OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

ninety-nine.

            THE ABNER HOUSEHOLD was peculiarly silent, a once in a blue moon kind of occasion that would surely convince the neighbors that the entire family was absent from their home. Either that, or they'd been slayed by a murderer, left for dead and strewn lifelessly about the rooms.

The thought made Reagan want to laugh, but laughing was basically synonymous with being okay, and she wasn't okay. Not even as she sat on the floor in front of the couch in between Kate's legs, feeling her sisters thin fingers comb gently through her hair.

Reagan hadn't gone back to Olympia in hopes that she would escape the formidable pain of all things Kurt in Seattle. If anything, his memory burned even brighter in her hometown, unblemished by the hardships of his final months. In Olympia, the reality of a world without Kurt in it did not exist.

And that made his absence all the more terrible.

The Abners had banded around their daughter in her time of need, almost acting as strangely impacted by Kurt's death as she was. As soon as Reagan had arrived, brushing damp rain out of her hair with Gracie balanced on one hip, Richard had enveloped her into one of his strong hugs.

"I'm so sorry," he had whispered.

Kimberly had been mostly mute, unsure of what to say in regards to what Reagan had been through. Reagan imagined that it wouldn't have been very nice. Her mother thoroughly enjoyed the expression 'I told you so,' and although Kimberly hadn't predicted Kurt's death, she surely had been cryptic about the belief that one day, Reagan's little fairytale would fall in tatters.

Gracie had been turned over into Kimberly's care, taken away into the kitchen where she was no doubt being served cookies and milk by her grandmother. 

Spoiled rotten, Reagan thought. And to think that Gracie hadn't even been loved by Kimberly until she'd come out of the womb. It was still irritating.

Kate was Kate, of course, doting on Reagan's every whim and need with her quiet comforts. Just the feeling of Kate touching her hair had lulled Reagan into a strange sense of calm, a place where her heartbreak didn't throb as painfully as she was now used to. The twins were there too, though they didn't comprehend what all the morose silence was about.

Only Robbie was missing from the small get-together taking place downstairs. 

Richard cleared his throat from his spot on the recliner, where he sat leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

"How about I start dinner?" he suggested. 

"Mom will just shoo you out of the kitchen if you try," Reagan replied. She stared straight ahead as she spoke, eyes trained on the clutter of picture frames arranged near the television. There were snapshots of her at every age, documentation of her horrible middle school years with uneven bangs and braces, but Reagan envied that girl. 

That girl had loved the music so much that it had practically bled out of her. She had scrapped the entire town for records, snuck downstairs in the middle of the night to tap quietly on the drums, and tried red lipstick out just to see if Debbie Harry's look was worth it. 

Little had she known that the stake she'd driven into her love of music would drive it right back into her. Right through her heart.

The front door suddenly opened, welcoming in the loud drone of rainfall. Reagan leaned over to peer down the hallway and saw Dave, sopping wet and wrestling an umbrella closed. 

Her heart yearned so badly to smile at him. How in the world had he managed to get drenched, even with an umbrella in hand? 

He tried to close the half-broken thing one more time before giving up, setting it on the floor and walking slowly into the living room. Richard got up from his chair instantly.