Lauren never wanted the feeling to go away. But in that moment, a premonition washed over her. As good as it felt to be reunited with him, the difficulties that had plagued her life since his disappearance hadn’t gone anywhere and wouldn’t. And at some point, her father needed to know.
“I love you, Dad. And I’m sorry for being a bitch to you.”
Alan smiled and squeezed her. “I love you, too. I missed you more than you’ll ever know. Even more than I’ll ever know.” He kissed her head, rubbed her hair with his nose, and inhaled through his nostrils.
Feeling that, Lauren pulled away suddenly and wiped her tears. “Where did that come from?”
“What? What did I do?”
“You said you’ve forgotten a lot of yourself, but do you realize what you just did?”
Alan shook his head, his lower lip protruding. “No. What?”
“You…sniffed me. You smelled my hair.” Lauren grinned. “You used to do it all the time, almost like a reflex. I used to think it was creepy, and even went through a spell when I thought you had some strange obsession with shampoo. But later on, I learned what it really was.”
Alan sent along a look, urging her to explain.
“Affection,” Lauren said. “It’s one of your ways of showing affection for the ones you love. You’re the only person I know who’s ever done it.”
“Me? I’m the only one, huh?” Alan’s expression softened. “Amazing. An hour reunited and you’re already helping me become the old me again.”
Lauren giggled.
Alan exhaled some relief. “Look, I know it’s going to take time to rebuild everything we’ve lost…but I also know it’s not going to happen in one day. I could stand with you, right here, for an eternity. But I’d love just as much to see your mother…and your sister, if they’re around.”
Lauren turned and reached for his hand. “Come on, I’ll take you home.” She motioned to Jade. “Let your friend know she’s welcome to come along.”
Chapter 28
Lauren guided Alan and Jade along Trout Run Road the short distance to the cabin. Upon arrival, the inviting scents of breakfast being prepared and coffee brewing tugged on Alan’s nose.
As Lauren went for the door handle, Alan halted her upon noticing how far Jade was lingering behind. “Whatever’s cooking in there smells incredible,” he said. “I should introduce the two of you before we go any further.” He beckoned Jade to come closer. “I want you to meet my daughter Lauren. Lauren, this is Jade, one of the special someones who’ve been there for me…every step of the way.”
Jade smirked. “Literally,” she said, tendering her hand. “It’s good to meet you, finally.”
“I take it you’ve heard a lot about me,” Lauren said, noticing now the woman’s busted lips and bloodied gums.
“I have.” Jade nodded, concealing her smile. “But not one bit of it did you justice. You’re a…striking young woman.”
The reply came bashfully. “That’s…kind of you to say. Thank you.” She looked to her father. “Ready for this?”
Alan exhaled a stressful breath. “No. But it feels like I’ve been waiting forever for it.”
Lauren pushed the door open and guided Alan and Jade into the cabin, to find Grace and Christian in the kitchen, working to get breakfast going.
When Grace saw her father make his entrance, she expelled a loud “Eeek!” and let loose the stack of plates in her hands. They fell to the floor and shattered calamitously on impact, sending shards and shavings in abstract patterns about her bare feet. Torn now between standing fast and injuring herself to go to him, she reached for Christian with fingers flailing. “Well, shit. Honey! Honeeey! I need help.”
Christian turned on his heels and hove her into his arms, then carried her over the danger zone, crushing pieces of broken dishes under his boots.
The second her toes touched the floor, she sprang to Alan with outstretched arms. “Hey, Daddy-o! Oh my gosh…it’s so exhilarating to see you! I’m glad you’re back!” She jerked away, sniffing, looking him over sideways. “You smell funny. And you’re cold as balls. Brrr! So how was your trip?”
Alan looked upon her strangely, not knowing how to react. “My trip? It was…okay, I suppose.”
“Okay? That’s it? Hmm…noticeably anticlimactic. After all this time away, I was expecting a veritable kiloturd more from you.” Grace put a finger to her chin and studied him. “You look pretty good, all doomsdays considered. And it’s very pleasing to know my future hubster wasn’t being a disingenuous twat when he told us you were here a bit ago.” She grabbed her beau’s right arm and dragged him forward. “Speaking of whom, have you met my Christian yet?”
“Uh, no. I mean, not formally,” Alan said, taking the younger man’s hand. “Alan Russell.”
Christian humbly introduced himself. “It’s a pleasure, sir.”
“Likewise. And you don’t have to call me sir.”
“Oh, yes he does,” Grace countered. “Trust me, Daddy-o, there’s a splendid rationale for the added formality. Though, it appears…no one has informed you, hitherto.” She flicked Christian’s funny bone and cut her eyes at her sister.
“Nuh-uh.” Lauren pointed away. “Direct that hormonal hate of yours elsewhere.”
Christian rubbed his elbow, looking befuddled. “Sorry, Grace. I just assumed you’d rather wait…you know, for the right moment.”
“Right moment?” Grace shot back in misplaced disdain. “Right moment?! What right moment? Just spit it out, one of you, or somebody! Why am I always the one to do it?”
The younger man despairingly tossed his hands in the air. “Grace, come on. Jesus.”
“No! No Jesus! Don’t do that, Christian!” Grace exclaimed. “Don’t you dare demean me! I’ll sign the divorce papers before you propose!”
“Grace…”
“Don’t say another word! You’ll only further embarrass yourself! I swear to—”
“Hey!” Alan balled in a thundering tenor, muzzling the room, its occupants, and the house. “Can all of you please calm down? I just got here!”
Grace lowered her head and bit into her lips. “Sorry, Daddy.”
“I apologize too, sir,” said Christian.
“Apologies accepted, and please stop calling me sir.” Alan scanned the faces in the room. “Okay, seriously. What on earth is so important that I’ve yet to be informed about?”
A few seconds passed in the silence before a forlorn, downhearted voice emitted from the hall. “That you’re going to be a grandfather.” With one hand to her chest and the other pressed to the wall for support, Michelle glided in with short steps. Her skin was blotchy and pale, and her lower eyelids looked ready to burst. “Congratulations.”
Alan’s eyes locked onto her figure and he shuddered. He’d prayed and begged God to get him this far. Despite his uncertainty, he was staring now into the damp, swollen eyes that could only belong to his wife. It was a moment for which he never could have prepared, one he’d known would come had he made it home. Alan didn’t recognize her and he didn’t know her face, but he could feel her presence pulling on him with a force stronger than gravity. Even the sound of her voice felt like it was drawing him in. “I’m…speechless. I don’t know what to say.”
“Neither do I.” Michelle wiped her nose with a tissue as more tears fell. Then she crashed into him, almost knocking him to the ground. “Welcome home.” She held on for dear life and exploded into sobs. “Christian said you were here…I didn’t believe him…I thought it was a cruel joke. I’ve been in bed with my face in a pillow, crying like a baby about it. Until I heard your voice. I thought I was hallucinating. But I’m not, right? This…really is you, isn’t it?”
“It’s me.”
“Well, I don’t believe it.” Michelle backed away a few inches to survey the man appearing to be her husband. “Jesus, Alan. This doesn’t seem real to me. It feels like you and looks like you, but you look like hell.”
“I feel how I
look, then.”
Michelle’s lips quivered. “And you didn’t give up on us.”
“Not for a second.” While struggling to absorb the moment, Alan deliberated all the faces in the room, save Jade’s. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to put a hold on this, but I don’t want to miss anything either.” He paused. “Now, which one of my daughters is pregnant?”
Lauren shook her head feverishly. “Definitely not me.”
Grace proudly raised her hand and pointed to her belly, her mood having achieved an about-face. “This baby bump certifies you a soon-to-be granddaddy-o.”
Alan nodded and grinned proudly. “I…suppose it does,” he said, then faced Christian. “And you’re the father, I imagine?”
The young man nodded avowal. “Yes, sir—I mean, yes. Minus the sir.”
Alan drew back, smiled broadly and took a breath, his hands having never left his wife. “Congratulations to both of you.”
Grace curtsied. “Why, thank you. It was nothing, really.”
The room went quiet after the exchange. All present moved to allow the out-of-touch husband and wife some extra space. Christian carried Grace back into the kitchen and set her down close to the stove, safely away from the shards of peril. He then went to cleaning up the shattered mess of dish remnants at her direction.
Alan rotated and was preparing to introduce Jade, who’d yet to leave the foyer, to the family. But at seeing Lauren’s glare, he decided to postpone.
Lauren then went to her. “Can you and I talk outside for a minute?”
“Of course,” Jade said with a nod, and followed the younger woman outside to the porch.
The women took positions opposite each other, and a breeze fluttered by, tossing Lauren’s hair around. She moved to square off with Jade, doing so in innocuous fashion. “What happened to your face?”
Jade hesitated, looking sheepish. “I…got in a little fight.”
Lauren tilted her head curiously. “A little one?”
“Mm-hmm. I won, though. In case you’re wondering.”
“And your opponent looks worse than you, I take it?”
“Oh, by far,” Jade said, grinning with zeal. “He sort of…lost his head over it.”
The witticism coupled with the look on Jade’s face served to break the ice. Lauren grinned back at her, then said, “My reasoning for pulling you out here wasn’t to prevent you from meeting everyone. You will, soon. But a lot of suppressed emotions are flying around right now, and I didn’t want my mother to see…what I’ve been seeing. Because she would have.”
Jade folded her arms. “Okay…”
“For the record, a large part of me is fighting this. I don’t know you. But evidently you’ve been with my dad the whole time he’s been gone, the whole time I haven’t been. I don’t know if it’s protectiveness or some form of envy on my part, but this whole situation feels wrong to me, and I can’t switch that off just yet.” Lauren exhaled a humid breath that condensed into a fog. “Dad said that you saved his life. Is that true?”
Jade looked away, her grin waning. “That’s not an easy question to answer.”
“From where I’m standing, it is. Either you did or you didn’t. It’s black or white, doesn’t leave a lot of room for gray.”
“I only did what anyone else would have done.”
“Not just anyone,” Lauren corrected. “And if you did, it’s admirable. There’s no reason to play it down.”
“I’m not,” Jade stated. “But I do refuse the full credit. If I explain, you’d understand better. But I’m not about to waste my time if you don’t plan to hear me out.”
“I’m listening.” Lauren bade her continue.
Jade took a deep breath. “I was there when he got hurt, came to his aid not long after it happened. And it wasn’t good; I didn’t think for a second he’d pull through. But he did, he surprised everyone, especially me, and I took care of him throughout his recovery.” A pause. “But I should’ve taken better care of him before. Saving a person’s life can be cut and dry, but it wasn’t in this case. Not for me. If I would’ve been doing a better job that day, your dad would’ve never fallen prey to anything.”
“I don’t understand. What job?”
“Protection. Preventing those under my watch from falling prey to bad shit,” Jade said flatly. “I was a professional; I lived and breathed the life for years, even became top tier, one of the best at it. But, in your dad’s case, when the moment came, I wasn’t there. I failed him.”
“So, in recompense, you felt obligated to care for him after he got hurt?”
“Yes, but there’s a lot more to it than that.”
“I’m sure there is.” Lauren squinted. “What were you? A bodyguard? Someone’s private security?”
“In some respects, but not exactly.”
The direction this chat was heading was making Lauren all the more curious about Jade, but the mystery woman’s story could wait. She needed to know her father’s full backstory. “So what happened to him?”
“Are you sure you want to know?” Jade asked frankly. “The details aren’t pretty.”
“I don’t doubt it. Whatever happened kept him away from us a long time.”
Jade rolled her lips. She spent the next few minutes outlining the details of her relationship with Lauren’s father, beginning with how things had initially gone down on the day of the EMP that had served as reason for their interaction to begin with. Jade told her about Walter and Ken and the foursome’s escape from Washington, to include the dreadful scenes they’d witnessed, as forever etched in her memory. “Fortunately for us, your dad already had a plan plotted out. We used the C&O towpath and walked our way out of there.”
Lauren felt a chill unrelated to the weather, recalling her conversation with Bernie scarcely days before.
“If it hadn’t been for your dad, we wouldn’t have had anywhere to go. And all the same, none of us would have left.” Jade hesitated, casting her stare out and beyond. “We slept in shifts, rotated watch, and spent a week on the trail without incident. Fifty miles in, we got ambushed. There was a firefight. We were…pinned down at first. They were shooting at us from overhead, from positions on a bridge overpass. And that’s a shitty environment to fight a gun battle.
“But we had automatic weapons, training and every advantage you could dream of, minus the high ground.” She regarded Lauren. “Your dad was in a good spot. He chose an old sycamore tree for cover. Its roots were exposed from floodwater erosion, and they hemmed him in. He chose well; from that spot he could shoot all day long and never get hit. But there was a culvert not far behind him that had been fortified with a binary explosive.”
“Like Tannerite,” said Lauren.
“That’s right. The opposition had taken a lot of casualties and we were nearing the deciding point. They were getting desperate; they weren’t even aiming their shots anymore. We assumed they would either give up, run off and hide, or do something stupid, but they didn’t. They pushed their big red last-resort button.” Jade paused. “I won’t bore you with the science on how blended ammonium nitrate and powdered aluminum reacts when struck by a bullet, but I watched your father soar about twenty feet after detonation, and it scared the life out of me.” She paused. “Of our group, he was the only one who’d never been in combat, and he had no place being there. And if I would’ve been doing my job, he wouldn’t have been a casualty.”
Lauren folded her arms and put her weight on a heel, finding herself riveted.
Jade continued. “We finished those fuckers off after that, every goddamn one of them. We chased them down and snuffed them out like cockroaches. Then we hoofed it six klicks, taking turns lugging your dad and his stuff to the nearest resupply waypoint on your dad’s map. His friend Valerie lives there. It was a town once, but they’d locked it down not long after the blackout and converted it into a compound. That’s where we found help for him. A doctor treated him, and Valerie and I took care of him during his coma.”
Jade nodded. “Admittedly, I haven’t left his side. I couldn’t.”
“Not once?”
“Okay, obviously, there were intermissions,” Jade said coyly.
“I’m sure there were.” Lauren stared hard at Jade. She searched her eyes and studied her expression and mannerisms, utilizing levels of inherited scrutiny. “You should know, I can see it, Jade. The way you look at him.”
Jade stammered. Her lips parted, but she didn’t answer.
“There’s no point in denying it,” Lauren said. “All things considered, it’s good my sister was in one of her off-the-wall moods. I don’t think my mom caught on, between her state of shock and the…distractions.”
Jade furrowed her brow and turned away. She dug for and pulled out a partial pack of out-of-date cigarettes and placed one between her lips, remembering then where she’d found them. “Dammit…you wouldn’t happen to have a light, would you?” She fidgeted, searching through every pocket in her clothing for an apparatus capable of igniting a flame. “As if this day couldn’t get any worse.”
“Worse? I didn’t say any of that to call you out.”
“Yet that’s precisely what you did,” Jade snapped. “Look, it’s okay. I’m used to it. I’ll just split. I’ll run along and go back to doing my own thing. It was stupid of me to ever believe any of this.”
Lauren took a few steps closer and held up a mini Bic while Jade looked warily at her.
“I always keep one on me,” Lauren said, flicking it to life. “It was one of the things Dad used to preach, among others.”
Jade leaned in and pulled the flame into the desiccated tobacco, and it crackled to life. “Thanks.”
“Where would you go if you left here?”
“I don’t know,” Jade said, shivering now. “It wasn’t part of the plan, but I’ll figure it out.”
Lauren looked curiously at her. “But staying here was?”
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