“It’s not so bad if you back out.” Despite his brief conversation with the others, Dane’s voice still sounded rusty. “Keep your attention on your hands and feet, and don’t forget to breathe.”
“Easy for you to say.” Her own voice sounded reedy, unsteady. “You used to jump out of airplanes for a living.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not the jumping that’s hard. It’s the landing that can get you in a world of trouble.”
On hands and knees, she flashed him a smile as she scooted in reverse until there was nothing but air beneath her feet. Ready to lunge back inside any instant, she felt for the ledge with her toes and found it, solid and wide and really not very different from a sidewalk, if she discounted the fact that it was eighty feet above the ground. “You never did say where you’re stationed,” she commented.
“Fort Murphy. It’s a couple hours away—”
“At Tallgrass.” Her smile broadened. “That’s where we’re all from. Maybe we’ll see you around.” She eased away from the entrance, silently chanting to keep her gaze from straying. Hands, feet, breathe. Hands, feet, breathe.
* * *
Dane Clark stiffly moved to the front of the cave. A nicer guy would’ve offered to make the descent with Carly, but these days he found that being civil was sometimes the best he could offer. Besides, he wasn’t always steady on his feet himself. If she’d slipped and he’d tried to catch her, she likely would have had to catch him instead. Not an experience his ego wanted.
His therapists wouldn’t like it if they knew he was sitting in this cave. He’d been in Tallgrass only a few days. The first day, he’d bought a truck. The second, he’d come here. The drive had been too long, the climb too much. But he’d wanted this to be the first thing he’d done here because it was the last thing he’d done with his dad before he died. It was a tribute to him.
The women’s voices were still audible, though all he could really make out was laughter. What were the odds he would drive two hours for a little privacy and wind up sharing the cave with six women—seven if he counted the pregnant one, now handing out jackets—from the town where he was stationed?
It really was a small world. He’d traveled a hell of a lot of it. He should know.
Sliding forward a few inches, he let his feet dangle over the edge. God, how many times had doctors and nurses and therapists told him to do that? Too many to think about, so instead he watched Carly’s progress, her orange shirt easy to pick out against the drab shades of rock and dirt. Why had she volunteered to lead the climb if she was afraid of heights? To prove she could?
Finally, she jumped the last few feet to the ground and spun in a little circle that he doubted any of her friends noticed. She joined them, and what appeared to be a spontaneous group hug broke out, congratulating each other on their success.
He’d had buddies like that—well, maybe not so touchy-feely. Still did, even if they were scattered all over the world. But after years filled with one tour after another in Iraq or Afghanistan, a lot of them were gone. Sometimes he thought he couldn’t possibly remember all their faces and names. Other times, he knew he would never forget.
After posing for more pictures, the women headed away from the falls. With the trail empty as far as he could see, he stood up, both hands touching the rock just in case. Time to see if his right leg and the miracle of modern medicine that served as his left could get him to the bottom without falling on his ass.
He succeeded. Uneven ground made for uncomfortable walking, the prosthetic rubbing the stump of his leg despite its protective sleeve. It was odd, standing, moving, climbing, without more than half of his leg. He could feel it, and yet he couldn’t, sensed it was there but knew it wasn’t. It was the damnedest thing—sometimes the hardest of all to accept.
He stood for a moment watching the water churn where the falls hit, giving the ache in his leg a chance to subside. Another month or two, and the pool would be filled with swimmers on weekends. He’d always liked to swim, and his various medical people had insisted he would again. He wasn’t so sure about that. He’d never considered himself vain, but putting on trunks and removing his prosthesis in public…He wasn’t ready for that. He was beginning to think he never would be.
Determinedly he turned away from the water and started for the parking lot. It wasn’t far, maybe a quarter mile, sidewalk all the way, but by the time he reached his pickup, his leg and hip were throbbing, and the pain was spreading to his lower back. The two-hour drive home, plus a stop for lunch, would leave him in need of both a hot bath and a pain pill, but he didn’t regret the trip.
Dane drove slowly through the park and onto the highway. Once he reached the interstate, he turned north, then took the first exit into Davis. A quick pass through town showed the fast-food options, and he settled on a burger and fries from Sonic. He was headed back to the interstate when traffic stopped him in front of a Mexican restaurant. Inside were the seven women from the cave, toasting each other, margarita glasses held high.
He’d noticed without realizing that most of them wore wedding rings. Were they just friends from Tallgrass, Army wives whose husbands were stationed there or maybe soldiers themselves? Carly, at least, had some military experience, with the way she’d pulled the name of his old unit out of thin air. And neither she nor Jessy nor any of the others had sounded as if they were native to Oklahoma, though he knew how easily accents could be picked up and lost. Best bet, they’d been brought to Tallgrass by the Army, and when their husbands deployed, so did they.
But he knew from firsthand experience there were worse ways for a wife to entertain herself when her husband was gone than hiking with her girlfriends.
He reached Fort Murphy in good time, turning at the end of Main Street into the post’s main entrance. A sandstone arch on either side of the four-lane held engraved concrete: WELCOME TO FORT MURPHY on the left, a list of the tenant commands on the right, including the Warrior Transition Unit. That was the unit that currently laid claim to him. In the future…
Once he’d had his life all laid out: Twenty years or more in the Army, retirement, a family, a second career that left him time to travel. He’d thought he might teach history and coach, open a dive shop, or get into some type of wilderness-adventure trek business. Now he didn’t have the vaguest idea what the future held. For a man who’d always known where he was going, it was kind of scary, not knowing where he was going or how—or even if—he could get there.
After clearing the guard shack, he drove onto the post, past a bronze statue of the base’s namesake—cowboy, actor, and war hero Audie Murphy. The four-lane passed a manicured golf course, a community center with an Olympic-size pool, and the first of many housing areas before he turned onto a secondary street. His quarters were in a barracks, opened only months ago, small apartments to help their occupants adjust to life outside the hospitals where most of them had spent too many months. Dane’s own stay had lasted eleven months. Long enough to bring a new life into the world. Not long enough to adjust to a totally new life.
He was limping painfully by the time he let himself into his apartment. Tossing the keys on a table near the door, he grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and washed down a couple pills, fumbled his way out of his jeans, then dropped onto the couch before removing the prosthesis. He had two—one that looked pretty real from a distance and this one, which seemed more of a superhero bionic thing. He was grateful to have them—he’d seen nonmilitary people forced by the cost to get by on much less efficient models—but neither was close to the real thing.
Absently rubbing his leg, he used the remote to turn on the television, then surfed the channels. There were lots of sports on today that he didn’t want to watch. They reminded him too much of his own years playing football and baseball and running for the pure pleasure of it. No chick flicks, no talking animals, no gung-ho kick-ass action movies. He settled on a documentary on narrow-gauge railroads, a show that let his mind wander.
How had he
filled his Saturday afternoons before the amputation? Running for his life sometimes. Taking other people’s lives sometimes. Jumping out of helicopters, patrolling barren desert, interfacing with locals. Before Iraq and Afghanistan, it had been riding his motorcycle through the Italian Alps, taking the train to Venice with his buddies, sightseeing and drinking too much. Hanging out, using too many women badly trying to get over his failed marriage.
He replayed weekends all the way back to his teens. Chores, running errands, homework, extra practices if the coach deemed them necessary, dates on Saturday night with Sheryl. Before she’d married him. Before she’d fallen out of love with him. Before she’d run around on him—adding insult to injury, with guys from his own unit.
He was over her. By the time she’d actually filed for divorce, he’d been so disillusioned by her affairs that he hadn’t cared. But there was still this knot of resentment. They’d been together since they were fourteen, for God’s sake, and she hadn’t even had the grace to say, “It’s over.” She’d lied to him. Betrayed him. She’d let him down, then blamed him for it.
And her life was great. She’d gone back home to Texas, married a rich guy who only got richer, and lived in a beautiful mansion with three beautiful kids.
Dane’s mother gave him regular updates, despite the fact that he’d never once asked. “You let her get away,” Anna Mae always ended with a regretful sigh.
Yeah, sure. He’d screwed up. It was all his fault. To Sheryl and Anna Mae, everything that had gone wrong was his fault, even the IED that had cost him his leg. If you’d listened to Sheryl and me and gotten out of the Army…
A dim image of the women he’d met that day—Carly, Jessy, and the others—formed in his mind. Did they lie to their husbands, betray them, let them down? It would be easy to think yes. The unfaithful-always-ready-to-party military wife was a stereotype, but stereotypes became that for a reason.
But today, after driving to the park, hiking to the falls, and climbing up to the cave, he’d rather give them the benefit of the doubt. That was something normal people did, and today, he was feeling pretty normal.
* * *
“Do you ever feel guilty for looking at a guy and thinking, ‘Wow, he’s hot; I’d like to get to know him’?”
The quiet question came from Therese, sitting on the far side of the third-row seat of Marti’s Suburban. Carly looked at her over Jessy’s head, slumped on her shoulder. The redhead’s snores were soft, barely noticeable, and due more to the third margarita she’d had with lunch than anything else, Carly suspected. Jessy was full of life until she got a few drinks in her, then she crashed hard.
“You mean, do I feel like I’m being unfaithful to Jeff, his memory, our marriage, his family, myself? Yeah. We had such plans.” Regret robbed her voice of its strength. “Life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.”
“But are we meant to spend the rest of our lives honoring our husbands’ memories and…alone?”
Alone. That was a scary word even for women as independent as the Army had forced them to become. Even before their husbands had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, they’d been gone a lot, training at various bases around the country. They’d worked long hours to get themselves and their troops combat-ready, and most home-life responsibilities had fallen on their wives.
But then, alone had been okay. There had been an end to every training mission, to every deployment. The men had come home, and they’d made up for all the time missed.
For the seven of them, though, and the rest of the margarita club, the last return home had been final. There would be no more kisses, no more hugs, no more great sex, no more making up for missed time. There were only flags, medals, grave sites, and memories.
Yes, and some guilt.
“Paul wouldn’t want you to spend the rest of your life alone.”
The words sounded lame even to Carly. Lord knows, she’d heard them often enough—from friends, from her in-laws, from therapists. The first time, from a grief counselor, she’d wanted to shriek, How could you possibly know that? You never met him!
But it was true. Jeff had loved her. He’d always encouraged her to live life. He would be appalled if she grieved it away over him instead. Her head knew that.
Her heart was just having trouble with it.
Therese’s laugh broke halfway. “I don’t know. Paul was the jealous type. He didn’t want me even looking at another guy.”
“But that was because he was there. Now…” It took a little extra breath to finish the sentence. “He’s not.”
A few miles passed in silence before Therese spoke again. “What about you guys? What if one of us…”
After her voice trailed off, Fia finished the question from her middle-row seat. “Falls in love and gets another chance at happily ever after?”
Therese swallowed, then nodded. “Would it affect us? We became friends because we’d all lost our husbands. Would a new man in one of our lives change that? Would we want to share you with him?”
“Would he want to share you with us?” Ilena asked. “What guy would want his new girlfriend spending time with a group that’s tied at its very heart to her husband’s death?”
Shifting uncomfortably, Carly stared out the window. She had other friends—a few from college, teachers she worked with, a neighbor or two—but the margarita club, especially these six, were her best friends.
She wanted to say a relationship could never negatively affect their friendship, but truth was, she wasn’t sure. She’d had other best friends before Jeff died—they all had—other Army wives, and they’d grown apart after. They’d shown her love and sorrow and sympathy, but they’d also felt a tiny bit of relief that it was her door the dress-uniformed officers had knocked at to make the casualty notification, that it was her husband who’d died and not theirs. And they’d felt guilty for feeling relieved.
She knew, because she’d been through it herself.
She forced a smile as her gaze slid from woman to woman. “I’ll love you guys no matter what. If one of you falls in love, gets married, and lives the perfect life with Prince Charming, I’ll envy you. I’ll probably hate you at least once a week. But I’ll always be there for you.”
The others smiled, too, sadly, then silence fell again. The conversation hadn’t really answered any questions. It was easy to say it was okay to fall in love, even easier to promise their friendship would never end. But ultimately, it was actions that counted.
The closer they got to Tallgrass, the more regret built in Carly. Though their times together were frequent—dinner every Tuesday, excursions every couple months, impromptu gatherings for shopping or a movie or no reason at all—she couldn’t ignore the fact that she was going home to an empty house. All of them were except Therese, who would pick up her resentful stepchildren from the neighbor who was watching them. They would eat their dinners alone, watch TV or read or clean house alone, and they would go to bed alone.
Were they meant to spend the rest of their lives that way? Dear God, she hoped not.
By the time the Suburban pulled into her driveway, Carly was pretty much in a funk. She squeezed out from the third seat, exchanged good-byes with the others, promising to share any good pictures she’d gotten, and headed toward the house as if she didn’t dread going inside.
It was a great starter house, the real estate agent had told them when they’d come to Tallgrass. “That means ‘fixer-upper,’” Carly had whispered to Jeff, and he’d grinned. “You know me. I love my tools.”
“But you never actually use them.”
But the house was close to the fort, and the mortgage payments allowed plenty of money left over for all those repairs. Jeff had actually done some of them himself. Not many, but enough to crow over.
She climbed the steps he’d leveled and inserted the key in the dead bolt he’d installed. A lamp burned in the living room, a habit she’d gained their first night apart, shining on comfortable furniture, good tables, a collection of so
uvenirs and knickknacks, and of course, photographs. The outrageously sized television had been his choice, to balance the burnished wicker chair she’d chosen for her reading corner. Likewise, he’d picked the leather recliner to hide at least part of the froufrou rug she’d put down.
Their life had been full of little trade-offs like that. He would load the dishwasher if she would unload it. He would take his uniforms to the dry cleaner for knife-sharp creases, and she wouldn’t complain if he wore sweats at home. She mowed the lawn, and he cleaned the gutters.
She’d stayed home, and he’d gone to war and died.
And she missed him, God, more than she’d thought possible.
To stave off the melancholy, she went to the kitchen for a bottle of water and a hundred-calorie pack of cookies. Before she reached the living room again, her cell phone rang.
It was Lucy. “I sent you some pictures. Check ’em out.” She sounded way too cheerful before her voice cracked. “Norton, don’t you dare! Aw, man! I swear to you, that mutt holds his pee all day just so he can see my face when he soaks the kitchen floor. Gotta go.”
“Hello and good-bye to you, too.” Carly slid the phone back into her pocket and made a turn into the dining room, where her computer occupied a very messy table. She opened her e-mail, and pictures began popping onto the screen—group shots, individuals, posed, candid, all of them happy and smiling.
No, not all. She hovered the cursor over one photo, clicking to enlarge it. Their cave-mate Dane. He was looking directly at the camera, a hint of surprise in his eyes as he realized he was being photographed, as if he wanted to jerk his gaze or his head away and didn’t quite manage.
It was a stark photo of a good face: not overly handsome, with a strong jaw and straight nose, intense eyes, and a mouth that was almost too sensitive for the rest of his features. He looked capable, a command-and-control kind of guy, except for his eyes. They were tough to read, even when she magnified the photo until the upper half of his face filled the screen, but there was definitely something haunted—or haunting?—about them.
A Love to Call Her Own Page 31