“Oh, I’m sure he understood just fine, but his wife was on his arm when you were describing that brunette’s breasts.” Boom laughed.
Connor laughed so hard, tears threatened to fall. He’d forgotten that Cathy was at that party. “Yeah, I don’t think she ever forgave me for my behavior that night.”
Then he ran a hand down his face, wishing he could wipe away past mistakes as easily. “Man, I was stupid. When a woman that good looking is single, there’s a reason. Took me close to six months to repair the damage she did to my credit.”
“What do you mean?”
“She was a thief! Took pictures of my credit cards while I was sleeping, and then treated herself to one heck of an online shopping spree. Then, when I cut off the credit cards, she gave out my number to several of her suitors. I had to get my number changed.”
Boom shook his head, still chuckling. “Sounds like your brother was a much better judge of character than you were.”
“If I remember right, it wasn’t her character I was judging.” Connor stuck his hands in his pockets. “Looking back, I probably deserved everything that sociopath did to me.”
“Yes, you probably did.”
“Thanks a lot, bro,” Connor said.
“What? I was agreeing with you.”
Connor’s thoughts drifted back to his brother lying in bed with a broken leg, staring up at him.
‘Please, Con, kill me. Save her.’
Connor looked away, wishing he could vanquish the memory for good, but knowing he wouldn’t, even if given the option. Every memory of Jacob was priceless. Even the ones that hurt.
Boom must have picked up on Connor’s dark musings, because Boom patted his shoulder. “What is it?”
“Every time I’m away from Ashley, I feel like I’m letting Jacob down all over again. I should be with her, protecting her like I promised him I would. Yet, by staying behind, I am protecting her. Seems like there’s never a right answer.” Connor’s knees buckled and he slid down the tree. He sat and plucked blades of grass, ripped them in half, and tossed them to the side. “I’m afraid something’s going to happen while I’m not there to help them.”
“You can’t be with them all the time. At some point you will have to trust them to survive without you.” Boom paused and smiled. “Unless you’re planning to lock them in a safe again.”
“Oh, believe me, I would if I could get away with it! They’d escape though. Liberty would probably blow up the entire planet to get out of any safety I forced on her.”
Boom chuckled. “I do believe you’re right. So, what do you plan to do with them?”
“What can I do? I love them, so I’ll probably continue to do what idiots in love do. I’ll follow them around like some crazed stalker, trying to keep them safe and protected while I slowly lose my mind.”
“Quite the definition of love.”
Connor nodded. “I’m thinking of making it into a ballad.”
Connor considered Boom’s question. What did he plan to do with them? There hadn’t been much time to plan for anything beyond keeping Ashley and Liberty safe. No one could possibly expect more from him. Yet, Boom’s question made Connor realize what he wanted.
“I plan to marry her, Boom,” he announced.
Stein rolled over in his sleeping bag. An owl hooted somewhere to the north of them. Connor watched his friend, waiting for a reaction.
“Then what?” Boom finally asked.
“I don’t know.” Connor shrugged. “Go off the grid, raise a family…”
“There’s no safe place to do that anymore, Conman.”
Connor chuckled. “Figures. Now that I want one.”
Boom patted Connor’s shoulder. “I hear safety is overrated anyway. Never tried it myself, and I wonder if Ashley and Liberty would even enjoy it.”
Connor nodded, smiling. “Yeah, well, there is that too.” And with that, he pushed himself off the ground, stood and stretched. Then he bid Boom a goodnight and drifted off toward his sleeping bag.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Liberty
I SAT ON a wooden bench, hunched over the plain white face of a porcelain doll. In my hand, I held a fine-tipped paintbrush, the thin bristles dark with black acrylic paint. In contrast, the bright summer sun beat down on the top of my head, providing what my grandmother referred to as ‘ideal painting light.’ I could feel my freckles multiplying under the warm rays, and knew my nose would be a lovely shade of pink by the time we finished. A wiser kid would have applied generous amounts of sun block, but I had neither time nor concern for such things.
Grandma stood beside me, holding a plate. She leaned closer and the smell of wheat toast and warm apple-butter tickled my senses, teasing my taste buds. When she smiled, little lines spread out from the corners of her eyes and around her lips. She sat the plate of toast on the bench next to me, and slid spectacles the color of her short silver curls up the bridge of her nose. Some grandmothers made cookies. Mine suffered from diabetes, so she fed me wheat toast smothered in sugar-free homemade apple-butter whenever I came to visit.
“Yum, thank you, Grandma,” I said, eying the treat.
“That’s for afterward,” Grandma said, waving her hand toward the brush. “We gotta paint first. This light won’t last forever, and those eyelashes are impossible to get right without good light.”
Right. The eyelashes. My attention turned back to the doll head in my hands and I wondered what had possibly given my grandmother faith that I could do the task she’d set before me. “But what if I mess up?” I asked her.
“Oh, you will, honey,” Grandma adjusted my grip on the paintbrush, making it feel awkward and unbalanced in my hand.
“Sheesh, Grandma, aren’t you supposed to build my confidence or something?”
She smiled at me, her eyes sparkling with humor. “Everyone messes up. Why should you be any different?”
Suddenly she sat beside me on the bench, and the paintbrush and the doll head disappeared. She cupped my cheeks in her hands and studied my face. “You’ve got young eyes. You see things in the young that others don’t. You can do this.”
She kissed my forehead, and then disappeared.
* * *
I awoke still reaching for the dream, as if I could step back through time and once more find safety under the watchful gaze of my grandmother. My eyes burned at the memory of painting eyelashes while she looked on and corrected every mistake I made. And there had been lots of mistakes, but she never got angry or even frustrated with me. Instead, she’d reassure me that, between my young eyes, steady hand, and her expertise, our dolls would have the most beautiful eyelashes ever. The task required lots of time and energy, but she was right. Our dolls did have incredible lashes.
Grandma’s back porch felt so far and long ago that I couldn’t help but wonder if it had actually happened.
Maybe it’s all been a dream and this is the only thing that’s real.
Closing my eyes, I searched for more memories of my grandmother. They came in flashes: Christmas, dinner at a restaurant, a drive, a birthday party. I held each memory close to my heart like the precious life-restoring gem it was.
Where are you, Grandma? Are you okay?
My imagination took a dark turn, reliving images of death and destruction. Since that path ended in a bottomless pool I wasn’t prepared to dive into, I focused on the dream and tried to analyze its meaning.
‘You see things in the young that others don’t. You can do this.’
I don’t remember her saying that. What the heck does it mean?
The words bounced around in my mind for a while, but no obvious meanings stuck, so I sat up and stretched. Every square inch of my body protested, insisting that I lie back down and sleep. Unfortunately, it was time to pack and get back on the road. Ignoring the complaints of my muscles, I tossed aside the still-wet clothes from last night and searched the pack Connor had given me.
The front pocket held a waterproof parka and pants that w
ould have helped me immensely the previous night, had I only known about them. I dressed in a dry pair of fatigues and woke Ashley.
She popped up like a jack-in-the-box asking, “Is Connor here?”
“I haven’t seen him yet, but we should go check.”
Her body collapsed, and she pulled her sleeping bag back over her head. “If he was in the camp, he would have come and told us.”
Yes, he would have. “Nothing gets past you.”
“I’m not moving until he gets here.”
Great. Just what I needed. I spent the next ten minutes alternately tickling, bribing, and threatening Ashley until she crawled out of her sleeping bag. We went in search of breakfast, finding a pot of oatmeal on top of one of those weird in-ground fire pits with an extra air hole. I grabbed two bowls and served us some. Ashley and I sat in silence, bruised, battered, and disheartened by Connor’s continued absence.
Jeff and Braden joined us as we were finishing our meal.
“Mornin’” Jeff said.
I nodded to him.
Kylee stumbled out of her tent a few minutes later. Her hair stood up from her head in a dark, knotted halo, making her look anything but angelic. She patted it down a couple of times, then gave up and staggered toward us.
I gave her my best attempt at a smile. “Hey, sunshine.”
She frowned.
“You’re having one of those days too, huh?”
She sat down and Braden handed her a bowl of oatmeal. After a few bites, she seemed to come back to life. She turned to Ashley and asked, “Has your dad shown up yet?”
Ashley shook her head.
“Sorry,” Kylee replied. Her face drooped.
Again with the bizarre interest in Connor. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” I told the girls, eying Kylee. “Connor is fast and stubborn. Nothing will be able to keep that man from finding us. Trust me, I’ve tried to lose him numerous times.”
Ashley gave me a fake smile that looked more like a grimace.
I squeezed her shoulders. “I’m glad I failed, though. He ended up being a pretty cool guy. Hey, why don’t you go see if someone has saddled Cinnamon for you yet?”
She seemed like she wanted to object, but then scampered off to check on the horse. I poured myself a cup of coffee, and then sat back down, staring into the fire. Jeff finished eating, and then said something about packing before he stood and left, followed by Braden and Kylee.
I tuned out the buzzing of the camp around me and focused on the flames, wondering what the heck was taking Connor so long.
What if he doesn’t come back?
The thought blindsided me, inundating my heart and mind with fear. Tears stung my eyes as I replayed all the times he had shown affection toward me, only to have me run away or brush him off. Now that I faced uncertainty about his return, regret felt like a rope around my ankles, threatening to pull me under a wave of despair.
I should have told him how I feel.
Truthfully, though, I was a coward. Revealing my emotions to Connor meant opening myself up to a vulnerability that I wasn’t ready for yet. But, if he stood in front of me right now, I would have come clean and confessed everything. But since he wasn’t there, I brushed away the last of the stupid moisture from my eyes, hitched up my backpack and went to pack up my tent. That killed a whole five minutes, so I meandered over to check on Ashley.
When I found her, the girl was having an in-depth conversation with Cinnamon about the necessity of holding still while she mounted the horse. Cinnamon chewed a mouthful of grass, eying Ashley like she was crazy.
“Yes, like that,” Ashley said. “Just stand there. Don’t move.”
She stepped to the horse’s side and stuck her foot in the stirrup. The minute Ashley put weight on the stirrup, Cinnamon drifted away from her. Ashley hopped a couple of times, following the horse, before pulling her foot away and stomping on the ground.
“You said you’d hold still.”
With the skeptical way Cinnamon eyed Ashley, I doubted she’d made any such promise. I watched the two of them, deciding that the scene would have been hilarious if only Connor would have been there to share it with me.
“Is there something I can do to help?” I asked.
“I don’t know what her problem is.” Ashley looked to be on the verge of tears as she gestured toward the horse. “She usually lets me right up. Why does she keep moving away?”
Baffled, Ashley and I studied Cinnamon. The horse chewed on a mouthful of grass around her bit, watching us as we approached.
“She seems fine, Ash.”
Ashley rolled her eyes. “I know, but watch.” She gripped the reins and saddle horn, and then slipped her foot into the stirrup.
Cinnamon shuffled to the side. I scratched my head. “All right girl, what’s going on?” I asked, patting Cinnamon’s flank.
She didn’t answer, so I picked up a stick and used it to clean out her hooves, checking for rocks or anything else that would make her uncomfortable. Finding nothing obvious, I grabbed the saddle and stuck my foot in the stirrup. When I shifted my weight to pull the other leg up, the saddle slid off Cinnamon’s back, falling toward me. It happened so quickly that I lost my footing and had to hop several times to regain it.
“Well, that’s your problem,” I said. “This horse is a genius and she knew the saddle was loose. She didn’t want you to fall off. Who saddled her?”
Ashley looked down at the ground.
“You did?”
“I told them I could do it myself. It doesn’t look that hard when they do it.”
“It’s not difficult at all, but you have to cinch it tight. If you can pull the girth away from the horse, it’s too loose.” I righted the saddle, and then lifted the fender and hooked the stirrup on the saddle horn. After undoing Ashley’s knot, I looped the cinch straps through the ring a couple of times, pulled the cinch strap tight, and looped it through the keeper. Then I led Cinnamon around in a couple of circles and tightened the cinch once again.
“Oh,” Ashley said. “That’s different than how they do it.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the cowgirl way,” I replied. “The knot should like like a neck tie.”
“Okay, but will Cinnamon let me on now?”
I shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
She gripped the horn and slid her foot into the stirrup. Cinnamon craned her neck to watch the girl, but other than that didn’t move. Ashley swung her other leg over the horse and settled herself into the saddle. In response, Cinnamon let out a huff, as if exasperated by how long it took us to figure out the issue.
“You were right.” Ashley beamed me a proud smile and patted Cinnamon on the neck. “She is a genius.”
Cinnamon whinnied in agreement.
* * *
That day we marched on, through the scorching summer heat, around mountains, and across shallow lakes. In an effort to distract my mind from worries about Connor and the pain, exhaustion, and possible heat stroke of my body, I daydreamed about all the things I wished I would have said to Connor.
Every time we stopped, I assisted Magee with Osberg and Noke. By the time Drill Sergeant Staten—as the soldiers had not-so-lovingly taken to calling him—finally called us to a stop that evening, I was half dead. After we lowered Osberg to the ground, I collapsed beside him and closed my eyes. The knowledge that I should be putting up my tent did not fill me with the energy to do so. My arms felt like useless lead-filled lumps, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to move them again.
A dark shadow loomed over me. “You dead?” Connor asked.
My heart sped up at the sound of his voice. I didn’t open my eyes, just in case I was dreaming. “I can hear you, so would that make you dead as well?” I asked.
He chuckled.
I shifted and winced at the charley horse that zapped my leg. Since I didn’t have the energy to stand, I kicked my leg a couple of times and tried to knead the muscle. “Nope. I’m definitely alive. My body wou
ldn’t hurt this much if I was dead.”
He knelt beside me and pushed my hands away so he could massage my thigh. His thumbs dug into the muscle. It hurt so bad I wanted to scream and writhe, but I didn’t have the energy move, let alone add drama to movement. He must have sensed as much, because the next thing I knew his arms slid under me, and lifted me into the air.
That woke me right up. “What the heck? Put me down!”
He ignored my protests and pulled me to his chest, holding me closer. Too weak and tired to win the fight, I gave up and collapsed against him, enjoying the comforting scent of his body.
“You know I’m going to have to kill you for this, right?” I asked.
His chest rumbled against me, so I scowled at him to let him know I was serious.
“You can kill me later, after you’ve rested.”
I yawned. “How very accommodating of you.”
“I try.”
For one brief, insane second, I considered professing my undying love for Connor, just in case…
“You’re not planning on abandoning us again, are you?” I asked.
“Aww.” He smiled. “Did you miss me?”
“Maybe for a second, but I’m over it now.”
He chuckled.
Connor made me stay awake long enough for him to stuff another disgusting MRE down my throat. Everything after that was a blur.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Liberty
I PEACEFULLY SOARED among the clouds, enjoying the cool breeze in my face as my wings stretched effortlessly across the sky. The world felt peaceful and free, smelling of nature and life. Then, suddenly, the breeze changed. The sky darkened, becoming heavier and tainted with smoke. Dipping below the clouds, I turned and searched until I saw found dark plumes billowing from the trees to the north. Fire. Curious, I flew toward the source to investigate.
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