“Zac,” I declared, nudging him with my foot. He flinched and opened his eyes. “Your phone is ringing.”
Taylor, Zac, and I were all beat. While everyone was out shopping, we had gotten the extra bedroom completely cleaned out and had made our way back to the living room to crash.
“Hello?” Zac mumbled into his phone. “Right now?” He groaned. “Okay, give us a few minutes.” After hanging up the phone, he dropped it to the floor beside him and laid his head back down.
“Who was it?” Taylor spoke groggily from his comfortable spot on the couch.
“Case,” Zac answered, mumbling. “They’re back but we have to go down there and get everything they bought.”
“That doesn’t seem very fair,” Taylor commented, stretching his arms above his head.
“Apparently that’s what we all get for making her go.”
“Alright, let’s just get it over with,” I said standing up. My brothers reluctantly followed my lead, but eventually we were down at the car.
“You should have told them to just buy the whole mall,” Zac teased Ezra. He just laughed as Zac ruffled his hair.
“We thought about it,” Natalie retorted. “But it wouldn’t have fit in the car. And this really isn't all that much. She refused to get much.”
Zac glared at Casey. “You were supposed to get what you needed.”
“I have more than I need now,” she argued.
“Did you get baby stuff?”
“Why do you keep pushing the baby stuff thing?” Casey was starting to sound irritated.
“We got some starter stuff,” Natalie answered for her, keeping them from fighting. “And we still have some of Ezra’s stuff she can use like a crib and baby monitors.”
Zac and I grabbed some bags from the trunk of the car. Zac, noticing Taylor not grabbing anything yet, wordlessly handed his to Taylor and turned around to grab some more. I laughed at Taylor’s baffled face.
“Ladies first,” I said after all of the bags had been taken out of the trunk.
The trip up to the apartment was silent with the exception of the boys' excited chatter ahead of us. I peeked in some of the bags I was carrying and found some clothes that were meant for Chris, some diapers, and baby clothes. A thought popped into my head as we neared our apartment.
“Hey Case,” I said out loud. She turned to look at me curiously. “Do you have any names picked out?”
“Yea,” she nodded modestly. For the first time since the first day she showed up, she seemed almost uncomfortable. “I have three that I’m thinking about.”
“Are they top secret?” Taylor asked her.
“No.” She seemed very reluctant to talk about it. I knew from experience that pushing her to talk about something wasn't the way to approach it.
“Don’t worry about it,” I smiled. “We’ll all find out eventually.”
All of the bags dropped to the middle of the living room floor after Natalie had opened the door to let us in.
Zac announced he was going back to bed, leaving Taylor and I to stay with the girls while they went through all the stuff they bought. One bag at a time, Natalie made Casey show us each item individually. Chris and Ezra took the opportunity to dump out the bags, making Casey put everything back in when they were done. I crawled to the floor beside her to put stuff back in bags after she had held them up to Taylor and I. It wasn’t until the fourth bag that I asked her the question that had been on my mind.
“Did you get anything for yourself?”
She looked at me like I was stupid. “Of course I did. Zac wouldn’t let me hear the end of it if I didn’t.”
“She didn’t get much,” Natalie explained, “but it will have to do for now.” Casey rolled her eyes and shook her head as she continued through each individual item in each bag.
She laughed as she pulled out a black shirt. In bold red lettering it said 'stubborn.'
“That’s actually Zac’s. “ She tossed it to the chair behind her that I had been sitting in.
After all the bags had been taken care of, Natalie and Taylor decided to go home. With much reluctance from Casey, Chris went with them. He and Ezra we’re becoming inseparable and I think Casey was starting to worry about tearing them apart when she was ready to leave New York. I was hoping it would give her just one more reason to stay.
I carried the bags to Casey's room, having to make more than one trip.
“Diana Kay,” she announced as I walked into the livingroom after the last trip to the bedroom. She was sitting at one end of the couch, with her back against the armrest.
“What?” I asked, confused. I sat down on the couch across from her.
“I was thinking about naming her after your mom, for all she has done for me. And Kay is my mom’s middle name.”
“Didn’t you say you had three names picked out?”
“Diana Kay, Taylor Renea, or Jessica Elizabeth.”
I chuckled, “keeping it all in the family huh?”
She smiled. “Christian’s middle name is Walker.”
“Zac or dad?” I asked her.
“Both,” she said sheepishly. “But we’re just going to say dad for now.”
“So why are you naming your children after our family?” I asked good-naturedly.
“Your family means so much to me. I just feel like maybe it’s a small token to show them how much I appreciate it.”
“Everyone knows how much you appreciate it. You’re part of our family. You have been for years.”
It was true. No one had thought of her as any less than family. I could see tears forming in her eyes, but I didn't do anything. I just watched as she started swiping at them.
“I’ve just caused so much trouble with everyone. I feel so horrible,” she confessed.
“You haven’t caused any kind of trouble.”
“I just show up one day out of the blue, and you guys spend crazy amounts of money on me, and clean out your music room. And even before that, when we were all living in Tulsa. I just feel like I’ve been nothing but a burden.”
“Casey, you are not a burden. If anything, you’ve been a blessing.”
“How could I have possibly been a blessing?”
"When you came to live with us you were so..." I frantically searched for a word that wouldn't put her on the defensive.
"Messed up?" She offered. "I was so completely screwed up."
"You were thirteen and you'd just lost your mother," I reasoned. "You were dealing with it the only way you knew how."
"She envied your mom," she smiled a little, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. "Her ability to have such a perfect family."
"Perfect?" I asked, laughing. Perfect was so far from the truth.
She nodded, smiling. She had laughter in her moistened eyes. She knew the truth of how unperfect we were.
"She always said if anything ever happened to her..." She looked down and started playing with a loose string on the throw pillow in her lap. I wasn't sure what to say to her. I'd never had to deal with a loss like that. "She always said that I'd go live with you guys." She sucked in a deep breath and rubbed the tip of her nose. "She didn't want me to stay with dad. I guess that's why your mom was visiting so often."
"Why?" I asked quietly.
"Just in case something did happen to her. She wanted me to know her."
"But your mom died in..."
"A car accident," she cut in, nodding.
"It's not like she knew she was dying," I reasoned.
She shook her head and looked at me pensively. "I guess it was just a mother's instinct or something. It was my dad's fault though. He was driving. He made her let him drive even though he was drunk, and she was too scared to argue with him."
Our conversation fell silent. I didn't know that. She'd lived with us for seven years, and somehow, there were still things about her I didn't know. All I knew was that her mom had died in a car accident and she was going to come stay with us because her mom wanted it to be that way if anything happened to her. Seven years of living with someone and there was still so much to learn. So much that she kept bottled up inside, letting it eat her up.
I suddenly wondered how much Zac knew. The things he knew that he'd never told any of us. The things that made their bond so strong, and fragile at the same time. It was something he still had with her long after their relationship had fallen apart with that one unfortunate event.
“Can I use you as a pillow?” She asked me after a few minutes of silence. Everything suddenly flashed back to how things used to be. Things felt like they were finally getting back to normal. For the past five years, since she'd left Tulsa, nothing seemed normal anymore. Everything felt so different. And we all thought that within a few months we could get on with our lives just as we had when she was still with us. But she had left such an imprint in all of our hearts that we just felt lost without her.
I nodded silently in response to her request, and turned so that my feet were on the floor. I lifted my arms up while she was positioning her head on my lap, and then let them fall around her once she was comfortable. I found myself wishing we could go back in time. Back when everyone was still in Tulsa and things weren’t so messed up. Before Casey left. Before everyone started worrying about her because she never called and never wrote. Back when I knew that whenever I needed a friend, I would have one right down the hall.
I felt like I lost my best friend when she left Tulsa. Sure, she came to visit a few times right after she left, but the visits never lasted long. She always had to get back to to her life in Kansas. And eventually the visits stopped all together. Just like the phone calls and the letters. It was as if she'd fallen of the face of the earth.
If I had known what was going on before, I’m not sure things would have turned out the same. All I knew was that this time I wasn’t going to let her slip away so easily. God sent her back to us because we were her family. We were her home.