“Well what?”
“Is she showing?”
“Showing? Yeah…no…I don’t know.”
“Radiant?”
“Who are you and what have you done with my big brother? You do realize you’re obsessed with a woman you’ve never met?”
“I’m not obsessed.”
And if he was he had every reason to be.
“How’d you find out about the baby?” Bruce asked.
“You know Dottie…” Lucky answered evasively.
“I know you must be her favorite nephew.”
“Dottie doesn’t play favorites. She’ll knit us both a pair of slipper socks for Christmas.”
“My point exactly.”
Open mouth, insert foot. Lucky hadn’t been thinking about his brother’s amputated leg. But he was probably right about Aunt Dottie knitting them both slipper socks. “She means well.”
“Dottie didn’t know about the baby.”
Lucky winced. “What’d you tell her?”
“I didn’t know it was some big secret. The whole team knows the widow-bride went to CryoBank. What I don’t know is how you knew before anyone else. You’re still in Iraq, for crying out loud.”
Lucky held his peace. He’d made Cait a promise.
“Just tell me your sudden interest in the widow-bride has nothing to do with Luke,” Bruce finally said. “This isn’t some twisted form of revenge…is it?”
Twisted maybe, revenge no.
“My interest in Cait is my business.”
“Cait, now, is it? Then for the record…She’s not just radiant, she’s smoking-hot. She’s also our brother’s pregnant widow. And he was head-over-heels in love with her. You step out of line and you’re going to have a whole team of Navy SEALs breathing down your leather neck.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Just good advice.”
“Yeah, well, you and your bottom-feeder Navy buddies stay away from that heat.”
“I’m not the one looking to get burned.”
CAITLIN BURNED ANOTHER BATCH of cookies. She shouldered the phone while she used a broom handle to knock off the smoke alarm. Her midnight confession to her mother-in-law was not going as planned.
“You’re what?” Nora Jean’s shock reverberated long-distance.
“Baking,” she repeated, setting the broom aside to pull on her lobster-claw oven mitt. She’d found an outlet for her late-night baking, an entire ward of kindred spirits who all knew something about loss. Whatever cookies she didn’t pack off to her brothers-in-law she intended to bring back to the hospital amputee ward.
She waved away the smoke. Reaching into the oven, she pulled out two charred cookie sheets, one at a time, and set them on top of the stove. Then she tossed off the mitt for a better grip on the phone.
Tonight her mother-in-law loved her.
Grief had made her mother-in-law irrational at times. At least they had that much in common. Caitlin wouldn’t know a rational thought from an irrational one. And couldn’t trust her own decisions.
Late-night shadows danced across the walls. Caitlin’s attention strayed to the bright contrast of the TV screen and her muted wedding DVD, where everything was white.
White uniform. White cake. White dress.
“Caitlin, come to Colorado for a visit,” Nora Jean urged. “I shouldn’t be alone for the holidays in my condition.”
Her condition? If my mother-in-law only knew.
“I’ll even splurge for the ticket. It’ll be waiting for you at the airport.”
White Christmas.
She’d missed her chance to take her father up on a similar offer to go to Maryland. “I can’t.” Her hand strayed to her midriff. Her hand was doing a lot of that these days. “A retail opportunity has presented itself,” she said, mimicking the staffer from the temp agency.
“You have a job?”
Why did the woman sound so surprised? It wasn’t as if she was incapable of supporting herself. Or of baking.
“It’s temporary. Just like the last one. Christmas through New Year’s.” If she was lucky. She needed the income.
She’d had a job shortly after arriving in San Diego. In fact, she’d received several offers after passing the state board and licensing exam. Then Luke had been killed and she’d quit working, with the intention of moving back home and working in her father’s drugstore.
So here she was, back at square one.
She’d signed on with a temp agency to keep afloat and to buy herself some time. But for the life of her she didn’t know what she was waiting to decide. Luke wasn’t coming back. No matter how much she wanted him to.
“So you’re working Christmas?” Nora Jean sighed. “Did you at least get the fruitcake I sent you?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Nora Jean must have really hated her that day. Caitlin hated fruitcake.
Caitlin had sent her mother-in-law a memory box she’d bought from the Navy Exchange. A simple velvet-lined, wooden box with a raised United States Navy seal on top. She’d put a lock of Luke’s hair inside. She’d snipped it the morning he’d left, while he was still sleeping.
She could still remember the look on his face when he’d woken up to find her hovering over him with a pair of scissors. She’d put that stolen lock to her lip in a mock mustache, and he’d started laughing. Then he’d tickled her until she’d begged for mercy.
That was a good memory. Except her laughter had turned to tears when it came time to say goodbye. She’d prolonged that last kiss to the last possible moment. She just hadn’t realized at the time it really was their last kiss.
While Luke’s mother continued talking, Caitlin toyed with the ornament from Jill and the wives that was sitting on her kitchen counter. That would be the last she’d see or hear from her friends for a while. With their husbands home they had other plans for the holidays. And who could blame them?
“…I worry that you’re not eating properly,” her mother-in-law said, and Caitlin realized she’d missed most of the conversation.
“I’m eating,” she defended herself, thinking of the oatmeal-raisin cookie dough. With a guilty glance toward the untouched fruit basket from the team, she vowed to do a better job.
“Did I mention I’ve lost twenty pounds?”
As if the amount of weight lost were an indicator of who loved Luke more. Why did the woman persist on making everything a competition?
They both loved him. “Nora, I have to go.”
“The offer stands. Think about it, at least.”
And then there was a side to Nora Jean that could be so sweet, tempting Caitlin with an offer like that. “I will…I promise.”
White lie.
The job offer wasn’t the only reason she couldn’t go. Her mother-in-law would realize she’d put on a few pounds. And she would have to tell her.
And defend her decision.
Ultimately, it would all come down to a little white lie when she looked the woman in the eye and told her she was carrying Luke’s baby. Well, not a lie exactly.
She was carrying Luke’s baby.
Wrong Luke.
That was the problem with keeping secrets. She had no one to talk to. The one person who shared her secret was a million miles away.
“Mom,” she said, trying to soften the blow with the endearment, “there’s something I have to tell you…”
“I’VE NEVER BEEN WITH A WOMAN,” Tick confessed.
Merry Christmas. Lucky saw real fear in the kid’s eyes. They were trapped in a stairwell when they should have been making their way up. Close-quarters combat was not the optimal employment of a sniper team. Three of their four rifles were bolt-action, not automatic.
The kid was too terrified to move.
“I’m not your priest. Keep your head down. And keep moving, Marine.” As his sergeant, it was Lucky’s job to be tough on the kid.
Lucky used their only automatic weapon to provide cover fire as he shoved Tick past the gaping h
ole left minutes ago by a rocket-propelled grenade. Eddie Estes pulled the kid to safety as insurgents returned fire from across the alley.
Lucky sank back against what was left of the sandstone wall, breathing heavily after four flights of fighting; cordite and copper burned his nostrils. The copper was his own blood.
Four tours without a scratch, and here he was bucking for a Purple Heart. But what really pissed him off—the shrapnel had cut through a perfectly good tattoo. How lucky could a guy get?
One more floor and they’d have the advantage of the rooftop. Welcome to the Ramada Inn. The typical rooftop in Ramandi was surrounded by a four-foot wall, sandbagged for sniping and to protect against mortar rounds. In the streets below, a pinned-down company of fellow Marines were counting on them.
Higher ground.
One more floor.
“You want to hear my confession?” Randall asked, sidling up next to him.
“It’d be a hell of a lot more interesting.”
Lucky nodded once to Randall, then opened a barrage of bullets as the spotter rolled to the other side. Another barrage and Lucky dove after him. The four of them scrambled up another flight of stairs.
Last landing. Bigger hole.
They’d be exposed those last few steps to the roof.
“Anything you’d care to confess?” Randall asked, eyeing the opening.
“Nope.” Lucky grit his teeth and ignored the blood trickling down his arm. It was just a scratch.
“You need stitches,” Tick said. “You want me to call the corpsman? Because I could call the corpsman.” The kid reached for his mic.
“It’s nothing,” Lucky grunted in his best John Wayne.
Sergeant Stryker, now there was a Marine. Sands of Iwo Jima. Best damn movie ever made.
He didn’t need some kid telling him he was bleeding. And he didn’t need a corpsman risking his neck for a few stitches when there were Marines dying in the streets.
“I was slapped with a three-thousand yard restraining order while on leave,” Estes spoke up to deflect Lucky’s wrath.
“Don’t you mean three hundred feet?” Lucky said with a measure of disbelief.
“Not after she told the judge I was a Marine sniper. I can’t go near a bell tower, clock tower, water tower or rooftop in my hometown.”
“What the hell did you do?”
“Rang a bell.” At Lucky’s expression of disbelief, Estes shrugged. “From the church bell tower. During her wedding rehearsal to another guy.”
“Did she still marry that other guy?” Tick wanted to know.
“Didn’t stick around long enough to find out,” Estes said matter-of-factly.
“I bought a real diamond.” Randall sounded resigned. Whether that was to marriage or the other big unknown, Lucky didn’t know. The thing was they all had unfinished business.
His team looked at him expectantly. They were counting on him to get them out of this mess. So he had to give them something.
“I keep a copy of What To Expect When You’re Expecting under my rack,” he said, resigned to nothing, except that last flight of stairs.
CAITLIN TRUDGED UP THE LAST few steps to her apartment. She wasn’t used to standing all day. And those extra five pounds she carried around in baby weight felt like twenty to her aching back and feet. Not to mention she was carrying a bag of groceries in each hand.
Okay, ten pounds. Without the groceries.
But they still felt like twenty.
Once inside, she put away her groceries, popped a Lean Cuisine into the microwave and grabbed a Yoplait from the fridge for dessert, which she ate first. It was Christmas dinner, after all. She could eat her dessert first.
She screened her phone messages between spoonfuls of strawberry-banana yogurt. Twelve in eight hours. That was a new record even for Nora Jean.
She’d told her mother-in-law about the baby last night—omitting the part about the sperm mix-up. Couples used donor sperm all the time. How was this any different?
Her commitment to Luke was real. If she confessed everything to her father right now, he’d understand. But somehow she didn’t think that argument would hold up against a mother-in-law who’d lost her only son.
Caitlin certainly wasn’t ready for that conversation.
But message number thirteen was Nora Jean again.
How lucky could a girl get?
LUCKY PUSHED ASIDE THE TENT flap. He glanced at the mail on his rack. The package from his aunt barely registered. Like every man in his squad his gaze drifted to Tick’s empty rack.
“The dumbshit kid!” Eddie Estes screamed. “I told him to keep his head down.” Estes sat on his rack and bawled like a baby.
There were murmurs of sympathy, but there was no consoling Estes. Not if you wanted to keep your teeth in your mouth instead of in a glass of Polident by your bed.
Lucky sat on his own rack and went through the motions of stowing his rifle. He ignored Dottie’s package. And his mail.
Estes shouted obscenities at someone who had the misfortune of wandering into the tent. Lucky tucked his mail away to deal with the sergeant. Two of the guys reached Estes first and held him back. The young Marine corporal who stood just inside the tent flap held an empty file box. “I need to get his things,” he tried to explain.
“You’re not touching his stuff with your filthy hands—”
“Hey,” Lucky warned Estes. “You’re out of line.”
“Dirty Hands” tagged ’em and bagged ’em. “Clean Hands” logged personal effects. Unenviable jobs at best.
All the honor went to the military escort—the “Blue Bark.”
He’d send Estes home with the body. The sergeant was in no condition to carry on here, but he might be of some comfort to the family. Estes had loved Tick like a little brother—they all had.
“We’ve got it,” Lucky said, taking the file box from Corporal Clean Hands, who made a hasty retreat. “Snap out of it, Marine,” he ordered Estes. “Let’s get this over with.”
They spent the next several minutes going through Tick’s footlocker. Laughing at the stupid stuff Richard “Tick” Tanner III used to say—it was either that or cry.
They’d made it up to the roof and back down again. Lucky had even let the corpsman stitch him up on the ride back in the Humvee.
Then their convoy had been hit.
Thirteen times Lucky had been in an armored Humvee when he’d heard that unmistakable pop. Thirteen times he’d survived a roadside bomb. It wasn’t the IED—Improvised Explosive Device—that had killed Tick. They’d lost him in the ambush that had followed. A battle that had lasted less than an hour, but in the end Tick was gone.
“Polish up your brass,” Lucky said when they were done, as a way of informing Estes of his decision to let him go.
“What about this?” Estes unfolded a letter tucked into the corner of Tick’s footlocker.
Lucky took the letter and read it, even though he was familiar with every life-altering word.
Please take a moment to consider your future family dreams….
The kid had counted on him to make his decisions for him.
The right decisions. Lucky couldn’t choose who lived or died in battle. Only, he couldn’t shake the feeling that when it came to CryoBank he’d let Tick down.
Lucky replayed that day over in his head.
Tick stretched out on his cot. Estes beaning the kid with a can of Pringles. Tick playing the what if game.
What if this was it?
For Tick, it was.
Lucky could pay the storage fees and let the family decide.
But they might make the wrong decision. And he knew what Tick would have wanted.
The same thing Lucky would want if someone put that same piece of paper in front of him today.
Life. A legacy.
Something that said he mattered to this world.
Lucky took out his nubby pencil, the one he always carried on patrol. He put his X on the line.
Donate my specimen.
Eddie looked taken aback for a moment. “Yeah, yeah,” he finally agreed. “Do you mind if I write a letter to go with this? You never know, his kid might want to know something about him someday.”
“I think he’d like that. Just don’t write about what a dumbshit he was.”
Estes chuckled. “I’ll stick to the truth. He was a guy with a lot left to learn. And he was too young to die.”
LUCKY LEFT THEIR TENT AFTER that. He made it around the corner before stopping to puke his guts out. Ten square miles of tents later, he still couldn’t get that concrete-slab mortuary out of his mind. Four boxcar-sized camouflaged refrigerators held remains until they could be sent home.
But on that slab every body cavity was searched for unexploded ordnance by some guy they wouldn’t even sit next to in the chow hall. Too superstitious.
Who knows, maybe it was “the hands” who wouldn’t eat with them. It couldn’t be easy. It had never been easy for Lucky. In fact, it was a hell of a lot easier not to form any attachments at all.
There was something about losing Tick that hit a little too close to home. Like any kid brother, Tick was so annoying you wanted him out of your hair, but when he was gone—really gone—you missed him.
And somehow you knew you were never going to be the same. Kind of the way he’d felt the night the chaplain had taken him to see Luke’s body. Hands that never trembled, trembled just thinking about it now.
He’d put so much time and effort into hating Luke, he’d forgotten that it wasn’t really Luke he hated. He’d never taken the chance to get to know his half brother and now he never would. He envied Bruce that. The chaplain had seemed surprised when Lucky had refused the honor of escorting the body home.
There was no honor in his shame.
At the end of the line for Luke there’d have been Nora Jean and Big Luke. Lucky couldn’t have dealt with their grief when he could barely come to terms with his own. But, he realized now, there would have been someone else at the airport to collect the body.
The widow-bride. Heartbroken. Trying to be strong.
Much like she’d sounded on the phone the other day. He couldn’t change what had happened with CryoBank. But he could put aside his feelings and see her through this. He owed Luke that much at least.
The Marine's Baby, Maybe Page 5