Riders (Riders, #1)(39)

Everyone started goofing off but I watched Mrs. A because she was acting strange. She had turned her back to us—and she never did that. Her head was bowed and I could tell she’d started crying because her back was jiggling. She hung up, wiped her eyes with a tissue, and sat back down.

She kept reading to us with the tissue in her hand. Her grip on the book was tight and her voice sounded too high.

I’d stopped wiggling.

Anna and I always downplayed our twinness at that age, but I crawled next to her and sat close enough that our arms were touching. I didn’t know what was happening but I knew I should be next to her.

Before Mrs. A finished the book, my dad marched into the classroom. He picked Anna up like she was a baby, grabbed my hand, and took us straight home.

Anna and I were sent to my room to play, but we didn’t. I stared at my Star Wars Legos and listened. The television was on in the living room. My dad was on the phone. Something bad was happening in New York—New York, which I felt close to because that was where I always sat on the map.

Anna had colored half a tree then given up, pushing the paper aside. She kept telling me she was scared and I kept telling her not to be scared because Anna scared made me anxious, and sometimes it even made me mean.

The door swung open and my mom was there, checking on us.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Anna asked.

Mom looked like she’d been crying, but she said, “Nothing, sweetie.”

“Who is Dad talking to?” I asked. I knew she’d protect us from whatever was happening, so I went straight for facts. If I gathered enough facts I could figure it out on my own.

“Some friends of his from work.”

“Uncle Jack?” I asked. Jack wasn’t an uncle but we called him that. He was my dad’s foreman in the roofing business.

“No, honey. From the Army. His old work.”

It was September 11, 2001, and the call he’d made was to his commanding officer in the Reserve. I’d figure that out later.

And I’d learn that he’d done ROTC through college, then served with the Fifth Special Forces Group in Desert Storm. I’d learn that his shoulder injury had come from shrapnel embedded in his rotator cuff. I’d learn, just from watching him, from listening to him talk to his buddies, about Ranger School. Jump school. The Ranger Battalions. The Scroll. The Creed. That Rangers lead the way.

But I didn’t know any of that then. I knew my dad as a roofer. A fisherman. A lover of Pearl Jam and Giants baseball. He was the guy who launched me over the waves on the beach, and who bench-pressed Anna because it made her giggle in a way that nothing else did. He was my mom’s best friend, with some additional elements like kissing that seemed pretty gross because, you know, I was six. But I learned something new about him that morning.

I learned that when bad things happened, my dad stepped forward first.

I learned he was a hero. A real one.

And that I wanted to be like him.

So much. I can’t even tell you how much.

Maybe I wanted baseball because of that. If I played ball then I wouldn’t have to find out if I was made of the same stuff as him. Because what if I wasn’t? What if I had nothing great or worthy inside me? Nothing to offer the world?

Forget the world. I couldn’t imagine disappointing him.

That would have been the worst.

But then he died and that redefined what I considered The Worst.

The Worst was watching the pencil and paper fall out of his hands as he stood on a roof. The pencil roll into the gutter. My dad fall forward and roll too—and then keep going.

He fell through the air and landed on the red brick walkway a few feet from the front door.

When I reached him, he was on his side.

One cheek pressed to the bricks, like it was a pillow.

His eyes were open but there was blood pooling in his ear.

He was so strong, my dad. My height, but much bigger than me. But he looked small to me half on that walkway, half on the grass. Then again, I’d never stood over him like that. I’d never been on my feet, looking down at my dad lying on the ground.

I just had never seen that.

The stroke was what had probably killed him, the doctors told us later. But it’s the fall that I remember. Every little piece of it. The pencil. The pad. The last look he gave me. The blood welling up in his ear. The fact that I stood there holding a cell phone while blood spilled down his cheek. The fact that my skin felt cool because I’d been blasting the AC in the truck on that hot, hot day. The fact that he looked small to me, and I hated that new perspective on him. The fact that I hadn’t been with him on the roof, and that if I had, I could’ve caught him and kept him from falling.

The fact that I didn’t think the doctors had told me the truth, so.

I could’ve saved him.





CHAPTER 23

“Gideon. Gideon, wake up.”

I lurched out of a dead sleep and looked around. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t in the barracks at Fort Benning. I couldn’t figure out why I was in my Jeep at night with a girl. And asleep. Then everything came back in a flash—the cuff, Daryn. Being War. The Kindred.

Daryn was leaning over the center console, watching me. She blinked, her eyelashes a pale flutter in the dimness. “We’re here.”

I sat up and scrubbed a hand over my face, trying to get some brainpower going. “Where’s here?” I asked.