On January 6, 1995, my third son Brandon was born. For the next nine days, I got to know a beautiful, pure soul who observed life around him through thoughtful, watchful eyes. He smiled. He wasn’t fussy. He was perfect. Too perfect for this world, it would turn out. On January 15th, I walked into my mother’s bedroom where he had been sleeping. When I turned him over, I knew he was gone.
I had barely met him, hadn’t really gotten the chance to love him, and suddenly there was a huge hole in my life I knew would never totally fill again.
My life shattered in an instant. Though I have been through many, many things in my life, sexual assault, domestic abuse and many lost loved ones among them, I can say without question the worst pain in this world I have ever experienced was the loss of my newborn son. Even that night, when I started to pack everything up – mostly to have something to do, but also because looking at an empty crib was too painful to bear – I felt like God had broken a promise to me. Parents are supposed to go first. It wasn’t right to pack away blankets and clothes that hadn’t even been used yet.
But I was too sad to be angry. I could barely put thoughts together at all. When I prepared his outfit for his burial, I included a diaper. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that these were things he would no longer need.
Though I fought collapse at the thought of what this would mean to my future, I had to hold strong for my other children, including my eldest, whose birthday was the very next day. He was five and had no understanding of the spiritual hell I was going through, nor did he need to know. We had a cake and presents and that was what my other child, the one who remained, needed.
So, I packed up my torment and my sadness and put it away with that crib and those clothes and toys and blankets that would never be used by Brandon. I kept alive by putting one foot in front of the other and surviving for my kids, who needed me more than ever before.
For the next 26 years, January 6 through January 15 belonged to Brandon, the only church I’ve ever attended with any real regularity. Those nine days were and are sacred. I was denied a lifetime with my child. I was going to hold tight to those precious days that celebrated his brief life.
In the dark months that followed his death, I threw myself into writing like never before. I needed the distraction. More than that, I needed the escape. I needed worlds I could control what bad things happened and when. I couldn’t sleep, literally haunted by my loss, feeling death crouching in every corner, ravenous and unsatisfied. Those books were my lifeline. They also became the embryos of what would come later, my sweet romance Picture Postcards and my more salacious saga, introducing us to the Fullertons in Enticed.
They were romances, because romances had always served me well when I was in the midst of grief and loss. When my dad died when I was eleven, I inherited stacks of Harlequin paperbacks that I inhaled by the dozens, in desperate need of a cute meets, first kisses, falling in love and Happily Ever Afters.
The HEA is often a derided aspect of the romance genre, which I attribute mostly to the general dismissive nature of feminine gratification. A mystery should be solved, a horror should be scary, but falling in love in a romance?
The audacity.
But love is audacity. To find happiness in a world where the worst can and does happen is defiant. Victorious. Necessary. Especially these days.
There is a lot of loss and rage and sorrow permeating our collective existence right now. HEAs seem almost precious, but they’re still every bit as necessary. In these last two years, when so many of us struggled to put one foot in front of the other, where surviving was a miraculous gift in and of itself, those things conceived out of loss needed to be born in hope of equal measure.
Enter Ruby and Simon.
When their Brandon died, they were brought together to do all the things their lost loved one no longer could. They needed purpose to heal from their grief, just like I did all those years ago. Grief will bring you to your knees. Often the only thing that will keep it from crushing you is having a reason to stand again.
I had my oldest son’s birthday. Ruby and Simon have an unfulfilled bucket list.
It took me 26 years, but I knew that 2021 was the year I gave my Brandon his due. There was still a happily ever yet to write, and I finally found the story he could help me tell.
Because of Brandon is about love persevering.
That is the hope of love, the necessity of it. The reason for it. It makes the bad stuff worth it. It is the reason that “The Dance” by Garth Brook is and has been Brandon’s song ever since those dark, pain-filled days.
It isn’t the book I promised, or even the other four books that remain in their uncompleted state, half-written and half-realized. I wasn’t emotionally ready to tackle those books yet, not after everything we’ve been through. I’m just getting back on my feet. I wanted something simpler, more focused. More like those stacks of books that healed me so long ago.
But the Groupieverse has expanded with this book, adding a tattoo parlor for all our past, present and future inhabitants. Like so many of my books, some familiar faces are ever present, including fan favorites like Vanni and Caz. My muse lives in their world and likes it there, so there are always new stories to take us there.
I hope you join me along this little sojourn into another corner of our expanding book universe. And, if you get to the end of this book feeling a little happier and a little more hopeful, you’ll know.
It’s because of Brandon.
Happy birthday, my dear sweet angel. This one is for you.
