“How do you feel about a fast-food breakfast where we can eat in the car?” Ben asked, coming to stand beside her. “That way Sadie can go, too.”
She slid her arm around his waist and hugged him tight. “See? You’re going to be a good dog daddy.” But what she was really thinking was See why I love you?
When Sadie was ready, they loaded up in the Mustang—Sadie didn’t mind either the doggy seat belt Avi had picked up yesterday with the rest of the dog supplies or being in the backseat—and, with Ben behind the wheel, they headed out. After breakfast at Sonic, they went for a walk along the pedestrian bridge across the Arkansas River, an old railroad bridge that connected to running trails on both sides. They drove to Whiteside Park, the neighborhood where Ben had grown up. Another drive to the Pearl District, not far from his office, and she showed him the house she’d grown up in. Then they headed west past Sand Springs before turning north toward Prue and to the small country cemetery where his father was buried, and they talked about nothing important.
It was the best day of Avi’s life. Part of her wished for pictures to commemorate every moment. The larger part of her knew she would never forget.
As they walked across the cemetery, Ben pointed out various graves: his grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, important tribal members, and old family friends. They reached his father’s grave, three rows from the back, a simple marker like all the others, the stone engraved with the usual information.
“What language is this?” she asked, gesturing to his father’s headstone. Most of the words were in English, but others were unfamiliar.
“Osage.”
“Do you speak it?”
“No. Dad knew some, and he wanted us to learn at least the basics, but…” He shrugged as he laid his hand gently on the stone. “It didn’t seem very important when we were kids. We—I wasn’t concerned with little things like culture and heritage.”
His tone was apologetic, but she understood too well how it had been. Life seemed so very long and so very full of chances to a teenager. In a large, global sense, of course she’d understood that kids could die, but in the sense that mattered—her own intimate world—it had never happened. She couldn’t die. Her friends couldn’t. It had been a worst-case scenario sort of thing. She was young, and life went on forever.
And then she’d found herself living the worst-case scenario, up close and damned personal.
“It’s not too late,” she said. “To learn the culture and heritage and language. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late.”
Ben’s smile was wistful. “You sure about that?”
“Scout’s honor,” she replied, holding three fingers in the air.
“Aw, you were never a scout, were you?”
“Okay, soldier’s honor.” Lowering her hand, she looked around. The cemetery was at the end of a bumpy red-dirt road, set among oaks and red cedars, surrounded by a wire fence that sagged in places. There wasn’t a sign to identify it. The people with loved ones buried there were probably the only ones who remembered its existence. Shade from the trees kept the grass and weeds to a minimum, and birds in the branches provided music, the only sound to break the stillness besides the occasional rustle of the wind and a bark or two from Sadie, waiting beside the car.
“It’s a lovely place,” she said softly.
“It was one of my dad’s favorites.” After a moment, he asked, “Is that weird?”
“I don’t think so. It’s beautiful, quiet, peaceful. But then, I like cemeteries.” She thought of the national cemeteries, which provided the final resting places for far too many of her friends, and rephrased, “Some of them.” She had one more to visit before she left: the colonel’s gravesite at Fort Murphy National Cemetery. Every few days she’d thought about it, and every few days she decided there was still time. No longer true.
The mood changed by the time they walked out of that small square plot of land, both his and hers. Life was such a wonderful thing to consider. Death, not so much. And sadness…Seeing his father’s grave, knowing how the last of his years had gone, must have been hard on Ben. Thinking of George, whose life had become happiest when Rick Noble’s had fallen apart, made Avi blue.
She wondered if he was thinking about his father, buried there alone, without his precious Patricia there to mourn. Was he imagining his own burial, years from now, possibly alone like his father?
That wasn’t going to happen. He would fall in love and get married. It was as natural as the sun rising in the east. She would be happy for him when it happened. Really. She would smile through her tears.
He took her hand, holding it tightly on the way back to the car. After helping Sadie into her backseat harness, he waited while Avi settled, closed the door, and leaned forward, forearms resting on the window. “You ever been to Mexico?”
“No.”
“You want to go now? With me? Forty-eight hours from now we could be on a beach and you could be wearing the ittiest, bittiest bikini ever made.”
She laughed.
Ben didn’t. “Margaritas under the tropical sun with me at your side don’t tempt you?”
“Sweetie, in a little more than forty-eight hours, I’ll be in my new home. If you want to run away, run to Georgia with me.”
A frown flitted through his eyes. “I’m talking real world.”
“Georgia’s not real?”
“Not for me. It’s just a fantasy.” With a tight smile, he circled the car and got in.
He didn’t say the words, but he might as well have, because they hung in the air between them, as heavy the red dust that trailed them back to the paved road. Fantasies don’t come true.
* * *
It was a tough couple of days. By the time Ben reached Patricia’s house late Friday afternoon, he was exhausted. Thank God, his personal life didn’t interfere with work, or he would have had to cancel his surgeries for yesterday and his appointments today. Luckily, he could turn off everything when he walked into the OR or an exam room. But there was no turning it off now. Avi’s going-away dinner was tonight—a farewell, Patricia called it—and tomorrow morning she and Sadie would drive off.
He wasn’t sure he could stand it.
The dinner was being held at the Grant house and would be just her family, Ben, and his mother. Ben would have preferred a crowd: his sisters and family, the margarita sisters and their families, Cadore’s football team, all the neighbors, and every soul who had ever bought even a single flower from the nursery. A ton of people wouldn’t make it any easier for him, but it would have been easier to hide.
Patricia had sent him out to the patio while she finished up in the kitchen. She was making snacks for Avi’s trip—three different kinds of cookies, caramel corn, and apple tartlets—to go with the pumpkin sourdough dog cookies Lucy had baked for Sadie. Now she joined him with two glasses of wine. When he shook his head, she insisted.
“I know you’re the best orthopedic surgeon in Tulsa, Ben, but if someone needs you tonight, they’ll just have to settle for the second best. Drink the wine. You look like you need it.”
As she sat beside him, he took a drink, then another. It was sweet, acidic, tart, and warmed him a little from the inside out.
“You’ve been dreading this weekend practically since Avi came home,” she remarked.
“Haven’t you?”
She raised her free hand and waggled it. “In the beginning, when George had to go away, I started missing him as soon as I found out he was leaving. It didn’t matter whether it was six days or six months, it was awful. Finally, I learned that it was better to appreciate him while he was there and make the most of it, then deal with his leaving after he was gone. I got good at it, too. I will miss Avi, but at least I know she’s out of the war zone. She’s back in the States; she’ll be teaching instead of getting shot at. I can go visit her, and she can come visit here.” She paused, then asked, “Are you going to go visit her?”
He shoo
k his head.
She opened her mouth, closed it, then thought better of it. “Have you really considered what you’re giving up, Ben?”
This sip of wine was really more of a gulp. She was right. He did need it. Especially if they were going to have a mother–son talk about losing Avi. “We’ve discussed it. She doesn’t want to get out of the Army, and I don’t want to give up everything and move. I don’t want to be an Army spouse.”
“I didn’t, either,” Patricia declared, surprising him. Her sly look showed that she was well aware of it. “But I wanted to be George’s spouse. I would have followed him anywhere, Ben. I gave up my home and my kids and everything I knew to be with him. That’s how much I loved him.”
He shook his head again, stubbornly. “I’m not you. Giving up everything isn’t an option.”
“It’s the only option right now. Sweetie—” She paused, her gaze going distant for a moment. Thinking that this was the first time she’d called him by anything but his name in twenty years? Remembering that she’d called him and the girls that all the time when they were little? Was that why he’d used it with his patients from the beginning—because it reminded him of a time when life was good and he’d felt reassured and secure?
“Sweetie,” she began again. “Your career is just a job. Your home is just a building. Your sisters…well, they’ll always be your sisters whether you’re living here or in Timbuktu—which, by the way, George and I visited and thought was quite remarkable. They’ll love you, call you, and visit you so much, you’ll wish you were back here so they’d leave you alone.” She raised one hand to ward off protests. “Just kidding. But Sara’s kids already know how to Skype. They call me at least once a week.”
The idea of his mother Skyping with her grandkids made him smile faintly. When he’d gotten his first computer all his own for his last birthday before she’d left, she’d declared, I’m a dinosaur. Technology has left me behind, and I like it that way. He stayed informed on technological advances in the surgical field, especially in the joint replacement surgeries he did, but personally he was as much a dinosaur as she’d claimed to be then.
“It’s not the same,” he said, and hated the way he sounded like a cranky child.
“No, it’s not. All the video chats in the world can’t compete with a single hug or a kiss. But when George was in Afghanistan, I got to sit right here on my patio and see him, hear his voice, and watch him laugh. With the kids, I can get comfy in bed in my pajamas and read them stories at bedtime. I get to see and hear them say ‘Sweet dreams, Grandma. I love you.’” Her eyes had watered at the mention of George and stayed damp through the rest of her words. She wiped at them without embarrassment.
“You know what else isn’t going to be the same, Ben? Sleeping in that big bed of yours without Avi. You’ll always have the memories, and if that’s all you get to have, like me, like Lucy and all the others, fine. Great. Memories are precious. But if that’s all you settle for because you’re too afraid or stubborn to have more, they’re going to be precious little comfort.”
Fingers clenching around the stem of the wineglass, he scowled at her. “Exactly when did I say ‘Give me advice on how to live the rest of my life’?”
She laughed, not the least bit impressed by the scowl, and squeezed his hand. “It was part of the deal, sweetie. I birthed you, and that entitles me to interfering in your life.”
He would have appreciated more interference when he was sixteen, eighteen, and twenty. Maybe that was why he really didn’t mind now. She was saying mostly things he’d thought, things he already knew—and she was speaking from experience. She knew what he was going through in ways no one else did.
Including him.
In an effort to lighten the mood, he referred back to a statement she’d made at the beginning. “So you think I’m the best orthopedic surgeon only in Tulsa?”
She laughed again. “In all of Oklahoma. Heck, in the entire country, if not the world. If I broke any of my creaky bones, I’d want you to be the one to fix them.”
“Thank you.” They toasted with their half-empty glasses, then Ben gazed across the lawn. It was neatly kept, thanks to Cadore’s mowing and Patricia’s gardening. She and George must have had such plans when they bought this place. No more packing boxes, sorting through the stuff they’d collected over the years. No more changing addresses or house-hunting or temporary living. This was to have been their home for the rest of their lives. Not just a house. Home.
And all they’d gotten was a few months living in it together before he’d deployed. Before he’d died. You’ll always have the memories, and if that’s all you get to have, like me, like Lucy and all the others, fine. Great. Memories are precious. She definitely had those. Twenty years’ worth.
She should have gotten at least another twenty years’ worth.
“I wish I’d known him,” he said absently.
“Who?” she asked just as absently.
He was surprised he’d spoken the words aloud, but they were true. “George. I wish I’d known him.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, sweetie…” Sniffling, she set her glass aside. “There’s never a tissue around when I need one,” she said, pushing to her feet and turning toward the door. “I’ll be right back.”
Ben returned to gazing across the lawn, at least, until a soft voice spoke from behind him. “That’s probably the nicest thing you could have said to her.”
He turned to find Avi, pretty in a pink dress with white dots, standing a few yards from the driveway. Her hair shone in the sunlight that reached it, hanging sleek past her shoulders, held back from her face by a white band with pink dots. With matching dotted flip-flops, she looked about seventeen, beautiful and innocent and sexy.
“You know what the hardest part of my job as an orthopedic doc doing total knee replacements in Oklahoma is?”
Shaking her head solemnly, she came toward him.
“Convincing my patients to give up their flip-flops.”
Reaching him, she gave his feet a pointed look.
“Yes, but my patients don’t know I wear them myself outside of clinic.”
She bent to kiss him, just a hey, you sort of kiss that was sweet enough to make him ache and sad enough to break his heart. Sitting in the chair to his right, she crossed her gorgeous legs, letting one shoe dangle, and helped herself to his wineglass, holding it up to eye level. “How much did Patricia pour for you? Thirty ccs more than what’s left?”
“She filled it practically to the rim.”
Avi raised her brows so her eyes opened wide with wonder. “Oh, God, don’t tell me I’ve driven you to drink.”
“I’m not the only ortho doc in Tulsa. Hell, I’m not even the only hip, knee, and ankle guy in my own office.”
“Uh-huh.” She handed the glass back to him, not quite understanding his point.
“I’m not on call this weekend, and if whoever is on call needs help, he can get it from someone else. I don’t have to be responsible and sober twenty-four hours a day three hundred and sixty-five days a year.” He always had been. Always. Not once in the years since he’d graduated medical school had he ever had one single, entire drink. Whether he was home alone, on a date, or celebrating something special, he’d never indulged in an entire drink so he could be ready if he was needed.
How many times in all those nights had he been needed? Maybe ten: multi-car crashes, partial amputations, one skydiving jump gone terribly wrong, a few industrial accidents. And if he hadn’t gone? He’d saved some legs, but his partners could have done the same. Would have.
Patricia returned from the house, carrying an empty glass and a full bottle. “Hey, Avi, honey, take a glass, please. Fill your own and top off Ben’s. He’s not driving anywhere tonight, but don’t let him get so hammered that all he wants to do at bedtime is go to sleep.”
Avi chuckled, and Ben frowned at both women. “I’m not drunk.”
“No, but you don’t hold your liquor the wa
y Avi and I do,” Patricia said with a sweet smile. “We’ve had a lot more practice than you.”
Avi filled her own glass and topped off Ben’s as instructed, just not quite as full as before. When she was done and had handed the bottle back to Patricia, she met his gaze and winked. He claimed her free hand, twined his fingers with hers, and closed his eyes, concentrating on them. Her nails were shorter than usual; she’d broken a few working on the fountain. Her skin felt a little rougher than usual, despite the gloves she’d worn, and there was a bubble of a blister on her left index finger.
This night would be the last time he held her hand like this. He wasn’t going to get maudlin over it; he’d promised himself on the drive over, but wine and sympathy made maudlin way too easy a destination.
“Are your parents about ready for us?” Patricia asked.
“Dad was in the shower when I left the house, and the chicken was resting. By the way, Mom sent a message that if you want to talk to Dad, you need to do it before the seven o’clock kick-off. The Tallgrass team is playing at Stillwater, and he’ll be watching it on his computer, thanks to one of his friends who mounted a video camera on an assistant coach’s ball cap.”
Patricia stood, anxious to get going. “Let me get the dishes I’m taking, and we can walk over now.”
Ben got his first clue when she pulled a garden cart from beneath a nearby tree. He gave Avi his glass as Patricia began pulling it up the steps, and helped carry it inside while Avi balanced the wine bottle and the glasses.
“These are treats for you, Avi,” Patricia said as she lifted a sturdy box into the cart.
Ben picked up the top bag, filled with bone-shape cookies. “Look, pupper cookies. You have to sit and speak before you get one.”
“Those are for Sadie, from Lucy. They’re all natural. Way better than that stuff you buy at the grocery store.” Patricia added a bowl of corn salad, another holding chunks of peeled, sweet cantaloupe. The aroma filled the room even with the plastic wrap stretched over the top. A pie carrier holding one of her sky-high meringue pies got place of honor, with the nearly full bottle of wine nestled beside it.
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