She inhaled and asked if they’d like to come in for a glass of water. Exhibiting impeccable manners, they accepted and entered her little bungalow. She puttered around in her bare feet, getting three tall glasses of ice water, filled to the brim with ice, as she was lately fond of doing, mostly so she could crunch the tension of Frankie’s deployment between her molars.
They did look a little uncomfortable. They answered questions, but didn’t volunteer anything. She knew they’d done this many times before. The questions were probably the same, How did he die? Did he suffer? Was he alone when he died? Who was with him?
The answer to that last one was like a slap across the face.
“We understand your husband’s best friend, Special Operator T.J. Talbot, was with him when he died.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m Frankie’s best friend. No one loves him as much as I do.”
She wasn’t going to start using the past tense until she had to.
“Yes, ma’am,” the gentleman said. “We understand that to be the case. However, SO Talbot was with him at the end. He did not die alone, ma’am.”
The baby started kicking again and she worried that her emotions had pumped adrenaline into her daughter’s system. She took a long drink of water and closed her eyes, willing calm. If she weren’t pregnant she’d be moaning and huddled in a heap the ground, pouring her heart out. But with little Courtney in her belly, she wasn’t going to take that chance. And somehow, it wasn’t what she wanted to keep doing, anyway. Her daughter was a strong reminder that life went on. Sucked, but it went on.
Just not with Frankie.
They rose to go when the conversation dwindled off into nowhere and she’d begun paying more attention to the pink nail polish on her toes. She was wearing pink every day now. Pink pajamas, the ones she could still wear, pink bed sheets (until Frankie came home), pink nail polish, even managed to put a hot pink extension in the side of her hair as if a little bit of Courtney was bleeding through.
The woman gave her a card to the Navy counseling group. Shannon already knew she’d go see Libby’s dad, who had helped a lot of the SEALs with their various emotional issues, not to mention the marital strains they experienced. And death. They’d all lost someone they loved. There wasn’t anyone in the community who didn’t know someone who hadn’t come home. Today it was her turn.
“Mom. He’s gone,” she said into the phone before the Naval messengers of Death had pulled from the curb outside, escaping to do another mission.
“What do you mean gone? I thought he was—Oh, my God, Shannon. No!” her mother said in a voice full of tears.
“Yes. They just left.”
“I’ll be on the next plane.”
“No, thanks, Mom. Give me a day or two, please. I’ve got friends here who can help. You come out soon, though. Give me time to be alone, but please don’t think I don’t appreciate what you want to do. I do. I need to do this first part alone, and with a few of the other wives here. You have Dad.”
Shannon knew her mother was a little hurt, but would recover. Next she called Frankie’s parents, who were out. She left a message, without saying it was bad news. Only that she needed to talk to them right away. Important. Involving Frankie. It was the last phone call she had to make.
She put the glasses…the ice cubes hadn’t melted yet…into the dishwasher, added soap and turned it on. The paint towels she tossed into the washing machine. She rinsed out the brush roller, the paint in the sink looking like the strawberry-flavored milk she’d loved so much as a child. She tapped the lid on the paint can. Arched back to give herself a good reverse stretch and looked at the pink glow in the room, the walls she would finish soon, but probably not tomorrow.
Tomorrow she’d go get that white crib she liked with the dust ruffle in pink camo. She’d put up pictures of animals and buy fuzzy teddy bears and maybe a frilly dress or two. A headband with a bow on it. Some pink ruffled socks and Mary Janes.
There was still so much to look forward to. It felt like Frankie would walk in any minute, telling her it had been a joke, T.J.’s idea of funny. But no, even T.J. wouldn’t play this trick on her. The walls were bare and unfinished. The room smelled of paint but had a nice warm feel to it. The floor was vacant.
But her heart, like her belly, was full of life.
It wasn’t fair. But it was the way it was.
Chapter Five
‡
T.J. processed out Frankie’s things and signed the paperwork, taking ownership of his buddy’s personal property. Part of him was angry at Frankie for giving him such a fuckin’ impossible task, to bring these things that had been important to Frankie, and hand them over to Shannon, who hated the ground T.J. walked on. Might even blame him for being the one who came back. Like T.J. had used up the quota of survivors for the day, thus abandoning his friend.
And he knew exactly how she felt. He felt the same way. He blamed himself for living, blamed himself for having caused so much worry on the part of Frankie’s widow. He blamed himself for not trusting his sixth sense over there—that funny feeling he got that said things were all fucked up. He’d kept that knowledge to himself this time. Why? Usually he told his LPO about situations he didn’t like.
But it was like he had that force of will, like he could make sure it wasn’t their time. Like so many other close calls, they would always somehow emerge unscathed.
Except this time he knew deep down it wasn’t the truth. They’d been one step behind, and perhaps trying to do a job the Marines should have been doing, not the SEALs. Not that the Marines were expendable, but the SEALs were supposed to do surgical strikes with good intel. He hoped some asshole’s head rolled over that one. He hoped never to have to face the man who was responsible for the decision to go in on the third day and not have them pull out. None of them had liked it one bit. He could tell Kyle had liked it least of all.
So maybe that’s why he didn’t say anything now. Why none of them did. The other side had figured out how to kill more SEALs, and now was using that knowledge as a strategy. You wanted to go in confident when it came to high-risk missions. With enough practice and training, things could go wrong and they would still work out. But this one had seemed from the get-go like the wrong fuckin’ TV program on the wrong fuckin’ channel. Nothing had been right about it. And a man—Frankie Benson—his best friend, and a man who had everything in the world to live for, was gone.
It wasn’t fair, but then death was indiscriminate. He knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier to take. Frankie was the one who’d gotten the pretty girl, the good grades, made his parents proud, dutifully knocked up his wife right away, and, except for the fact that he was having a girl, pretty much did everything the way it was supposed to be done.
T.J., on the other hand, had broken a lot of hearts, foster parents and girls he’d known, teachers who’d believed in him, employers, coaches whose teams he’d had to walk off of because he had to work, or because his grades made him ineligible—he broke everyone’s heart, and more than once, too. He wasn’t any better at the second chances than he was the first. He should have bought the farm. Not fuckin’ Frankie.
Everything the guy had could be fit into his duffel and one shoebox. That box had a collection of letters from Shannon. Frankie had read some of them to the guys. God, the lady could write damned sexy things, and everyone got revved up whenever Frankie got a love letter. He’d sit down as soon as those letters came, glued to the paper, that silly, shit-eating grin on his face, pink cheeks like the bottom of the daughter he’d never see, half embarrassed, but incredibly grateful for his life. That was the thing that separated them. Frankie was grateful for his life. T.J. was out to grab as much of it as he could before the bell rang.
T.J. had stitches in his thigh, on his forearm, and a couple of stitches on his left butt cheek he wasn’t sure he really needed but was given anyway by an overzealous corpsman. That was the part that itched like hell, and he was halfway of a mind to rip them ou
t with surgical scissors. They were damned annoying, and he hoped they didn’t leave a scar he’d be forever having to explain.
He swung the duffel over his right shoulder, cradling the shoebox in his left hand while he made his way to the pickup. He tossed the duffel in the second seat of the 4-door truck, and set the shoebox beside him on the bench seat in front.
Looking down, he pretended Frankie was inside that box, maybe done up in miniature like that movie he’d seen as a kid about the guy named Tom Thumb.
“You’re gonna have to help me here, Frankie. Shannon doesn’t want to see the likes of me. But I can’t just show up without calling first, and I did sign a paper saying I’d return your stuff to her, so send me a sign, would you? I’m in need of assistance.”
He pretended Frankie said something nasty, which he most certainly would have, if the man had been alive.
Fuck! He punched his steering wheel and then pressed his forehead to the top of it, gently banging it against the black leather padding.
This is totally messed up.
In the silence of the truck cab, he thought he heard Frankie laughing at him. Big, tough SEAL, afraid to talk to a woman. But she was Frankie’s woman, and she was six months pregnant. The facts were stacked against him. She was fragile, so he couldn’t tell her off if she got too inappropriate, which he was sure she would. She’d lost her husband, so she didn’t deserve to be treated in any way other than like the lady she most certainly was, and she hated him with everything in her soul because of all the shit T.J. had caused her and her dead husband.
Maybe he should get Lansdowne to have one of the other Team guys return Frankie’s belongings. Would it have been any easier to give it to his parents? That he could probably have done without any trouble at all, but Shannon. Shannon didn’t deserve this.
He dialed her number and hoped like hell she wasn’t home.
But he wasn’t that lucky.
“Hey, Shannon. How’re you holding up?” His voice was raspy and it cracked like a boy of seventeen.
“How do you suppose I’m holding up, T.J.? You calling to say you’re sorry or to give me a hard time?”
Her abruptness was her method, he realized, of keeping her distance, from everyone. He’d heard the other wives talk about how they had trouble getting close to her.
“No, even I wouldn’t do that.”
“Well, the day is young. Give it time. I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to be an asshole before you go to bed.”
That unfair statement pulled the plug on his anger. It was like the girls in grammar school who would call him names because they knew he wasn’t allowed to push them back. Why was it was okay for a girl to use verbal violence, but he wasn’t allowed to protect himself by making them hurt in return? Some therapist’s idea of the right order of the world. Probably a jerk who didn’t know his ass from an anthill.
“You’re entitled to your opinion. I might add that Frankie didn’t share that opinion, not that it should make a fuck’s difference to you.” He was satisfied he’d delivered a slap and not a full on blow to the chops.
“It doesn’t mean shit to me, T.J.” She breathed heavily into the phone. “Okay, look, I’m not at my best, so what is it you called about? You must have had something in mind.”
“I have his things, and the Navy wants me to deliver them to you.”
“I’ll be gone tomorrow after noon. Why don’t you drop it by the house then, anytime after twelve. It should be safe on the porch for a couple of hours until I get home.”
“I could meet you where you’re going.”
“Seriously, T.J. I don’t want you anywhere near my OB. I don’t want to be reminded that all my husband’s things are being handed over to me for their safekeeping or whatever. I’d like not to burst into tears in front of a waiting room filled with a bunch of emotional mothers-to-be and their scared-shitless husbands.”
“I get your drift.”
“You can leave it on the rocking chair on the front porch.”
“I’ll do that, then.”
“Okay, we’re done?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Thanks for dropping the stuff off. Should I leave anything for you? Anything in there you want for yourself?”
“God, Shannon, I haven’t even looked at anything much. I know about a few letters of yours in there. That’s about it.”
“No selfies in there?”
“Um, Frankie never took pictures of himself.”
“No, asshole. I sent him a few naked selfies. I want those back.”
Oh, those. He’d completely forgotten what fun they’d had with Shannon’s selfies. Truth was, some of the guys would sneak them from under Frankie’s bed and pass them around quarters while he was taking a shower. The last round had happened so fast, and then they were traveling, so T.J. still had the picture of Shannon in his shaving kit and hadn’t had the heart to tell Frankie.
He certainly wasn’t going to tell Shannon now.
The streets of San Diego were as charming as they always were, sunny, filled with light peach and white houses, green gardens, palm trees reaching up into a bright blue, cloudless sky. He usually reveled in the gentle weather, but today he felt almost resentful about it, like it wasn’t right there were so many happy people living in such a happy place when Frankie was dead.
Frankie and Shannon’s house was small, which wasn’t unusual, since it was an expensive neighborhood. Even a little one was ungodly expensive. They were renting. Frankie had said he doubted they’d be able to buy anything decent until they moved to the East Coast.
They’d lived here only a couple of months, but already the colors were crisper, brighter. Maybe someone had painted the outside. The front steps looked like they’d been painted red so recently he was worried that maybe he shouldn’t walk on them yet.
As Shannon had told him, there was a white wicker rocker on the little concrete porch, obscured by a delicate metal handrail with boxwood bushes planted in a row in front. The trimmed hedge also bracketed the walkway to the porch.
He swung the duffel bag down on the far side of the chair, so it wouldn’t be seen from the street, and placed the box on the seat. He looked inside at the living room through the small glass window embedded in the massive Craftsman-style front door, and was satisfied no one was home.
Walking back to his truck, he checked his cell phone for the time. It was one o’clock. He told himself she’d be along anytime now, and should get going, but he couldn’t leave Frankie up there in that box alone and unable to defend himself, should a complete stranger decide they wanted the worthless contents of the box.
He sat back and waited. As usually happened, when he thought about Frankie and Shannon, he remembered their wedding day. It had been a pretty incredible day, certainly memorable. As weddings went, he thought it was perfect. So much better when things didn’t run on time, and all the unexpected things in life showed up at the wrong moments. He lived for those times.
And Shannon had been all tousled and white, delicate and sweet, like the buttery vanilla frosting on the wedding cake. After the ceremony, Frankie had been on serious probation, so was careful when he placed the cake in her mouth, but she still got a blob of frosting on the right corner of her lips. Frankie had kissed it off. The guy was enraptured. It had been good to see. It had been a good day, despite what Shannon might think. His buddy had the sendoff he deserved and the beginnings of a life he’d earned because he was such a good guy. One of the good guys.
It had always made T.J. feel like a better person when he hung around Frankie. He’d never told him that, and this he regretted. Maybe someday he’d tell Frankie’s daughter. Probably would never tell Shannon.
An hour went by. He was surprised at himself for being patient, waiting. He didn’t mind it. Was going to be his last time with Frankie, in a way. That box was up there, like Frankie was in heaven, and he, T.J., was here sitting in the front seat of a truck. Waiting for what? Well, to be honest, he
was waiting for the rest of his life, and eventually for the end of it.
But he knew it wouldn’t be for a while. Another one of his sixth senses.
He thought about the promise he’d made Frankie. Wasn’t like he’d agreed to go chase Shannon and get her to marry him, which would be the biggest mistake of both their lives. But he’d find a way to secretly help the little girl, and yeah, he’d kick the first guy who tried to get fresh with her. Would be creepy for the kid, though, having an old, gnarled SEAL shadowing her while she was trying to survive high school. Have this dark shadow around every corner, ready to pop out and defend her. She probably wouldn’t like that. And in another sixteen or seventeen years his capacity for stealth would be seriously compromised. Hell, he might even be using a cane, like Tyler had to occasionally.
He was sharing this chuckle with Frankie, really feeling him sitting in that box with the little mouse chuckle Tom Thumb would have given him, when Shannon drove up. Before she drove into the garage, she rolled down her window and he did the same. They were heading in different directions.
“Left everything on the porch. Just wanted to make sure no one messed with it,” he said in his softest, most compassionate tone. She did a quick inhale and ripped her eyes from his face, looking out through her dirty windshield.
“Thank you,” she said over the top of her steering wheel. But she didn’t gun it, like he’d expected. She was thinking.
“You want to come in for a drink?” she said, still looking straight ahead.
“I don’t think so, Shannon. You’d probably prefer to be alone, and I only came to bring you his things.” That got her to look at him, and he could see the red puffiness around her eyes. Part of him wanted to say he was sorry, but that would have earned him a rebuff. She kept watching him, like she expected Frankie to materialize if she stared at him long enough.
It gave him the creeps, so he looked down at his hands in his lap. “Well, I’ll be going, then.”
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