It was a quiet night in Bellwood. The trees stirred, leaves whispering against a sky the color of pooled ink. Cars slid through the dark like nothing bad had ever found this town. Bars along Maple throbbed at the seams—old-timers with permanent squints, kids brave enough to trust a fake ID—each of them after the same thing: a night that didn't ask for anything back.
So was I.That wasn't going to happen. I should've known.
RING.
RING.
"Who the hell is calling at this hour?" I mumbled, rolling onto my left side. The mattress squealed at the shift. The ringing died. Gravity reclaimed me.
RING.
RING.
"What," I grunted a minute later, rubbing my face. I shoved the covers off and pushed upright; my spine popped all the way to my neck like bubble wrap. The RV—"the rust bucket," as my granddaughter Gwen liked to call it—held its breath around me. Condensation threaded the small window over the sink. A fly strip swayed near the vent, summer ghosts suspended in amber.
RING.
I dug the phone out of last week's jeans. I'd let it go dark the last few days—too busy catching up with family and pretending retirement meant quiet. The screen glared: Unknown Number. A hairline crack ran through the top corner, a scar from a night I don't talk about.
I let it ring once more, then hit accept.
"Hello… yeah, this is Max Tennyson speaking. What's this about? It's awfully late." The words came out with confusion—and a thin snake of dread winding through old bones.
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry for the hour, but this is an emergency." The man's voice was steady. Trained. Not new to bad news.
I paused. What could be an emergency now? If this were about my time with the Plumbers, it wouldn't start with apologies.
"This call concerns your daughter, Kaitlyn," he said. "Sir, you may want to sit down."
My free hand found the back of the dinette chair and didn't quite grip. The RV tilted, just a fraction.
"I'm standing," I said. "Say it."
A beat. Paper rasped on his end.
"This is Sergeant Alvarez, Wilshire PD—Delaware. I'm sorry to inform you… your daughter, Kaitlyn Tennyson, was pronounced deceased at 12:43 a.m."
Then I was gripping. The chair. The table. Anything. The world listed as I tried to slow my heart and failed.
"No… you must be mistaken." My voice came out flat. "What happened."
"I'm sorry, sir. There's no mistake. You have my deepest condolences." He kept going because he had to. "Units responded to a call at the Wren Street address. The house was burned out—looked like an explosion—and unsecured. Based on CSI analysis, we believe there was a struggle inside."
I slid down the cabinet until the floor caught me. Something hot tracked my cheeks and I barely noticed. My baby girl.
"The husband is unaccounted for—status unknown," Alvarez said. "He's our primary person of interest."
His voice thinned to a tunnel. Guilt, grief, and a thought that didn't fit: When did she get married?
"Sir? Are you with me?"
I cleared my throat. "Line cut for a second. Repeat."
"Yes, sir." He exhaled, patient. "As for her son—Benjamin Kerby Tennyson—we have him at Mercy General. As next of kin, you can take custody after discharge."
My mind reeled. Kaitlyn had a son. I had a grandson. …Wait.
I forced myself upright. "Is he okay? For the love of God, tell me he's okay."
"Sir, please—take a breath." He waited a beat. "Your grandson has fractures in both legs, multiple bruises and abrasions, and a first-degree burn. The medical team has addressed the physical injuries. It's his mental state we're concerned about."
Silence.
"We believe he witnessed the incident," Alvarez added, voice gentler now. "He's not talking. You need to see him."
"Address," I said.
He gave it. I repeated it back, word-perfect.
"I'm on my way." I ended the call before my voice could break again.
The phone slid from my hand. I folded in on myself on the RV floor—forehead to knees, hands locked behind my neck—and I cried. Not the tidy kind. The kind that empties a man out and leaves him shaking in the dark. A sound I'd never let anyone hear tore itself free anyway.
When there was nothing left, I wiped my face on my sleeve, stood, and moved.
Shirt—my red, floral button-up, the one Gwen teases me about. Jeans. Belt. Wallet. Keys. I reached for the old cupboard by reflex and stopped. Not tonight. I closed it softly, as if that could keep its ghosts asleep.
Outside, the air had the sharp, clean bite of recent rain. The RV door thunked shut. The engine coughed, then settled. I pulled out into a town that had the decency to pretend it didn't notice me.
Halfway down Maple, my phone buzzed. A text thread from an unknown number lit the cab.
Photos.
On Wren Street, the night was torn open. Sawhorses. Tape. White suits moving like cautious ghosts. The townhouse a black mouth rimmed in ash. A banner that had read HAPPY BIRTHDAY sagging in the ruined window, the middle letters melted to a smear. A toy firetruck on its side in the gutter as if it had rushed out and fainted.
My thumb hovered above the next image. I stopped. Not yet. There were people I needed first.
Carl's porch light was a tired coin against the dark. I knocked twice, harder than I meant to.
Knock.
knock.
Footsteps. The chain slid. The door opened a hand's width and then wider. My son blinked at me—nightgown, robe, hair in surrender. "Dad, it's past midnight, what is it—"
I put two fingers to his lips. His eyes met mine. Whatever he saw there closed his mouth for him.
"Your sister died tonight," I said, each word a step through broken glass. "Her son—your nephew—is at Mercy General in Delaware. He needs his family now. Wake Sandra. Wake Beatrice. Get dressed. Be ready when I get back. I'm going to get Natalie and Frank."
For a half second, the world was only the ticking of their hallway clock. Then Carl nodded once, like a soldier taking an order he hated. "Okay." His voice broke and steadied. "Okay."
Sandra appeared behind him in a t-shirt and confusion that turned to fear and then to motion. "What do we need?"
"Clothes, IDs, jackets," I said. "We're driving straight through."
Beatrice's small face peeked around the banister, hair a wild halo. "Grandpa?"
"Back to bed, Bee," Sandra began, but I shook my head.
"No," I said gently. "Come here."
She came down three steps and I met her halfway. She climbed into my arms and I held on like she was the last piece of a bridge. "We're going to help your cousin," I whispered into her hair. "Okay?"
"Okay," she whispered back, and for a moment I heard Kaitlyn at five saying okay, Daddy, I'll be careful, I promise, and the world tilted again.
I set Beatrice down, squeezed Carl's shoulder, and left before the house could swallow me.
Natalie answered on the second knock, robe thrown over striped pajamas, eyes already brimming like she had known before I spoke. "Max?"
"Nat," I said. "It's Kaitlyn."
Frank—my son—stepped into the hall, broad-shouldered and barefoot, a mug he'd forgotten to drink from cooling in his hand. He read the rest in my face. The mug went down. Keys came up. Coats appeared out of nowhere. He put a hand on the small of Natalie's back and said nothing because the right words don't exist. Behind them, Gwen rubbed sleep from her eyes, the question in her mouth closing when she saw mine.
We caravanned, three vehicles stitching a seam through empty streets. I led, watching their headlights hold steady in my mirrors. The radio stayed off. All I could hear was the engine, the wipers, and the clock in my chest refusing to learn a new rhythm.
We crossed the county line. The road flattened into a ribbon. Sodium lamps threw islands of orange on wet asphalt. Between them: black water, deep and quiet. I drove the way you drive when everything you love is upstream and the dam has already broken.
Memories came like road signs I didn't want to read. Kaitlyn at eight, triumphant on a two-wheeler, blood on her knee and a grin that dared the world to try again. Kaitlyn at sixteen, slamming a car door and swearing she'd never speak to me and speaking to me ten minutes later because we were both terrible at pride. Kaitlyn at the last Thanksgiving I'd seen her, telling a story that made the whole table laugh, eyes bright with some secret she hadn't decided to share yet.
Mercy General rose out of the night all at once: glass and steel and too much light. I parked crooked and didn't care. Inside, the air tasted like old coffee and antiseptic. A security guard looked up, took one look at our faces, and pointed us to the desk.
"Name?" the nurse asked softly.
"Benjamin Kerby Tennyson," I said. "His mother is—" The word stuck. "I'm his grandfather."
She tapped, nodded, and came around the desk. "Third floor. Pediatric trauma. I'll radio ahead."
Elevators are cruel when they're slow. I counted the lights and didn't blink. Natalie held my arm. Somewhere in the building a baby wailed, indignant at the whole deal of being new.
Third floor. Soft colors that tried and failed to be kind. A doctor met us in the hall—early thirties, dark circles, steady eyes. "Mr. Tennyson? I'm Dr. Rao."
"Max," I said. Words felt heavy. "Can I—"
"Yes," she said. "He's sedated for pain. He's safe."
Safe. The word almost knocked me down.
We walked to a room half-dimmed to keep the world gentle. My grandson lay small in a bed that would have fit two of him—casts on both legs, bandages like cloudy maps across knees and shins, a pale rectangle of gauze peeking from under the collar of a hospital gown, another over his left eye. One hand had been left free of tape and IVs. In it, he clenched an object so tight his knuckles had gone white.
A brass compass.
Its needle twitched, lost, trying to find north in a place that didn't have one.
I put a hand on the rail. "Hey, Ben," I said, and my voice came out as something like a promise. "It's Grandpa. I'm here."
His eyelids fluttered but didn't lift. The monitor kept a thin, stubborn count of his heart.
Carl came in behind me and made a sound I didn't know he could make. Natalie pressed her fist to her mouth. Frank stood at the foot of the bed like a wall that would not break.
Dr. Rao spoke low, practical mercy. "He's stable. The fractures are clean. Burns are superficial. We're more concerned about shock and acute stress. We'll keep him overnight, likely longer. Social services—"
"He's not going anywhere but with us," I said, and the room understood it wasn't a threat, just gravity.
She nodded. "Of course."
My phone buzzed—messages stacking into a wall. Condolences. Questions. A cousin offering prayers. My sister asking if the news about Kaitlyn's was true. I tried to answer and couldn't. My thumb slipped; the next photo in the thread opened.
I saw enough to know and not enough to ever forget. The camera kept its distance; mercy lived in the blur. A body bag. The edge of a stretcher. A charred wall collapsing into shadow. The caption: I'm sorry, I found all I could for the moment.
I folded in half on the visitor's chair. The breath went out of me like a fuse. Natalie—usually the cool one—knelt and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, Gwen's smaller hug closing over us both. I cried again, quieter this time, like the sound might break the boy's sleep.
When I could, I set the phone face down. My hand drifted to the compass and paused. Ben's fingers twitched; the needle jittered and settled, stubborn as a heartbeat.
I leaned close so only my grandson could hear. "We're going to follow this, you and me," I whispered. "I don't know what happened or what you saw. But no matter what, we're here. All of us. We're family, and we love you. You're not alone."
The rest lived in my throat where vows belong.
I looked at my family—faces I'd known in every season of their lives—and felt grief move through us like weather, heavy and unstoppable, and then, under it, something else: alignment. Concern sharpening into purpose.
Outside the window, night pressed its forehead to the glass and waited. Somewhere far off, a train drew a long line across the dark and tied it off. The compass needle trembled once, as if it had heard me.
"Rest, kiddo," I said, laying two fingers lightly on his hand, careful not to jostle the needle. "Grandpa's here."
And I stayed, counting his breaths until mine matched, holding fast to the only north I had left.
...
A couple of hours later we were still crammed into the room. Gwen and Beatrice had sagged back into sleep, each curled into a parent's lap. The rest of us sat in our separate weather systems—guilt, worry, the kind of grief that doesn't talk.
I watched him sleep and tried to find the strength it would take to raise a boy. I had not been a gentle father to my own; they turned out all right, but I know the places where "all right" costs. I didn't want to spend Ben there. I hoped I could carry him through this—and, God help me, that he might carry me through it too.
Even asleep he looked scared and tired.
Me too, kid, I thought. Me too.
A rustle. I blinked, sat up. Ben was awake—dark curls a mess, eyes open and emptied out, that glassy, too-old stare you only get from seeing something you shouldn't. Carl and Sandra noticed at the same time. Natalie did, too.
She exhaled, not as a doctor, just as family. "I'm a therapist," she said softly, "and even I can tell from his eyes… the trauma—he's going to need real help."
"I know," I told her—firm, gentle. "That's why we're here." I stood and moved to the bedside.
"Hi, Ben," I said, slow as rain. "It's nice to meet you. I'm your Grandpa Max—your mother's father."
His eye twitched. Otherwise, nothing. Worry lifted its head.
I kept going. "Over there are your Aunt Natalie and your Uncle Frank. The girl in the chair is your cousin Gwen." I pointed to the other side of the bed. "And that's your Aunt Sandra, your Uncle Carl, and your cousin Beatrice."
Nothing. The compass lay under his fist like a live thing.
"We're your family," I said. "We're the ones who will take care of you from now on. You're not alone."
I took his free hand.
He squeezed. Hard. Hard enough to hurt. Then, slowly, he turned his head and looked at me—eyes so cold and empty it felt like opening a door to winter.
What did you see, kid?
What the hell happened?
What more was taken from you. I will give everything I have to give it back to you…
If only I knew.
I would.
I promise!