An Everyday Hero

by Laura Trentham

Ally’s dad wouldn’t see her graduate high school or get married or be able to hold his grandkids. It wasn’t fair. The adults around her probably thought they were doing the right thing in protecting her, but she deserved the truth. Even more, she was strong enough to handle it.

  “I do think you deserve to know. Can’t you ask your mom?” Greer knew the suggestion was inadequate before it was even out of her mouth, but what options were there?

  “Yeah, sure.” Ally’s response was as noncommittal as they came.

  “All right, let’s leave the questions about your dad for a second and focus on Caroline. What can you do to stop her?”

  “It’s too late. Even if she stopped posting today, thanks to her lies, everyone at school thinks I’m a slutty troublemaker. Girls don’t want anything to do with me, and the guys—” A disgusted grunt came from her throat.

  “What are the guys doing?” A chill passed through Greer.

  “They either think it’s hilarious to say gross stuff to me in the halls or they ignore me altogether.”

  Greer sat back and chewed on her thumbnail. How could she keep this to herself? It was harassment. What could she do to help without breaking her promise? “Have you thought about changing schools?”

  “It’s the only public school close by. We can’t afford private school.” She flicked the pencil. It flew end over end, landing on the floor. “I’m used to being the new kid. I know the drill, but this place is different. Harder.”

  Greer didn’t know what Ally had been like before, but her father’s death had changed her. Perhaps it was a combination of the place and the person being too different to fit together.

  “You need to talk to your mom, Ally. About all of this. Your dad, Caroline, the way you feel. I’m sure she wants to help you.” Except Greer wasn’t sure.

  “School will be out for summer soon and I won’t have to think about it for a while.” Ally pointed at the guitar. “I thought we were here to work on music. I can’t be late getting home.”

  Greer wanted to say more—wanted to do more—to help, but the boundaries of their relationship were indistinct and her inexperience with kids and the complexity of Ally’s problems left her floundering.

  Greer pushed back from the table and pulled the guitar into her chest, her hands instinctively falling into their assigned places. A rush of heat had her body tingling and her heart racing. Prickles of sweat popped up along the back of her neck.

  As if the room had stretched, she heard Ally from a distance say, “I’ve always wanted to play the guitar. I took piano when we were stationed in North Carolina when I was little, but we left the piano behind when we moved to Kentucky.”

  Greer’s stomach clawed to escape. Even though there was only an audience of one, her fingers fumbled to find the strings to play a proper chord.

  “What’s wrong? You look ready to hurl.” Ally herself looked both concerned and freaked out.

  Grown-ups weren’t supposed to have breakdowns. Especially in front of a kid who had her own overflowing Dumpster of worries to deal with. Greer forced a smile. Fake it until you make it.

  “I haven’t played for a while. Before this dry spell, I can’t remember a day I went without playing since I was ten and my mom and dad got me a guitar for Christmas.”

  “Why’d you stop? Was it because you got arrested?”

  “I stopped because”—she swallowed and tried to assemble a reason that didn’t make her sound crazy—“it got too hard.”

  It had been hard long before she stopped, though. Music had become a mocking reminder of her failures. By the end, her songs had deserted her, and the silence in her head was a physical ache.

  “I’m sorry.” Sincerity laced Ally’s voice. She understood loss.

  Greer wanted to kick her own butt. She had lost something she loved. Something she could revive if she wasn’t such a coward. Ally had lost someone she loved. Her dad was gone forever.

  “Nothing to be sorry for. I’ll get over my fears. Eventually.” Greer put the guitar down, but still it called to her like a mocking siren. She ignored it. “Let’s start with lyrics. Were you able to get anything down on paper? And it’s okay if you weren’t, by the way. It’s not—”

  Ally rummaged in her backpack, pulled out a stack of papers, and dropped them on the table. The top sheet was covered in words and scribbles and doodles of flowers in the margins. Greer flipped through the pages with her thumb. They were all similarly filled.

  “Wow. Writer’s block is not an issue.”

  Ally popped up and meandered along the walls of the small room as if she were a wild animal desperate to escape a cage before being tortured. Greer couldn’t argue the fact that watching someone read and pass judgment on your writing was a form of torture.

  “They all suck. In fact, give the pages back and I’ll burn them,” Ally said, making a grab for the stack.

  Greer pulled the papers out of Ally’s reach. “Not a chance. Yes, they probably suck, but that doesn’t mean we can’t transform them into awesome. That’s the thing about words—people too, if you want to get philosophical: letting go of the bad can open us to be even better.” If only Greer could edit out the bad decisions she’d made.

  Greer skimmed the top page. It was a story about a boy walking away and not looking back at the girl who loved him, leaving her with a broken heart. Songwriting was intensely personal. Whether the pain lived in Ally or whether she’d channeled her dad’s death, Greer had enough respect for the process not to ask.

  The subject had been done a million times over, but Ally’s turn of phrase was unique and begged to be spoken or sung aloud, yet it lacked a complexity Greer knew Ally possessed.

  “Rhyming is overrated.” Greer underlined the last words in a handful of the lines. She gestured Ally over and turned the paper so Ally could see. “These are good, but a listener will check out if the cadence is too repetitive.”

  “I need to know the rules, I guess.” Ally’s shoulders fell into a slump as she sank down on the edge of her seat.

  “First rule: there are no rules. In fact, the best songwriters break the rules. Your homework for our next session is to listen to songs you like and figure out why. Then, listen to songs you hate and figure out why. Can you do that?”

  “Lay around and listen to music? I think I can manage it.” Ally’s sudden smirk made Greer wonder how her mother had survived her teenage years without having a chronic case of whiplash.

  “You have to really listen. Study them. I want a list of specifics.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you must become a student. Is a song’s chorus repeated too many times? Is the imagery conveyed too on the nose? Is the actual music complex enough to support the lyrics or vice versa? Dig deep.”

  “Okay. But how am I supposed to compose music without an instrument?”

  “You have an instrument.”

  “No, I don’t. I told you we left the piano behind when we moved.”

  Now it was Greer’s turn to smirk. “Your voice, dummy.”

  “I don’t want to sing in front of people.”

  “You don’t have to. You can compose all by your lonesome in your room.”

  “Like how?”

  “I don’t know, you sort of get lost in your head until you stumble into the music.”

  Ally shook her head. “That makes no sense.”

  How could she describe the feeling? Greer took two pencils and tapped out a slow three-quarters-time rhythm on the desk, letting her body sway to the beat. “First, find a beat.”

  Ally picked up two pencils and joined the rhythm.

  “Good,” Greer said. “Then close your eyes and let your mind wander.”

  Greer followed her own instructions, expecting to find a barren wasteland. Instead, a simple melody wavered in the void, and she hummed a few bars before incorporating Ally’s first lines. She opened her eyes.

  Ally’s mouth was open, her eyes wide, making her look younger and vulnera
ble. “You made what I wrote sound good.”

  “Your lyrics are good.” Greer waved the piece of paper. “A universal story of lost love. Powerful stuff.”

  A knock interrupted them. Time was up.

  Anxiety strummed through Ally as surely as if an out-of-tune chord were playing. She shoved the stack of songs into her backpack and swung it over one shoulder. “Gotta go.”

  “I can give you a lift and get you home that much faster.” Greer rose.

  “No, thanks.” Ally ducked past Richard. By the time Greer gathered her bag and the guitar, the tinkle of the front door chimes were fading.

  Amelia tapped on her laptop, her cat’s-eye glasses emphasizing a boho-chic look that could have graced the cover of a magazine. Greer dropped her time sheet on the desk and returned the guitar to its stand, running her fingers down the strings in a regretful caress. Was this how a man suffering from impotence felt?

  “Things are going well with Ally.” Amelia stated it as fact as she signed her name with a flourish. “How did things go with your new assignments?”

  Greer had met earlier in the week with two new veterans. After dealing with Ally and Emmett, she had anticipated a battle to get them to participate. Instead, they’d been eager to learn and write. She had enjoyed both sessions, but the spark Ally brought hadn’t been there. The push-pull she shared with Ally was challenging, which made the time they spent together engaging, frustrating, and inspiring.

  “What’s the story with Ally’s mom?” Greer tucked the time sheet into her bag. Now that she’d added the two new veterans, hours were adding up more quickly than she’d anticipated.

  Amelia sat back and pushed her glasses to the top of her head. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing in particular.” Greer poked her toe at the edge of a faded rug. “This looks like the rug Uncle Bill and Aunt Tonya had in their dining room when I was a kid.”

  “Bill gave it to me when I started the foundation. He’s been good to me.”

  Greer and Amelia had one thing in common: they both loved Bill Duckett. Not even her aunt Tonya’s resentment and anger toward him after the divorce had dimmed Greer’s worship of him. He’d always had time for Greer, and she’d loved visiting him in his chambers and trying on his long, dark robes.

  Amelia put her glasses back on and turned her attention to the computer screen. “Anything else you need?”

  “No. I’ll see you next week.”

  Before Greer made the turn into the hall, Amelia called her name. She did an about-face.

  “I’ve been doing this long enough to trust my instincts. I’d advise you to do the same,” Amelia said. In her eyes were stories—tragic and uplifting—of men and women who had come and gone through the foundation’s doors.

  Greer nodded and headed out. Her stint at the foundation was supposed to be a simple exercise in addition. One hour after another would add up to fulfill the court requirements.

  It was unsettling to think the work she was doing with Ally and the others meant more than the paper she got signed every week. She didn’t want it to mean more. She didn’t want to worry and wonder what Ally was doing outside the meager two hours a week they shared.

  But it was too late. She already cared.

  Chapter 9

  Drawn by the rumbling thunder, Emmett stepped onto the porch. Dark clouds lined the horizon like ink blots engulfing the setting sun. The stagnant air was so dense he felt like he could break it in two with his bare hands. The coming storm would do the job. The lights in the cabin flickered before going out.

  As a child he’d held an unnatural fear of storms and the tornados they could spawn. The edge of Madison had been hit when he was eight, and he’d never forgotten walking a formerly quaint neighborhood street where only sticks and stones remained. The utter destruction had stalked his imagination and nightmares for years.

  Only when he’d faced the destruction of war had he let go of his fear of storms. There was a purity in the force of nature that man’s crude bumbling desecrated. Nature was neither good nor evil, only powerful. Men at war, on the other hand, were rarely good and mostly evil.

  He’d joined the army with the notion he was making the world a better place, keeping the ones he loved safe, making a difference. Had he made a difference? The lives of the family whose house had been destroyed in a drone strike he’d witnessed had been changed forever.

  Statistics were kept on civilian casualties, but reports never detailed the horror of a young girl screaming for her father or the boy lying in the street covered in burns, his mother weeping over his body. The report on the ambush that had ultimately taken his leg and the life of his sergeant hadn’t described his unbelievable pain and the way his sergeant had choked on his own blood at the end. Emmett couldn’t scrub the details out of his head.

  Since then, storms no longer scared him. If a tornado bore down on him, he wouldn’t cower but meet the onslaught and beg to be taken. Perhaps then he would find peace.

  Lightning flashed and thunder followed a few seconds later. The storm was still miles away, but an electric feeling vibrated the air. Chaos was coming.

  His weather radio blared from inside, but he ignored it and walked down the porch steps to welcome the onslaught. The wind went from zero to sixty faster than a Mustang. The tops of the trees bowed in supplication.

  A streak along the ground caught his eyes. He squinted. It was coming straight for him. Not a dog. He hoped to God it wasn’t a skunk or a rabid raccoon. Lightning rent the fabric of the sky. The animal cowered in the middle of the path. A black-and-white kitten.

  A raindrop hit Emmett, trailing down his cheek like a tear. He raised his face as the rain poured out and obscured the landscape. Emmett looked to where the kitten had been but it had vanished.

  He backed under the cover of the porch and shook his head like a dog. The temperature had dropped. He was rain-soaked and refreshed. The wind howled and blew gusts of rain in all directions as a premature dusk gripped the land.

  The heart of the storm was right on top of him now. Adrenaline streaked through him like a flash of lightning, leaving his nerve endings sizzling. There were some things he missed about serving. The fear-excitement cocktail served on a daily basis was one.

  The kitten reappeared five feet in front of him, bedraggled and terrified. It disappeared into the dank muddy underworld beneath the porch. It would be safe enough.

  He plopped in a rocking chair and enjoyed Mother Nature’s wrath. His leg throbbed. He’d been up and moving more lately. His stump was sore, his thigh muscle ached, and the burning in his phantom limb ramped to uncomfortable levels.

  Too soon, the harsh leading edge of the storm gave way to a windy rain. No tornado would spirit him off to Oz tonight. His adrenaline ebbed, and he closed his eyes, listening to the pelt of rain on the roof of the cabin and the rustle of the wind in the trees.

  In the relative calm, a plaintive cry came from under him. Over and over the kitten howled. Was it injured or merely scared? He wished it would shut up and go away. There was nothing he could do to help the thing. Keeping himself fed had become an issue lately. His mom still hadn’t dropped by his requested groceries and even more tragic, no casseroles.

  The kitten’s ceaseless cries shredded any peace he’d managed to garner from the storm. Emmett stomped inside, ignoring the pain in his stump at every step. He left his rain-soaked clothes on the floor outside the laundry and pulled on a T-shirt and shorts. After easing off his prosthetic, he laid on the couch, wired and restless, but without power, he had nothing to fill the silence.

  The kitten’s howl reached through the floor and grabbed him around the neck. He muffled his ears with a pillow, but the faint sound poked at him like a claw. He sat up and threw the pillow across the room, knocking a lamp to the floor.

  “Goddammit!” His holler echoed through the room.

  Leaving his prosthetic behind, he hopped up and out the door, tucking a flashlight into his waistband. Using the handr
ail like a crutch, he jumped each step on his one leg. At the bottom, he laid on his side in the stew of grass and mud, clicked the flashlight on, and shone it under the porch.

  Eyes reflected back at him in the farthest corner. Of course. Was he going after a kitten? The crying revved up like a children’s toy on repeat. Was it his imagination or did the kitten sound weaker? He sat up and rested his arms over his good knee. The kitten would live and run back into the woods in the morning.

  Except it had probably been dumped by some jerk who couldn’t be bothered to take care of his damn animals. Dumped to die a long painful death by starvation or even worse, as prey to a coyote or fox. It was helpless.

  Emmett shimmied under the porch, cursing himself every inch of the way. Cobwebs made him shudder, and the smell of damp earth and decay ignited flight instincts. The feeling of being trapped in a grave pressed in as he drew within reach of the kitten.

  He slowed his movements, afraid to spook the little thing, but it didn’t move, either too terrified or too tired to fight him. He wrapped his hand around its body, each rib defined. It trembled but didn’t bite or scratch him. Life or death, the kitten had accepted its fate.

  A surge of protectiveness welled in Emmett’s chest. There were too many he hadn’t been able to save, but he could do something for this pitiful creature, even if it was only to offer it a dry place to spend the night.

  It took longer to work his way out from under the porch with one leg for leverage and a handful of kitten he didn’t want to crush. Finally he rolled out onto his back and stared up at the black sky, the rain too soft now to wash away only God knew what coated him.

  He staggered to his foot. His shoulder pitched into the porch, a protruding nail ripping through thin cotton to bare skin. Exhaustion overcame him like a tsunami. He crawled up the porch steps and collapsed on the damp wood. The clean smell of cedar was a comfort after the funk of moist earth under the porch.

  The kitten tucked itself in the crook of his neck and under his chin, the vibration of its purr like an offering. He would rest for a few minutes before fetching something for the kitten to eat and drink. His eyes closed and he sank into blackness.