Page 166 of The Story of You

Everyone’s quiet for once, waiting for me to speak. I don’t have much to say, but I know that I need their help. I couldn’t leave Aleksander on my own the last time either. “Si-Simon?” I finally say.

“Yes, Silas?”

“Move home.Please.” My voice is a broken, shattered thing and the tears are relentless. I mean both of them, but Shane will only do so if it’s Simon’s wish.

“Yes. Of course.” His hands find my hair from behind. Another knot loosens.

“There are three more Randalls,” I tell them. This is my fault. I taunted Aleksander. I cajoled him to use any means necessary to get me back if I were ever to leave. “Two of them are lost out there somewhere.”

“We’ll find them,” Darius promises. “Find them and take care of them, Silas.”

I nod and it hits me like a gut punch. I’m supposed to be their leader, but all it took was a few minutes with Aleksander to burn me to ashes. “We will. I’m sorry. I’ve failed all of you and I will do better.”

“Dad, look around you. You made this family.Us.We’re as strong as we are because of you.” He clears his throat. “A good leader empowers his subjugates.”

Is he quoting Lakshan? Or Wyatt? I think I’ve heard them both say that by now. “True, but that doesn’t mean I should stop striving for better. Now, didn’t someone say something about magical doughnuts? Or have we missed them?”

“Me! That was me, but Darry and I both found them. Baba! They have sprinkles and pink and some are decorated to look like unicorns. They’ll be so sugary you’ll hate them!”

“They also have Star Wars themed doughnuts. I want a Hans Solo,” Darius says. He cups Wyatt’s face. “Sorry, Daddy. You have to be my Princess Leia.”

“Do you think they might have a Yoda?” Shane says, shocking us all.

“They must,” Oliver says, the excitement lifting him out of his seat. “Juli, you’re gonna have to work those arms. I’m getting a whole dozen for myself.”

“No,” Darius says. “Wyatt, stop him like you did before. Oliver on a sugar high is worse than being stormed by an army of toddlers who haven’t slept in five days.”

“Fuck you, Darry. Besides, Juli knows exactly how to—”

“On second thought, no doughnuts. Let’s head straight to the haunted mansion,” I say. There can’t be anything sexy about haunted mansions, can there be?

“Whatever, Baba, you don’t mean it.”

The van fills with chatter of doughnut ideas that get more ridiculous from one to the next and instead of demanding they shut up, I let that energy in. It’s the energy of dreaming. Of manifestation.

I turn to my husband who has just proudly proclaimed that if they have a doughnut that resembles young Mads Mikkelsen, it’s all his. He thinks that I look like young Mads…

“I know why you’re always the rain,” I say and press a kiss to his lips.

“Oh?’

“Because you make sure I don’t just survive, but that I thrive.” He smiles his secret smile and I know I’ve gotten it right. It gives me something better than hope: faith. “All right, onto the shop with the diabetes-inducing doughnuts—no one is getting more than one, Oliver—and then the night in a haunted mansion, in which we’ll be sleeping in the same room somehow because Shanni and I are not waking up multiple times when certain people inevitably climb into our bed.”

There are several groans at my declarations, but they know I’m right and it’s as it should be. Things aren’t all right, but when are they for us?

We’re Randalls, Sparrows, a Kerr, a Reeves, and—I guess—a Vincenzo. We don’t need “all right”, so long as we have each other.

THE END