Broken Soldier: A Novel (18 page)

Maria looked at her closer, and her eyes seemed to soften. “He cares about you very much, you know. I have spoken to him about this.”

“Is that right?” Emily couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Rafa’s mother was trying to excuse his behavior?

“It is, yes.”

Emily sighed. She wasn’t going to get rid of Rafa’s mother without answering some questions. “I am serious about him. Or I was. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on right now, okay?”

“I want my son to be happy. I thought that I knew what was best for him, but as you say, I do not know, either.”

“Then we at least agree on that. I want Rafa to be happy, too. With me or without me, I wish him well.” That didn’t mean that it hurt any less, but it was the simple truth.

“Then you have my blessing.” Maria curtsied and left.

Emily stared after her. His mother gave her a blessing while he was with another woman? There was something horribly wrong with that picture.

Maybe Rafa had managed to hide it from her before, but his whole family was insane. Emily turned back to the bedroom and opened her suitcase. She didn’t know what time the next flight to America left, but she intended to be on it. 

R
AFA'S 
mother stood in the kitchen, a cup of coffee in her hand. She looked him over as he entered from the garage. “Rafael, I think you should go talk to your girlfriend.”

Rafa paused, his father nearly running him over. “Why?”

“She is upset about something.”

What had Lorena said to her? “Where is she?”

“Upstairs.”

Rafa rushed past, heading straight for the garret room. Behind him, his mother asked his father how their shopping trip had gone, but Rafa didn’t hear the response as he jogged up the stairs. A glance down the second floor hall showed that the guest room door was still closed. Lorena or Bernardo--or both--were probably still sleeping off the wine.

He heard the crying as soon as he reached the third floor. Quiet, gentle sobs at the far end of the otherwise silent hallway. His jog turned into a slapdash run.

“Emily,” he said, stopping in her doorway.

She looked up, eyes red, and wiped her nose. Her suitcase lay before her, full of badly folded clothes. She glared at him. “You.”

“What?” Rafa’s heart stopped beating, his veins filling with a terror he had only known when men were trying to kill him.

“You know what. I’m leaving.”

“Emily, what is going on?” His hand shook slightly as adrenaline rushed through him. “What’s wrong?”

“How dare you ask me that. You were in bed with her. I heard it!” She blinked back tears.

“Emily, I slept alone last night.” He took a step forward, but stopped when she pointed at him with her straightener. She had hold of it like it was a deadly weapon.

“I looked into your room earlier. You weren’t there. The bed wasn’t even disturbed. I looked all over the house for you, and do you know what I found? That tramp of yours cooing over you in the guest room. I don’t know what you were thinking, I can’t handle that. We’re done.”

Rafa’s legs felt weak. This couldn’t be happening. God, he hadn’t even done anything wrong. “Em, I got up at 6:00 and had breakfast with my dad. We’ve been out in the city since before 8:00.”

Emily’s lip quivered and her eyebrows narrowed.

“I’m not joking. Emily, I love you. I could never be unfaithful; I would die without you.” He stumbled forward, using the bed to help balance. “Losing you would be worse than losing my hand and my leg. I might have felt incomplete before, but without you in my life I would lose my whole sense of being. You make me a better person.”

The next few seconds were a blur, but then she was in his arms, crying on his shoulder. “I love you, too,” she whispered.

“Em, if you want to go home early, I don’t mind. I’ve had about enough of Spain.”

She sniffled, squeezed him tighter. “But your dad. Your Yaya.”

“Dad and Yaya will understand.”

“Lorena...”

“The devil can take Lorena for all I care. She’s worse than cancer.”

“We don’t have to go, Rafa. I was... I just thought I’d lost you.”

Rafa held her, kissed her forehead, her wet cheeks. “I will talk to my family, but we can leave early. I’m ready to go home.”

“With me?” She looked up, hopeful.

“Always.”

#

A line of travelers stretched toward the security checkpoint in the Madrid Barajas airport, people clutching their passports or their children or their lovers. Emily stood with Rafa, waiting as he gave his parents and grandmother one last hug.

“You call when you land, okay?” his mother said.

“I will,
Mamá.
” Rafa disengaged, turning toward his father and wrapping him into a hug.

“Enjoy the rest of your vacation, Rafa. And show those flyboys in Colorado Springs what a real soldier looks like.”

“I will, Dad.”

Rafa’s mother approached Emily, her arms opening. “It was good to meet you,” Maria said.

Emily hugged her tentatively, but was surprised at how the other woman squeezed her with real affection. “And you, too,” Emily told her.

“He is happy with you,” Rafa’s mother whispered into Emily’s ear. “And so I am happy for him. For you both.”

“Thank you.” It felt surprisingly good to hear it, and when Emily looked into the other woman’s eyes, she was surprised to see truth in them.

Yaya came next, and despite her age, her hug was even stronger than her daughter’s. “Be safe,” Yaya said. “And tell me if you read any good books.”

“Thank you for having us,” Emily said. “And I will.”

Rafa’s father approached, hand outstretched, but Emily wasn’t falling for that trick again. She stepped around his hand, and gave him a hug, too. It was a hugging family, and that wasn’t a bad thing, she was learning.

“Keep an eye on him, Em,” Rafa’s father said. “If he gives you any guff, you let me know.”

“I can handle him,” she said.

Rafa’s father laughed. “I have no doubt that you can.”

“Em, shall we?” Rafa held out a hand. “
Mamá
, Dad, Yaya, see you when we see you.” Rafa led Emily toward the checkpoint. The golden ceiling stretched overhead, and even as she walked toward the flight that would take her back home to Colorado, Emily found herself wondering when she’d be back in Madrid. It hadn’t been an easy trip, but she’d survived and her affection for Rafa had only grown.

#

Emily wasn’t sure what Rafa and her dad were talking about out on the balcony, but it had to be serious for them to be out in the cold so long.

“Stop sighing, dear,” Emily’s mother said. “They’ll be along in good time.”

“I’m not sighing.”

Her mother smiled.

Well, maybe she was. She hadn’t realized it, though. She turned her attention from the balcony to the Christmas tree. Her parents still had it up, and it was as heavily decorated as ever. They spent a ridiculous amount of time on it, covering each individual branch with a strand of lights. She remembered the hours it had taken to decorate it when she was a child.

The balcony door cracked open, letting a cold blast of air into the house. Footsteps tramped inside, and Emily’s father came into the living room. Rafa followed him, his face red with the cold.

“Well,” Emily said, “did you boys get whatever it was worked out?”

“We did,” her father said. “I think you found a good man, Em. I’m proud of you.”

Emily stared at him, shocked. Had her father just said he liked Rafa? “I... Uh...”

“Thank you, Mr. Hale,” Rafa said. He sat beside Emily and slipped his hand into hers. It was frigid, but she didn’t mind.

“None of that, Rafa, you can call me Karl, I told you that. Now, I think we have some presents to open, don’t we?”

Emily’s mother did the distributing, passing boxes wrapped in bright Christmas trees and snowmen around the room. They alternated presents, each opening boxes and finding a sweater or a pocket knife or perfume.

Emily edged forward on the couch as they finished. “I have one more for Rafa. Stay here,” she told him.

The skis were specially made, and she’d had her mother pick them up for her from the manufacturer while she’d been in Spain. Emily slipped into her parents’ bedroom and retrieved the yellow and blue camouflage planks. A red ribbon wrapped around them from top to bottom, holding them together. A wide bow completed the package.

“Rafa, close your eyes,” Emily called into the other room.

“Alright,” he said.

She carried the skis to the living room, stepping over discarded wrapping paper, and stopped in front of him. “You can open your eyes.”

He looked up, his eyes scanning the skis and stopping on the special bindings meant to interface with his prosthetic leg. His eyes grew wide.

“Do you like them?” she asked.

“I love them.” He held out his arms, and she passed the skis over. He plucked at the bow and unraveled the ribbon, lifting and admiring. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“Of course I did. It’s purely selfish. I love skiing, and the best way to get you to go with me is to ensure that you have a good set of skis of your own.”

Rafa laughed. Behind her, her father murmured something to her mother.

“So,” Rafa said, “I have one more gift for you, too.”

Emily looked at him, confused. Where had he hidden another gift?

“Sit and close your eyes.” Rafa stood up, wrapping paper rustling as he moved. “Okay, you can open them.”

He kneeled before her, his left knee on the ground. A plain blue box lay on his outstretched palm, a single word embossed in gold on the lid:
Amor
.

Emily reached for the box, her heart beating like she’d just run a marathon. Her fingers would barely close around it. Hope swelled in her chest. Part of her knew what was in the box even as she opened it to reveal a gleaming diamond ring.

“Emily, will you marry me?” Rafa asked.

She looked at him, blinking back tears for the second time in a week, and said one word: “Yes.”

E
MILY worried about Rafa. He jogged along beside her, his breath forming great clouds in front of him, but he’d barely said two words since they’d entered the trail.

“Alright, Rafa, something’s wrong. Talk to me.”

“I’m fine. Not even a twinge.”

His strides were long and steady, his shoe and his blade alternately crunching on the frosty gravel. It was the furrows on his forehead and the tension in his arms that bothered her.

“I don’t mean your knee. Are you worried about the wedding?”

“Huh?”

“We need to work out a date and decide who to invite and work on colors.” He was watching her out of the corner of his eye, but his expression was one of surprise. So the wedding wasn’t the problem. That was a relief. At least one of them still had the brain capacity to think about something else.

“Rafa...”

“I’m still here.”

The week after the proposal had been one long high. Christa had been giddy when Emily had shown her the ring. In between bouts of jumping up and down and grinning like a Cheshire cat, Emily had started planning the wedding, and she’d hardly given a thought to anything else.

But if he wasn’t worried about the wedding, what else could it be? Afternoon sunlight filtered through the trees that lined the trail, casting him in shadows as he moved from light to darkness and back to light. His muscles flexed with each stride. Realization dawned on her: tomorrow was his first day at his new job at the Air Force Academy.

“Are you worried about your first day of work?” Emily asked.

“I don’t know how a bunch of Air Force cadets are going to respond to an Army vet.”

It was gratifying how she was beginning to read him, even if she couldn’t understand his concern. “You’re kidding, right?”

Rafa frowned. “No. Intra-service rivalry is a real thing for some people. It’s really bad at the academies.”

“Rafa, you’ll be fine. You’re experienced, knowledgeable and if anyone doubts it, all they have to do is look at your arm.” She meant it to be encouraging, but his frown deepened.

“It doesn’t work like that. They’ll see-- I don’t know what they’ll see. It won’t be good.”

“Seriously, you have to stop worrying about your disabilities. They’re part of you, but you don’t have to let them define you. Go in, be professional and you’ll be fine. It can’t be as bad as the stuff you dealt with in the Army.”

“They won’t shoot at me, I suppose.”

“Well, it’s the Air Force, right? Even if they did, they’d miss.”

That drew a chuckle, and his arms started to move more easily at his side. “Talk to me about the wedding,” he said.

“Well, we need a date.”

“How about early summer? It will be beautiful in Madrid in June.”

Madrid? She didn’t want to walk back into the lion’s den at all, never mind for her own wedding. “We can’t even get a church booked in that amount of time.”

“Do you want to go later? August?”

“I was thinking next Christmas. And something in Boulder or Denver. Or what about the Air Force Academy, they have a chapel there, right?”

He hesitated. “They do.”

“But you don’t think they’ll let you use it?”

“I don’t know. They might.”

“Okay... we can come back to that later. We need to see what’s available closer, anyway.”

“Or farther away?”

“Maybe. Let me think about it some more first.”

“How about we think while we run?”

“Sure.”

He sped up, forcing Em to really stretch her legs to stay with him. Her need to breathe overcame her desire to talk, so she ran along beside him a while, sucking wind and focusing on the trail. The cool mountain air seared into her lungs with every ragged breath.

“I need to slow down,” Emily said after a mile or so. She dropped to a more sedate jog, her heart thumping from the near sprint.

August was just too soon if they wanted to book anywhere that his mother would remotely approve. Emily really wanted a Christmas wedding, with garlands and trees and lights, but at the same time, she didn’t want to wait 11 months, either.

“What about Thanksgiving?” she asked.