by Karina Bliss
Beyond the door came the muted babble and laughter of his relatives.
Connie had invited so many offshoots of the family tree it was like hacking through a jungle of Davises all repeating the same exclamations.
“I wouldn’t have recognized you!”
“Such a pity your father isn’t alive to see this.”
“I can’t imagine what you went through.” The last delivered with speculative compassion.
The expectation that he’d share his experiences had driven Lee in here. That and a growing claustrophobia that frightened him. He should be getting over this, dammit. The woman he loved loved him. He’d reconciled with his buddies....
Tough it out. He dried his hands, straightening his shoulders, and left his tiny refuge, pausing at the entrance to the cavernous hall, echoing with conversation.
He missed his father terribly here amongst whanau—family. He recognized him in the smile of an uncle, a gesture from his nephew or a quaint phrase.
Across the room Jules’s eyes met his and he smiled. She’d dealt with enough of his angst. From here on in, all he cared about was making her happy.
She returned to charming the out-of-town rellies, who’d come up especially to gawk at him. Lee frowned at his pettiness. C’mon, man, these are good people, kind people, people you care about. Not their fault he was overly sensitive to the furtive looks and double takes. Trying not to watch for their reactions, he was unable to stop himself. Two uncles were reacting in surprise right now.
His friends, Jules, even his siblings treated him as normal. He didn’t like the reminder that he still had a ways to go.
“Nephew,” his aunt said imperiously.
“Aunt Philly.” Lee bent to kiss her dry cheek, trying not to inhale her trademark clash of sultry oriental perfume and mothballs from her “company coat.”
Clutching his arm, Aunt Philly said, “I understand you don’t want to talk about it.”
And then she waited.
“You’re looking well,” he replied.
She frowned. “I can see why you don’t want the whole country knowing your business, but you’re among family now.”
“And how are your azaleas?”
“It’s a mistake to hold things in.”
“And your cat?”
“You should be proud you survived. You’re a hero.”
“Not much opportunity for heroism chained to a wall, Auntie. All you have to do is take a breath and then another one.” Because life was that simple. And that complicated. “Hell, we’re both doing it now. In, out, in, out.” He heard how sharp his voice had become and stopped speaking, aghast.
“In, out. In, out.” She smiled. “It gets pretty special when you’re my age.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know—”
“It’s okay.” She patted his arm. “My father was in the war and he had little moments, too.”
“Did he ever get over it?”
Her smile broadened to a grimace. “You take care,” she said, and tottered away.
Guess that was a no. As he stared after her, a boy ran over. “Can I stand on your hand?”
Lee tried to imagine the towheaded kid in front of him two years younger and came up with a name. “You’re too big now, Jack.”
“Aw...” Glancing around, the boy grabbed a tiny girl playing chase through the adults. “Do my sister then. Eliza’s only two.”
The tot he’d captured took one look at Lee and started squirming to escape. Her brother tightened his grip. “You’ll like it,” he cooed.
Eliza started to wail, and gently Lee loosened Jack’s grip on her. “Let her go, mate, she doesn’t know me.” Another chain broken.
“Well, can you do an airplane with me?”
“Next time, when I’ve built up more stamina and can do all the kids.”
“And then you’ll be fun again?”
Lee froze, unable to breathe.
“Jack, stop pestering Lee.” His cousin put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Sorry, mate,” he said when the boy ran off. “It’s all about him, y’know?”
In, out. In, out. “Hey, no problem.” Seeing a question forming, he added quickly, “So how are things with you, Frank?”
“Same old, same old.” Rocking back on his heels, Frank folded his arms and settled in. Lee listened to a litany of woes about his sales job, which included his ass of a boss promoting a new twenty-something over him—after he’d been working for the company for eleven years—and that he was getting carpal tunnel syndrome because who made sales calls in person anymore? It was all texts and emails....
His cousin paused, waiting for a response.
Lee looked at Frank. Words trembled on his tongue. Don’t you realize how ephemeral life is? And you’re wasting it whining about carpal tunnel syndrome? Then make a change! I lived in a room the size of a parking space for months. I didn’t have a choice.
He smiled weakly. “Your kids are terrific.”
“There you are.” Rob materialized in front of them. “Excuse us, Frank, I need to take him away.”
Yeah, Lee thought, take me away. “Congratulations.” Rob shook his hand. “Jules just told me you two have worked things out.”
Lee looked around for her, surprised she’d said anything. “Did she mention we’re keeping it quiet from Connie until after this party?”
Her reaction was anyone’s guess.
“Mum’s the word.”
“What are you two talking about?” With an organizer’s bustle Connie joined them, glass of wine in hand. Her flushed face suggested it wasn’t her first. “Rob looks surreptitious, which suggests it’s interesting.”
“I was telling Lee,” Rob commented, “that I asked Jules once what her secret was with Dad and she said, ‘Ian needs to talk about Lee and I need to hear about him.’”
Connie’s cheeks reddened even more. Lee finally found Jules. She was picking up one of the kids too short to reach the dessert table, and together they checked out the sweets. You, he thought.
“And how very much,” his older brother continued acerbically, “I appreciated Jules making his last months so much better than they would have been without her.”
Lee stole his sister’s wine and gulped a sip.
“It’s time to get over it, Connie,” Rob said gently.
She opened her mouth to reply, but Lee got in first. “Rob, thank you for championing Jules. And I’d love you to keep doing it. But if you keep talking about Dad here—” his voice cracked and he took another swig of Connie’s wine “—I’m going to break down and cry.”
Instantly Connie’s hostility dissipated and she put her arm around him. “I forgot this is your first family get-together without him. How can I make this easier?”
“Don’t expect me to make a speech.” He’d laid down the law earlier but the cake suggested she had other ideas.
Her lips tightened and then she sighed. “Okay, but I’ll say a few words. Some of the family traveled a long way to be here today. In fact, the Hamilton cousins haven’t seen you yet—go mingle.” Plucking her empty wineglass from his hand, she began steering him toward some recent arrivals, pausing to glare over her shoulder at Rob. “I’ll think about it,” she said.
Like everyone else, the Hamiltons greeted him with hugs and handshakes and an expectation that he’d be the life and soul of the party.
He tried. God knows he tried, as the afternoon progressed, to be the old Lee. The joker, the charmer, the teller of
tall tales.
But on face after face, he saw the same progression of emotion: excitement became confusion, compassion and then embarrassment as he struck one wrong note after another. “Before you used the bucket they called the toilet you had to thump it on the ground a couple of times to scare off the cockroaches. Otherwise you’d have them tickling your ass.”
Like a stand-up comedian in trouble, he couldn’t connect with his audience.
In the midst of family he felt more profoundly alone than he’d been as a captive. He felt almost as if he’d disappeared.
“Having a good time?” Jules said in one of their brief interactions.
He looked at the woman he loved, glowing with happiness. “Fantastic,” he lied. “You?”
“It’s fun catching up with everyone but I miss you. Want to sneak out for a snog behind the hall later?”
“Hell, yeah.” He lifted her hand and kissed it to avoid her eyes, afraid of what she might see in his—a hollow man.
By the time the speeches started Lee was anesthetizing himself with more alcohol. Enough to loosen his tongue and give the punters what they wanted...fun reflections on the mother of all homestay vacations.
Except he couldn’t resist correcting their misconceptions. “Most of the Taliban aren’t Afghans, they’re dispossessed young Muslims from neighboring states fighting for a cause greater than themselves.”
“You sound like you’re defending them,” Frank said.
“The man who gave me sanctuary risked not just his life, but the lives of his family and fellow villagers.”
“If he was so great then how did you end up in Taliban hands?”
“That,” Lee said carefully, “is none of your—”
“Mind if I borrow this guy?” Jules tucked her arm in his and steered him away. “I could hear your voice across the other side of the hall. Are you okay?”
“I need to get out of here,” he muttered, incapable of pretending any longer.
“Hang in there for five more minutes, Connie’s just about to—”
Over by the buffet table, his sister clapped her hands. “Can I have your attention, please?”
Lee couldn’t stop himself from groaning, which echoed audibly in the silence Connie’s request had created. Shit.
Connie’s smile grew fixed. “I promised Lee no speeches,” she said. “I just wanted to thank you all for joining us to celebrate his return. It’s been a tough couple of years for the Davis clan and we’re so happy to have you home, Lee.” She paused to compose herself.
“Speech!” someone yelled.
Connie sent him a plaintive look.
Lee stayed where he was but raised his glass. “Thanks for all your support. Great to see you all again.” It was the best he could manage.
“And of course, he and Jules are engaged, so it’s a double celebration,” Connie continued woodenly. She hesitated. “She’s become part of our family over the past year or so and was a great comfort to Dad. And on his behalf, I’d like to say thank you. It’s not forgotten.”
Cheers reverberated through the hall. Jules squeezed his arm and Lee grinned on cue. He felt like a balloon slowly losing air.
Out came the cake, carried by two of his nephews, slightly lopsided on the cake stand. The heat of the kitchen had softened the frosting...the red lettering of Welcome Home bled into the surrounding white.
Connie beckoned them over. “Come cut it, you two.”
“I think you’re getting confused with a wedding, Con,” he managed to say.
Everyone laughed. Finally, he’d nailed a punch line.
But it came too late. Lee could no longer pretend Jules’s love was enough to make him magically A-frickin’-okay. Or make the difficulty he was having connecting with others everybody else’s fault.
The fault was his.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“IT’S ONLY BEEN two weeks, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Jules said as she pulled away from the community hall for the two-hour drive home.
Lee dug deep to call up the detachment he’d relied on to get him through captivity. “You’re right.” One last wave to his siblings, one last fake smile and finally he could lean back against the Pink Lady’s passenger seat and close his eyes.
“The question that guy asked,” she said, “about how you ended up a captive of the Taliban when you’d been given sanctuary. Did the militants scare him into handing you over?”
“No,” he said shortly.
There was a moment’s silence. “Was he killed?” she said in a low voice.
“No.” But he may have been since. “Mind if we don’t talk right now? I’m beat.”
“Of course.”
As soon as they got home Lee changed into workout clothes and started lifting weights. Five minutes later, Jules came to stand in the doorway, apparently unaware that he could see her reflection in the mirror as he ground through some lat pull-downs. She was chewing her lower lip. “I thought you were tired,” she said.
“Mentally. Exercise will sort me out.”
Ten minutes later she returned in a tee and stretchy yoga pants. Climbing onto the rowing machine, she strapped her feet into the angled footrest and grabbed the handle.
Set up for him, it barely moved.
“How do you change this thing?”
“Lever on the magnetic wheel...right-hand side.”
She peered at the control panel. “Now what?”
“You hate gym equipment.”
“Do I?” She punched a few buttons.
“You better not be keeping an eye on me.”
“I’m not.” She started to row, settling into a rhythm.
Lee trained long after Jules had left, trained until he was drenched with sweat, until the pain in his body was all he felt. Then he took a long shower. When he left the bathroom, the smell of spicy chili wafted from the kitchen.
“Dinner’s nearly ready,” Jules called.
He shrugged a light sweater over his T-shirt. “Smells delicious—” that was true, but somehow the smell nauseated him “—but I ate so much at the party, I couldn’t eat another bite. You go ahead. I’m all talked out so I might watch some television.”
Dumping his workout clothes in the washing machine, he went to the living room and switched on the sports channel before settling on the couch.
What was left of his former self? The fearless optimist, the golden boy?
The old Lee had died on the day of the ambush.
For a long time he sat there, his eyes tracking movement and color but not seeing anything. He’d withdrawn to a place of numbness, a place he knew well. Where he didn’t think. Didn’t feel.
A light flicked on and he blinked, abruptly aware that he’d been sitting in the dark. Jules came in, ready for bed in her summer pj’s and a light robe. Two mugs clinked together in her free hand.
“I made you a hot chocolate.”
It was an effort to speak. “Thanks.” He put it on the table.
Jules curled up beside him on the sofa, her knee touching his thigh. “Who’s winning?”
Edging his leg away, Lee tuned into the game—basketball—and checked the score line at the top left of the screen. “Breakers.”
“Okay.” Cupping her mug, Jules sat back, somehow managing to nudge up against him again. He tried to shift away but he was already at the end of the couch. Irritation pierced his Zen-like calm. He quashed it.
Minutes passed. The warm pressu
re of her leg radiated into his, forcing him into a wider awareness of his surroundings—the flicker of the screen, the excitable commentary, the thud and squeak of the basketball shoes on the gym floor, the smell of the hot chocolate and honeysuckle.
Finally he caught her nodding off in his peripheral vision.
“Go to bed,” he rasped. “I’ll be in soon.”
Her head jerked up. “I’m enjoying this.” Another five minutes and her chin dropped again. Slowly she toppled to rest her head on his shoulder.
“Jules, go to bed.” No response. Goddammit.
For the rest of the game he sat with her sleeping body a warm weight against his shoulder. The Breakers won, 105–103. Lee switched off the remote and uncrossed his arms, feeling the blood return to his stiff joints. Strands of her hair tickled his bicep. He brushed them off, one by one, twining the last strand around his thumb. Soft and silky, so delicate against his roughened hands.
“Ow.” Rubbing her scalp, she sat up and glanced sleepily at the dead screen. “Is the game over?”
“Yeah.”
She looked at him and her eyes widened. “Lee,” she said helplessly.
He had no idea what the problem was.
Her fingers touched his cheek. “You’ve been crying.”
“That’s crazy.” Pushing her hand away, he felt his face, and fiercely rubbed it dry. “Guess I was really invested in the Breakers winning.” Humiliated, he pushed to his feet.
She followed, catching him around the waist and pressing her face to his chest. “Tell me how to help you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Fine?” she said. “You’re obsessive about exercise, you treat offers of support from those who love you as attempts to manage you. You exhaust yourself trying to be the same guy you were before deployment then beat yourself up when you can’t sustain it. We’re all on your side and you don’t have to do this alone.”
His anger flared and he couldn’t contain it. “Maybe I want to.”
“You need to talk to someone,” she persisted. “It doesn’t have to be me. An army therapist...the guys. People who can relate to your experience.”