When she wakes up from her nap, she hears voices outside, drifting down the hall from the kitchen. Daddy, and Momma…and two more she doesn't know. One is loud, and laughing…the other, deep and serious. Kind of scary. She scrambles through the tangle of blankets with her little hands, feeling for her stuffed bunny. One hand closes around a soft, tufted ear, and she sighs with relief, pulling it toward her and clutching it tight to her chest.
She slips out of bed and pads across the floor, her socked feet making no noise on the shiny wooden planks. The bedroom door creaks, though, and all the talking in the kitchen stops. Curious, she pokes her head out.
The short hallway is dim, but the kitchen beyond it is bright. She sees her dad, twisted around in his chair, smiling at her. Everything about her dad is huge—he has long legs like a giraffe, and long hair, and a really big smile. Her dad's smile makes her smile, too. She can't help it.
"Hey Peanut," he says. He always calls her that. "Come over here, there's some people I want you to meet."
She tucks her bunny under one arm and skips down the hall, sliding across the kitchen tile and into her dad's arms. He picks her straight up and sits her on his knee, laughing.
"You know Momma told you to stop sliding in your socks like that Peanut," he scolds gently. "You'll get a splinter in your foot one of these days."
"My name's not Peanut, silly," she says, scowling up at him. "It's Mary, remember?"
"I remember. But you're still my little Peanut. Now come on, say hi."
She twists around on her dad's lap until she's sitting facing the rest of the room. Momma's in the other chair, giving Daddy this goopy look. Mary wrinkles her nose and turns her attention to the other two people, the new ones.
It's two men. They're both really tall, but not as big as her dad. One of them kind of looks like him though, a little bit. He has sandy-brown hair like her dad, except it's really short and her dad's is long. And he smiles at her like her dad does, big and bright. She finds herself smiling back.
"Hi there Mary," he says. He's the laughing man she heard before, she realizes. His voice doesn't sound like he's laughing now, though. He's still smiling, but his eyes are all glassy, like Momma when she's watching a sad movie and wants to cry. His voice is all quiet and raspy, too.
"I'm your Uncle Dean."
Her eyes light up. "Uncle Dean?" She squeals, sounding excited. She jumps down off her dad's lap and slip-runs across the floor to wrap both arms around his legs in a big hug. "Thank you for the birthday present, Uncle Dean," she says, voice muffled a bit by his leg. He bends down and pries her off, scoops her up into his arms. She goes willingly, wrapping both little arms around his neck and giving him a huge smile of her own. He holds her like her dad does, so that she doesn't feel like she's about to fall. She likes her Uncle Dean already.
"I love the princesses," she says. "I colored all the pictures of Merida; she's my favorite one ever!"
"Mine, too," Uncle Dean laughs. He still looks like he might be about to cry, but happy too. His eyes are really bright green, like grass. And on his nose…
"Daddy!" She says, all excited again. She turns her head to catch her dad's eye. "Look Daddy, look! Uncle Dean has freckles all over his face, just like me!"
"Yeah," her dad laughs. "Yeah, I guess he does." She turns back to Uncle Dean.
"Momma says freckles are really just angel kisses," she tells him seriously. Her dad makes a funny sound behind her, like a snort. Uncle Dean throws back his head and laughs out loud. Mary tilts her head to the side, confused. She wasn't making a joke!
"Well in that case," Uncle Dean says, "I have someone else I want you to meet." He turns them to face the other new person in the room. He's been standing there quiet the whole time, waiting his turn. Mary wishes she was that good; she wouldn't get put in time out so much at pre-K for talking out of turn.
His hair looks a little bit like her friend Jeremy's does after nap time at school, sticking up everywhere. He has really big, bright blue eyes and his head is tilted to the side, the way she does when she's trying to figure something out. He's smiling a little at her, so she smiles back, suddenly shy.
"Mary," Uncle Dean says softly, "this is my angel. Cas."
Mary looks back at Uncle Dean, and then looks at the other man, eyes wide.
"Oh," she breathes, squirming to get down. Uncle Dean sets her on her feet, and she takes a few steps toward Cas, looking up in awe.
"Hello," he says to her. His voice is really deep and scratchy. She holds her bunny a little tighter. Cas kneels, then sits cross-legged on the floor. She takes a tiny step back, unsure. But then he smiles, a real smile. A big one, like her dad's, and her Uncle Dean's.
"I like your rabbit," Cas says.
"It's a bunny," she ventures carefully.
"Right, of course," he says, nodding. "Does your bunny have a name?"
Mary shakes her head.
"No," she says. "He's just bunny."
"Ah," Cas says. "I will remember that."
His voice is very serious, like he really means everything he says. Sometimes Daddy and Momma talk to her like that, but she can kind of tell they're playing along. Like when Daddy checks her closet and under her bed for monsters. He doesn't think there will be any monsters. But he checks because she wants him to.
Cas is different. She bets he would take her totally seriously if she asked him to check under her bed for a monster. She looks up over her shoulder at Dean.
"He's your angel, Uncle Dean?" She asks. Uncle Dean nods, looking past her, at Cas. Uncle Cas, maybe. She wonders if he would mind if she called him Uncle Cas.
"Yeah," Uncle Dean says, and his voice is all raspy and quiet again. "Yeah, he really is."
There's a house among the hills of northern Georgia, tucked way back in the woods down an old dirt road, away from the sounds of highway traffic. There's a little blue Honda parked out front, and every day the owners of that house come out the door and pile in, off to school, or work, or something else. Something safe, and normal.
The tall man with the shaggy, tawny-brown hair laughs and walks with his head up, not a care in the world. The petite brunette smiles up at him, radiating happiness. Or sometimes rolls her eyes at him, radiating indulgent annoyance. It depends on the day, really. And the little girl with her blonde curls bouncing runs rings around them both, keeping them on their toes and ensuring that their lives will never be quiet, or boring.
Every month or so, usually on a weekend, there's a shiny black '67 Chevrolet Impala parked next to the Honda for a few days at a time. Its owner—glad to have his baby back after so many years driving stolen junkers—scoffs at the Honda good-naturedly when he climbs out of the driver's seat to greet the house's inhabitants, the laugh lines around his green eyes on full show as he scoops the little girl up into his arms for a gigantic hug. His angel clambers out of the passenger's seat, graceless and awkward and older every year, but always smiling. Their skin is deeply tanned from so many hours spent with their faces tilted to the sun, on highways and hilltops, beaches and mountains, anywhere the road takes them. The journeys through darkness and danger still come, but they're only detours…detours that always bring them back to the light, and the road, and here. To family. And always, always together.
The little girl jumps down from her uncle's arms, beckons him to follow her, to see what new thing she's done, or learned, or found in the time since he last came to visit. The three men exchange a glance as they follow the head of wild-flying curls back into the house, and it's a look heavy with history but light in its heart.
It's the look of three men born and raised to be soldiers, who finally found peace, and rest, and a place in the world that feels like home.