by Naomi Niles
An hour later, the sun was setting and fish guts and blood were everywhere. Dylan put the last fish into the bucket and looked up at me. “We’re finally done. Well, I cleaned all the fish.”
“You did,” I agreed.
“I think it’s only fair that you clean me up now,” Dylan said.
“Oh … how do you propose I do that?” I asked.
“We go upstairs to my room and get in the shower,” Dylan said suggestively.
I smiled. “You really need me for that?”
“Of course,” Dylan said seriously. “You’ll need to scrape the blood off of me.”
“Eww,” I said and Dylan laughed.
“It’s a good idea.”
“Maybe,” I nodded. “But I think I have a better one. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
I went off in the direction of the shallow brick steps that led back up to the house. There were plants, shrubs, and flowers on either side of the steps and there was also a tap that was connected to a long, blue hose. I turned the water on, grabbed the hose, and walked back towards Dylan.
His back was to me and he didn’t see me coming. I waited till I was close enough and aimed the water straight at him. He jumped up in shock as the cold water hit his back. “Dear God,” he exclaimed.
“See?” I said. “Isn’t this a much better idea?”
He shook his head at me and then descended into laugher as I kept spraying him. He had to shield his face as I aimed the hose higher and he was forced to stand there and brace himself against the water pressure.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
I smiled innocently. “Only a normal amount.”
He stepped back and removed his shirt so that he was standing there in only his soaked trousers. His stomach was flat and ridged with hard muscles that formed a perfect six-pack. I had to try very hard not to stare. I was so distracted by his chiseled perfection that I barely registered that he was coming straight for me.
“Wait,” I screamed. “No!”
It was too late. He grabbed me and pulled me close to him, drenching me with water while I struggled against him. The water was cold and I shivered against him, staying close to try and steal as much body heat as I possibly could.
“I cannot believe you just did that,” I said.
“You’ve met your match, Miller.”
I laughed surrendering to him and we both stood there under the hoses manufactured shower. I saw lights turn on in the house and I realized how dark it had gotten. The sun was close to setting and it was almost time for dinner.
“I think we should go in and start cooking,” Dylan suggested but he kept one arm wound tightly around me.
“Hmm,” I nodded. “We should probably change out of these wet clothes first. I’ll need to borrow something.”
“Or you could just hang around naked in my room till your clothes dry?” Dylan suggested innocently.
I laughed. “Genius plan,” I said. “But I think I’ll borrow some clothes anyhow.”
Dylan sighed. “If you insist.”
We walked up to the house trying to squeeze as much water from our clothes as possible so that we didn’t track anything into the house. Before we reached the back door, it opened and Mrs. Thomas appeared at the threshold. She was carrying two large, fluffy towels.
“I though you two might need this,” she said as she handed them over.
I took it gratefully. “Thanks, Mrs. Thomas,” I said. “Sorry about this.”
“Don’t be sorry dear,” she said. “I’m sure Dylan was the one who started it.”
Dylan shook his head. “Actually it was Lizzie who started it,” he said promptly.
“Don’t believe him.”
“I won’t,” Mrs. Thomas smiled and Dylan rolled his eyes and groaned. “That’s what happens when you have the face of an angel: no one believes you would start anything.”
I winked at him and followed him upstairs after he had set aside his bucket of cleaned fish. It had been so long since I’d been in his room that I’d expected there to be some difference there. But it was like stepping into a time capsule. There wasn’t much that had changed. His bed was still in the same position, his posters were still fastened to the wall, and his stack of comic books was still shelved to the left of his bed.
“Whoa,” I said as I stepped inside.
“Mom kept it pretty much the same,” Dylan explained. “After I left she said she couldn’t touch anything.”
I smiled. “I would probably be the same if I had kids.”
Dylan passed me a glance and I turned away from him. “So … do you have clothes for me?”
“Umm … sure,” he said as he started rifling through his wardrobe. “I have just the thing for you.” He pulled out a pair of elastic waisted black shorts with a red waistband and an oversized shirt with Bob Marley’s face on the front.
“Oh my God,” I breathed as I came forward and ran my fingers through the shorts and shirt. “You still have these?”
I had worn both things many times before when we had still been together. They were my go to clothes of choice whenever I needed something to change into and I didn’t have a spare set of clothes with me. They looked thin and worn down, but they were soft as cotton and they smelled of my past.
“You never got rid of them?” I asked.
“I couldn’t,” Dylan admitted. “Too many memories.”
I lifted the shirt to my nose and breathed it in. “I’m glad you did,” I said. We changed out of our wet clothes and into dry ones and then we went downstairs to start cooking. Mrs. Thomas had already got a pot of pasta on the boil so I started chopping vegetables and Dylan got to work with a quick marinade for the fish. It was a cozy feeling and I realized how much I had missed it.
We were all seated around the center island in the kitchen, each involved in our own tasks. Even the silence was comforting because there was a homely trust that lay there between us. I noticed that Mrs. Thomas kept shooting glances between Dylan and I.
“How have you been, Mrs. Thomas?” I asked cautiously wondering if I should be asking the question in the first place.
She looked up and her eyes were a little clearer than they had been a few days ago. Still, I could see the sadness in her eyes and I knew that it was probably a permanent change.
“I’m doing better,” she admitted. “But I don’t think I’ll ever be back to normal, as they say.”
“No,” I nodded. “I can’t imagine you would be.”
“It’s strange, you know,” she went on, her voice dimming a little under the weight of her memories. “I’ve been with him for so long that it’s like … it’s like I’m missing a limb. The strange this is … he was away a lot in the first decade of our marriage because of all the deployments. So sometimes I wake up and it feels like he just away and he’ll be back in a few weeks with new stories from all these far off places.”
I could see it in her eyes. She probably hated his deployments, she was probably terrified that he wouldn’t come back from one of them, but she still preferred that alternative to the reality she was living now.
“It can’t have been easy, being married to someone in the Navy,” I said.
I could feel Dylan’s eyes on my face but I didn’t look his way. I kept my eyes focused on his mother, trying to decipher the different layers of sadness in her eyes. For some reason it affected me on a different level. Her sadness felt personal to me, as though I was as touched by it the same way that she was.
“Oh it wasn’t,” Mrs. Thomas sighed. “It was very hard … especially early on in our marriage. We even separated once because of it.”
“What?” Dylan asked looking up at her in surprise.
“It was a long time ago,” she said. “Before either one of you boys were born.”
“Still, you never told me.”
“Because it wasn’t important. We worked through it and I realized that despite everything, I loved your father and he loved me. We
knew we had problems but I think we both decided that it was worth it anyway.” She paused for a moment. “Still, it never stopped being hard. Every time he left on a deployment, I was terrified he wouldn’t come back. And every time he was home, I was terrified he would be called back for another mission.”
I saw it all as though I had lived through it too. I felt her pain. I felt the same worry and fear. She was describing her life but it felt as though she could just as easily have been describing mine.
Chapter Nineteen
Dylan
“You both did well today,” mom said as she nibbled delicately on the fish in her plate. She barely ate anymore. She just picked at her food and moved it around the plate in a show of eating.
“How about another piece, Mrs. Thomas?” Lizzie asked, extending the plate out to her.
“No thank you dear,” she said. “I’m full already.”
It was a lie and we all knew it. She had already lost a lot of weight since dad’s funeral and she threatened to lose more the way she was going. Tyler shot me a worried glance and I returned it with equal fervor. I noticed how closely Lizzie was watching mom tonight and I knew she understood how badly my mother was bogged down in grief. But it was more than that.
I could tell from the way Lizzie was watching my mother that she was considering what her life might have been like if we had stayed together and she had been the wife of a Navy SEAL. I knew I was imagining it but I couldn’t quite find the details of our life together. It was more like a hazy dream where I couldn’t pick out the intricacies.
“Did you boys talk to Jason?” mom asked once we had finished our meal.
“I spoke to him this morning,” Tyler replied. “He’s writing up the final deeds.”
“I hope you boys didn’t bicker over things,” mom said in her soft tone.
“Of course not mom,” Tyler’s voice was gentle and I knew he would never let on about the disagreements we had. It had always been the unspoken agreement between us. We would never upset mom with our constant back and forth fighting.
“Good,” mom replied and she genuinely looked relieved. She turned to Lizzie and smiled. “My boys have been such a comfort to me. I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without them.”
Lizzie smiled. “They need you as much as you need them.”
“It’s nice to think so.”
“No, Lizzie’s right,” I nodded.
Mom smiled again and her eyes fell back on Lizzie. “It’s so nice to have you over again dear; it’s been so long, too long really.”
“It has,” Lizzie nodded but I noticed a cloud of doubt pass over her eyes as though she were unsure if she should be there at all.
I didn’t want her thinking about things too much; I didn’t want her doubting or questioning the time she was spending with me. I rose from the table and excused myself and that signaled to everyone else to do the same.
“You and Lizzie did so much today,” mom said as we moved into the kitchen. “Tyler and I will do the dishes.”
I didn’t protest too hard; all I wanted was to be able to spend some time with Lizzie alone. I moved back and cornered her as she entered the kitchen with the remaining dishes. “Let’s go for a walk,” I suggested.
“Ok,” she nodded easily and we said goodbye to Tyler and mom and made our way out of the house.
It was a lovely night. The stars were visible and the moon was on full display. We moved out of the driveway and down the dusty path that led to the cemetery. I hadn’t made a conscious decision to go there but it felt right to be walking there with Lizzie. I hadn’t been to the cemetery since the funeral and I was glad I had her with her.
Slowly I slipped my hand into hers and she gave me a small, distracted smile. “Can I ask you a kind of personal question?” I asked.
“Sure,” she answered back.
“Did your life turn out the way you imagined it would?”
It was a loaded question and I knew that, but I was contemplating the answer myself and I wanted to know if Lizzie had the same thoughts when she couldn’t sleep at night. More than anything, I wanted to know that I was not alone in thinking about my life that way.
“Not even a little,” Lizzie replied.
I raised my eyebrows. “Not even a little huh?”
Lizzie sighed as we approached the cemetery. It stood on an elevated slope and so that we were faced with a few lonely headstones that were almost at eye level. She stopped outside the little swinging gate to the cemetery and slipped her hand out of mine.
“I had something completely different in mind,” she replied slowly. “Something more than the life I have now.”
She didn’t wait for me to react or respond. She pushed open the little gate and I was forced to follow her through it. We walked down and to the left, right to the back where the larger, shadier trees grew. She went straight for my father’s grave as though she had read my mind. She stopped right in front of the headstone and waited for me to join her.
There was a small wreath of flowers lying lopsided on dad’s grave. There were white flowers with little purple petals weaved through the wreath. I bent down and adjusted it so that it was sitting comfortably against the pale stone. I couldn’t believe that he was gone; sometimes it felt like I would turn the corner and he would be sitting out on the patio reading a newspaper.
“It doesn’t seem real does it?” Lizzie said softly, and again it felt like she was reading my thoughts.
“No it doesn’t,” I agreed. I looked towards Lizzie and took her hand again. “I don’t know if it will ever become real to me.”
“It will,” she said slowly. “Give it some time. At first it will be like you’re searching, as though you’re still looking for the person you’ve lost to walk into a room and smile at you. Sometimes you might even forget, you might see something that would interest them and you make a mental note to tell them, only to remember that it’s too late.
“But as time passes, it starts to sink in and you’ll have to reevaluate then. In a way it’s like losing them a second time because now enough time has passed for you to know that they really aren’t coming back and that hole in your life is always going to be empty.”
I stared at Lizzie while she spoke. Her voice was soft and her eyes were filled with aged sadness. “Sounds like you’ve been through this before,” I pointed out.
“No,” she shook her head. “No one very close to me has ever died … but that doesn’t mean I haven’t lost people.”
I saw the meaning in her eyes and I nodded. “You lost me,” I said.
“Yes,” she nodded. “I lost you, and for a long time it didn’t feel real. I thought you’d go there, stay a couple of weeks, months even until you realized that you made the wrong choice. I was convinced that after you realized you’d made a mistake, you would have come back.”
“When did you realize that I wasn’t coming back?”
“I think it was half way through your training,” Lizzie said. “You called one day and you were thrilled because it was the first time you’d gone through a successful training session. I heard the excitement in your voice and I knew then that you wouldn’t come back. You had gone too far, you had accomplished too much, and above all, you needed to prove to yourself you could do it.”
“You know me too well,” Dylan said softly.
“I used to,” Lizzie nodded.
I led her to one of the trees beside dad’s grave and we sat down together. The moon winked at us from its perch, sending silver rays down on little patches of grass around us.
“Why did you stay in Texas for college?” I asked. “I thought you always wanted to travel.”
“I did,” Lizzie nodded. “I still do. But it just never happened for me.”
“It could have,” I pointed out.
“I know, but that’s not the decision I made,” she answered. “I was really low after graduation; I felt as though the only person I had left was my mother and I wasn’t sure I coul
d leave her alone. So I decided to stay and build a life in Bastrop. But it didn’t turn out the way I had imagined.”
“What had you imagined?”
Lizzie smiled. “I thought by now I’d have been married a couple of years,” she said. “Maybe even have a child or two. That might have been the case, if it hadn’t been for—”
“Paul?” I asked before she could finish.
“I chose wrong,” Lizzie said taking responsibility even where she had none. “I was young and mixed up and lonely and I made the decision to marry for all the wrong reasons.”
“Would you take back that choice if you could?” I asked.
“Of course,” Lizzie nodded. “But there’s no point in living your life in if’s. I did that once and it almost drove me crazy. Sometimes I feel as though it did anyhow.”
“You’re not crazy,” I said immediately. “You’re just … stuck.”
Lizzie looked down at her hands. “I know.”
“You realize that you don’t have to be in a small town to be stuck in life right?” I asked. “I’ve travelled all over the world and I’m as stuck as you are.”
“How did that happen?” Lizzie asked.
I sighed. “War changes you,” I said. “The fight changes you. It puts things into perspective and makes you realize what is really important. But sometimes, by the time you realize it, it’s too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“I made friends with this guy called Daniel Leigh during my training before I was an official SEAL. We went through the whole damn thing together and out of a group of fifty-three, were we two of eight that made it through and took our oaths. He became my best friend but after the things we had been through … he felt more like my brother.
“We ended up in the same unit and our first two deployments were stationed in Afghanistan. He was a couple of years older than me and he was married. His wife’s name was Helen and his daughter’s name was Lori. She was only fourteen months and he hadn’t seen her for eleven of those months. He kept a picture of Helen and Lori in a locket around his neck and he looked at it every night and every morning like a prayer.