(A/N: I know, this chapter's been a long time coming. Thanks for bearing with me. I've also been struggling with whether I want the story in first or third person, so I apologize in advance for the inconsistencies)
I don't know where I am. Everything's moving to fast for me to understand. There's blurs of things here and there. Voices. I'm in a house. A really shitty house. There's childish laughter coming from upstairs. It sounds familiar. It's Ben's. I race upstairs and slam open the bedroom door, but there's no one inside. There's toys scattered all across the room. "Ben?" I call out, uncertain on if he is just messing with me. It would be just like him to play a prank on me, he's done it plenty of times before. But for some reason I don't think that it's the case this time. "Ben, where are you? This isn't funny. Just come out." I hear the door open. Maybe he's just home late from school or something. The younger grades do get out later. That must be it.
"Griffin, where's your brother?" Calls my mom up from downstairs.
"I…I don't know. I can't find him", I answer back, as I shakily make my way down the stairs.
"What do you mean you can't find him. You were supposed to be watching him! You were supposed to take care of him!" All of the kindness has left her face, as she yells and berates me. "This is your fault. If something happens it is your fault," she yells, grabbing my shoulders and slamming my body into the kitchen counter. I scream from the pain in my hip. I hear sirens.
Why is mom doing this to me? "I asked you to take care of your mom and brother," says Casey as he walks into the room, surveying the scene in front of him. "That's the only thing I've ever asked of you, that's the last thing I've ever said to you. I don't think that's too much to ask for. You deserve everything that happens to you. You failed me. You failed your dad. You failed your brother," says Casey, as he continues berating me and egging my mom on.
"No, no, please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to," I cry as they both continue to yell and berate me. The sirens get closer. They stop outside of the door.
"Police, open up!" They command, standing outside of the door. My mom continues to yell. I scream for help. All I hear is a loud bang, as someone barges the door open, and…
I jolt out of bed, in a cold sweat. I immediately regret it and lay back down, my head pounding from what happened last night. It was just a dream. It was just a nightmare. It's not happening, I remind myself, as I glance over to look at the clock. It's quarter to four. I am definitely not going to school today. I try to roll onto my side, but my ribs cause me to yelp and give up on that endeavor. I stare up at the ceiling, the moonlight casting shadows that swirl as the wind blows on the leaves. As I fade off into another hazy sleep, I remember what day it is. It's my dad's birthday.
888
I wake up with a pounding headache, which is not helped one bit by Luke slamming his truck door after he gets in. I lay in bed with my eyes closed until I hear his truck fading off into the distance, and I spend a few moments listening to the silence of the house. I turn my head and see that it's a little past noon on my alarm clock. As I try to get up, the memories of last night come flooding back in. I feel my mouth, and the swelling of my lip has gone down, but it was split open pretty good. Breathing too deeply or moving too much causes my stomach to hurt. I slowly get out of bed and make my way to the bathroom to check out the damage. As I stare at my face in the mirror, I start to wonder how it got to be this way. How this became my life. But there's no use thinking about it, it's just how it is. Most of the damage from last night won't be noticeable. My stomach bruises will be covered by my shirt, I'll just have to make sure that the shirt sleeves come down long enough to hide where Luke grabbed me. There's not much I can do about the split lip; I'll just have to come up with a cover. I chuckle to myself thinking about what ridiculous thing I'll come up with this time.
I turn the shower on so that the temperature is just below lukewarm. I'm definitely not ready to take a hot shower in this condition. After making myself look more presentable, I head downstairs and start ravaging through the cupboards to look for something to eat. I find a can of SpaghettiOs in the back behind a 6-pack of Bud Light. I turn on the TV while the soup is in the microwave. The News Anchor is reporting about education reform in Chicago Public Schools and some of the new policies they've adopted to lower unexcused absences, which I can't help but scoff at. I practically inhale my soup, and then sit there contemplating where I was going to go for my dad's birthday. Normally I would go to the cemetery, but it was too far to walk from here. After a while, I remembered that my dad's badge was hung inside the Robert J. Quinn Fire Academy on the wall of badges memorial. I figure that's as good of place as any to see my dad. I put on a thick hoodie, and start walking over there.
888
"Did you see how many cans of green beans the woman in front of us in the checkout line had? I really want to know what one person does with that many can of green beans," I said with a grin across my face as I hand Dawson the groceries to put into the car.
"You're just jealous that she is probably making one hell of a good green bean casserole, and you aren't going to get any of it," teased Dawson, shutting the door after the last bag was in. The drive home was relatively uneventful. Well, as uneventful as driving in Chicago can be. Dawson started making lunch while I unloaded the car. It was quite nice to be on the same work schedule, getting to spend our off days with each other. "Lunch is ready when you are," Dawson yelled out. She had opted to make tuna salad sandwiches, which meant that she finished just as I had gotten comfortable on the couch.
"Do you purposefully time things so that I have to get up whenever I sit down?" I gave Dawson a quick peck, and sat down with her at the table to eat our sandwiches.
"What are your plans for the rest of the day? I have a couple of errands to run, if you want to tag along," offered Dawson.
"I was thinking about heading down to the Academy for a little bit. Catch up with some buddies of mine," I replied. I stared out the window, following a sparrow as it flew from branch to branch.
"Does this have anything to do with what day it is?" Dawson asked, noticing how distant her husband had become.
"I don't know. I guess so. I know it's been so long, but it feels like Andy's just going to walk back in the door, and ask about what happened to his free birthday drink. After his death, it was okay for a while because I still saw Heather and the kids, but after they moved, I guess I just lost touch with them. And then it felt like I lost Andy again, ya know?"
"I get it Matt. I think it'd be good to go down to the Academy. If it's where you feel you need to be, then that's where you should go."
I continued staring out the window for a few moments longer, and we sat in relative silence, with only the sounds of our chewing filling the air. "I'll be back soon," I uttered as I got up and put my dishes into the sink.
Dawson looked at her husband with concern at all the emotions he was feeling that he wasn't sharing with her. But she knew that now was not the time to pry, Casey would talk when he was ready. He always was someone who handled grief in a very muted way. If he would just acknowledge these feelings the first time around, instead of bottling them up, he wouldn't have to deal with them again and again every time something comes up, Gabby thought. But what could she do? This was something that Casey had to do for himself. "I'll probably be gone when you get back, but I'd love to hear about how everything went tonight, okay?"
"Will do," I replied. I kissed my wife on the cheek, and grabbed my jacket as I made my way out of the door. I drove down to the academy, with the radio turned up to try and drown out my own thoughts.
888
Griff stopped on the corner outside of the Academy to scope the place out. He hadn't been back here in years, and needed to make sure that he was in control of this situation. He didn't want to see anyone, everyone here was from a past life of his. One he didn't belong to anymore. There was no movement inside the building, and after about 10 minutes, Griff walked up to the front door and made his way inside. The building was exactly the way he remembered it. Wide hallways, and the hundreds of badges lining the wall. He made his way down to the far end of the hallway, where his dad's badge would be. He noticed how many more had been added in the years since his dad had died. How many other kids lost one of their parents. He finally settled on his dad's badge. "Hey dad," Griff said, as he raised one hand to the glass, and the other held the dog tags he kept in his pocket.
888
Casey pulled up to the back of the building. After turning his engine off, he texted one of his buddies that he knew was leading a course and let him know that he was here visiting, and that he would stop by before he left. As he made his way into the entrance he noticed that someone was standing in the hallway with his hand on the glass covering the badges. The figure was wearing a hoodie, so Casey couldn't see who it was. They looked too thin to be someone else who was on Truck back when Andy was, but Casey couldn't think of who else would come here at this time of day. And although the doors were not locked during the day, most members of the public didn't even know the memorial was here, let alone visited it. Curiosity sank in, and Casey started making his way towards the figure. He had crossed about half of the distance, when the person turned and looked at him, for just a moment, dropped his hand, and then turned away and started walking towards the other entrance. "Hey, wait up! I wanted to ask you something!" Casey called out, increasing his pace to catch up with whoever it was standing at the glass.
888
"I've missed you, dad. I'm doing what you said to do, I'm being brave. I just wish you were here, and Ben was, and we could have a birthday party like we used to." I fell into silence, lost in the thoughts inside of my head. Suddenly, I heard the back door open. Just stand still, maybe they won't come this way, I thought to myself. When it became clear that the person was coming down the hall towards me, I decided to risk a glance. I just looked for a second, but the face was unmistakable. It was Casey. I dropped his hand and started walking away. Just play it cool. He won't recognize you. It's been too long. Wait til he leaves and then get out of here, it'll be like this never happened.
"Hey, wait up! I wanted to ask you something!" Casey called out. Casey increased his pace, and I started to panic. I made one more quick look back, saw the distance between us closing, and did the only thing I could think of doing. I ran. It took Casey a second to catch on, and by that point I already had a considerable head start. I ran out the doors, dropping the dog tags when my hands forcibly pushed the doors out of the way. I considered stopping when I heard them hit the ground but if I did then I would surely have been caught. I just hoped that Casey hadn't noticed. I ran out and around the building, hiding behind the dumpster on the side. I tried to slow my breathing as much as possible, and sat there for about 15 minutes until I knew for sure that Casey had given up and left. As I cautiously rounded the corner, I checked where I knew that I dropped my dad's tags, but they were gone. What am I going to do now? I wondered, as I slowly made my way back home.
888
Suddenly, the figure broke into a sprint and barged out of the doorways before Casey even knew what was happening. Why is this kid trying to run from me? Casey wondered as he ran to try and catch up. By the time he got outside, the figure was nowhere in sight. He looked around for a minute, and then decided it wasn't worth trying to find them. Strange, Casey thought. As he was walking back in, he stepped on something inside the double doors. He looked down, and found a set of dog tags. He picked them up, and started to inspect them. The first one had the firefighter's prayer, which was standard. Okay, so they did have some connection to the building. But still, why would they run? He went to look at the other tag, and he nearly dropped them when he read what it said. "Andrew Darden, Firefighter, Chicago Fire Department". How? Who would have had these? Who took Andy's dog tags after the funeral? Casey racked his brain, searching for the answer that he knew had to be there.
"Griffin." He stated, remembering how the young boy had always been fascinated by his dad's dog tag. How had he not recognized the boy? It had been what, 4 or 5 years since he had last seen the boy? He had to be 14 or 15 by now. Why did he run? Casey wondered, as he put the dog tags in his pocket and made his way back down the hall.