Dean
Dad had been dead for four hours, and Johanna needed a new diaper.
That was the thing about babies. They didn't care that your father had just stopped breathing. They didn't care that you were sitting on the edge of the bed, not knowing whether you should scream or puke or just stop existing. They needed a diaper. Now. Right now. And they would scream until they got one.
So I got up. Because that's what I did. Get up. Function. Keep going.
Sam was sitting at the table. He'd closed Dad's eyes, pulled the blanket over him, and then sat down and started Googling. Funeral homes. Cremation. Costs. As if he could organize death like a seminar at Stanford. As if turning it into a spreadsheet would make it hurt less.
I said nothing. Everyone grieved in their own way. Sam made lists. I changed diapers.
Johanna lay on the other bed, kicking and screaming. Her face was red, fists clenched, mouth wide open. She screamed like the world was ending. And maybe it was. Maybe she could feel it—that the man who'd brought her here was gone. That the air in the room smelled different. Heavier. Quieter.
Or maybe she just had a full diaper. With babies, you never knew.
I picked her up. “Shh. I know. I know.” My voice sounded wrong. Too thin. Too brittle. I cleared my throat. “Come on, Jojo. It'll be okay.”
It'll be okay. What a bullshit thing to say. What would be okay? Better? When? How?
I laid her on the changing pad Sam had brought from the drugstore at some point. Opened the diaper. Cleaned her up. Put on a new diaper. Fastened her onesie. Done. By now, I could do it half-asleep. In the dark. With one hand while the other held a gun. Not that I had to. But I could've.
Johanna stopped screaming. Looked at me. Green eyes, wide open, so clear I thought I could see myself in them. Dad's eyes. My eyes. Our eyes in a face so damn beautiful it hurt.
“Hey,” I said. Quietly. “Hey, sweetheart.”
She reached for my finger. Held on tight.
And I stood there, in a motel room where my dead father lay under a blanket, holding a baby who looked at me like I was everything in the world. And I thought: I can't do this. I really fucking can't do this. I'm not—I’m not the kind of guy for this. I'm the guy who kills things. Who breaks things. Who burns things.
But Johanna held tight to my finger and made that sound, that soft cooing, and her eyes slowly closed, and I thought: Shit. Yeah. I have to.
“Dean.”
Sam. His voice was quiet. Careful. The voice he used when he thought I was about to explode. Most of the time, he was right.
“What.”
“We have to—we have to burn him. Tonight. Before anyone—”
“I know.”
Silence. Johanna breathed against my shoulder. Evenly. Calmly. Like nothing had happened.
“I found a place,” Sam said. “Twenty minutes from here. A field. Secluded.”
Of course he had. Sam always found a place. Sam always found a solution, a plan, a next step. That was his thing. Mine was building the pyre.
“Okay,” I said.
Sam stood up. Came over to me. He looked down at Johanna, and his face—Sam's face, which usually showed everything, every emotion, every thought, like an open book—was blank. Not cold. Not hard. Just blank. Like someone had taken everything out and forgotten to put it back.
“I'll take her,” he said. “While you—”
He gestured toward Dad's bed. I nodded.
Sam took Johanna. Carefully, with both hands, like she was made of porcelain. She made a protesting noise when she lost my warmth, but Sam held her against his chest, and after a few seconds she went quiet. His heartbeat. She liked Sam's heartbeat. Calmer than mine. More even. Less like a bomb about to go off.
I went to Dad's bed.
Pulled back the blanket.
He looked like he was asleep. They always did. The dead always looked like they were asleep, and that was the biggest lie death told, because sleep meant waking up and waking up meant going on living and this was—this was final.
I put my hand on his chest. Cold. His shirt smelled like whiskey and gun oil and the aftershave he'd used for as long as I could remember. I closed my eyes.
“I've got this, Dad,” I whispered. “Like always.”
Behind me, Johanna made a sound. That cooing. And Sam said quietly, “Shh, it's okay. It's okay, sweetheart.”
And I thought: There are three of us. There were four, and now there are three. Two brothers and a baby in a motel room, and outside, the world was full of monsters, and inside was a dead man who'd taught us how to fight, but never how to stop.
I pulled the blanket back up.
Tonight, we'd burn him. Tomorrow, we'd keep driving. And the day after that, Johanna would need another diaper, and I'd get up and change it, because that's what I did.
Get up. Function. Keep going.
For her.