OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

one-hundred-thirty.

IT WAS ONLY for a little while. Dave would hardy be gone for very long the following week, but to Reagan, it marked the beginning of the end. Even though he was set to return to Los Angeles to cram in as much time as possible with her and Gracie before he was off to Europe to play the festival scene, it was the starting line that contrarily marked the finish.

She sat in a ball on the couch, her eyes glazed over as she stared at the television without gleaning anything entertainment, or even distraction from it. Truthfully, she was unable to pinpoint any certain emotion that was weighing on her the heaviest. They were all at war inside of her, scuffling for dominance.

She hadn't needed to fixate on any certain feeling to surmise that there was no point in stressing about what a bitch her life had turned out to be.

Richard had insisted on normalcy in the coming months. From the moment he'd been discharged from the hospital, still a little wobbly on his feet his head wrapped in gauze, he'd declared that his family was not allowed to break down over his Alzheimer's diagnosis. They were to go on, functioning in their day to day lives as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He didn't want it any other way.

That wasn't enough for Reagan. She was needed in Los Angeles for work, but that hadn't stopped her from booking multiple airline tickets in advance back to Seattle, where she'd make the drive into Olympia by rental car each time to see her father. She wanted, needed, as much time with him as possible before her forgot her.

He needed time with Gracie. Her summer would be spent jetting back and forth between Washington and California with her mom, seeing the grandfather that she couldn't fathom not knowing who she was one day.

Richard had accepted his diagnosis the way he'd accepted most things in life, with a sigh and shrug of his shoulders followed by a smile, though the one he'd worn leaving the hospital had held a trace of fear behind it. Reagan knew her dad was scared.

Her entire family was scared. The twins, who'd just turned fourteen, couldn't fully comprehend that they wouldn't have a lifetime with the father they'd grown up adoring. He'd be a stranger to them, likely by the time they would start reaching major milestones in their lives.

Robbie had endured the pain quietly, wedging himself between his two older sisters without contributing a word to their planned next steps. At twenty-three, he should have been enjoying life, freshly graduated from college and having just gotten his own apartment. He'd grown up so wonderfully and Reagan attributed plenty of his gentle personality to Richard, who'd been Robbie's keeper after she'd left home.

But Kate . . . thinking about Kate was a punch to the gut.

Before Reagan had left the hospital on that godforsaken night, Kate had pulled her aside, tears making her eyes shiny under the hallway's fluorescent lights. It was then that she'd told Reagan the news that no one else knew of yet — she was pregnant.

Reagan understood exactly why Kate had chosen that moment to tell her. Their world was falling apart and of course on top of that, Kate had been given a gift to celebrate that barely held up against the misery of knowing what was slated for Richard.

It was so much to digest at once. A countdown had begun ticking towards the moment that Richard would become a virtual stranger. Kate was going to have a baby. Kimberly, for perhaps the first time in her life, was catatonic and refusing to speak, not even to Reagan whom was surprised that her mother wasn't even mentally with it enough for a typical round of bickering.

Dave. Dave was still there with her, threaded around her soul, and the wall of all those ancient problems that they'd once had was looming over her, impossible to climb as it'd been upon its erection.