This Home
Sara stays in the car with Mike. She's sitting in the back seat with him, unknowingly kissing the top of his head every few minutes. He's a little bit drowsy from the pain medication, so he's snuggled in her arm and drifting in and out of sleep.
They pull into a diner and, for a moment, neither Sara nor Michael make a sound. Then, he takes in a deep breath, exhales slowly, and adjusts the rear view mirror to look at Sara. There isn't much to say, and even less needed to be said.
Inside, they have dinner.
"Uncle Lincoln isn't coming home anytime soon, is he?"
Mike's observant tendencies are so intuitive and deep-rooted, it catches him off guard —as if he hadn't fully grasped the reality that yes, this is his son. Some days, he really hasn't. It surprises him constantly how much detail and subtlety Mike notices, much more than he lets on. It's hard to submit to the fact that this ten year old boy is capable of having such emotional and heavy assessments. But he doesn't sugar coat it. Maybe to anyone else, let alone a child, but not to his son.
He shakes his head slightly, then makes a quick glance at Sara. "He's in pretty bad shape," Michael reaches out and takes hold of his hand, in part, to comfort his boy. In large, though, it was for him to be sure in this moment that he hadn't lost everything. "Your mom and I are going back in a few hours to see him."
"Let me come with you!" He says, already knowing his place in their plan.
"No, you need to get some sleep, baby," Sara finally joins in, hushing him with her whispered voice.
"I can't go to school tomorrow, right?" he says quieter.
"That's not the point. You need to sleep."
His eyebrows furrow just a bit, and he looks away from their gaze.
"I'll tell you what," Michael proposes, "You get a good night's rest tonight. If you're feeling a lot better tomorrow, you can spend the night with uncle Lincoln at the center."
His face lights up immediately. It's so precious to Sara that for a second, she can't find it in herself to be furious of Michael's deal. "Finish you food," she ends up adding. Michael squeezes her knee, grateful.
Mike is fast asleep in the back.
"Michael, we can't go home," she nearly begged him. Her eyes are wild, unable to settle on any one place. She wants to keep them all in her sight, terrified because if— no, whenever she looks away, she loses another part of her. "We don't -we… whoever did this could come back."
"I know." He places his hands on her shoulders and it reminds her to take a deep breath.
The three head over to Lincoln's apartment. Mike is awakened by the series of speed bumps in the parking lot of the complex.
He's carried inside, though he's too sleepy to realize it. But he gets one last burst of alertness when the smell of his uncle suddenly greets him. He's in his uncle's bed. He doesn't need to ask why or make any comments about it. Instead, he welcomes it and turns over so that he's lying face down into the pillow. He lifts his head up and to the side just in time to see his dad pull the blanket over him.
"Good night," he says. Always.
Michael smiles and looks at him for a bit too long. "Night," he finally replies, and sweeps his hair from his forehead.
Mike watched his mom and dad leave with the bedroom door open and the hallway lights kept on. He wished he could come with them to be with his uncle through his first night in the hospital.
He wasn't afraid of sleeping all alone.
It's just that he knows uncle Linc doesn't like hospitals, he's told him once before. He wondered if his mom and dad knew that. His uncle shares a lot of things with him when they play out in the yard or go walking on the trails behind the house. And if he were there tonight, they could talk about more things like that —almost secrets. Nobody would ever guess it, but his uncle Linc was afraid of a lot of things. A lot of things made him mad, but a lot of things made him scared, too. He'd have them play a game or watch something on the TV so he wouldn't have to think about those things.
No, he wasn't afraid of sleeping alone; he was afraid of uncle Linc having to sleep alone.