The Language of Light by Meg Waite Clayton

Author:Meg Waite Clayton [Clayton, Meg Waite]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-52665-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-27T16:00:00+00:00

20

When I returned home from Dac’s, the house was overly quiet, the smell of cooking turkey hanging heavy in the air. It was nearly noon. I closed the door noiselessly behind me, certain that something had gone wrong. Wasn’t anybody home? Maybe someone had gotten hurt. Maybe the boys had gotten wild with their new toys and one of them had stumbled, fallen against the fireplace mantel. They’d gone to the hospital, Dad had tried to reach me and I wasn’t at Emma’s and they’d had to go on without me, Ned holding a clean cloth to Charlie’s elbow or his eyebrow while my father drove. It couldn’t be worse than that, could it? If it had been, Dad would have called from the hospital and when there was no answer he would have called Emma again and she would have told him I’d dropped Dac off on the way and so maybe I was still at his place or we’d had a flat or something, and Emma would have called Dac and we’d have answered, or we’d have heard the answering machine, Emma’s voice saying she was looking for me, that one of the boys was hurt.

I picked up a faint murmur coming from the family room. It was deep, adult. My father’s voice. They’d just fallen asleep, then. Napping. They’d gotten up so early to see what Santa had brought them. Maybe Charlie was napping and Ned was being quiet, letting him sleep on the couch where he’d dropped off or where Dad had moved him after he’d fallen asleep on the floor.

I slipped off my coat and hung it on the closet doorknob. I smelled like Dac, like sex. But I needed to see my boys.

I followed the sound of Dad’s voice, found the three of them snuggled together on the couch, Boomer the only one napping. Ned and Charlie had been crying, their eyes were red and their noses were running and they were tucked up right next to Dad on the couch. He sat with his arms around them, murmuring softly as he had at Wesley’s funeral, when he’d told them it was all right to cry. I couldn’t make out his words.

“Mom!” Charlie was up off the couch and hugging his arms around my waist, and so was Ned, with Boomer’s tail battering our legs as he circled us.

“We’re having a bit of a bad spell,” Dad said. “They’ve been missing their daddy.”

“Oh no,” I said, and I knelt down and pulled them all toward me, pulled us all together into a big group hug. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.”

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