We look between the men.
“For,” Connor says easily.
Ryke nods. “Fo—” BEEEEEEEP!!
The loudest honk outside jars all of us to our feet. Coconut barks outside, an alarmed, deep throaty noise that means bad things are happening.
Oh God.
The children are in the cul-de-sac.
Only a quick glance out of the window, I see the kids stare at something incoming. Sulli—she’s in the middle of the street unlike Jane and Moffy, who’ve ridden their bike to the grass.
My lungs ram in my throat, and in seconds, we all rush out the door.
< 30 >
March 2023
The Meadows Cottage Philadelphia
RYKE MEADOWS
I run down our front yard, Daisy right behind me. “SULLI!” I shout, my veins beating out of my fucking neck. Sulli kneels on the pavement like she just tripped off her skateboard. Our white husky stands in front of her, growling at the massive tractor-trailer that drives down our fucking street. Headed for the end of the cul-de-sac. Straight towards my five-year-old daughter.
The horn blares.
Right before I reach the mailbox, Moffy drops his bike, preparing to run out into the street to grab her.
“STAY BACK!” I scream at him. He freezes in place just as my shoes meet asphalt. I pick Sulli up in my arms and sprint to the yard, Nutty trailing close behind. We fall onto the grass at the loud crunch, and our dog licks Sulli, like making certain she’s cognizant and not sitting in fear.
The driver just crushed the fucking skateboard beneath the tires.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. My nose flares. That could’ve been my fucking daughter. How did this tractor-trailer even get through the fucking gates?
Jane holds onto the bike and stares wide-eyed at the scene. “Merde.” Shit.
I frown deeper.
It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her curse in French, and by Rose and Connor’s quick exchange, I’d fucking bet it’s theirs too.
“Sulli?” I climb to my feet and then help my daughter stand. She’s in a state of fucking shock. Nutty nudges Sulli until she responds with a pat to the dog’s head. Then Daisy wraps her long arms around Sullivan, and our daughter relaxes at her mom’s embrace and hugs back.
I grab Moffy’s baseball hat that fell off when he was about to sprint into the street. “You alright?” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Moffy?”
He looks as shaken as the other two, and I’m just as fucking concerned about him as everyone else. This is my brother’s oldest kid. Same jawline, currently the same haircut. He’s the one who had a seventh birthday and held Eliot by the candles. Asking him to blow them out. The one who served a slice of his own birthday cake to every kid before he cut his own. The one who could make the rowdiest children settle down and the quietest ones speak up.
He’s the fucking leader of this pack.
“No one ever comes down here,” Moffy says, dazed until he looks to me. “I wouldn’t have left her in the street. I wouldn’t have. I promise.”
“Hey.” I shake my head. “It’s not your fucking responsibility.” Stop carrying that weight.
He beats himself up over it. The driver climbs out of the tractor-trailer with a clipboard, and that’s when I really examine the trailer portion of the vehicle.
The blood just rushes out of my head.
“Uncle Ryke?” Moffy frowns.
Connor, who normally has to be involved in everything, never approaches the driver.
He knows it’s for me.
Rose knows it’s for me.
Daisy’s eyes start to flood with tears, and Nutty sticks closest to her.
“Mommy, what’s wrong?” Sullivan asks.
Daisy is too choked to answer. She gives Sulli a weak smile and then kisses her nose.
I mechanically meet the driver at the base of the fucking driveway. “This has to be a fucking mistake.” I forget to chew him out about nearly running over my daughter. My head pounds, and my skin has turned ashen white.
“You’re Ryke Meadows,” he states, not asks, grinding coarsely on a piece of gum. He unclips an envelope, hands it to me. My name scrawled over the front.
Ryke
I can’t place the handwriting with anyone I know.
“I just need you to sign off here, and I’ll unload the Jeep.”
The Jeep.
The forest-green Jeep that I’ve ridden in hundreds of fucking times towards cliffs, quarries, the shittiest climbs and the greatest ones.
I can barely think. I don’t know what else to do. So I sign my name on the line and then watch as he fucking unloads my history.
An arm curves around my waist. My muscles unbind by Daisy’s presence, and I find some words. “I can’t take Sully’s Jeep.” What the fuck am I supposed to do with it? How can I ride in it?
Sulli slips between us. “I have a Jeep?”
It fucking guts me for a second.
I pinch my eyes—I just can’t hold it in anymore. What the fuck am I going to do? Daisy wavers, unsure of what to say since we agreed not to bring up Adam Sully until our daughter was older. She’ll ask what happened to him, and death can be petrifying for five-year-olds.
He died really fucking young.
“Daddy?” The fear in her voice splinters down my spine.
Eyes burning, I drop my hand to her head. She peers up at me, tearful and confused. Daisy whispers in her ear and rubs her arm.
“Hey, Sul,” I say in the softest tone I can muster.
“Hey, Daddy.”
I wipe my eyes, and then I tell her, “You’re named after one of the greatest guys I’ve ever fucking known. He was a rock climber. That’s his Jeep.”
Awe brightens her green eyes.
“Adam Sully,” I tell her his name, and just as the Jeep reaches the pavement, I rip open the envelope. A letter inside.
Ryke,
We’re moving this week. We don’t have space for his Jeep anymore, and we can’t bring ourselves to sell it. He’d want you to have it. Take care.
Barbra Sully
He’d want me to have it.
I turn to Daisy. “I’m keeping the Jeep.”
She smiles. “He always said he had the better car than you.”
I laugh because it never felt fucking true until now. This Jeep has more value than any other material possession I own. And I’ll take care of it. Yeah. I think he would want me to.
*
“Quickdraws, honey, bananas, chocolate-covered espresso beans,” Daisy reads a receipt, one of many stuffed in the fucking glove compartment of Sully’s Jeep. I parked in the garage, still behind the wheel while Daisy sits cross-legged in the passenger’s seat.
I sift through his old CDs on the visor: Oasis, No Doubt, Héroes del Silencio, a band he introduced me to when we were eight or nine. We learned Spanish around the same fucking time.
No one cleaned his shit out, so after years’ worth of time, it stands like a relic of my long-lost friend.
“For fuck’s sake, Sully.” I find dried fruit beneath his car mat, moldy like it’d been stuck there a long time while he was still alive.
Daisy passes me a few receipts. We spend the next thirty minutes just fucking remembering him. I break a smile at a few National Park maps, areas off-the-beaten path circled with a dull pen. He wrote my name beside the ones he wanted to bring me to.
When Sully fucking called me to climb, I went. All these places with my name—I’ve been there with him. I catch Daisy’s eyes clouding, and I reach out, my hand on the back of her head. She leans into me, and I hold my wife. I’m not even fucking thinking anymore.
I just exist in this moment, as tranquil as I’d be on a crag. Scaling thousands of fucking feet towards the sky. I look down at Dais, and her eyes flit up to me.
“Every day that I grow older is a fucking blessing,” I say lowly, my voice hushed in this Jeep. Next to the sun of my life. “But every day that I grow older with you is fucking priceless.” I watch her chest rise high. “I’ve been so fucking lucky.”
Lucky to be with Daisy.
Lucky to be alive.
Lucky to hold my daughter.