Chapter 8 - THE MORNING SUN
A year later.
The July heat was thick and golden, the cicadas humming a lazy afternoon symphony in the trees behind our house. The driveway where I had found Eli bleeding and broken was now covered in colorful, chalk-drawn spaceships and winding race tracks.
I stood on the front porch, leaning against the wooden railing, sipping a glass of iced tea. I watched as Eli sprinted across the lawn, chasing our new golden retriever, Barnaby. The dog was a goofy, clumsy mess of paws and ears, and Eli was laughing so hard he tripped over his own feet, tumbling into the soft grass.
He popped right back up, unharmed. The physical scars on his ribs and his hand had faded into faint, silvery lines. The emotional scars were healing too. We still went to therapy every Thursday. We talked about the bad memories when they crept up in the dark, but those nights were becoming rarer and rarer.
Arthur was serving a thirty-year sentence in a maximum-security federal penitentiary. Marcus had taken a plea deal, turning state’s evidence on the politicians in the ledger to knock his sentence down to fifteen years. Neither of them would ever cast a shadow over our porch again.
“Dad!” Eli yelled from the yard, throwing a battered tennis ball. “Watch this! Barnaby learned a new trick!”
“I’m watching, buddy!” I called back.
Eli threw the ball high into the air. Barnaby launched himself, missed the ball completely, and landed in a heap on top of a sprinkler head, soaking himself and Eli in a spray of cold water.
They both shook off the water, Eli howling with laughter.
I walked down the porch steps and joined them in the yard. The sun was warm on my face. The house behind me was secure, its doors unlocked, its windows open to let in the summer breeze. There was no one coming to take him. There was no one hiding in the dark.
Eli ran up to me, his wet hair plastered to his forehead, holding the slimy tennis ball. He looked healthy, vibrant, and alive. He looked like a normal kid.
“Can we go to the park later?” he asked, panting. “I want to show Barnaby the ducks.”
“We can go anywhere you want, Eli,” I said, ruffling his damp hair. “We have all the time in the world.”
He smiled, a wide, genuine grin that reached all the way to his bright eyes. He turned and threw the ball again, sprinting after the dog into the bright, endless expanse of the afternoon.
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I stood there on the lawn, watching my son run. The mailbox at the end of the driveway stood tall, its little red flag lowered. There were no coupons fluttering in the wind, no blood on the pavement. Just a quiet, peaceful suburban street bathing in the sunlight.
We had walked through the fire, and we had come out the other side. We were battered, we had our scars, but we were unbroken. We were a family. And as I watched Eli tackle the dog in the grass, laughing under the vast blue sky, I knew with absolute certainty that the dark days were finally behind us. The door was unlocked, and the monsters were gone.
