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** AJ **

Ava continued to wail incessantly, her ear-piercing cries slicing through the stillness of the early morning hour. Despite the fact that I had been a proud daddy for over sixteen months, I still found it hard to fathom how someone so small was capable of producing such a life-sized noise. I dropped down onto the couch and pressed Ava’s head against my chest, her tears immediately soaking through the fabric of my t-shirt.

“I know it hurts, baby. Daddy’s going to make it all better.” I cooed, my fingers working overtime to remove the lid from the jar of teething cream.

Ava responded to my feeble attempts at comfort by shrieking at a volume that I was sure had yet to be officially recorded. Drool was streaming out of her mouth, mixing with the tears that had already dampened my shirt. Catching sight of what I knew was a very limited opportunity; I plunged my index finger into the jar of sickeningly sweet, cherry flavoured jelly and quickly jammed the pinkish cream into Ava’s mouth. Ignoring the painful stabs from the teeth that had already poked their way through, I massaged the cream over Ava’s gums; making sure to move in clockwise circles as her pediatrician had instructed.

It took a few minutes for the numbing agent to kick in, but when it finally did Ava’s cries petered out into a series of woeful sniffles. She knocked her tiny face against my chest, leaving a trail of tears, mucus, and drool in her wake.

“Daddy!” She hiccupped.

“That’s right, baby.” I pulled a Kleenex out of the box on the coffee table and began to gently clean her face. “Daddy’s here.”

She looked up at me with the big, innocent eyes that she had, by some random stroke of luck, inherited from me and sighed in contentment. As far as Ava was concerned, the ordeal was over.

“Daddy!”

I grinned, despite the fact that I had been awake for almost twenty-four hours straight. It never failed. Regardless of how bad the situation seemed while it was happening, all of the lingering stress and frustration immediately vanished the second that I saw Ava smile.

“What should we do now?” My eyes flipped to the clock on the cable box. “It’s one o’clock in the morning.”

Ava continued to stare at me, her eyes wide. “Tubby.” She gestured wildly at the television. “Tubby.”

“Good choice, Ava.” I reached for the remote. “Let’s see if we can find something to watch until you decide that it’s time to go back to sleep.”

The TV sprang to life and the high-pitched whine of Dora the Explorer immediately filled the room. I cringed and frantically jabbed at the remote in an attempt to change the channel before Ava’s brain could register that her beloved Dora was prancing around on the screen. I have nothing against children’s programming, but if I had to listen to Dora tell me to ‘say backpack’ one more time I was going to launch the television through the window and into the pool.

“What about ESPN?” I suggested as Ava repositioned herself on my lap. “Do you want to watch some sports highlights?”

“Tubby.” Ava repeated, her eyelids fluttering heavily. “Tubby.”

“The Teletubbies aren’t on right now, baby.” I explained; my eyes glued to the screen. “Are you sure that you don’t want to watch the soccer recap with daddy?”

When Ava didn’t respond, I cautiously looked down. The only time that Ava voluntarily fell quiet was when she was asleep or on the verge of a massive tantrum. Thankfully, the former was true in this case. I ran my hand lightly along the top of her head and snuggled her against my chest. I was still in awe of how beautiful my daughter looked when she was sleeping.

I returned my attention to the television in the hopes that the monotone drone of the announcer would lull me to sleep. After fifteen minutes of listening to mindless facts about English Premier League soccer, I began to aimlessly flip through the channels. It was becoming pretty obvious that I wasn’t going to sleep any time soon.

I had gone through close to one hundred channels when I saw him. I recognized his face before I could read his name; the blonde hair, the blue eyes, the slightly mischievous smile. I immediately felt more alert as my eyes searched beyond the ‘Breaking News’ banner for the headline. If his face was plastered across my television before two o’clock in the morning, he was in trouble; real trouble. The notion that he was using again immediately consumed my sleep-deprived brain and I felt my stomach flip. He had been doing so well lately.

If my stomach had flipped at the thought of him relapsing, it positively plummeted as my eyes finally took in the headline: ‘Nick Carter found dead in Tennessee’. I sat forward on the couch, tightening my grip on Ava as I shakily turned up the volume.

A female reporter was standing in front of a long line of caution tape. Although it was dark in the footage, I could make out the outline of what appeared to be a park. An abundance of emergency personnel were milling about; flittering in and out of the video feed. The announcer sounded anxious, and the wind was whipping her hair across her face as she attempted to piece together the story.

~*~*~*~
“… there are very few details at this point, but it appears as though this was a targeted attack. According to limited eyewitness accounts, Carter was approached by two unidentified males while leaving a downtown hotspot around 1:00 A.M. A struggle ensued and Carter attempted to flee his attackers on foot. Investigators have determined that Carter died from a single gunshot wound to the chest, but they are still not sure how his body ended up in Pinkerton Park. Police are appealing to the public for information. Anyone who was in the downtown area of Franklin around one o’clock this morning is being asked to get in touch with police. Investigators are also warning members of the general public that the area surrounding Pinkerton Park will remain closed until further notice. Carter is well known for his rise to fame as one of the leading members of the Backstreet Boys …”
~*~*~*~

I couldn’t breathe; my lungs felt as though they were being squeezed into a pair of leather pants that were at least ten sizes too small. I let out a choking, wheezing grunt that sounded so incredibly foreign that I wasn’t even sure if it had come from me. The reporter was still talking about Nick; discussing his accomplishments and struggles in the past tense. I gasped for air, my chest shuddering with the effort. The report couldn’t be true. Someone somewhere must have made a mistake.

“AJ?”

The sound of Rochelle’s voice inexplicably made everything worse. I pulled my eyes away from the television and stared at her blankly, my lungs still burning with the effort of trying to pull oxygen into my body. My arms curled around Ava’s small frame and I pressed her body into mine. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to let her go.

Rochelle stared back at me; dishevelled from having just woken up. Her hair was roped into a messy bun on top of her head and her eyes were crusty with sleep. A look of concern contorted her features. “Are you okay?”

I opened my mouth and made the strangled choking sound again. I was beginning to feel light headed. Rochelle’s face was getting fuzzy, and I could feel myself starting to sway.

“AJ?” Rochelle’s voice was rising in apprehension. “AJ!”

I could feel Rochelle’s hands on mine, prying Ava out of my arms and pushing me back against the couch. I forced my eyes shut in an attempt to minimize the dizziness. I could hear Rochelle rustling around, putting Ava down in her playpen in the corner. The TV was still on, but I could only make out a series of distorted sounds. Which was good; I had no desire to listen to the reporter continue to talk about Nick in the past tense, as if he were gone. He wasn’t gone. There had surely been some kind of mistake.

“AJ?” Rochelle had returned to the couch. I could feel her hands on my chest. “What’s wrong? Are you sick? Are you having a heart attack?”

I opened my eyes and peered into Rochelle’s panic stricken face. “Nick.” His name came out sounding garbled and choppy.

“Nick?” Rochelle repeated. “What about him? Are you sure that you’re not having a heart attack?”

“Nick.” I repeated his name, surprised that Rochelle had been able to understand me the first time. I nodded my head in the direction of the television. “Nick.”

Rochelle reluctantly pulled her gaze away from my face and turned to stare at the television. Her face paled as soon as she saw the headline, her hands left my chest and shot up to cover her mouth. “Nick!”

“It’s a mistake.” My voice was slowly returning; the shock was quickly turning to anger. “Some asshole has got it wrong.”

Rochelle’s eyes were filling with tears; her gaze locked on the lady who was still yammering on and on about Nick in the past tense. “He’s been murdered?”

“No.” I shook my head. “It’s a mistake.”

“They’ve found his body?” Rochelle’s eyes didn’t leave the TV. “In a park?”

“No!” I was no longer trying to control the tremor in my voice. “It’s – it’s not him!”

Rochelle finally returned her attention to my face. “They wouldn’t say it was him unless they were sure.” She hesitated as the tears began to roll down her face. “Oh my God! Nick’s dead!”

“He’s not dead!” I roared with more anger than I had intended.

My voice echoed through the house, reverberating off of the walls and waking Ava up. I hauled myself off of the couch in one angry motion and began swiping things off of the coffee table in an effort to locate my phone. Ava’s worried cries mixed with Rochelle’s sobs as I forcefully rifled through the items. I knew that I was probably scaring both of them, but I couldn’t stop my panic driven rage from rising to the surface.

“If he was really dead, someone would have called me. I wouldn’t have found out from a fucking news report! Now, where the fuck is my God damned phone!?” I picked up a pile of magazines and hurled them to the floor, narrowly missing Rochelle who was scurrying across the room to console Ava. The anger was coursing through me now; threatening to become uncontrollable. I needed to find my phone. “Why didn’t someone call me?”

“It’s like three, maybe four, in the morning.” Rochelle’s voice was soft, but it still managed to stop me in my tracks.

“What?” I dropped the iPad back onto the coffee table with a damaging thud. “What are you talking about?”

“The time difference …” Rochelle was clutching a hiccupping Ava to her chest; tears still running down her face. “We’re only three hours behind everybody else. It’s only just after 3:00 A.M. in the east.”

“Shit.” I sank back down onto the couch. The all-consuming rage had disappeared and the shock was starting to reclaim its hold on my body. “Nobody else knows.”

Rochelle shook her head. “You need to call them. You can’t let them find out the way you did.”