A Promise of Forever (27 page)

“You and Sadie will provide the personality.”

“What was she doing while you were making coffee?”

“Watching you through the window. So was Sundance. Nyla tried to brace herself on Sundance’s back so she could see, but she’s too short.”

She smiled at the image. The dogs had bonded so well that she would take all three of them with her, given the chance, but there was no way her parents would allow that to happen. Beth, her no-dogs-not-ever mother, was as in love with Nyla as her dad was with Sundance. As Avi was with Sadie.

Their mothers pulled up chairs, and a short while later, Neil joined them. “Halftime,” he said. “We’re ahead by fourteen.”

“Good for us,” Beth said dryly.

“Good for Joe,” Patricia added. “I’d love to see him become the winningest coach in Tallgrass history, but then some bigger school would hire him away.”

Avi glanced at Ben, half expecting him to mutter something like
good riddance
. He didn’t, though. He didn’t even let his nose twitch the way he usually did. “Maybe Lucy should marry him to make sure he stays.”

The other three adults turned astonished looks his way. “
Lucy?
” his mother echoed, and Neil added, “Li’l bit?”

Ben immediately threw Avi under the bus. “It was her idea. She’s the one who thinks Joe has a thing for Lucy.”

That earned her astonished looks, too, but after a moment’s consideration, Patricia started tapping her finger thoughtfully against her chin. “Hmm. Joe and Lucy. They
are
adorable together. And they’re best friends. We all know the kind of passion that can grow from that.” She gave Ben a look. “At least, sometimes. When it’s right.”

Avi tuned out the matchmaking conversation that followed, tilted her face up to the sky, and closed her eyes. Four weeks ago tomorrow, she’d arrived in Tallgrass hoping for a little peace, for forgiveness and laughter and a few good times. She’d gotten all that and so much more. Healing. Hope. Renewal.

A broken heart was a small price to pay for all that.

Though it hadn’t finished breaking yet, she reminded herself as Ben claimed her hand. By the time it was in pieces all around her, she might be in need of more healing. But not hope. She had enough hope to share with everyone around her.

She and Ben would be all right. Not together, but all right.

It was dark, the temperature cooled to the mid-seventies, when they said their good nights. With her nightly needs in a backpack slung over one shoulder, Avi bent to give Sadie a good rub and tell her good night. The dog whimpered so loudly that Patricia hooked on her leash, gave her a hug, and said, “Miss Sadie, you have the honor of being the first four-legged creature I’ve allowed inside my house. Not even Sara’s yippy dog is welcome, but you’re much more a lady than she is.”

“Because Sara’s ‘she’ is a ‘he,’” Ben murmured to Avi as she took the leash.

After hugs and kisses all around, they strolled down the steps to the sidewalk and turned south. It was a quiet walk to the Sanderson home. What was there to say?
Please change your mind. Please come with me. For the love of God, please don’t break my heart.

He hadn’t wavered, not once. He wasn’t leaving Tulsa, period, end of discussion. And she
had
to leave. It wasn’t a choice for her.

The earliest she could get out of the Army was in two years, and if she could live without Ben for two years, if he could live without her, what was the point? But if he was still single in eight years, and so was she…

The possibility brought very little comfort.

Though Sadie had sniffed and made use of every tree, sign, and most shrubs along the way, they lingered in the yard for a few minutes while she checked out new scents, then climbed the steps and entered Patricia’s house. Dim lights shone in the living room and the kitchen and at the top of the stairs. Avi unhooked the leash and hung it over the doorknob, then started upstairs. Sadie trotted at her side, and Ben brought up the rear.

Sadie sniffed the guest room, taking particular interest in the runner beside the bed. Lifting her head, she sniffed Ben’s legs, then plopped down on the runner. She associated the scent of him with comfort. Silly, but it made Avi’s throat tighten.

“I’m following Patricia’s rule for Sara when she was little,” she said in an unsteady voice as she unzipped her dress. “I’m wearing my prettiest underwear.” She slipped off the dress and struck a pose, one hip jutted forward, both arms raised over her head, turning a few times to show the minuscule fronts of the hot pink confections, along with the even more minuscule backs.

“Aw, now I feel bad. You splurged on Victoria’s Secret, and I just wore my Calvins,” he teased, but he didn’t sound as if he really meant it. That was okay. They didn’t have to pretend that everything was normal when a tidal wave of blue was just waiting to crash over their heads.

“It’s not what they are that matters. It what’s inside them.” She unhooked the bra, shimmied out of the panties, and helped him out of his Calvins. As they kissed and embraced their way to the bed, she felt like an attention-deficient kid, her hands rambling everywhere, her kisses starting one place and ending far away. She wanted to touch, taste, feel every bit of him. She wanted to close her eyes three years from now and remember the little scar on the side of his left knee or the exact angle of his arm around her when he was asleep versus when he was awake.

They made love fast and slow, sweet and demanding, and sad, so sadly. His looks seared her skin, his kisses burned the memories deeper, his caresses were enough to make her soul weep. Before, they’d made love. This time, she realized through the sorrow and the grief, they were saying good-bye. When they were done, she wanted to curl up and cry, but she didn’t. Oh, she did a lot of curling, but very little crying.

She was strong. She would survive. She would stay alive. She would thrive.
She whispered that to herself a few times before sleep finally came.

D
amp and humidity were as much a part of Washington as earthquakes were of California or tornados across the South. At his mother’s insistence, Calvin had developed a tolerance for the weather wherever he went.
You’re a real boy,
his mother used to tell him on the occasions he’d wanted to play video games in the house instead of go out and play.
You won’t melt, shrivel up, or blow away.
Fresh air, in Elizabeth’s opinion, might not cure what ailed you, but it made you feel better.

After the chaplain’s visit, Calvin had called home. He’d told his parents that things were good, had relieved their worries and stirred them up at the same time, claiming that he’d been working long hours getting ready to deploy again. They hadn’t wanted to hear that, and just as he’d known they would, they’d pushed it to the back of their minds. Instead Elizabeth had asked if he was eating healthy, if he’d found a church to attend, what had happened with that pretty woman he’d met a month or two ago. He lied about the eating and the church, and the pretty woman had been fiction to start with. It had made her feel better that he had a girlfriend, so he’d created one.

Now it was Friday night, late, and something about that phone call with his parents had clicked inside him. It was time. He’d been driving around Tacoma for the last hour, pretending he didn’t have a destination in mind. He turned onto a narrow, rutted street that didn’t appear to have a name. It dipped beneath railroad tracks, then went two blocks before abruptly ending—no curbs, no circle to turn around in. There were houses on either side, mostly boarded over. In all the time he’d been coming there, he’d never seen a sign of life. Even the rats, it appeared, had moved on to more prosperous neighborhoods.

He pulled into the poor excuse for a park, shut off the engine, and quiet fell quickly. Closing his door created a sharp report that echoed in the pines. His footsteps crunched over too-tall grass, the damp clinging to his shoes, soaking through to his socks. The dew soaked into his jeans, too, when he sat on the concrete picnic table, his back to the street, facing the railroad tracks.

He’d known this day would come, this time when he was too tired, too distressed, too weary to go on. When the last bit of hope had fled, when he’d become a danger to himself and everyone else. He hadn’t lied when he told his mother they were deploying again. That was what had led him here. He couldn’t go back to combat. He couldn’t lose another friend. He couldn’t witness another death. He was so tired of hurting, and he couldn’t think of a damn thing in life that would make it stop—the dreams, the nightmares, the voices, the blame. That would make him feel like he had a
right
to live anymore.

Nothing could make him feel better.

But one thing could stop the pain.

Dim light filtered from the nearest street lamp. The other lights were shot out, one pole bent like a vee after a crash with a vehicle. It had been like that all the months Calvin had been coming here, like no one realized. No one cared.

In the weak light, he withdrew his weapon. After so many deployments, the heavy semiautomatic sat comfortably in his hand, an extension of his arm. He’d thought ahead: It was loaded with only one bullet in case some kid found it before the authorities found him. One round to undo all the damage the countless ones fired at him in Iraq and Afghanistan had caused. It had taken him a while to realize that a bullet that missed could kill you as surely as one that hit. This one wasn’t going to miss.

For the first time in months, tears filled his eyes. They were tears of relief that, finally, he was going home. He was finding a way out. He would never hurt again. He wiped them away, gripped the pistol in his right hand, and raised it to his temple. Slowly he applied pressure to the trigger, proud that his hand remained steady, and—

Something slammed into him from behind, knocking him off the picnic table where he sat. His arm thrust out to break his fall, and his elbow cracked as a solid weight landed on top of him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” a young male voice demanded at the same time Calvin twisted, bellowing, “Get off of me!”

The attacker lunged to his feet, grabbed the gun, and stuck it in the back waistband of his jeans. Calvin had a harder time getting up, cradling his broken arm to his ribs.

“Man, I hope your arm hurts. That’s the least you ought to have when you do something stupid—and this ain’t even your neighborhood. Who the hell goes to someone else’s neighborhood to blow his brains out? You think we’re poor so it’s no big deal?”

“It’s no one’s damn neighborhood,” Calvin muttered, trying to find a comfortable position for his arm. Through the haze of pain, he identified a teenage boy, fourteen, maybe sixteen, with black hair and dark skin and a faint accent.

“It’s
my
neighborhood, dude, and you got no right.” The kid crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. He was big, six feet or so, but thin, painfully so, like his bones were too big for his body.

Homeless,
was Calvin’s first thought, then he amended that.
Hungry.
If Calvin had it in him to care about anything, he’d feel bad for the kid. He would take him out to eat, give him whatever cash he had. But right now he cared about only one thing.

“Give me the gun,” he said quietly.

The kid was cocky. “Ain’t gonna happen. Why’re you here? Why didn’t you do this in your own part of town?”

“It’s none of your business.” Calvin tried to reach into his hip pocket for his wallet, but intense pain made his breath catch, made him close his eyes and sway unsteadily, reaching blindly with his good arm for the table behind to steady him. Once the pain settled into a dull throb, he tried the maneuver again with his other hand, grunting, twisting. Sticking his left hand into his right back pocket was almost more than he could manage, but at last he fished out the worn leather wallet that had been a high school graduation gift from his parents.

He tossed the wallet on the table about halfway between him and the boy. “There’s money and a debit card in there. Give me the gun, and it’s yours.”

The ground began to vibrate beneath their feet. In another moment, the 10:15 train was going to come rumbling through here, blasting the quiet all to hell, blowing its whistle for the crossing a few miles to the north. When it was gone, Calvin knew from experience, the quiet would seem overwhelming for a few minutes.

The kid looked at the wallet, then at the oncoming train, its light cutting through the damp air like a beacon. With Calvin’s luck, he would keep the gun, take the money, and run, leaving Calvin to live another day. He couldn’t bear the thought.

Without conscious thought, he grabbed for the boy, catching a handful of shirt, but all the kid had to do was shove his right arm and Calvin collapsed to his knees. Spinning, the boy ran toward the tracks, scrambling up the hillside toward the right-of-way. His feet sliding in the gravel, he threw the gun.

Calvin heard the thunk of metal on metal as a boxcar with an open door passed. The kid whooped with glee, confirming that, against odds, the pistol had landed inside the car.

Calvin sank from his knees to sit on the ground, watching hopelessly as the gun, his only chance of escape this cool, damp night, rumbled on down the tracks.

The red light that had replaced the cabooses of his childhood was passing as the boy came back. He looked pleased with himself, but not exactly satisfied—like he knew that he hadn’t prevented the solution to the problem. He’d just delayed it.

“Come on.” Grabbing hold of Calvin’s good arm, he heaved him up. “You need to go to the hospital and get your arm looked at.”

“I don’t care about my damn arm.” Having gained his feet, Calvin shoved the kid away, dug his keys from his pocket, and took a few staggering steps toward his car.
Why, God?
Why give me the courage, the hope, the relief, then stop me like this? I should be dead now. I want to be dead now.

The kid caught up with a few light steps, snatched the keys from his hand, and grinned. “I’ll drive.”

If good-byes weren’t one of the hardest things in the world, would hellos still be sweet?

The thought ran through Avi’s mind as she drove away from her parents’ house, losing sight of her mother and father, Patricia and Sundance and Nyla and Ben, after a few blocks. Her parents and Patricia had still been waving. Ben had stood to one side, hands in his pockets. She hadn’t looked at him more than a second in her rearview mirror. That wasn’t how she wanted to remember him.

She had one stop to make before leaving Tallgrass, one that she’d put off as long as she could. Driving east on Main, she flipped on her signal and turned through the gates of Fort Murphy National Cemetery. Her dad had given her directions to the colonel’s gravesite, one of far too many recent ones in the cemetery. She parked in the shade to protect Sadie and walked to the marble stone, still looking white and fresh, not yet showing the signs of weathering.

She stood there a long time, until a chill washed over her. She hadn’t needed to see the colonel’s marker to bring home the fact of his death. She’d lived with that for more than three months. But, somehow, it did just that. It made her realize that she would never see him again. Ask his opinion. Listen to his advice. He wasn’t just stationed at another post across the country or around the world. He wasn’t just out of reach.

He was gone. And no matter how deeply her life had been touched by his—inspired, enriched by his—she had lost him. Forever.

Tears streaked down her cheeks, and she made no effort to wipe them away. She had cried over him before—good-byes had never been easy—but every time until the last, she had known she would see him again. That wasn’t going to happen in this time.

From the front seat of George’s car, Sadie made a low, mournful sound.
Erooo.
Avi turned to find her leaning her chin on the door frame, her big brown eyes looking puppy-dog sad. But she followed the wail with a bark. There was a time for sadness, and a time for moving on and facing new adventures, and in Sadie’s opinion, that time was now.

Turning back to the marker, Avi pressed her fingertips to the stone. “Duty, honor, country,” she murmured, the U.S. Military Academy motto. Straightening, she drew back her shoulders and snapped off a crisp salute.

“At ease, sir. You’re now at rest.”

Over the next week, Ben went to work, saw patients, and did surgery, but his heart wasn’t in any of it. He wasn’t concentrating during the day or sleeping much at night. He couldn’t count how many times he reached out in bed, expecting to find Avi there, or even Sadie or Sundance, and getting a handful of cold sheet instead. Every evening when he came up the stairs to the loft, there was a moment where he’d forget, when he’d slide the key into the lock and think
I’ll be glad to see Avi
before the bleak emptiness of the loft brought him back to reality.

He knew Avi had arrived safely in Augusta with Sadie. He’d been at Patricia’s house that Sunday evening when Beth called to tell them that. He had hoped Avi would call him herself, and he’d prayed she wouldn’t. He’d been enough of a mess. Hearing her voice again would have been that much worse.

Not
hearing her voice, he’d decided, was worst of all.

Living life without her was the absolute worst of all.

And the hell of it was, he didn’t have to.

Sometime before dawn Saturday morning, he’d decided he wasn’t going to. The only thing keeping him from Avi was his own stubborn self, and today he was getting out of his own way.

He’d spent much of the morning on the phone: getting airline reservations, talking to the office manager about his schedule, talking to his partners about his plans. No one had been happy, except possibly the airline that had filled one more seat, but he didn’t care.

After a lifetime of taking care of others, of being the responsible one, not caring was a huge relief.

Now he had to tell his sisters, say good-bye to Lainie and the boys, and call Patricia. The first two tasks would be easy—
easy
being a relative thing—since the five of them, plus Sara’s husband and Brianne’s new boyfriend, were gathered around the kitchen island, eating bakery treats before the Drillers double-header started at eleven.

Though he sat in the living room, not yet having brought up the subject.

“How’re you doing?” Brianne dropped down on the couch beside him, bumping shoulders with him.

“I’m okay.” Looking at her sweet sympathetic smile, he reconsidered his use of the word
easy
. For twenty years, they’d been more than brother and sister, more than family. She and Sara had been the two most important people in his life, the ones he loved best and worried most about. They’d been the focus of his life for so long that he’d forgotten how to focus on anyone else. Leaving them, the family he loved so damn much, would be the hardest thing he’d ever done.

For the woman he loved, God help him, even more.

“Aw, you miss Avi.” Her tone was soft, full of sympathy. “You didn’t know you’d miss her this much, did you?”

He smiled wryly. “Knowing it in my head and actually feeling it in my heart are totally different things.”

“Yeah, you’ve always been a head kind of guy when it comes to women.”

They sat in silence a moment, shoulder to shoulder. Ben knew he should call Sara over and tell them his decision, but before he bothered to look over his shoulder and open his mouth, Brianne spoke again.

“Remember, when we were kids, when you were planning for college in high school?”

Curious about where she was going with this, he shrugged. “Of course I remember.”

“You were going to move to Stillwater, live on your own, do all the things kids on their own in college did. Then Mom left, and Dad fell apart, and you went to OSU, but you had to commute because you couldn’t leave home. You couldn’t leave us. And you wanted to go to medical school at Baylor, but you couldn’t do that, either, for the same reasons. And after Daddy died, you had to do your residency right here in Tulsa so you could look after Sara and me.”