Chapter 13

Lucy watched as her nephew, clad only in a cloth diaper and a Batman t-shirt, plumply rolled onto his forearms.

A year's supply of disposable diapers at stake, and he could care less. His mother didn't care, either: they were diaper hipsters. Dipsters.

But it was a race, and it was a distraction.

She didn't want time to move. Heightened emotions of a 60 second baby crawl meant 60 seconds of not thinking about that departure line at DFW airport's military gate.

Would he come home?

Lucy stared long and hard into her brother's jaw, trying to memorize its strength, its joy. So much like his father's. Lucy looked at her father, behind them, holding a grandkid.

Boy, how his face shined. Shined with happy. Shined with momentary glee.

Three weeks ago it shone for a different reason. Slick with tears, it still looked strong, but awash in joy she could stand to stare at her father's face forever.

And that's what it was, forever.

Every year.

The fair.

Lucy heard music in her head, tuning out cheering, tuning out organs from adjacent tents, tuning out Big Tex bellowing in background hums. For a minute, it was all right to be back here, to be doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again.

It was all right for it not to change.

And then, like an organ grinder halting his pedals, the music stopped. Lucy came back into focus. Oh how she wanted it to change. Oh how she wanted to be able to make her father's face light up like that with a grandchild of her own. Oh how she yearned to be the one standing near a duct tape finish line at a baby crawling race with her cell phone, screaming at her child to come and get it. Oh how she wanted to be loved, to be loved in the way all these other twosomes became two and then three and then us.

Oh how she wanted.

Lucy watched her sister-in-law hoist her child up into the air, victorious, giant smiles captured on television cameras for evening news segments. She watched reporters take her name. She watched her brother head over to furl her up into a hug, in his shoulder, on his arm.

She turned away, fighting tears.

Someone was watching her from behind the tent poles, but she didn't know.

She had never felt more alone in all her life.