Bonds Of The Heart (3 page)

              “Not now.”

              Another sigh came from his mother. “Okay, Blake. Tomorrow.”

              Tomorrow was another day. Maybe then he’d be able to fit together some of these puzzle pieces that made up his new life. Who was he kidding? Things were never going to be as easy as that. And tomorrow wasn’t going to change anything.

***

              “Why did he have to go and re-enlist? He should have been retired. He promised. He broke his promise to us, mom. I don’t understand how you can just sit there and be okay with all of this. If he loved us he would have stayed. If he loved us he wouldn’t have gone off to some dangerous shit hole of a place and get himself killed!” Erika didn’t even bother to fight the tears streaming down her face. She'd been pacing in the living room for the past three hours.

              The anger was right. The anger was good. The anger was everything she needed right now. She blamed her dad for getting killed. She blamed her mother for letting him re-enlist. She couldn’t understand how her mother could be so calm through the funeral and after. Erika could hear fierce sobs at night through the thin walls, but her mother never got angry for her husband dying. She never once blamed the career her husband had chosen. And Erika couldn’t understand one damn bit of it.

              “Why? Why aren’t you angry with him? Why aren’t you mad at them for taking him away from us?”

              “Because that’s not what your father would want. Because they didn’t take him away from us and you know that. Because this was who your father was.”

              “Does he get a say now? He’s dead! He left us to go fight in some damn war knowing he’d be taken away from us!”

              “Your father loved his job and he knew that each and every time he was deployed there was the risk of us losing him. But he fought for what was right. He did what he believed in. And I believed in him. I knew from the moment we met that this was important to him. I accepted it then and I accept it now. I wish you would accept it, Erika. It would help you not to feel so angry with him.”

              “He loved the damn corps more than he loved us.”

              “You know that’s not true.” Her mother’s head snapped up to meet Erika’s gaze. For a moment Erika was happy to hear the anger in her mother’s voice. But as her mother sighed, she knew it wouldn’t last. “Your father loved us with all his heart. He fought for this country because he knew it was his duty to do so. He believed in what he fought for. The freedoms we have are because of the men and women like him who risk their lives for us. That never meant he didn’t love us.”

              Erika crumpled into the sofa next to her mother. After all the pacing she did, she knew her exhaustion wasn’t from walking back and forth but from the emotions inside of her. She wiped the tears from her face and closed her eyes.

              “It’s not fair,” She said.

              Her mother reached her arm around Erika’s shoulders and pulled her close. Erika went willingly. “I know, baby girl. It’s not fair. It will never be fair. But we will get through this. Together.”

              Erika rested her head on her mother’s shoulders. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to get through this. She was so angry with her father and the job he had chosen. Why couldn’t he be a normal dad and have an office job? Why couldn’t he do normal things like fix cars or mow the lawn? If he wanted to fight for what was right he could have been a cop and been local. At least then some terrorist wouldn’t have killed her daddy.

              No one could possibly know how she felt. Her mother sure didn’t. Her mother’s pain wasn’t as strong as hers. No one she knew suffered as much as she did so no one would know what she was going through. She’d just have to deal with it herself.

Four

***

“Oh, Daddy.”

              Erika picked up the old photograph and ran her hand across the faces that peered back at her. Her father, proud in his dress blues, stood towering over her mother in her brilliant white, lace tiered wedding dress. The trees were lush and green behind them. The sun twinkled in their eyes and in their smiles.

              There was no trace of the swing set her dad put together when she was three. No tire swing hanging from the large oak that stood behind them. Just her parents on their wedding day in the backyard of the first house she had lived in.

              There was a brief ceremony at the courthouse a year prior to the photo being taken, right before his first deployment. Her father had promised her mother, when he returned, to give her the wedding she dreamed of. Because her mother was desperately in love with her father, she had decided on a small backyard wedding with just friends and family. She didn’t need anything more than that.

              Now, years and too many deployments to count later, Erika sat in the dusty, musty attic sifting through her father’s old items. There were boxes among boxes of trophies, medals, souvenirs, and other trinkets that he would bring back from the locations where he was stationed. Old tattered sweatshirts and t-shirts with the USMC logo, worn from years of hard labor around the house, lay folded in boxes.

              Erika pulled a box toward her side and ran a hand over the tan uniform shirt adorned with medals. Just a year ago, Sergeant Major Henry ‘Hank’ Gibbons, was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon for bravery under enemy fire. The award ceremony took place at Quantico the week before he left for Afghanistan. Erika had called that morning to wish her father congratulations. She had gotten up early just to make the phone call between time zone differences. It was the last time she spoke with him.

              “Erika?”

              She felt the fabric under her fingers one last time before she sealed the box with packing tape. “Yeah, mom. I’m up here.”

              Brianne Gibbons climbed the creaky old ladder and peeked her head into the attic. “Erika, it’s been three months. You can’t beat yourself up anymore. He did what he loved.”

              “I know, mom. I just wish he didn’t love it so much.” She'd whispered the last few words.

              “Why don’t you come downstairs and help me in the kitchen? I’ll fix you some tea.”

              “I’ll be right there.” Without a glance back to her mom, Erika lay the photo of her parents in another box full of old photo albums and sealed it shut.

              It had been three months since the funeral. In that time, she had taken a leave from her job and temporarily moved in with her mom to help sort out her dad’s belongings and to make sure her mom was okay. It had taken her mother and her that long to be able to bring themselves to begin boxing some of her father’s belongings. Erika had kept the dog tags and refused to take them off, as her father did. Her favorite t-shirt, frayed with some holes, had been her father's. It still smelled like him, a mix of musk, wood, and earth. She had barely left the house in those three months. The only time was to drive her mother to Quantico or to Culpeper to fax papers back to her office in L.A. She couldn’t bring herself to do anything more.

              With a heavy sigh, Erika stood and headed downstairs to the small kitchen. On her way, she passed her room where her suitcase lay opened on the floor next to her old bed and her laptop sat on the bedside table. She had another month before she had to return to reality, to her apartment in Los Angeles, and face each day knowing her father wasn’t coming home.

              Old pictures hung in the hallway. Erika idly trailed a finger over each as she studied them. Her first time riding a bicycle, her dad had just let go of her, arms still in the air. Her sweet sixteen birthday party she insisted on having in the backyard. Her senior prom with her father shaking her date’s nervous hand as she looked on laughing from behind them. Her parents' wedding at the court house on the front steps holding the marriage license and flashing their small gold bands. Her father and mother at one of dad’s many award ceremonies.

              So many memories surrounding her. Though she should be happy for the times they had spent together, Erika couldn’t help feeling the pain of loss and anger toward the career her father had chosen. Gripping the dog tags around her neck, she sluggishly wandered down the stairs.

              She found her mother in the kitchen looking through cupboards. From the old photos Erika had seen, time had been kind to her mother. She had high cheekbones—knife-edged some would call them—and doe eyes that were a mix of amber, gold, and brown. Her mahogany hair, once long, was cut to her shoulders for easy care. If you looked at a picture of Erika next to that of a young Brianne Gibbons you would think they were sisters, with one difference. Erika’s ice blue eyes were a gift from her father. They offset her dark hair and creamy pale ivory skin in contrast.

              She watched her mom move cans and boxes, and scribble notes on her weekly grocery list. The teapot had started to whistle and Brianne simply just turned down the heat. She moved with ease around the kitchen. Erika could remember crisp spring Saturday afternoons baking cookies with her mom from scratch. There would be flour all over the place and her father would just shake his head and laugh at the two of them covered from head to toe in white dust.

              Erika took a seat at the small dinette in the corner near the bay window. She knew she’d be the one heading off to the grocery store for her mother. Since her Jeep was the only working one at the moment, and her mom didn’t drive anything bigger than her old Ford compact, she’d get a chance to visit her daddy on the way.

              “What’s on the menu this week?” Erika asked as she picked at an imaginary spot on the small kitchen table.

              “I was thinking chicken but I can’t find anything to go with it. I’ll have to put something together with what I have. I have some potatoes that are still good. I’ll figure something out. I don’t want you going out in the rain.”

              Erika looked out the window at the dark gray clouds that threatened in the distance. The rain wouldn’t come in for another few hours, and she knew that her car was built like a tank. Rain wouldn’t stop her.

              “Mom, my car can handle the rain. I don’t mind driving.”

              “No, no. You can go tomorrow.” Brianne waved her hand in the air as if to shoo away the topic.

              “I’d like to visit Daddy. Since I’ll be out, I can stop at the store for you anyway.”

              Brianne held one hand on the cupboard door and had a pencil in the other. She hesitated only enough that her daughter wouldn’t notice. She missed her husband terribly. She quickly jotted a few more items to her list, then closed the door. She gathered two cups and two tea bags and turned to Erika. She poured the steaming hot water into the cups and placed them on the small kitchenette. She returned with the tea bags and a small bowl of sugar. When she sat, she quietly measured her daughter as they drank their tea in silence.

              A mother knows, and she could see that Erika hadn’t gotten much sleep over the past few months. The west coast make-up she spent her money on couldn't hide the mauve color under her eyes. She was frail and had lost too much weight, Brianne thought.

              When she had decided to marry Hank fresh out of training, Brianne had resigned herself to being the proper military wife. She had moved across the country more than a dozen times, usually with Erika in tow. She knew what it was to be a soldier's wife and she never complained about it. She proudly hung the American flag from the front porch of each home they lived in, a yellow ribbon adorned to the railing at the base of the flag. She could never fault the United States government for taking away her husband. That was the work of an insurgent native, who carefully placed the IED that killed Hank and part of his unit and injured hundreds of others. She accepted that at some point in time that day would come. She had prayed it would be many years in the future, but she thanked the Lord every day for the time she was given with her husband. She was sad that her daughter didn’t have as much time as she had.

              “Okay,” Brianne said. “I want to bake a pie for Mrs. Hamilton and her family anyway. But you hurry back. I don’t want you getting caught up in the storm.”

              “Yes, mom. I’ll be back soon.” Erika kissed her mom on the forehead and took the list from her. Brianne watched as Erika grabbed her keys, rain jacket and headed to her Jeep.

***

              Blake had parked across the street from the small plot of land with headstones aged by time and weather, but couldn’t bring himself to cross the street to the entrance of the cemetery. Instead, on frequent visits, he would park the truck on the side of the gravel road and, if the rare occasion called for it, get out and lean up against the hood and just stare. Like he did today.

              The dark clouds were coming in fast. He could see and smell the rain in the distance. Fresh and clean. It fell in sheets—no, waves—soaking the trees and grasses. The air was heavy and cool, exactly as Blake felt on the inside. So when the black Jeep came to a quick jolt in front of him on the other side of the road, with white smoke barreling from under its hood, he couldn’t understand why he was even remotely intrigued to find out what the delicate woman behind the wheel was going to do about it.