely, the action would become a blur. It’s weird to take something like this so slow. Unsettling.
“Can I go in the yard?” Jonah asks. He’s standing by the back door, face pressed to the glass as he counts raindrops.
“In the wet?” Carlos looks up from the garlic, takes in the rain and his boy’s eager face. “It’s really coming down out there, mijo.”
“I don’t mind.” He stands poised, ready to go as soon as one of the papas opens the door. The backyard is an interesting configuration, more vast than it appears through the patio doors, and wrapping around three sides of the house. The edges are bordered by a steep bank of trees and flowering bushes, creating a sense of being in a wooded enclosure. And the Campbells have a swing and climbing frame he’s played on before – it’s all too exciting to resist. He looks up at TK and Carlos pleadingly.
Jonah gets like this, sometimes, in contrast to his nervousness that can make him inert – his whole body leans forward as if pointing to the future, with a kind of compulsion to get out into the air so he can start flying.
“Okay, you can go out and take Ruby with you – try not to get too muddy, though,” TK says. He heads back to the entryway, where Jonah’s yellow raincoat hangs next to Sam’s battered old leather jacket on a hook. Jonah puts his coat on by himself, but he needs help with his new, dark green rain boots, which are a little stiff and have laces. These boots are a replacement for the bright red slip-on boots he had before – in part because they were starting to pinch his growing feet, and in part because Logan Wayne stamped on his toes and called him a baby for wearing them. This became a whole thing between Carlos, TK, Jonah, Kimberly Wayne, Logan himself, their teacher Miss Davidson and the headteacher Mrs. Pahlke, with Logan ultimately being forgiven because of his “At home situation.”
On the car ride home, Jonah made a strong case for being able to choose his own new rainboots. The papas looked at each other, then back at the road, and said, “Okay,” at the same time. So, last Saturday at the mall, Jonah opted for a smart, dark green pair that look more like hiking boots. The kid, it seems, has taste.
“Comfortable?” TK asks.
Jonah nods yes, but they aren’t really as comfortable as his red rainboots used to be. Still, he can make do.
TK opens the back door to the yard only after double-checking Jonah’s zipper is zipped properly. Such a tricky zip. As soon as the door opens, Ruby bolts out, with Jonah in fast, giggling pursuit. It feels great to zoom across the large patio and jump onto the splashy grass. The cool rain is something for Ruby to leap for and catch. Jonah leaps to catch it too. Neither of them are particularly successful rain collectors, so after a minute they chase each other in circles and figure eights instead. They last a little longer at this game, until Jonah remembers the swing around the other side of the yard.
“Come on, Ruby! Let’s go!” he yells. Ruby barks her agreement as she races him there.
Jonah mounts the swing like he’s leaping into a getaway rocket ship. Three…two…one…BLAST OFF! He launches into space, leaving the aliens in his dust.
Jonah has a swing too, back home in his own yard – a beautiful one with a wooden frame, sturdy metal chains and a wide, rubbery seat, which Grandpa Owen helped to build. The Campbells might have a more modern house and an oven so fancy it could remotely control a nuclear submarine, but their swing set has a metal frame that quakes in the wind and the seats are narrow and attached with rope. Still, a swing is a swing is a rocket ship, and Jonah powers himself back and forth while Ruby bounces around, barking at him delightedly, her ears flopping and flapping as she goes.
In the kitchen, TK stands at the sink, washing his hands after handling the chicken, watching the boy and the pup through the window.
“I think it is finally time, you know,” he grins, turning back to Carlos with a wink. “I know we kept flipflopping, but I do think he’s ready for real.”
“Birthday or Christmas?” Carlos asks, laying sprigs of rosemary neatly into the casserole dish.
“Oh, birthday!” TK replies with an adamance that’s almost fearsome. “I don’t want to have to wait an extra three months, either.”
“Fair enough,” Carlos laughs, “A birthday puppy it is.”
“He seems better today, right?” TK says, turning back to the window. “He didn’t retreat into himself that much around the Campbells.”
The rain is splashing down heavily now, and Jonah is off the swing having landed safely back on planet Earth. He runs around with Ruby again, who has a bunch of leaves in her mouth that she appears to have acquired from a bush.
“I think it’s good that Parker handed Ruby to him right away,” Carlos says.
“She’s always a good icebreaker,” TK agrees. “It’s just, Jonah went all shy around the hospital staff yesterday. I thought we might be having a setback. Again.”
“They were all strangers. And yesterday was overwhelming for everybody.”
TK shakes his head. “Yeah. I mean – God. When I heard your voice on the phone–”
“Sorry I scared you.”
“No, don’t be sorry,” TK says quickly, turning back to him. There’s a guilt in making Carlos feel guilty. He didn’t mean to. But it was scary. He was scared. Carlos’ voice was shaking. Maybe he was crying, or on the verge of it. He truly believed Sam was going to die.
“I just called you right away,” Carlos tells him, “I should have waited and calmed down.”
“Baby, it’s okay. I always want you to call me whenever you need to, you know that.”
Carlos leaves the casserole prep, wandering over to join TK by the sink. TK faces the window again, Carlos wrapping his arms around his waist from behind. TK smiles at the sensation of Carlos’ lightly stubbled face pressing into his neck. Normally, he’d pull Carlos’ arms even tighter around him or rub his forearms soothingly, but those beautiful arms of his are wounded and bandaged, so he goes a little limp and just lets Carlos hold him as he will.
“Carlos?”
“Hm?”
“Why didn’t you want to go in and see Sam yesterday?”
“I didn’t want to intrude.”
“But you always intrude. You both do. When you were in the hospital because of the nunchuks thing, he walked in on us kissing and sat down like he owned the place.”
Carlos laughs helplessly, remembering the way Sam removed his hat, sat down with a sigh, and drolly said, “Don’t mind me, boys.”
“That was a lot different.”
“Or the school bus hijacking,” TK goes on, “If anything, that was more serious, right? You barely left his side – not even when Ash and the kids were there.”
“That was different too!” Carlos protests.
“Why? How?”
“Because that wasn’t my–” he shuts his mouth.
“Your what? Your fault?”
TK gives Carlos a moment to answer.
When he doesn’t, TK says, “Okay – that’s enough,” and twists around in Carlos’ arms so they’re eye-to-eye. “Babe, please. What the hell actually happened yesterday?”
“You know what happened.”
TK shakes his head in protest. “I know that Sam got stabbed when you guys busted a money laundering scheme. I know that you have knife wounds all over you. I know that there are eight guys in custody. But that’s it.”
Carlos shrugs. “That is it.”
“Usually, yes. But this time it’s different and don’t try and tell me it’s not. I can see it in your eyes, husband.” TK pokes Carlos right in the pec. “You’re blaming yourself for whatever went down, and I want to know why. Come on.”
Carlos lets go of TK with an uppity grunt and attends to the sink himself. He runs the faucet, selects a potato from a paper bag. Washing mud from the potato’s buff skin, he says, “Alright. You know the company Clowns 4 Hire?”
“No?” TK replies with a surprised chuckle. “Oh, wait. Maybe I do.”
“Judd and Grace used them for one of Charlie’s parties.”
“That was a magician, though.”
“They don’t just do clowns,” Carlos says knowledgeably. “For one thing, they were a front. Money laundering. Illegal gambling. Even weapons trade at one point. But we think they got cold feet – there just wasn’t enough evidence for that one.”
“Clowns 4 Hire,” TK repeats, taking it all in. “That’s kinda genius for a front. You’d never expect it.”
“They’ve been operating for a long time under everyone’s noses. It came onto our radar because a former employee sang like a canary when he was arrested for something else.” Carlos turns the faucet off and sighs heavily, picks up the vegetable peeler. “So, Chief McIntyre blew a gasket over it. Because it’s basically a failure of intelligence, surveillance, you name it. We should have gotten wind long ago. All of that.”
“He was embarrassed?” TK offers.
“Exactly.” Carlos begins to peel the potato skin in a perfect gold spiral, even with the restricting bandages affecting his usual flow. “So, in a kind of knee-jerk way, he put me and Sam on it. Ordinarily, with these things, we figure out a plan, scope the place out, go undercover together and have each other’s backs all the way, you know? But McIntyre wanted to call the shots; said only one of us goes in, the other surveils. Which meant me and Sam ended up arguing over who had to be the clown. It came down to rock, paper, scissors.”
“Get out!” TK laughs, “And you won with your rock?”
“Actually, no.”
“No? You’re always rock,” TK tells him with a flirtatious twinkle.
“I was rock.”
“I knew it,” TK says, giving him a light hump.
“But Sam was paper. He got me. Except…I argued my way out of it.”
TK gasps playfully. “You broke the sanctity of rock, paper, scissors?”
“Yes.” Carlos huffs, indignant. “On the basis that when we were undercover at the casino, he got to be a dealer in a tuxedo and I was a slot machine attendant being literally spat on.”
“God, Carlos. Your life.” TK shakes his head, wandering to the stove to check on the parboiling carrots and rutabaga. They bought the rutabaga because it was on its own in the store among a tray of eggplant, and Jonah felt sorry for it.
“We took our situation to chief McIntyre,” Carlos continues, “He agreed with me. He said I didn’t have the physique of a birthday clown.”
He looks down at his broad and muscular frame.
“So, we sent Sam in. He spent weeks cultivating his life as a clown, being hired out to birthday parties. He was pretty good at it.”
“I can imagine it perfectly,” TK says, momentarily distracted by a rumble of thunder overhead.
“But then we busted them, and all hell let loose.” Carlos throws the vegetable peeler into the sink and spins on his heel.
“Damn it, TK,” he cries, “It should have been me in that clown suit!”
“Oh, babe.”
Carlos slumps against the worktop, looking mournfully at his bandaged arms. “It should have been me.”
“No. Come here.”
Carlos sidles away from him. “I’m okay.”
“Baby.”
“I don’t deserve a fucking–” TK grabs him into a hug “–Hug,” Carlos whimpers against his shoulder.
“Hey, hey,” TK hushes, “It’s not your fault.”
“I could have lost Sam.”
“But you didn’t,” TK says, “And things would have played out differently if you were with the clowns instead. They still would have lost their shit, but maybe you’d have been standing at a different angle for the knife. Sam is going to be fine. And you’re fine.” He takes Carlos’ face in his hands but doesn’t squish his cheeks, careful with the wound beneath his beautiful eye. “Sam will want to see you, okay? Maybe tomorrow.”
Carlos nods against TK’s hands. “I love you,” he whispers.
“I love you too.” TK leans in and kisses him. “And everything is going to be alright.”
Carlos takes a deep, tearful breath and lets go of TK to resume potato peeling duty. Hugs and kisses from his husband are his favorite thing in the world, but they are not conducive to making a casserole from scratch for a family in need of a pick-me-up.
“Wait–” Carlos says, freezing on the spot with the vegetable peeler in hand. “Where’d they go?”
Out in the yard, the rain comes down thick, and the wind alone moves the swing back and forth.
TK peers out of the window too. No Jonah, no Ruby. No sound of them either, running, splashing, barking – laughing. Nothing at all. Maybe he’s gone to clamber around the leafy borders with Ruby at his heel, the greenery thick enough to obscure them.
TK jogs to the back door and into the yard. “Jonah?”
Carlos joins him a second later. Without speaking, they hurry together around to the right side of the house, out of breath like they’ve already run a mile. No Jonah, no Ruby.
“They’re not here,” TK says, clutching at Carlos’ t-shirt as they turn and run back the other way.
“They have to be!” Carlos yells, spinning around as they go, “Jonah! Jonah, answer me!”
The sky flashes with a blue-white jagged streak of lightning, a mighty thunderclap following within seconds.
This isn’t happening.
This can’t be real.
He was here just moments ago.
TK stops, his legs giving out, his heart pounding like a too-big thing in his tightening chest. The little boy who he spends every waking second thinking about – he doesn’t know where he is.
He’s always known where Jonah is.
Carlos has always known.
But right now, they don’t.
They don’t know where Jonah is and the sky is sinking, the ground is rising, and TK is being crushed between both like he’s in a garbage compactor, which is exactly where he belongs.
But somehow, he’s moving again, like he’s floating above the ground, Carlos clinging to his arm. They’re heading towards a noise.
“He must be out the front,” Carlos says. His voice sounds like it’s coming from another room.
Dizzily, TK takes in the sight of the wooden access gate on its latch, banging in the wind. Carlos practically rips it off its hinges as he runs through.
“Jonah!” he screams, “Jonah Morgan Strand-Reyes, come here right now!”
In the four years since they adopted Jonah, Carlos has only full-named him two other times. Usually, when he’s got himself into a pickle, he’s Jonah Morgan, with Morgan said in a tone that suggests Papa Carlos is not going to tell him twice. Both times the full naming happened were thanks to Logan Wayne, of course, who since the Gymboree days has followed Jonah around like a bad smell. Last year, TK and Carlos were disagreeing over whether Jonah should switch schools because of Logan, and Jonah became so upset he yelled, “Leave me the shit alone!”
“Jonah Morgan Strand-Reyes! We do not use that language!” Carlos said, even though Jonah had almost-certainly heard Carlos say shit two evenings prior because he dropped a carton of noodles.
The year before, when Jonah was a preschooler, Logan kept grabbing hold of Jonah’s nose during the Easter recital to make his singing voice come out like a kazoo. The next day, Jonah retaliated by putting a sharp rock he’d found at recess on Logan’s chair. Logan sat on the rock and screamed, which was the intended effect, but Lacey Roberts who sits next to Logan and has a stupid crush finked on Jonah immediately. Carlos did the pick up, which meant being confronted again by a furious Kimberly Wayne. On the solemn walk to the car, Carlos gently asked Jonah for his side of the story, at which Jonah shrieked, in front of everyone in the parking lot: “Papa! Shut up!”
It was one of the worst moments of Carlos’ life, Jonah’s anger and let-downness being turned on him like that.
“Jonah Morgan–” Carlos swallowed, the rest of it a pained whisper, “–Strand-Reyes…we do not say shut up to each other…”
Jonah burst into fresh tears, covering his face like he couldn’t bear to look at Carlos or be looked at in return.
Carlos got down on his knees and took Jonah into his arms. “Mijo.”
“I’m sorry!” Jonah wailed.
“I know. It’s going to be okay,” Carlos soothed, “Let’s talk it out over a milkshake?”
Jonah nodded, pulling away from him, all tears and red eyes and snot and drool. “Can I have mint chocolate?”
“Yes, mijo,” Carlos kissed his cheek and picked him up, and Jonah let himself be carried in front of everyone, even in front of Logan.
One of the worst moments of Carlos’ life? He would give anything to go back to it now as he and TK stumble up and down Monterosa Drive crying out for Jonah and Ruby.
“Have you seen a little boy in a yellow raincoat?” they ask every passerby, “And a little dog – a little black spaniel?”
Everybody tells them no. Everybody is rushing to get out of the rain.
Another thunderbolt floods out the sky with whiteness and an ear-splitting crack.
“He just isn’t anywhere!” TK shouts a mere inch from Carlos, like if he doesn’t shout, his voice will be lost to the rain.
“I’m calling it in,” Carlos says, dragging his phone out of his pocket. He swipes through his contacts until he lands on Detective Sarina Washington, Missing Persons Unit, on speed dial.
“Ranger Reyes,” she answers breezily after three rings, “How are you doing? It’s been a while.”
“Detective Washington, my kid and the dog we’re dog-sitting are missing,” he tells her, “Send everything you’ve got.”