Free Them (Him #3) by Carey Heywood

that night, three weeks ago. To say he’s withdrawn is a gross understatement. We do our best to draw him out, but Rascal seems to have the most success. She now sleeps in his room and when we get home from school, he walks her.
    One small blessing in all of this is Sarah is too busy to stress about getting or not getting pregnant. After my sperm count came back normal, she went and saw her doctor again. That same week, they performed an outpatient procedure to remove the polyp discovered during her ultrasound.
    Logan rides to and from school with me, and still eats lunch in my classroom every day. He misses his dad. To go so long waiting for him to come home only to lose him is a tragedy I can’t imagine. Every week, I bring him to see a grief counselor, and we visit his grandmother afterward. News of her son’s passing, so soon after losing her husband, has taken its toll.
    Logan seems hesitant to see her, but I don’t want him to regret time lost with his last remaining blood relative before she passes. This kid has had to deal with more loss than anyone should in his thirteen years on this Earth.
    Today, he asked me to take him to go see his dad. I glance over at his quiet profile as I drive to the cemetery. He was so strong, helping to plan his own father’s funeral. There was some money, life insurance that came to him. He wanted to pay for everything himself, but Sarah and I wouldn’t let him.
    Brian drew up trust paperwork and once Logan agreed, those funds, all of them, are now waiting for him once he’s eighteen. The cemetery his father rests in isn’t a far drive.
    After I park, I ask, “Do you want me to wait in the car?”
    He shakes his head so I get out and walk next to him as we follow the now-familiar path to his father’s grave. I never had an opportunity to meet his father before his passing, and I can only hope he died knowing how special his son was. There are days after Logan meets with the counselor where Logan will talk about his dad. Those days neither Sarah nor I can get a word in edgewise as Logan almost manically tells us one story after another.
    It’s as if he fears his father will be forgotten if there isn’t anyone other than him who knew his life. Other days, more recently, he’s silent, keeping everything tucked inside. That was why I gave him the option of me waiting in the car. I don’t know if he wants to talk to his dad, and I don’t want to intrude on that.
    Being here at the cemetery brings his funeral fresh to the forefront of my mind. The day was blessedly dry, but the two days of straight rain prior had saturated the grounds. Logan looked so small and alone as he stood in a new suit and watched his father’s coffin being lowered into the ground.
    He had no family members to rely on. His grandmother wasn’t well enough to leave the nursing home. There were some of his other teachers and a few of his neighbors who came, and a group of five soldiers from his father’s reserve unit came to pay their respects and offer their condolences to Logan. None of them knew Logan or had known his father directly, though, so the meeting was awkward at best.
    Logan didn’t cry, but watching as his mouth tensed with emotion over and over that day is scarred on my soul. All I wanted to do was tell him to let it all out, that it was okay to cry. That wasn’t my place, though. All I was at that point was a teacher turned unexpected foster parent. I was out of my depths and unsure of how to give him the support he needed.
    Sarah wasn’t, though. She saw his pain and curled her love around him. It wasn’t until after everyone else had left that he turned into her embrace and sobbed. The force of his pain made her take a step back to hold them both upright. I moved behind her and held them both as he finally cried.
    His tears spurred our own. It was gut-wrenching and a pain I had not experienced since the moment I first thought I had lost Sarah. Death has an uncanny way of reminding us