Call To Honor. Tawny Weber

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      That he’d still have words for later was just one of those things that always amazed her about Nathan. He’d talk through the meal about everything from camp to the LEGO project he was working on to baseball and back again. Unlike his mother, he never ran out of words. Never had to search for them.

      But she was searching now. For the words, for the right way to tell him what she had to share. As he scooped his last fry through his ketchup, she still hadn’t figured it out. But like most of motherhood, she realized she’d have to figure it as she went.

      “Leave the dishes for now, Nathan.” She laid her hand on his arm to keep him from jumping up from the table. “We need to talk.”

      “Am I in trouble?” His face creasing, Nathan settled into his chair again.

      “No, sweetie,” she rushed to say, sliding her hand down to mesh her fingers through his smaller ones.

      He was growing so fast. Once, those fingers had been tiny as they’d wrapped around hers, his just-born eyes staring into her face as if she were his world. Those fingers had gripped hers as he’d taken his first teetering steps; that hand had held tight the first day of school.

      She’d spent her entire life trying to protect him. To give him the best and keep him as happy as she could. Now she had to hurt him. God help her, she blamed Brandon.

      Harper took a deep, shaky breath as she tried to fight back the tears clogging her throat, then gave her son a reassuring smile.

      “You’re not in trouble. I just need to tell you something.”

      “Something bad?” he ventured when she bit her lip, trying to gather the words she still hadn’t found.

      She wanted to assure him that it wasn’t bad. She wanted to continue ignoring Brandon’s existence. His death shouldn’t change that.

      Except that she couldn’t. And it did.

      Once again, Brandon had managed to turn her entire world upside down, and once again, he hadn’t stuck around to watch the fallout.

CHAPTER FIVE

      SO THIS MUST be what it felt like to get run over by a truck.

      A very large, dirty truck overloaded with painful regrets and parental guilt.

      Sitting on the edge of the bed, head resting in her hands, Harper used her fingers to try to massage away the pain throbbing a tango on her scalp.

      He’d taken the news well.

      Too well.

      She’d told him that the man who’d fathered him was dead, and Nathan had simply nodded. He hadn’t asked any questions. He hadn’t been interested in Brandon’s heroics as a SEAL, or why he’d never been around. He didn’t care what was in the box of effects sent to him by the person who claimed to be Brandon’s best friend. The first time he’d shown any emotion was when she’d suggested he might want the glass-fronted rosewood case of medals to keep in his room, and that’d been to throw the case back into the packing box with a scowl.

      Before she could ask if he wanted to talk about it, or if he had any questions, he’d demanded to know if they were done yet so he could call Jeremy.

      Harper hadn’t known what else to do other than wave him toward the phone. Maybe he was just too excited about camp to focus on the other. Or maybe he simply didn’t care.

      She’d spent the rest of the evening watching for signs while pretending not to. She’d done her yoga in the TV room while he chatted on the phone. She’d worked on her laptop in the dining room while he’d tossed his baseball in the backyard. And she’d curled up with him on the couch while he grumbled over his summer reading.

      But she hadn’t seen a single sign of grief or confusion. He’d been his usual, upbeat self.

      Maybe he was repressing something.

      Or maybe he simply didn’t care.

      “Mom?”

      Harper jumped to her feet, hurrying down the hall to Nathan’s bedroom.

      “What do you need, sweetie?”

      “I can’t find my baseball.” In Thor pajamas, wrapped in the bedtime scent of coconut soap and bubblegum toothpaste, Nathan sat in the middle of his floor surrounded by LEGO pieces. “I wanted to use it as the power source, but it’s not here.”

      “Power source, huh?” Harper knelt down next to him, careful to avoid jabbing a tiny plastic block into her knee. “Is this going to be a space station?”

      “Yeah. It’s gonna be Kylo Ren’s hideout.” He didn’t look at her, but Harper didn’t need to see his eyes to conclude he was upset. “He’s gotta recover and learn to control his temper and figure out stuff.”

      Kylo Ren. Harper’s breath came slow and painful as she tried to figure out how to ask her little boy if he was suddenly relating to the villain’s father issues. She wanted to gather Nathan tight in her arms and rock away any pain, soothe any confusion.

      Her eyes burned as she looked at the top of her son’s tousled hair as it lay drying in shaggy waves. He wasn’t a baby anymore. And while she didn’t claim to understand much about the male ego, she knew her little boy was already too much a man to accept either words or hugs until he was ready for them.

      She didn’t know what it said that she grieved over that more than anything else today. But there it was.

      So she did what she always did. She sidestepped the emotional drama and went for the practical.

      “You were playing with your ball when you were in the yard. Did you leave it out there?”

      “Maybe.” His face creased as he continued to snap the tiny gray pieces together. “I think so.”

      “I’ll find it,” she said, giving in to the urge to run her hand over his hair before rising.

      “Can I listen to a story, too?” he asked before she reached the door.

      “Percy Jackson?” Harper asked, reaching for the remote she kept on the spaceship-shaped shelving unit and aiming it for the CD player. Already queued to chapter 7, the narrator’s voice filled the room with the adventures of Percy and Grover. Harper waited another moment, but Nathan seemed content.

      He wouldn’t be in a half hour when she called for lights-out, though. Not without his ball. He’d never had a blankie or teddy bear. Just like he’d never had a father.

      He’d had her. And he’d had his baseball.

      Since he’d probably left it in the backyard, she started her search there. It wasn’t until the evening air cooled her hot cheeks that she realized they were covered in tears.

      Harper dried them with an impatient swipe of her hands, bending low to peer under chairs, stretching sideways to check behind the bank of variegated hosta plants and rich purple spikes of salvia.

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