Chapter 50

My conversation with Natalie was still on my mind when I woke up the next morning. Despite how quick I’d been to dismiss it the night before, I couldn’t stop thinking about the parallel universe she had described, the one in which I was an able-bodied pilot who had met and married her instead of Kristin.

What would that have been like? I wondered while we went through my morning routine. It was a long day, meaning we had to do my bowel program on top of everything else. It wouldn’t have been like this – that’s for sure, I thought bitterly as I lay on my left side on the bed, waiting for Natalie to finish the prepwork.

It was her first time doing my program without Dawn around to help, and I could tell she was a little nervous. Her voice sounded higher-pitched than usual as she talked through each step, narrating what she was doing. “Okay, babe… I’m gonna insert the suppository now,” she said, standing behind me where I couldn’t see her.

“Wait, you remembered the lube, right?”

“Oh, shoot! I knew I would forget something!”

I cringed. “Jeez, Nat! Just ‘cause I can’t feel it doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.”

I was just teasing her, trying to ease the tension, but my response only seemed to make her more flustered. “I’m sorry!” she squeaked. “Hang on…” As she fumbled with the tube of lubricant, it fell from her hands, hitting the hardwood floor with a loud clatter. “Ugh!” I could hear the frustration in her voice as she bent down to retrieve it.

“Babe. C’mere a sec.” I reached out and patted the opposite side of the bed. “Over here, please, so I can see you.”

With a sigh, Natalie walked around to the other side of the bed. “What?” she said curtly. Her face was bright red; she looked like she was about ready to cry.

I felt a stab of regret, suddenly wishing I hadn’t put her in such an awkward position. But there was no way to take it back now. It was just the two of us here in Nashville, two hundred miles from home and the safety net Dawn’s presence had provided. The only other person nearby who knew how to do my program was Nick, but the last thing I wanted to do was call him to come over and finish it for me. I was going to have to put my faith in Natalie and hope she could handle it by herself without spiraling into a full-blown panic.

“Look at me.” I waited until she’d locked eyes with me to continue. “You can do this. Just take a breath. It’ll go a lot better if we’re both calm and relaxed.”

She nodded. “I know. I just don’t wanna do something wrong and end up hurting you. Dawn made this seem so simple, but I almost messed up already.”

“I thought we weren’t gonna talk about Dawn,” I said, shooting her a devilish grin.

The corners of her mouth twitched. “That was last night. Today’s a new day. I’m half-tempted to FaceTime her right now and have her talk me through it again.”

“You don’t need to call Dawn. You were doing fine before,” I told her. “I was just giving you a hard time about forgetting the lube. You’re not gonna hurt me. You’ve got this, babe.”

Natalie sucked in a shaky breath, her shoulders rising and falling as she released it with a sigh. “I’ve got this,” I heard her repeat to herself as she returned to the other side of the bed. “All right. Let’s try this again.”

Listening to her little pep talk took me back to the early days after my accident, when I was the one learning about bowel programs and all the other personal care procedures that had since become a routine part of my life. Over the last few years, I’d grown accustomed to accepting help from caregivers, but as a newly-injured quadriplegic, I had been horrified by the prospect of having other people help me bathe and go to the bathroom.

Clearing my throat, I said conversationally, “You know, when I was in the hospital and the nurses would come in to help me with this kinda stuff, I would do whatever I could to disassociate from what they were doing to me. I would put on my headphones and play music to block out the sound, then close my eyes and picture myself someplace else.”

“Where would you go?” Natalie asked quietly. She had quit her running commentary, but I heard the soft click of her opening the cap on the tube of lubricant.

I kept talking, trying to take both our minds off what was happening back there. “Well, during the bed baths, I liked to imagine I was floating in the middle of a lake. It worked with the feeling of being wet, ya know?” I laughed. “But, for bowel programs, I’d pretend I was lying on a bearskin rug in front of the fireplace at a cabin in the mountains after a long day of skiing.”

“Really?” Natalie laughed, too. “That’s, like, oddly specific, yet surprisingly… romantic?”

I felt my face redden as I realized the bearskin rug made it sound more like some sort of sexual fantasy than a form of escapism. “I wasn’t trying to be romantic. I know it probably sounds weird, but it helped me relax and get past the embarrassment,” I explained. “Maybe you’d feel more confident if you did a little mental role-playing… pretend you’re a nurse like you thought about becoming.”

“Well, I do kinda feel like one when I’m wearing these,” she admitted, snapping the wrist of one of her latex gloves. “I never knew you were into role-playing – or skiing, for that matter.”

“I used to love skiing,” I said, swallowing the hard lump that had risen in my throat. “Kristin and I took a ski trip just about every year.”

“I’ve only been once. I was pretty bad at it,” Natalie said with a giggle, “but if it’s something you’re passionate about, I’d be willing to give it another try.”

I shrugged. “What’s the point? I wouldn’t be able to do it now.”

“Don’t they have adaptive skiing?”

“I dunno, maybe… but even if they do, it wouldn’t be the same as before.”

“Better than nothing, though. We should look into it!” she said as she stripped off her gloves, balling them up before she tossed them into the trash can. “I mean, you had fun horseback riding, right? And hiking in your all-terrain chair?”

“Yeah, that’s true,” I said, perking up a little as I remembered how much I had enjoyed both activities. “I guess it would be worth trying sometime.”

“That’s the spirit.” She turned back to smile at me before she went into the bathroom to wash her hands. “All right… time to get up,” she said when she returned, looking much more at ease. She helped me transfer from the bed to my shower chair, which she pushed into the bathroom and positioned over the toilet.

“Thanks, babe,” I said, flashing her an appreciative smile. “Will you bring me my phone?”

“Sure… here you go,” she replied, placing it in my hand.

I grimaced when I saw what time it was. We were already running late; I was supposed to meet Nick and Howie at the studio in just over an hour. “I think we’d better skip the shower this morning,” I told Natalie. “I mean, I already took a bath last night, and that will save us some time.”

“Whatever you wanna do,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll be in the other room. Call me when you’re ready for me.”

“‘Kay… thanks.” I thought about everything else I had to do to get ready for the day: get dressed, brush my teeth, eat breakfast, take my morning meds, and pack the bag that contained my bladder care supplies. Even without showering, I would never make it to the studio on time. Hey, I’m probably gonna be late, I texted both of my bandmates. Moving slow this morning.

No problem, Howie texted back, to which Nick added, Take your time.

But I still felt bad for making them wait for me. The most frustrating part was knowing there was nothing I could do to speed up the process. I was at the mercy of a body I had no control over and a girlfriend who wasn’t accustomed to doing my full morning routine in an unfamiliar place. While Natalie puttered around the hotel room, picking up and getting herself ready, I sat on the commode, waiting impatiently for the medication she’d given me to get things moving.

As I waited, my mind wandered back to our conversation from the night before. Wistfully, I contemplated how differently the day might have begun if I wasn’t disabled. Without a bowel program to worry about, Natalie and I would have slept in longer. We might have fooled around in bed before breakfast or taken a shower together purely for the fun of it, not because I needed help washing parts of my body. Afterwards, I would have thrown on some clothes, brushed my teeth, kissed her goodbye, and walked out the door without a care in the world. But that wasn’t the world I lived in, and imagining that it was only made my reality seem more depressing.

With a sigh, I pulled up the notes app on my phone and tried to put my thoughts into words.

Something that you said got into my head.
Here I am, falling from the edge.

I hummed to myself, finding a tune for the pair of lyrics I’d come up with. It wasn’t much, but I figured if I arrived at the studio with a fresh idea for a song, it would make up for being late.

“What are you singing?” I looked up to see Natalie leaning in the doorway, a little smile playing on her lips.

I felt my face flush; I hadn’t realized she could hear me. “Nothing. Well, it may be a new song eventually, but it’s not enough to qualify as one yet.”

“I see. And how many other songs have you written on the toilet?” she asked, her eyes twinkling with amusement.

Chuckling, I shook my head. “None that I can recall, but I’ve never really tried before today – which, now that I think about it, seems like a wasted opportunity. I mean, I have plenty of time to sit here and brainstorm while I’m taking a…” I trailed off, reminding myself that I was talking to my girlfriend, not one of the guys. No need to be crude.

Natalie laughed. “True. But when fans ask where you come up with your ideas, you might wanna keep that part to yourself.”

***

“Hey, y’all… sorry I’m late,” I said when I finally rolled into the studio, where Nick and Howie were already hard at work with Dan Muckala, one of the producers we’d worked with on previous albums.

“I can see some things haven’t changed,” Dan said, smiling as he stood up to shake my hand. “Punctuality never was your strong suit.”

“Yeah, not so much,” I admitted, flashing him a sheepish grin as I held out my hand for a fist bump instead. “Pound it, brother.”

He brushed his knuckles against mine, then patted me on the back. “You look great, man. How have you been?”

“Not bad. Pretty good, actually.”

“In case you hadn’t heard, Kevin’s got a girlfriend,” Nick said with a grin. “That’s the real reason you were late, right, bro? You were probably up all night, doing the nasty with Natalie.”

I rolled my eyes, smiling as I shook my head. “Whatever you wanna believe, Nickolas.” I didn’t bother to set him straight, knowing he was just messing with me anyway.

“Well, hey, congratulations, Kevin. I’m happy for you,” Dan said, but I detected a hint of sympathy hidden behind his smile. It was the same bittersweet smile everyone gave me when they heard I was dating again, the smile that said, Good for you. I’m glad you’re finally moving on, while secretly wondering what my dead wife would think if she could see me with another woman. It gave me the impression that while people wanted me to move on with my life and not be sad anymore, they expected me to remain a widower in mourning for the rest of my life. Their mixed messages always made me second-guess myself.

“Thanks.” Clearing my throat, I quickly changed the conversation. “So, how’d it go yesterday? Did you get a lot done without me?”

Dan sat down at his keyboard to play the melodies he’d composed as Nick and Howie took turns singing some of the lyrics they’d co-written. My favorite was a break-up song Nick had started working on with Dan, which was as catchy as it was depressing.

“It happened in the blink, blink, blink of an eye. I guess it was the wrong, wrong side of goodbye. You caught me on the blind, blind… blind side. You didn’t even stop once to think twice,” Nick sang, his voice rising and falling back into his lower register. “Drove through the pouring rain, weaved in and out of pain, wanted to turn around… Wish I’d’ve done it now…”

“Damn, brother,” I said when he finished with the chorus. “Lauren didn’t dump you since I saw you last, did she?”

Nick laughed. “Nah, we’re good. So, what do you think?”

“I love it,” I replied, smiling at him. “I wanna hear the rest.”

“That’s all we have so far,” he said with a shrug. “It still needs a second verse and a bridge. Maybe you can help us come up with something.”

“Yeah, of course!” I cleared my throat. “Actually, I thought of a couple song ideas, too.”

“Yeah? Let’s hear ‘em!”

“Well, first of all, I was thinking it would be nice to include some kind of a tribute song to the fans on this album. You know, like another ‘Larger Than Life’ or ‘Everyone’ – something to show our gratitude to them for sticking with us as long as they have.”

“Almost twenty years,” Howie added. “That’s a great idea, bro.”

Nick nodded. “Absolutely.”

Encouraged by their enthusiasm, I went on. “I also wrote a little something this morning. It’s not much, but…” I showed them the lyrics I’d saved on my phone. “Nat and I had this whole conversation last night about parallel universes and alternate timelines, speculating on how our lives would have turned out if we’d done things differently. It made me kinda sad, you know, imagining what could have been.” I paused, swallowing hard. “Of course, it doesn’t do me any good to keep dwelling on mistakes I’ve made in the past. I tried to tell her that, but then, today, we were talking about this visualization technique I would use when I was in the hospital, where I would close my eyes and pretend to be someplace else – sorta like mental role-playing.”

“Ooh, role-playing… kinky!” Nick said, snickering. It was like he’d completely missed the point of what I was trying to explain. Had he even been listening?

“Never mind,” I muttered, shaking my head. “I’m just rambling here.”

“No, we wanna hear more about your idea, Kev,” Howie said kindly. He narrowed his eyes at Nick. “Never mind him.”

I flashed him a grateful smile. “Well, so, anyway, I was thinking the song could be about escapism – running away from the real world and imagining yourself somewhere else with the one you love.”

“That sounds romantic.” Howie smiled back at me. “So, it’s not really about the kinky kind of role-playing,” he said, giving Nick another look, “but more like make believe.”

“Yeah… make believe,” I repeated, nodding as the wheels in my head began turning again. “I like that.”

After our brainstorming session, the guys and I got to work. By the end of the day, I had helped Nick come up with another verse and bridge for his track, “Light On,” and he and Howie had helped me turn my two lines into an entire song.

“Something that you said got into my head. Here I am, falling from the edge,” Howie sang as Dan accompanied him with a series of chords on the keyboard. “Waiting for the day I can run away… with you. With you…”

“Like angels on fire, we burn the sky.” As Nick’s powerful voice took over the pre-chorus, I pictured myself at the controls of a small plane with Natalie sitting next to me in the cockpit, the two of us soaring off into the sunset together. “One kiss and we say goodbye…”

“If we could only make believe… You and me together.” I led the chorus while Nick and Howie added the harmony. “We could be king and queen… Rule another world forever. We’d set our course to live or die. Across the universe, I’d be by your side… if we could only believe…”

My late night conversations in bed with Natalie had inspired the lyrics I’d contributed. But when I began the second verse, my late wife was the one on my mind.

“Catch another breath; I got nothing left.
This love I have is pulling me to death.
Waiting for the night I can feel alive… with you…”

I thought about the recurring dreams I’d had ever since Kristin’s death, dreams in which the two of us were dancing. Lying in bed at night, I would look forward to falling asleep because it was the only way I could still see her face, hear her voice, and feel her body. It was the only time I could feel my own body – my old body, unbroken and whole. Sleep had become its own form of escape for me.

“Like angels on fire, we burn the sky. One kiss and we say goodbye…” As Nick repeated the pre-chorus, I couldn’t help but wonder which woman I’d actually written this song about: Natalie… or Kristin?

***

“Been down the back roads, where the girls are homegrown. That Southern thang, so sexy how they talk slow…”

I listened with amazement to the recording, hardly recognizing the voice coming out of the speakers as my own.

“And somethin’ happens in the woods of Kentucky, drinkin’ moonshine, bonfire, pour the gasoline…”

Nick and Howie burst out laughing. They’d both had huge smiles on their faces the whole time I was in the sound booth, and now, hearing my voice set to the demo music our producer, Dan, had put together, I knew why. Dan had encouraged me to lay my Southern drawl on as thick as I could during the recording process the previous day. “Summon your inner hillbilly,” he’d said with a grin. I’d felt ridiculous singing that way, but, somehow, it worked.

“That sounds fuckin’ awesome, dawg,” Nick said, holding out his hand for a fist bump. I felt a surge of pride as I pounded his knuckles. In my six-year absence from the group, Nick had become a creative force. His praise meant the world to me.

“Wait…” Sitting next to them on the sofa, Natalie gave me a look of wide-eyed astonishment. “Was that you?!”

“You bet your britches it was,” I replied, shooting her a big grin. “Did you forget you were dating a country boy?”

“I guess I must have. And here I thought I was just dating a Backstreet Boy,” she said, shaking her head. “But this doesn’t sound like a typical Backstreet Boys song.”

“Doesn’t it?” I asked as Nick’s voice came in on the chorus.

“I’ve been all around, all around the world,
Every single part, every part of the world,
Touching down in Rio, Monaco, L.A., Tokyo,
Oh, but it all just feels like home…”

“Well, now it does,” she admitted with a smile. “I guess it just needed more Nick.”

I tried not to take offense to that, knowing Howie’s and my voices weren’t as widely recognizable as the other three. “This is the new fan anthem we wrote the other day,” I told her. “Do you like it?”

“I don’t like it; I love it! It’s real catchy.” She bobbed her head to the beat as we listened to the second verse. “And clever, too. Kudos to whoever helped y’all come up with all the rhyming city names,” she added with a wink when we reached the bridge.

“Beijing, Stockholm, Buenos Aires to tango,
Moscow, Cape Town showed us how to get down,
London, Berlin, this is where it all began.
San Juan, Sydney, can’t forget the NYC…”

I laughed, remembering how I had called her earlier that week while we were brainstorming a list of world cities to include in the song. She had taken a break from Christmas shopping to help us put pairs of rhyming places together. In return, I’d asked Nick and Howie for permission to invite her to the studio on the last day of our writing retreat to hear a sneak peek of some of the songs we had started recording.

“Of course, these are just demos,” I explained before we played any of the tracks Dan had put together. “They’ll sound better once AJ and Brian have recorded their parts and they’ve been mastered by the sound engineer.”

“Oh, I know,” Natalie said. “I’m not here to judge.”

But her opinion mattered to me, not only because she was my girlfriend but because she was the target demographic we were trying to reach. Although we had fans of all ages and genders, the bulk of our fan base was made up of older millennial women, who had been teenage girls at the peak of our popularity and were now in their twenties and thirties. They had grown up since Millennium, so our sound needed to grow and mature, too. I hoped our new material would appeal to adults whose taste in music had changed since their teens.

“So, what do you think?” I asked once we’d finished playing the new songs for her.

Natalie beamed. “They’re all so good, babe!” she gushed. Getting up from the sofa, she threw her arms around me and gave me a kiss on the lips. “I’m so proud of you!”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling up at her as she let go of me.

Behind her, I saw Nick and Howie exchange glances, their eyebrows raised. “Hey, where’s my kiss?” I heard Howie ask jokingly.

“Aww, Howie, I’m so proud of you!” Nick replied in a high-pitched drawl, planting a big, wet kiss on Howie’s forehead. Howie made a face as he wiped away Nick’s slobber.

Natalie laughed. “I’m proud of all of you,” she amended. “This album is gonna be great! I can’t wait to hear the whole thing when it’s finished.”

“Here’s hoping that happens in the new year,” I said as Nick and Howie nodded. We had already written and recorded so many new songs that I knew it would be hard to narrow them down.

But that would have to wait until after the holidays. Between buying a house, working on the album, filming for the documentary, and promoting our new single, the past two months had been incredibly busy for me. I’d lost count of how many times I had flown back and forth across the country. Thankfully, we only had one more television appearance booked to perform “It’s Christmas Time Again,” and then we would take a few weeks off to spend time at home with our families.

“See you in New York next week, buddy,” Howie said, hugging me goodbye before I left the studio later that morning. We had agreed to go in early and wrap up by ten since Howie had a noon flight to catch, and Natalie and I had a long drive ahead of us. It had been a productive week in Nashville, but I couldn’t wait to get home.

The drive back to Lexington went much more smoothly than the drive down. Even after stopping halfway to eat lunch and use the restroom, we still made it to my house by two.

“Will you text Dawn and tell her we’re here?” I asked Natalie as we passed through the gate at the bottom of the driveway.

“Sure,” she replied, taking her phone out of her purse.

I had hoped Dawn would be waiting when we pulled up to the house, ready to help Natalie bring our bags in or at least hold the door open for us, but she was nowhere to be seen. Natalie unloaded all the luggage by herself, leaving it in a pile on the porch while I used my knuckle to punch in the code on the electronic door lock. It took me a couple of tries to enter it correctly, but, finally, I heard the latch disengage with a click.

“Dawn?” I called as I opened the door and went inside. “We’re home!”

“Kevin!” Dawn walked out of the living room, looking startled to see us. “I’m sorry; I didn’t even hear you pull up!”

“That’s okay. We-” I stopped mid-sentence as I took a second look at her, noticing for the first time her blotchy face and red, puffy eyes. “Are you all right? What’s wrong??

“I can’t stop watching the news coverage,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s so horrific, but I haven’t been able to change the channel.”

I stared at her in confusion, my concern intensifying into a sense of dread and fear. “Did something happen?”

Her miserable eyes met mine. “You haven’t heard, have you? About the school shooting? At the elementary school?”

My first thought was of my son. “What?!” I let out a strangled cry as my heart leapt into my throat. My body slumped forward, sagging in my chair. If it wasn’t for my seatbelt, I probably would have fallen right onto the floor.

“You don’t mean Mason’s school, do you?” I heard Natalie ask and felt her hand on my shoulder, gently pulling me back into an upright position. She must have been thinking the same thing I was.

“Oh, god, no!” Dawn said quickly, the color draining from her face. “Not Mason’s school. Some school in Connecticut… Sandy Hook Elementary. A gunman opened fire there this morning and killed twenty-some people, including kids.”

“Jesus…” The surge of relief I’d felt upon realizing she wasn’t talking about a local event was short-lived. No matter where it had happened, the thought of students my son’s age being subjected to such a violent act at their school was horrifying.

Natalie and I followed Dawn back into the living room, where the TV was tuned to special live coverage. We watched in stunned silence, listening to a reporter talk over aerial footage of the school, which was still surrounded by emergency vehicles. Tears filled my eyes as still photos flashed across the screen, showing teachers leading lines of tearful students to safety and parents reuniting with their children at a nearby firehouse. I could only imagine the range of emotions they must have experienced over the past few hours. Panic… fear… relief… grief…

Swallowing hard, I took a swipe at my eyes, wiping away tears as I looked at the time on the mantel clock. It was two-thirty, which meant Mason’s school would be letting out in five minutes. I cleared my throat. “I’m gonna go wait for Mason’s bus.”

“It won’t be here for another half hour,” Dawn reminded me. Every weekday, she walked to the bottom of the driveway with me a few minutes before three to meet the schoolbus when it dropped off Mason. She claimed it counted as her daily exercise, but I knew the main reason she did it was to ensure I made it there and back safely.

“I know, but I can’t watch any more of this right now.” Without another word, I turned away from the TV and wheeled myself out of the living room.

“Kevin, wait!” Natalie called as she rushed after me. “Don’t forget your coat. It’s cold out there.”

I nodded, allowing her to help me put on a heavier jacket over the Wildcats hoodie I was wearing. She pulled a stocking hat down over my head, then put my hood up over it. “There,” she said, tugging on the drawstrings to tighten the hood around my face. “How’s that feel?”

“Fine.”

“Can I come with you?” she asked as she opened the front door for me.

“Sure, if you want,” I said with a shrug.

Both Natalie and Dawn followed me down the tree-lined driveway that day. It was a long trek, so I took my time, moving more slowly than I typically did. Each push took all the strength I possessed, for my arms felt as heavy as my heart. But I didn’t ask for help, reminding myself that the physical pain I felt was nothing compared to the emotional agony those poor parents in Connecticut were experiencing. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than losing a child.

“So, how was your trip?” Dawn asked in a hollow voice as we waited for the bus.

“It was good.” I didn’t elaborate much; making music seemed so trivial compared to what we had just watched on TV.

“We almost called you Tuesday morning,” Natalie told her, cracking a sheepish smile. “I may have had a slight freakout over doing Kevin’s program for the first time by myself… but he talked me down from the ledge, and I figured it out. It went a lot better yesterday.”

“Glad to hear it,” Dawn said, managing a tiny smile in return. “I knew you could handle it. But I don’t mind helping when you’re here – whatever makes you and Kevin most comfortable.”

Listening to the two of them talk, I couldn’t believe how much time and energy I had wasted worrying about Natalie doing my bowel programs. It didn’t matter to me anymore. Nothing did, except seeing my son step off that school bus. At that moment, he was the only thing on my mind.

Finally, the big, yellow bus rumbled down the two-lane road towards us, right on time. I breathed a sigh of relief as it slowed to a stop in front of my driveway, its lights flashing red as its doors opened. But I couldn’t fully relax until I saw Mason clamber down the steps.

“Daddy!” he cried, his eyes lighting up when he saw me waiting for him. He leaped off the bottom step and bounded toward me, his bookbag bouncing on his back. Of course, he had no clue what had happened in Connecticut, and I wasn’t about to tell him.

I forced myself to smile, hoping my happy face would hide the sadness I felt inside. “Hey, buddy!” I called back, opening my arms wide. As he climbed into my lap, I wrapped them around his tiny body, hugging him as tightly as I could. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you, too, Dad,” came his muffled reply as he clung to my chest, his arms around my neck. Of course, I had called him every night from Nashville, but hearing his voice and seeing his face on my phone wasn’t the same as holding him. I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of his hair, sending up a silent prayer for all the parents who were still waiting to hear what had happened to their children.

“How was your day, kiddo?” Dawn asked when he climbed down from my lap. She had dried her tears, so Mason didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary as she knelt down to hug him. But, like me, she held onto him a little longer and tighter than usual.

“Good,” he said nonchalantly as he wiggled out of her embrace. “We got to do an art project.” Shaking off his bookbag, he unzipped it and pulled out a paper plate Santa face with googly eyes, a red pompom for a nose, a beard made of cotton balls, and a red construction paper hat.

My eyes burned with unshed tears as I looked at it, my heart breaking for the kids who wouldn’t get to open their Christmas gifts and the grieving parents who wouldn’t know what to do with the wrapped presents they’d already put under the tree.

“Wow! You did such a good job, Mason!” Natalie gushed, giving me a few seconds to compose myself before I responded.

“Yeah, that looks great, buddy! C’mon, let’s go hang it up on the fridge. It’s getting cold out here.” As I turned my chair around, I added, “Hey, how ‘bout we order pizza for dinner tonight?” I caught Dawn’s eye, knowing she wouldn’t feel like cooking anything.

“Sounds good to me,” she replied, giving me a grateful smile in return. “We’re glad to have you home. Aren’t we, Mason?”

“Uh-huh!” Mason answered, his artwork flapping in his hand as he skipped merrily ahead of us.

I watched him with a lump in my throat and gratitude in my heart. “It’s good to be home,” I said as I wheeled myself after him. “Hey, wait up, son!” Mason glanced back over his shoulder, giving me time to catch up to him. “You gonna race me back to the house?”

His face split into a wide grin. “Last one there’s a rotten egg!” I heard him shout as he took off running.

I leaned forward, pumping my arms as fast as I could to propel myself up the driveway.

Natalie laughed as she jogged along next to me. “Want a push?” she offered in a low voice.

Already out of breath, I nodded. “Go for it, baby,” I said, my shoulders burning. “Let’s give him a real race this time.”

“You got it, babe,” she replied with a grin, grabbing my push handles. My chair began to pick up speed as she broke into a full-out sprint, using her long, muscular legs to close the distance between me and Mason. The big wheels bounced over the concrete, sending violent vibrations up through my body. “You okay?” I heard her call out as I clutched my armrests, trying to keep myself balanced.

“Yeah!” I called back, the cold wind whipping across my face. Despite the physical discomfort I felt, I found myself smiling – for real this time.

***