Head Over Heels Âœ“ 10 / hard to hear

august, age twelve

The town was long overdue a visit from the sun by the time mid-August rolled around after almost a month of dull summer weather. The sky had been littered with clouds for a few weeks, the grey hardly ever turning blue behind the rain that sprinkled the grass and dripped from the trees. The garden was looking amazing after such a good drenching as the flowers soaked up the rain and blossomed but Lucas had hated it. He hated leaving the house when it was so miserable outside, his glasses always getting smudged by the droplets no matter how careful he was, and he hated his feet getting wet.

July had been a bit of a misery, all four of Lucas’s younger sisters’ birthdays spent indoors the rain had poured, and it was hard to enjoy the summer holidays when it was so disgusting outside. But at last the weather was improving, halfway through the holidays and just two weeks away from Lucas’s birthday: the sun peeped its head out from behind the clouds that parted to let it through, the light shining down over last night’s rain. There was warmth in the air, the bitter breeze gone as yellow rays illuminated the sky.

For the first time all month, Lucas felt at ease. His brain wasn’t so crowded, as though the sun had melted his worries. He had even slept in late, not making it downstairs until almost eleven o’clock in the morning with a peaceful smile on his lips, even though Charlotte had been crying until almost midnight. Although she was now seven months old, she struggled to settle at night and she hated to be separated from her mother: she wailed whenever she was laid down in her own cot and Sarah and Truman had taken to letting her sleep with them just to calm her down.

The house was eerily quiet. When Lucas got downstairs he peered around to check for signs of life other than the soft pad of his own feet on the carpet, but there were none. There wasn’t a single noise in the house. A frown replaced his smile.

“Mum?” he called out. He knew Truman was at work but that didn’t explain the sudden disappearance of his mother and his four sisters. “Hello?”

There was a note on the kitchen table. He sat down to read it, comforted by his mother’s neat cursive.

Lucas –

Didn’t want to wake you baby! Dad’s at work; Audrie’s gone with Dylan to get A-level results; Liliana and Felicity are with hammy and hara and I’m at the doctor with Charlotte. I should be back by 10:30. Hope you slept well. I think you really needed it.

Mum xx

Lucas read the note three times before he folded it in half and dropped it into the kitchen bin. Lifting his eyes to the clock, it took a moment for him to focus on the hands. It was five past eleven. His frown returned: his mother was more than half an hour late after leaving him home alone for the first time ever. A flicker of panic curled itself into a tight, heavy ball in his stomach, replacing the happy mood he had woken up in. His mother always gave herself leeway to be late: if she had said she would be back by ten thirty then she most likely would have returned ten minutes earlier than that so really, she was even later than the note suggested.

Before he could allow the fear to grow, Lucas reached for his mobile phone. He left it charging in the kitchen every night, the rule enforced by himself rather than something his parents had requested, and the screen lit up when he unplugged it but there were no messages, no missed calls. She hadn’t tried to reach him to say she would be late. That realisation only added weight to the dread in the pit of his stomach that he tried to hold at bay as he scrolled to his mother’s number. Hers and Asher’s were in constant competition for the top spot in his list of most contacted.

Holding the mobile to his ear, he stood straight against the wall and started to count to ten. He had to start over before the dial tone cut out and he heard his mother’s answering machine message. Before the beep sounded, he ended the call and tried again. He knew she rarely listened to her voicemails and she often missed a call within seconds of it ending. In his mind’s eye, he pictured her lunging for the phone and muttering under her breath when she missed the call.

The second call went straight to voicemail too. His stomach tightened and his heart clenched, gritting his jaw to stop himself from getting emotional even though he knew that was a dead cert. Instead of calling his mother one more time, he scrolled down to his grandmother’s name in the list and he dialled her, hugging himself tightly in the corner of the room as it rang and rang.

Only twice. After two dials, she picked up the phone with a bright inflection in her voice when she said, “Hi, Lucas!”

“Hammy?”

“Yes? Are you ok, Lucas?”

“I’m home alone but I’ve never been home alone and Mum left a note but she won’t answer the phone and she’s really late,” he said, his words coming out in a rush as though he had unstoppered a dam and let them pour.

“Hey, hey, it’s ok,” Maddie said, her voice soothing. “Hara’s coming to get you right now, Lucas. He’s just left, he’s on his way. Are you ok?”

He nodded before he remembered she couldn’t see him. “I just came downstairs and I’m all on my own. Mum’s note said she’d be back at half past ten but now it’s … seven minutes past eleven and she won’t answer her phone. Where is she?”

“She just had to go to the doctor, hun,” Maddie said. “You don’t need to worry.”

“But why’s she late? Why won’t she answer her phone?”

“You know how doctors can be sometimes. She probably just got caught up in the waiting room; maybe she’s with the doctor right now and that’s why she didn’t answer your call.”

Lucas nodded to himself, comforted by his grandmother’s words. She always knew what to say. “Ok,” he said.

“Don’t work yourself up, hun,” she said. “Hara will be with you by twenty past eleven and I’m going to make you some breakfast, ok? Have you eaten yet?”

“No. I only just came downstairs.”

“Ok, I’m going to put something together for you then. I’ve got Lily and Fliss with me.”

“And Tom?” He let his shoulders loosen a little as Maddie spoke, letting her calm words wash over him.

“And Tom. And Mika, too,” she said. “Her mum just dropped her over about half an hour ago. I’ll let them know you’re coming over, hun. Do you want me to stay until hara’s with you?”

“No, it’s ok,” Lucas said. Now that there was a plan in action he didn’t feel so nervous, his stress leaving him once more. “I’ll see you soon.”

“See you soon, hun. Love you, baby.”

“Love you too, hammy,” he said, waiting for his grandmother to end the call. He hated to press the red button, never daring to be the first to hang up. He never said goodbye either: it felt too final.

*

Nick arrived at exactly twenty past eleven, knocking on the door and pulling Lucas into a tight hug as he said hello.

“So, you don’t much like being home alone?” he asked with a smile as he got back into the car with his grandson beside him.

“No,” he said, the answer short and definitive. He didn’t need to justify himself: he just hated being in the house when nobody else was around. “Thanks for coming, hara.”

“Anytime, Lucas. You know how it goes: all you have to do is call and I’ll be there.”

“How what goes?” Lucas asked, dragging his eyes away from the fields that zoomed by as Nick drove down the country roads that led from Little Blythe to Farnleigh.

“The song. You know, You’ve Got A Friend.”

Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know it,” he said, to a gasp from his grandfather.

“Seriously? Ok, here, take my phone. Find the song, play it now,” Nick said.

“Is it old?”

“Well, yes. It’s from before I was born. But it’s a classic – you should have it in your music repertoire.”

“I don’t have one of those,” Lucas murmured as he opened up his grandfather’s music app and searched for the song. Clicking the top one, he sat back and listened to it play over the car’s bluetooth. The tune was unfamiliar but he liked it: the music was simple and the words clear, two of his few criteria for a good song. He hated songs with too many instruments or indistinct words, though he didn’t mind classical: at least he could turn off his brain as he listened to that.

“Still don’t know it?” Nick asked. Lucas shook his head, his lips pressed together.

“It’s nice, though. I like it.”

“It’s true, too, you know. Any time you need a helping hand, you know hammy and I are always around. And your parents are too.”

“I know.” Lucas smiled. “Thank you.”

The rest of the journey was quiet, hardly another word said as they listened to the radio in mutual silence until Nick pulled up outside his house and Maddie opened the door with Felicity on her hip. Although she was three and perfectly capable of walking – even better now with the glasses that cleared her vision – she liked the attention her grandmother gave her: without Charlotte around, she still got to play the baby card.

“Hey, Lucas,” Maddie said with a grin, setting Felicity down to hug her grandson. “I’m sorry you woke up to an empty house – I just assumed you were at Asher’s when your mum dropped the girls off.”

“Nope,” Lucas said, breathing in his grandmother’s perfume. The aroma was a home comfort, reminding him of his childhood days spent with his grandparents: Maddie had worn the same perfume ever since Sarah was a baby, a smell that all of her children and grandchildren associated with her. “I was in bed.”

“Well, there’s breakfast waiting for you and Tom and Mika are in the conservatory.”

“What about Mum? Did she call?” he asked, following his grandmother through to the kitchen with Felicity’s hand in his when she reached for his fingers.

“I told her that you’re here,” Maddie said.

“Did you tell her or her answering machine?”

Maddie chuckled. Not a lot could get past him when he knew what he wanted. “I told her,” she said. “I left her a message and she rang back a couple of minutes ago. She said she’s very sorry for leaving you on your own and for missing your calls.”

“So she’s ok? She’s coming over?”

“She’ll be here in about twenty minutes,” Maddie said. “You don’t need to worry, Lucas. You just go and have something to eat, ok? I’ve got cereal and fruit and the toast should just have popped up.” She took it from the toaster and dropped the hot slices onto a plate, taking the butter from the fridge to swipe across the pieces for Lucas.

“Thank you,” he said when she set the plate down in front of him.

“Anything for my favourite grandson,” she said, kissing his forehead before he could squirm away.

“What if Mum has another baby and it’s a boy?” he asked, looking up at her. “You can’t say that if you ever have another grandson.”

Maddie just chuckled. “Then I guess I’ll have to cherish the time until then.”

Lucas ate faster than usual, devouring the toast and a handful of orange segments before he headed into the conservatory to find Tom and Mika bent over a crossword together. They both looked up when they heard him; they both smiled. It lifted Lucas’s heart a little to see Tom smile, something that didn’t happen so much anymore.

“Hey,” he said as he took a seat, reading the crossword upside down. Mika had brought a big book of puzzles with her, something she and Tom spent most lunchtimes doing together. They didn’t need to exchange words, no pressure for Tom to raise his voice as they sat huddled together with the book in front of them, each holding a pen.

Over the past couple of years, slowly growing accustomed to a new person in his life, Tom had come to consider Mika his best friend. She was the only person who hung out with him because she wanted to, the only person who had never made him feel like he needed to be anything more than who he was already. She didn’t try to make him speak; she didn’t tease him when he kept his words to himself. Never had she questioned him: she didn’t care that he was the way he was, or why. She just wanted to be his friend. She was the only person who had ever just wanted to be his friend, unconditionally. He knew he could be himself around her, getting lost inside the maze that was his mind as they sat together and filled out crosswords and Sudokus. She always shared her puzzles and she never interrupted if he was on a roll, waiting until there was a pause from the pen in his hand.

“Hi,” Tom said, at ease with himself with his two favourite people sitting with him. As much as he loved Lucas, his other best friend, he knew that family had always played a role in their friendship whereas Mika had never had that pressure. It was her own choice to sit with him.

“Hi, Lucas,” Mika said, one foot up on her chair with her chin on her knee. “We’re a bit stuck.”

“What on?”

Tom pointed at number ten across. “The word for a hammerhead shark’s hammer head,” he said. When he was comfortable, it was impossible to tell that he had any difficulty speaking. When he was at school, it was impossible to tell that he could talk at all. “You like sharks.”

“It’s the cephalofoil,” Lucas said, peering at the boxes. It fitted perfectly. He took the pen Tom handed him and he filled it in, writing it in backwards so as not to smudge his own writing with his hand. Being left-handed had proved to be a bit of a curse when he was such a perfectionist, constantly seeking out the fastest-drying pens. He had found the perfect brand a few years ago but it had been discontinued and his hefty supply had since run out.

“You’re so clever,” Mika said, as though she hadn’t filled in the first fifteen clues without hesitation. As smart as she was, with both enormous common sense and what Lucas assumed was an extraordinarily high IQ, she was always the first to compliment others for the slightest achievements of an intellectual nature or otherwise. Although she had been the only girl in all of Year Eight to score a gold award in the annual maths challenge, she had gushed with praise for Asher when he had achieved bronze. Lucas, who had also got gold, had been quietly smug when Adler hadn’t scored high enough for a certificate.

“I just used to be obsessed with sharks,” Lucas said. He struggled to take praise, never knowing quite what he was supposed to say in response to a compliment. “I never would have got that one.” He pointed at number six down: an animal found only in the Galapagos Islands. Mika had written flightless cormorant in perfect capital letters. “I’ve never even heard of that.”

“They’re so cute,” Mika said with a grin, holding her wrists up to her shoulders. “They’ve got these really tiny wings so they can’t fly.”

“Mika knows everything,” Tom said, wonder in his voice. “How do you say ‘you’re very clever’ in Japanese?”

“Anata wa totemo kashikoidesu,” Mika said without hesitation. Tom smiled, his eyes widening.

“I wish I could speak another language,” Lucas said. “That’s so cool.”

“Your parents are Korean!” Mika said. “Don’t they speak it at all?”

He shook his head. Mika’s bilinguality was in part thanks to her parents’ insistence on speaking Japanese around the house, even though they had both been born and raised in England. Her mother had bounced around the care system as a child, holding onto her heritage as the only constant in her life, and she had instilled that in her daughters too, insisting that they were proud of where they came from.

The three of them fell quiet when the crossword stole their attention once more, six eyes trained on the unsolved clues. Occasionally, one of them would grab a pen and scrawl in an answer without a word, confident enough not to rely on anyone else. When Liliana wandered in to see them all bent over the puzzle, she quickly left in search of something more interesting to do. She settled on watching cartoons with her sister and her grandmother, waiting for her mother to return.

Lucas looked up from the puzzle when he heard the click of the front door and the familiar jangle of his mother’s bracelets and he jumped to his feet, heading into the hallway. He wanted to know what had possibly taken so long and what had possessed her to leave him alone, a hundred questions on the tip of his tongue, but they all melted when he saw her. She stood in the hallway with Charlotte gripped against her chest as she fumbled around in her bag, her eyes red behind her glasses.

“Mum?”

She looked up, her bag dropping to the floor, and she gave him a wobbly smile. “Hi, baby. I’m so sorry about this morning, I really am. I don’t know what I was thinking, leaving you like that. I’m so sorry.” She held him close with one hand, his head almost level with hers: while he was a little taller than average for his age, she was short for hers. “Where’s hammy?”

“In the sitting room. What’s wrong? Why’re you crying?”

Sarah sniffed and smiled but her son’s concern was enough to tip her emotions over the edge again for the hundredth time that morning. A fresh set of tears welled in her eyes, her chin wobbling. Lucas stared, holding in a deep breath as he flipped through the pages of his mind for a solution.

“Are you ok?” he asked after a few seconds. She nodded, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Why were you at the doctor? Is something wrong?”

“No, no, I’m fine, baby,” she said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Maddie came out of the sitting room when she heard her daughter’s voice, pulling her into an embrace without question, sandwiching Charlotte between them. Nick had taken Liliana and Felicity out to the garden centre when they had got bored, the house suddenly quieter without their babbling.

“What’s going on?” Lucas asked. “Why won’t you tell me? Where did you go all morning?” He hated when his questions weren’t answered almost as much as he hated having so many questions in the first place, wishing his mother would just tell him what was wrong in plain and simple facts. He watched as she dried her eyes and cuddled Charlotte closer. “Is something wrong with Lottie?” he asked after a moment. “Where did you go?”

“I had to take Lottie to the doctor,” Sarah said, following her mother through to the conservatory where she sat down on the sofa with her baby on her lap, holding Charlotte against her stomach. “To the audiologist.”

“What’s that?” Lucas asked.

“It’s a doctor who specialises in hearing,” Maddie said, sitting down next to Lucas. She turned to Sarah. “What did they say, baby?”

Sarah had to gather herself for a moment, taking a shaky breath before she kissed her daughter’s soft hair and tried to stop the tears that she cursed for being so pathetic. “She has autosomal recessive hearing loss,” she said quietly, biting her tongue to stop more tears as she repeated the words that she’d had to have repeated to her a few times before they had sunk in.

“What does that mean?” Lucas asked, trying to hold onto his patience though it was quickly slipping out of his grip.

“Lottie’s deaf,” his mother said, pressing her lips to Charlotte’s head and holding her close. Lucas frowned, his eyebrows coming together until they formed one.

“She’s deaf? She can’t hear?”

Sarah shook her head, beating herself up for not noticing sooner. Charlotte had never reacted as much as the others had as babies but it was only a few weeks ago that she had stopped responding to noise at all, not even flinching when her mother had dropped a glass on the floor.

“How come?” Lucas asked. He felt his skin go hot and cold the way it always did when something big happened.

“It’s a genetic thing,” Sarah said. “Truman and I both have a gene, apparently … I’m not sure. I got a bit upset when the doctor was explaining it to me.” She wrapped both arms around her daughter, floored by the realisation that she couldn’t hear a word they were saying: she was sitting in her own silent world, locked out of her mother’s chatter. Sarah pushed up her glasses and covered her eyes with one hand, her shoulders shaking. Maddie took Charlotte, bouncing the girl on her knee.

“This isn’t the end of the world, hun,” she said. “It’s just a shock. But she’s still a completely normal little girl. You should talk to Bree, you know. She’s been through all this with Nia – she can help you.”

“I just … I’m overwhelmed right now,” Sarah said. “I can’t really process it all. I know there are all sorts of options but right now all I can focus on is how lonely she must feel. I feel so awful, Mum. I got so annoyed when she cried every time she couldn’t see me. I had no idea she couldn’t hear me either.” She reached out for her daughter, pulling her back onto her lap. “I just don’t want to let her go right now. I … I want Truman.”

“He’ll be home in a few hours,” Maddie said, rubbing her daughter’s knee. “You just need to calm down, Sar. The good news is Lottie’s healthy, right? She’s fine and she’s going to be fine. Look at Nia – she was tiny when she lost her hearing and look at her now. She’s no different to anyone else out there.”

Sarah nodded to herself, trying to let the words sink in but it was hard when her world had just been tipped upside down. Lucas stared at his little sister who stared right back, her eyes bright and inquisitive. When he waved, she grinned at him and she copied when he clapped, smacking her hands together with a gurgle.

“So will she ever be able to hear?” he asked, looking up at his mother.

“That depends,” she said, dropping her eyes to her baby before she looked up at Maddie. “The audiologist wanted to talk about cochlear implants and he said her language could be normal if she has them fitted soon but … I don’t know, it’s surgery. It’s a big thing and she’s so little and … God, Truman doesn’t even know yet.” She broke down again and Maddie put her arms around her, shushing her as she cried.

Lucas looked up at Mika and Tom. The two of them were still sitting at the table, their attention on the conversation across the room rather than the new crossword they had started. Mika’s eyes were wide, her brain swirling with all her ridiculous knowledge that was held back by her emotional intelligence: she was smart enough to know when being smart wasn’t appreciated.

“I know we’ll be ok,” Sarah said, once she had taken control of herself, “it’s just a lot to take in at once. I knew something wasn’t quite right, I just didn’t realise how wrong it was. There’s a lot to think about.” She bounced Charlotte when she began to cry but she knew that noise: she was hungry.

“Well, first things first,” Maddie said. “I’m going to make you a cup of tea and you’re going to feed your daughter. When Truman gets home, you are going to tell him what the doctor said and you’re going to talk about the next steps. Then you should go and see Bree this week because she’ll be a lot more useful than me.”

Sarah nodded, taking a deep breath. “Ok,” she said. “I’m ok. We’re going to be ok.”

*

Lucas wasn’t sure how ok his mother really was when even after they got home that afternoon, she broke down in tears when Charlotte cried. She had told Liliana and Felicity once they had got back to the house, neither of whom had been too fazed by the news. It had gone over Felicity’s head – she was too young to comprehend or care – and Liliana had been intrigued, but that hadn’t lasted for long.

The house was back to being hectic and Lucas almost wished he had appreciated the morning’s silence more as he sat in the sitting room with his book in his hand. He was back to reading the first Harry Potter book again, by now having lost count of how many times he had read the entire series: it was a source of comfort when he got overwhelmed, something he wished he could share with his mother. She never had the time to read for pleasure anymore.

A little after lunchtime, the front door opened and Audrie slipped into the house as quietly as though she was trying to go unheard but Lucas picked up on the click of the lock, putting down his book to greet her.

“Hey,” he said, leaving it at that when he saw the look on her face. She looked like Sarah had a few hours ago.

“Hi,” she said quietly. She sloped into the kitchen where Sarah was preparing supper with Charlotte strapped to her chest. It was the only way she settled, with her cheek over her mother’s heart.

“Hi, honey,” Sarah said with a smile. She had managed to get her tears under control once she and Charlotte had settled into a rhythm, building up a pile of chopped peppers and onions to make supper later. “Audrie? Are you ok? Oh!” she cried out, remembering where Audrie had been that morning, collecting her AS-level results from school. “How were your results? How did you do? What did you get?”

“Four As and an X,” Audrie said. She stood still for a moment, a glass of water in her hand, before bursting into sudden tears and leaving the room. Sarah and Lucas stared at each other.

“What on earth?” Sarah asked, glancing into the hallway. “Four As? That’s amazing, isn’t it? What’s an X? That’s not a grade.”

“I don’t know,” Lucas said. “She only did four exams.” All year, Audrie had been cramming for physics, biology, chemistry and French with an insane workload that she had powered on with, at times only just keeping her head above water. She was still pursuing her childhood dream of becoming a marine biologist, that goal well in reach with her top grades and passion for science.

Lucas followed his mother’s gaze before he followed in his sister’s footsteps, heading up to her bedroom where he found her lying face down on her bed. Sarah followed close behind, knocking before she slipped into the room and sat on the edge of the bed.

“What’s wrong, Audrie?” she asked, her hand on her shoulder. “Four As, that’s incredible. I’m so proud of you, sweetie. Why’re you so upset?”

“What’s an X?” Lucas asked. Audrie turned her cheek against her pillow to look at her mother and her brother, her eyes streaming.

“Dylan broke up with me,” she said, her voice small. Her entire body shook when she sobbed, burying her face in the pillow. Sarah’s heart broke for the millionth time that day, rubbing Audrie’s back.

“Oh, Audrie,” she said, on the cusp of crying again. Lucas stood still, his frown set into his features.

“Why did he break up with you?” he asked. The two had been together for so long now, more than two and a half years, that he had grown used to them being a couple. Dylan had become a feature at Song family dinners as much as Lucas was a feature at the Knights.

“He said he doesn’t love me like that,” Audrie said, sniffling into her sleeve. “But I don’t get it. I still love him.”

Lucas didn’t know what to do, watching as Sarah soothed her. It was all too much for him, far too much emotion for one day after he had woken up feeling so good. It had been hard enough to see his mother cry and harder still to realise that his baby sister couldn’t hear his voice. To see Audrie cry, when she was ordinarily the strong and sensible one in the family, was a step too far. Muttering an excuse, he backed out of her bedroom and passed his sisters, heading straight outside. He didn’t stop until he got to the end of the garden where the grass met the stream.

His head was full again. Before it had only been full of his own problems but now there was even more to weigh on his mind. He sat down on a flat rock and watched the stream trickle by, part of him tempted to dip his toes in the water even though he ordinarily couldn’t think of anything worse than touching the dirty brook. He wanted to push the limits, just like the day had done so far. But he couldn’t. His limbs wouldn’t move, stuck like a statue as he stared.

It didn’t take long for him to lose track of time. The air cooled off, the sun hiding behind a cloud, but he stayed where he was. He couldn’t bear to move as though that would be admitting that everything was changing. Everything had already changed. Hugging his knees to his chest, he swallowed hard and focused on the fluttering leaves all around him, the gentle tinkle of the water trickling over the pebbles in the bed of the stream.

“There you are.”

He turned around at the sound of Truman’s voice. He never got home before four thirty: Lucas realised he must have been outside for a couple of hours, getting sucked into the vortex of his own mind for far too long.

“What’re you doing down here?” Truman was holding Charlotte in one arm, feeding her from a bottle.

“It was a bit too much inside,” he said. “Mum was crying and then Audrie was crying and I didn’t know what to do so I came down here.”

Truman sat next to him, carefully lowering himself down to the ground without dropping his baby or her bottle. “I hear it’s been quite a busy day,” he said.

“Did Mum tell you about Lottie?”

Truman nodded. “You know she’ll be just fine, don’t you? You don’t need to worry about Lottie, Lucas. Yes, it’s a bit of a shock and we’re going to have to make some changes but everything’s going to be ok.” He gazed down at his daughter with adoration in his heart, love spilling out of his every pore as he cradled her, and he lifted his eyes to Lucas.

“What about Audrie?”

Truman pursed his lips. “As much as it hurts, love doesn’t always work out. She’ll be ok, though. She just needs some time to grieve. What about you, Lucas? How’re you? Mum said you ended up home alone today.”

“I didn’t like that,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Hara came and got me.”

“You met up with Tom and Mika, right?”

He nodded.

“There we go. Something good from today,” Truman said with a laugh.

“And lots of bad,” Lucas added. His stepfather shook his head and let out a slow sigh as he watched the water.

“You have to take the bad with the good,” he said, trying to put together an analogy in language Lucas would understand better than a broad statement about the unfairness of life. “When you look at a puzzle, some of the pieces don’t always make sense but all together, they paint a picture. Right? On their own, they don’t mean anything but they’re necessary to the jigsaw.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” Lucas muttered. “I know you’re making a point but I don’t know what it is.”

“I guess I’m just saying that everything happens for a reason. Maybe we don’t always know the reason, but it’s there.”

If everything happened for a reason, Lucas thought, then there was a reason Adler was in his life. There was a reason she was determined to knock him down, a reason that she just wouldn’t let go. But there was also a reason that he still had Asher, a reason that they had made promises to each other all those years ago.

“Do you really think that?” He looked up at Truman and down at Charlotte, who looked so peaceful as she drank from her bottle. Truman nodded.

“I really do. Maybe it’s cowardly, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just something I tell myself to avoid having to deal with the senselessness of life, but it helps.”

Lucas nodded. It was vague, but it suited the state his mind was in. If there was a reason for everything then there was a reason that he loved his best friend; there was a reason to hold out hope.

+ – + – +

i hope you enjoyed this chapter, and seeing a little bit more into tom’s head (as well as this being a bit of a family chapter). i hope to post ch11 tomorrow but my flight is from around 10pm – 1am which is my prime writing zone! i wasn’t sure i’d get this done today as i was pretty tired at midnight with only 2.5k but i’m pretty stubborn and i’m not about to break my daily updates on the 10th day.