First Come Twins

by Helen Brenna

  “How’d it happen?” she asked quietly, as if she wasn’t sure it was her place. “Losing your foot?”

  In the hospital, Noah had briefly described the explosion to various military personnel in order for them to file their reports, but, since then, he’d tried not to think about it. “It was exactly like you see in the movies. I’d been with the same unit for a couple months. They were acting on a tip about a small cell of insurgents hiding in Mosul.

  “Out of nowhere, a roadside bomb hit our truck. It was probably remotely controlled, and they were waiting for us. I was in the rear with Mick, my military guide. When the bomb hit, I felt a burning sensation on the back of my left leg and was thrown out of the truck. Lost my foot, broke an arm and a few ribs, concussion, shrapnel punctures.” He touched his chest and arms where shrapnel had hit him. “My back felt like it was on fire.”

  “The others?”

  He grew silent, remembering. “Everyone else was killed.”

  The sound of Sophie’s sharp intake of breath hit him hard. “I’m so sorry, Noah.”

  “For me? Losing a foot is nothing.”

  “It changed your life.”

  Curiously, for the first time since the bombing he wanted to talk, but not to just anyone. He wanted to spill his guts to Sophie, tell her everything that had happened over the years, his failures and successes, how his brushes with death and seeing others die had changed him.

  “What about John?” he said, angry, not at Sophie, but at life. “He was a month from heading home after three tours of duty and never got the chance to hold his new baby daughter. Or Lindsey. She’d been in Iraq only two months, wanting to follow in the footsteps of her three brothers who all made it out of there alive. Then there’s Mick, Chris, Leon. What about them?” There was nothing she could say, and he felt bad for lashing out at her. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve seen some terrible things. Things I can only imagine.”

  “I used to keep a journal of all the people I’d known who’d died in all the wars, military actions or peacekeeping operations I’ve been involved in through the years. During Iraq, I gave up.”

  “Too many?”

  “Let’s say I know more than I’d like about putting on field dressings.”

  “Why’d you keep doing it?”

  “I was afraid no one would write about all the things the world needed to know. Half of what I’ve written has never seen the light of day because there isn’t a newspaper or publisher out there who’ll touch it.”

  “Why do you care?”

  He’d never thought about it before. “I suppose I knew early on I could never be a cop, or a soldier.”

  “Too much like your dad.”

  He nodded. “Guess, in my own way, I’m always looking for justice, for the truth.”

  Somehow, someway, the anger that had insulated and protected each of them seemed to have dimmed, and the awkwardness between them reared up again. Suddenly, he was done talking and done walking. “I need to go back,” he said.

  “Get some sleep. I’ll stop by again tomorrow after work.”

  “Don’t, Sophie, please.” He turned and went up the hill alone. She was hell on his nerves. “I’ll get myself off this damned island.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  WITH THE SUN BARELY RISING over the treetops off the east side of the island, Jim Bennett slowly motored his boat into the Mirabelle marina and aimed for his slip. He’d come in and out of this maze of docks so many times in the past forty years he could probably make the trip blindfolded. Good thing, too, as his mind was nowhere near the task at hand.

  He docked his thirty-footer and took the pipe out of his mouth. After tying down the boat, he gutted the whitefish and salmon he’d caught that morning and threw them on ice. Gulls cawed overhead, piercing the quiet morning air in their quest for breakfast. He tossed the fish entrails in the water, letting the noisy buzzards fight over them, and washed his hands.

  “You got in late this morning.”

  Jim barely heard the soft feminine voice over the sound of the gulls squabbling. He glanced up to find Josie standing on the dock holding a take-out container.

  “I brought you some breakfast,” she said.

  He held out his hand, helping her climb onto the boat. “I thought we agreed to meet at the inn in the mornings.”

  “You hungry or not?”

  “All right. All right. I just don’t like people talking.”

  “They’re going to talk, anyway,” Josie said. “No matter what you and I do.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t like stirring the pot.”

  “You know, when we first started seeing each other, I understood your privacy issues. But now…” She hesitated. “I’m not Gloria, Jim.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “Sometimes I wonder.”

  He poured her the last cup of coffee from his thermos. “It should still be hot.” He held it out for her.

  “You go ahead.” She sat across from him. “I’ve had enough already this morning.”

  He opened the container she’d brought to find scrambled eggs and ham along with some hash browns, all still hot. “Caught a couple nice ones this morning, if you can use ’em.” He tapped the cooler with the tip of his tennis shoe. The position of police chief on Mirabelle didn’t pay all that much and left him with more free time than he liked, so he ran a small charter fishing operation and sold fish to the restaurants on the island. “If the inn can’t use ’em, I’ll take ’em to Delores.”

  “Marty asked if we could do an old-fashioned fish fry one night when all his guests are here, so we’ll take them.”

  “How’s the first week of summer season going?”

  “Oh, the usual. Jan set up the wrong room for a buffet the other afternoon, and then changed the time for lunch yesterday and forgot to tell me. Nothing catastrophic.”

  “You ready for Marty’s wedding party?”

  “Not yet, but we’ll get through it.”

  “You always do.” He finished the last of the breakfast, sat back and stuffed tobacco into his pipe.

  “Well, I gotta get back to work.” Josie took the take-out container and gave him a goodbye peck on the cheek.

  Jim glanced around the marina and breathed a sigh of relief that the docks were still deserted. He held out his hand and helped her out of the boat.

  She paused, as if debating something.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Jan was complaining that Sophie’s been spending a lot of time with Noah.”

  The news seemed to cause a tight feeling in his chest. “When? Where were they?”

  “Every day this week. At your mom’s house most of the time. Arlo said they walked by the stables last night.”

  Son of a…

  “Jim, what if you’ve been wrong about them all these years?”

  “You don’t know Noah the way I do.”

  “Well, I know Sophie, and I know she’s a good judge of character.”

  “Humph,” he grunted. “Growing up on this island, she’s too naive for her own good.”

  “You need to tell him—and her—the truth.”

  “I’m not telling anyone anything.” He threw her a questioning glance.

  “Don’t look at me.” She headed down the dock. “Everyone’s chickens have a way of coming home to roost all on their own.”

  ON SUNDAY MORNING, MORE THAN a week after he’d first arrived on Mirabelle, Noah awoke, or rather slid out of bed as there had been very little actual sleep involved, before the sun had risen. Feeling damned near close to human for the first time in a long while, he brewed himself some coffee and toasted a piece of bread and then sat at the table with his laptop in front of him.

  After opening his work-in-process he forced out a couple words. He typed a line and deleted it. Typed another few and deleted those, too. Over and over, he attempted to pick up where he’d left off on his documentary on the Iraqi war and over and over, he hit a dead end. He was
about ready to fling the damned computer across the room when the paragraph he’d written before the explosion caught his eye.

  He backed up and read more. The thoughts and words flowed like the current on a river, smoothly, quickly, and, almost as if the man who’d written those passages was gone, he didn’t recognize a single line as his own. Would that man ever come back? Not with, for all intents and purposes, a gun pointed at his head that was for sure.

  After forcing down the toast, he pushed away from the table and grabbed that full-length mirror his doctors had ordered him to use for therapy against the phantom pains. The first day he’d been here, the delivery boy had set it against the wall by the front door and that’s exactly where it had stood ever since.

  His doctors had told him that phantom pain, while very real in a physical sense, could be the result of mixed messages being sent by the brain to the nerves. The experimental treatment they had him try in the hospital required him to sit with his legs flat in front of him and a full-length mirror, lying horizontally between his legs, standing upright on its long edge with the reflective side facing his good, full leg. While watching the mirror he was to flex and move his leg, supposedly tricking his brain into thinking he had two good legs. Maybe it was time to give it a shot again.

  Noah sat lengthwise on the couch in his grandmother’s living room, his legs, such as they were, stretched in front of him. Then he set the mirror between his legs and rotated his right foot and flexed and released, all the while watching the reflection in the mirror. He repeated the process as many times as he could stand.

  It looked as if he had two good legs, and if he concentrated he could almost—almost—remember what it felt like to run, to walk without discomfort. To be whole. As much as he wanted to, he refused to glance at the other side of the mirror at his stump. It was nothing more than a mass of scar tissue. No, he wasn’t close to whole. Never would be again.

  He moved the mirror, set it against the wall near the box holding his new prosthetic. Maybe Sophie was right. Maybe he was worried about changing the status quo. If he got better, recovered one hundred percent, then he’d have to get back to life. Full swing. Then he’d have no reason for not writing his book. The old leg reminded him he was a cripple, told the world to back off. He was damaged goods. He had an excuse for hiding away. A new leg left him no excuse for being afraid.

  He flipped back the box cover and stared at the high-tech piece of machinery. Made of the most advanced materials available, the leg was at least ten pounds lighter than his temporary one. Carbon fiber with an arched foot, it would no doubt feel unbelievably better at the end of what was left of his leg.

  What are you worried about, Noah?

  That it’ll be time to leave Mirabelle.

  He closed the box. He wasn’t ready.

  In the meantime, he surely could keep busy. He gathered some supplies and headed outside. It was tough. He hadn’t wanted to get moving or leave the safe confines of his grandmother’s house, but he did get immense satisfaction from having trimmed every shrub in the entire one acre lot and scraped and primed all except a small section of the entire back side of the cottage before Sophie showed up late that afternoon.

  “The yard looks good,” he heard her say.

  “Thanks.” He looked down at her from his position near the top of the steel ladder.

  “Marty’s wedding guests have been arriving all day, so I wasn’t going to come up. But then Josie made a big batch of lemonade and I knew you’ve been out here working all day.” She held up a large plastic pitcher. “Would you like to take a break?”

  He glanced down at her. She just wants you off her island. That’s all. He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “Give me a few more minutes and I’ll be finished painting the back.” And very likely finished for the day as this was the first time he’d done any kind of manual labor since losing his foot.

  “I’ll be right out.” She disappeared through the back door of the house.

  When she came outside a little while later holding two glasses filled with ice and lemonade, he was washing his hands with the hose. After he’d finished, she held out a glass.

  “Thank you.” He took a sip. It tasted so refreshing that he downed the glass and poured himself another. Then he sat on the back stoop in the cooler shade.

  “Did you sleep last night?”

  “You mean that thing people are supposed to do at night?” He chuckled. “No.”

  “Have you eaten anything today?”

  “Sure.”

  “Noah—”

  “Mom!” Kurt’s shout came through the front-door screen and out the back.

  “I told you, she’s not in there,” Lauren said.

  “I’m in back,” Sophie yelled.

  Only seconds later, the twins came running around the corner of the house.

  “What are you two doing?” Sophie asked.

  “Jan told us to come and get you,” Kurt said.

  “Smart woman that Jan,” Noah whispered.

  “And,” Lauren said, holding out a container, “Josie made Noah some dinner.”

  “Well, wasn’t that nice.” Noah accepted the container.

  “Will you be able to eat it?”

  “Actually,” he said, holding Sophie’s gaze. “I’m starving.”

  “Roasted chicken, mixed vegetables and mashed potatoes and gravy,” Lauren said. “I cut you a piece of the mixed berry pie I made myself.”

  “You did?”

  “Mmm-hmm.” She nodded.

  “Making pies by yourself.” He studied her. “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen,” she said. “But everyone says we’re mature for our age.”

  Kids. Always in such a hurry to grow up. “Well, thank you, Lauren,” Noah said. “Is this what you had for dinner?”

  Lauren nodded.

  “I rarely cook,” Sophie said. “That’s one benefit to having a trained gourmet in the kitchen.”

  “I’m surprised you’ve stayed so trim.”

  Kurt frowned at him as if he sensed there was something between Noah and his mother and didn’t like it one bit. The feeling was mutual.

  “Let’s go.” Kurt tugged on Sophie’s hand. “Marty said he wants you to come back down for the fire.”

  “Are you coming to the bonfire, Noah?” Lauren asked.

  “I’m not so sure—”

  “Please come,” Lauren urged. “You’re family, remember?” She looked to her mom for support.

  “Marty would love to visit with you,” Sophie said, standing next to Kurt.

  “We’ll see.”

  Kurt walked away and down the hill. “Come on!”

  “Chill!” Lauren said, following him.

  Noah followed the three of them around the side of the house and watched their downhill progress. Sophie. A mom. With kids and a business, she was obviously entrenched on this island. And him? He’d be leaving as soon as he could sleep through the night and hold down three square meals.

  Nothing had changed.

  BY SUNDAY NIGHT, MOST of the wedding guests, including Marty and Sophie’s two sisters and their families, had arrived. True to their word, Jan, Sarah and Josie were taking care of everything. They’d prepped rooms, registered guests, set up buffets in the main dining hall for every meal, and distributed room keys and maps of the island as well as the week’s calendar of events.

  Sophie continued to check in with them from time to time, but for the most part, she was free to do as she pleased. Even Lauren and Kurt needed barely any supervision once their cousins had arrived. This island was their personal playground, and they loved showing their cousins around. It was the only time Lauren, in particular, appreciated living on Mirabelle.

  At dusk, while Brittany set up extra chairs, Sophie built a fire in the large, stone-encircled pit and the kids chased fireflies around the inn’s expansive back lawn. Once she’d gotten the campfire going, she sat in a folding camp chair and looked into the sky.

  “H
ey, kids,” Brittany yelled. “Go find some marshmallow roasting sticks. Get one for me, too, while you’re at it.”

  They dashed off and returned only minutes later, huddling in a circle. The campfire blazed, its flames leaping into the midnight-blue sky and casting flickering yellow-orange light onto the faces of Lauren, Kurt and Brittany, as well as several other nieces and nephews of Sophie’s. Groups of guests and relatives milled about, some by the shoreline, some near the fire, and others near the picnic table Jan had set up with the makings for s’mores.

  Sophie leaned back in her chair and zipped her jacket. Though the temperature was mild for this early in summer, an occasional chilly breeze blew in off the lake, making the heat emanating from the fire all the more comforting.

  “This is going to be a perfect marshmallow roasting stick,” Kurt said, continuing to strip the bark off a green branch with his pocketknife. “Want me to do yours?” he asked Lauren.

  “Sure.” Absently, Lauren handed Kurt the branch and went back to poking the red-hot coals at the center of the fire with a stick.

  Sophie studied her son’s profile. Tonight more than usual, she could see Noah in his features. The Bennett brothers had looked alike in some ways, but had been so different in personality.

  Both brothers had been determined and achievement-oriented, but Isaac had been duty bound and methodical in his approach toward life. He’d been cautious and rarely failed at anything he set out to accomplish. In fact, Isaac had always been so meticulous Sophie had never imagined he’d be killed in the line of duty. Guess there was no accounting for stray bullets.

  Noah, on the other hand, had never been frightened of failure. He’d enjoyed the rush that came from taking chances. Always, he’d pushed his boundaries. She supposed that’s what drew her to him when they’d been younger. He’d never been afraid to do anything, to go anywhere. So much like Lauren and Kurt. Or was she imagining that connection?

  She shook her head, clearing her thoughts. “I wonder what’s keeping Marty,” she said.

  “It looks like he’s visiting with someone,” Brittany said, more subdued than normal as she lost herself in the fire. “He’ll be back in a minute.” The flames seemed to mesmerize her. “Marty said he wants to have a fire every night, even in the winter, after we move—” She stopped, tucking her chin into the neck of her jacket.