The Price of Valor

by Susan May Warren

  Aggie rolled over and pressed her hand on Signe’s cheek. “Mama?”

  Signe wove her fingers through hers. “I’m here, baby.”

  “Are we safe now?”

  The door had clicked behind Ham, but she saw his shadow stretching under the door. He was standing just outside, clearly intending to camp outside the door.

  Signe tucked her body against her daughter, felt the thump of her heart, the warm curve of her body.

  Sank into it, her throat thick. “Yes, honey. We’re safe.”

  For now, tonight, they were safe.

  “When morning gilds the skies . . .” The hymn hung in Ham’s mind as he sat out on one of his Adirondack chairs at his cold fire pit, watching the sun rise. The horizon had turned from pewter to molten gold, not unlike the brilliant red lava he’d seen spouting from Etna. Only this lava flattened over the horizon and spilled into the lake, across the waves, tipping them in copper. A brisk wind scattered the leaves that scraped across the stone fire pit, and in the distance, a flock of Canadian geese landed in the tiny inlet nearby, their honking breaking through the silence of the dawn.

  Ham wore his thick flannel jacket, a wool hat, and had his hands shoved hard into his pockets, and still he shivered. Maybe not as much from the air as the chill from Signe since that moment in Italy when he realized she’d betrayed him.

  The moment, the realization, still swept his breath from his chest, still made him want to let out a growl from the deep ache he felt all the way to his core.

  He still hadn’t found his footing.

  Especially since she kept knocking him over. “I think it’s best if I don’t stay.”

  What?

  How—why—what had he done to make her keep running from him?

  He leaned forward in his chair, his head in his hands. “Lord, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know.”

  The wind stirred, lifting the fragrance of autumn—crispy, drying leaves, a hint of smoke in the air, the deepening loam.

  Everything dying in the face of winter.

  “I don’t know how to reach her. How to tell her that she’s safe. How to bring her home . . . how to be her husband.”

  He waited, but nothing of wisdom filled his soul. Just the sun upon the platinum waters, turning it from dark to light.

  He couldn’t deny the hard clench of relief in his chest when he spotted Signe in the kitchen with Aggie when he finally went in. He’d left her a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt in the hallway and she was wearing them, frying up a couple eggs.

  Aggie sat at the counter, her legs wrapped around the high-top chair, licking peanut butter off a piece of toast. “Mama is making eggs!”

  Ham shed his jacket and closed his sliding glass door. “I see that. There’s some bacon in the fridge too.”

  “We don’t eat pork,” Signe said. She wore her hair down, finger combed.

  “Oh, uh . . .” He looked at Aggie, whose eyes had widened. Oops. “Why?”

  Signe looked at him, frowned. Back to the eggs. “I guess . . . oh, um . . .”

  Because Tsarnaev had been Muslim.

  He hadn’t even thought about how her faith had been affected by her tenure in Tsarnaev’s camp.

  Or if any of it still existed.

  Signe slid a couple fried eggs from the pan onto a plate. Brought them over to the counter. “Over hard, the way you like?”

  “Thanks.” He slid onto a stool beside Aggie. She’d changed into a pair of flannel pajamas, fuzzy pink slippers.

  Signe handed him a fork. Met his eyes.

  Her gaze held sadness, and he tried not to panic.

  She returned to the stove and sliced a wedge of butter into the pan.

  “I have to meet with Scarlett this morning. She has a hacker friend who might be able to decrypt the list. We’ll get her to work on it, and then I’d like to head up north, to my cabin.”

  Signe drew in a breath. “Ham—”

  “For Aggie. It’s gorgeous and . . .” And maybe they could figure out how to start over. “You’re tired, Sig. You need a break. It’s safe. No one is going to find you there, I promise.”

  Signe looked at Aggie, who was nodding.

  Smoke rose from the pan. “Oh, the butter!” She took it off the heat, then broke a couple more eggs into the pan. “Okay.”

  He watched her fry eggs, then, “You’ll be here when I get back?”

  She looked at him. Then gave a slow nod.

  The gesture sat in his gut, a sort of ember of dread and fear until he returned home, the jump drive left safely in Scarlett’s hands.

  He also hadn’t returned Isaac White’s phone call.

  They just needed time.

  Time to unravel Signe’s story.

  Time to be a family.

  Time to figure out how he could fix this.

  Signe had packed Aggie a bag and was scanning through television channels on his flat-screen as they waited. “You have over five hundred cable channels.”

  “I know. I watch about three. Ready?”

  Aggie was armed with all her stuffed animals—the moose, her ratty unicorn, the oversized dolphin, and her furry rabbit. She’d changed into a purple sweater and leggings, her hair braided.

  Signe hadn’t changed, and when she walked over to him, he handed her a bag. “Scarlett sent these over.”

  She looked inside and frowned. “Why would she give me clothing?”

  “Because you don’t have any?”

  She drew in a breath, then fished through the bag and pulled out a pair of fuzzy socks. “Right. I’ll go change.”

  By the time Signe returned, he’d gathered Aggie’s bag, his own overnight bag, which he’d packed last night, just in case he had to take off quickly, and some snacks for the five-hour drive.

  She wore a pair of jeans and a baggy sweater, and with her hair up in a messy bun she looked every inch a suburban soccer mom. “You want me to drive?”

  “No. We’re taking the truck,” he said and glanced out to his Silverado in the driveway.

  “How many vehicles do you own?”

  He picked up Aggie’s bag and his own, and managed the door by himself. “Three, counting the Corvette.”

  She picked up the bag of snacks and followed him out. “How rich are you?”

  He loaded the gear into the bed of the truck, took her bag from her, and pulled the top over the bed. “I can afford what I need for me and the team.” He opened the back door for Aggie to climb in. “And for you and Aggie. Here, honey, you’re in charge of the chips. Don’t eat them all at once.” He handed Aggie the bag of goodies as she settled her farm around her. “Oh, and I brought your book.” He pulled the book they’d been reading from his back pocket. “I thought you’d like to finish it on the way up.”

  He wondered if Signe noticed the cover.

  “You’re reading her The Farthest Away Mountain?”

  So, yes.

  Signe walked around and climbed into the cab. “Where did you find it?”

  “Used bookstore.” He joined her in the driver’s seat.

  She smiled at him and it nearly lit his chest on fire. “I can’t believe you remembered.”

  “You wouldn’t stop talking about that book, and how you wanted to go on your own adventures.”

  Yes, she did.

  He set the security system, then glanced in the rearview mirror. Aggie was already inside the book. “Did you teach her to read? She speaks excellent English, and her teacher says she’s the top in her math class.”

  “Yes. Tsarnaev allowed us wives to raise our daughters.”

  “Wives? Plural?” He pulled out onto the highway. The sky overhead had turned a wispy, light blue.

  “He had several. But most of them were political alliances with neighboring tribes.”

  He really didn’t want to know.

  “He wasn’t as cruel as you might think. He cared for his wives, and—”

  “No, Signe.” He cut his voice low, but really, he didn’t care
if Aggie heard him. “Evil disguised as kindness is just manipulation. And manipulation is emotional abuse when it’s used to control people.” He looked at her. “You did a brave, honorable thing. But let’s not pretend you weren’t also physically, mentally, and emotionally abused in the process. Tsarnaev is a terrorist, and terrorists are only interested in themselves and their agenda.”

  She stared at him, her eyes hard, then turned away.

  Nice, Ham.

  Lord, give me wisdom.

  As they headed north, the trees deepened their bejeweled colors—gold, red, and deep purple, the slightest hint of frost on the cattails and pussy willows that lined the marshes along the highway.

  “Where is your cabin?” Signe asked.

  “It’s near the town of Deep Haven, overlooking Lake Superior.”

  They stopped for coffee at Tobies, a donut shop halfway to Duluth. Ham turned on the radio, and for a while they listened to the news. Signe’s hands went a little white when updates of White and Jackson’s campaign came over the radio.

  He resisted the urge to touch her. “Scarlett will get to the bottom of this.”

  “Who is her hacker? Is she with the CIA?”

  “No. Apparently, her boyfriend’s brother is engaged to a superhacker. Scarlett is flying out to see them this weekend, so she’ll give her the drive then.”

  “It feels strange for it to be over, you know?”

  “I do. When I separated from the military, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I came home and bought the house and started remodeling it—”

  “You did that yourself?”

  “Mostly. I gutted it, did the rewiring, the plumbing, the structural work. I had some help—North left the same time I did, and he came back to Minneapolis with me. I spent very little while I was serving, so my bank account was flush when I returned. I used it to set up my first GoSports shop in Minneapolis. We started with a weight room, a boxing area, and a climbing wall. We’re open 24/7, and when we realized we were maxed out, we opened another location in the western suburbs. That membership maxed out within a few months, so we opened another shop in Arden Hills, and from there, started a franchise.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. I got lucky—I had a contact with the Minnesota Vikings, so we had one of their wide receivers sign on as our spokesman. Even ran a Super Bowl ad our second year that exploded our franchise sales. Now, we’re national, with our first international club opening in a few weeks in Vancouver.”

  “So, very rich, then.”

  He laughed. “No. I’m always putting back into the company. I even teach, sometimes. We specialize in alternative sports—everything from climbing to triathlon swimming, with individualized plans to help people realize an active lifestyle. You won’t find any Jazzercize classes, but we do have a Pilates teacher, a hot yoga room, and a spin class. Our most popular classes are the ice-climbing and kite-surfing classes.”

  He topped the hill over Duluth, and immediately the air changed, chilled, Lake Superior unfurling in deep blue in the valley below.

  “Is that a bridge?” Aggie said, leaning forward and pointing to the arched aerial bridge that spanned the channel between Minnesota and Wisconsin.

  “Yes. Want to stop and see it?”

  She nodded, and Ham exited at Canal Park.

  Aggie tossed chips to the seagulls as they walked the barrier along the channel, all the way to the lighthouse. Signe shivered, and Ham took off his jacket and wrapped it around her.

  She didn’t shrug it away and he counted it as a win.

  An oceangoing cargo ship came in, and Ham held Aggie’s hand as they stood under the bridge, watching it go up.

  “Cool,” Aggie said.

  Ham bought her an ice-cream cone, then they got back into the truck and headed up the shore.

  Signe dug into the bag for a couple sandwiches. “Cheese and baloney. It was all I could find in your fridge, but if I remember correctly, they were your favorite.”

  “You used to bring them to school, just in case my stepmother refused to make me lunch.”

  “And Twinkies.”

  He took the sandwich that she’d unwrapped. “I would have gone hungry without you.”

  “Hardly. I wasn’t the only girl in school who had a crush on you.”

  “You were the only one who knew how terrible my stepmother was.”

  She took a bite of her sandwich. “Is she still alive?”

  He swallowed, put his sandwich down, and took a drink of water. She took his thermos and capped it as he shook his head. “She and my father were murdered in Central Park about fifteen years ago.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. They’d taken Kelsey to The Lion King on Broadway and then decided to take a walk through the park. They were jumped by a gang of three guys. They killed my father and my stepmother and left Kelsey for dead.”

  “Oh my.”

  “Yeah. Thankfully, she was found, but she was badly hurt. I was deployed, but the Navy got ahold of me and I left as soon as I could. It still took me ten days to get to her. She was asleep when I arrived and I just sat there, looking at her, trying not to blame myself for not being there.”

  “Of course.”

  “I realize how crazy that sounds, but—”

  “But that’s how you’re built.”

  He shrugged.

  “How old was she?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Oh, wow. I remember you playing with her. Taking your horse out into the fields. Remember her? The horse used to blow up her stomach so the saddle would fall off after you cinched it.”

  “Yeah. I was the only one who knew how to saddle her.”

  “What happened to Kelsey?”

  “She went to live with family on her mother’s side. A cousin who lived in Wisconsin, not far from the farm. The hardest thing I ever did was leave her there. It was . . . I felt . . .” He drew in a breath, surprised by the sudden burn in his eyes. “I felt like I was abandoning her.”

  He glanced at Aggie in the rearview mirror, but she was still reading, her ice-cream cone gone.

  Signe had her gaze on him when he looked back at the road. When she looked away, her jaw was tight.

  “Kelsey’s okay now,” he said, trying to figure out what he’d said wrong. “She’s actually the lead singer in a country band called the Yankee Belles. And I think she’s engaged.”

  “So, then, you talk every day.”

  He frowned.

  “You think she’s engaged?”

  “I . . . I walked out of her life about fifteen years ago and we haven’t really stayed in touch. I got an update from a mutual friend a few months ago.”

  “Why haven’t you stayed in touch?”

  They’d gotten behind a slow-moving car. Off the passenger side, the waves were tossing themselves into the rocky shoreline. The sun had passed the apex of the horizon, was falling to the backside of the day, the sky bruising with the hour.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s because you’re ashamed.”

  He frowned. “What?”

  “You hated leaving, and you decided you were a bad person for doing so—even though you had a country to protect—and now you can’t face her.”

  He stared at her. Closed his mouth and looked back at the road. “I was an active-duty SEAL.”

  “Yep.”

  “And I was in the middle of a deployment.”

  “Mmmhmm.”

  “And my team needed me.”

  “This was what—about a year after I left you?”

  He drew in a breath.

  “The team was all you had. But you still think you’re a bad guy for leaving her.”

  “I was all she had.”

  “You never were good at forgiving yourself.”

  He floored the truck and passed the car.

  “You were always nice to your stepmother.”

  “I had no choice. My father married her. And if I—”

  “If you sa
id anything, she beat you. Or locked you in the cellar. Or didn’t feed you—”

  “Okay, that’s enough, Signe.” He settled the car back into cruise. “A lot of people have rough childhoods.”

  “You deserved a better stepmother. And frankly, a better father. He should have stood up for you. But just because they didn’t doesn’t make you a bad person, Ham. You’re one of the most heroic, kind—”

  “Yeah? Then why are you thinking of leaving me?”

  She drew in a breath.

  Aw. See, Lord? He schooled his emotions, tamped them back down to a hard ball.

  “Signe. You deserved a mother who didn’t choose drugs over you. Who made you feel important and worthy of sticking around. But we can’t live wishing for what we don’t have.” He looked at her. “We have to live with what we’ve been given.”

  She met his eyes. “And what’s that?”

  “I think you know,” he said quietly.

  “Hey, are we almost there?” Aggie leaned forward.

  Ham looked back to the road. “Yep. Just a few more miles.”

  Signe looked away. “It’s really pretty up here.”

  And how. Somehow, the moment he entered the picturesque town of Deep Haven, he left behind his problems, the weight of his thoughts, and slipped into another mindset.

  The tiny town wrapped around a small harbor—restaurants, gift shops, pubs, and hotels edging the pebbled beach. Sailboats still waiting for haul-out sat at anchor or were moored at the docks by the fish house, and a trail of gray smoke twined from the smokehouse in town.

  Deep blue water raked the shoreline, and seagulls hunted for snacks among the rocks. A white lighthouse sat at the end of the breakwater, the cold froth of the lake splashing against it. A hill rose behind the town, bejeweled with the golds, reds, and oranges of maple, oak, and poplar intermixed with deep green balsam and fir trees. Overhead, the sky was turning mottled purple, dappled with a deep blush along the far horizon.

  A place time and worries forgot.

  Ham pulled into the gas station, filled up the truck, then went in to pay while Aggie used the restroom. A man stood at the counter, talking to the cashier.

  “Pastor Dan?” Ham held out his hand to the pastor of the Deep Haven Community Church. Brown hair, medium build, the pastor had once served on the volunteer fire-fighting team. In fact, his wife had been the fire chief, if Ham remembered the lore correctly. He’d attended the church a few times during his escape weekends.