by Robyn Carr
He rushed to her side, scared, and rolled her over to find her laughing and spitting snow. He just looked down at her in wonder—did nothing disturb her? Scare her? Panic or worry her? He covered her mouth with his for a long kiss, and when he let her go she said, “Before we go inside, we should make snow angels.”
“I’m not making snow angels,” he said. “What if Buck sees me? It would ruin my reputation forever.”
“Just one, then. Yours would be so big—like Gabriel, for sure.”
“Then will you go inside with me? No more screwing around?”
“Aw—I thought that was your favorite part?” she asked, taking a handful of snow and shoving it in his face.
With a growl, he got to his feet, lifted her off the ground and threw her over his shoulder, carrying her back to the cabin. He stood her in front of the door and brushed the snow off her before letting her enter, then did the same himself.
“You’ve forgotten how to play,” she accused him.
“You play around enough for both of us,” he said. Without shedding his jacket, he got water heating on the propane stove and the woodstove. “I’ll give you a little time alone while I shovel a path to the john and hook the plow blade onto the truck. Think you can manage these big pots on your own?”
“Are you going to dig us out so soon?” she asked, clearly disappointed.
He smiled at her. “Not exactly. I’m going to make a couple of passes at the road—but no one has to know about it. I just don’t want to get us too buried. Do me a favor? When you’re done with your bath—start my water cooking?”
“Sure, Ian,” she said. “And if you’re very nice—I’ll scrub your back.”
Winters had always been a huge burden to Ian—the shoveling and plowing a necessary evil to give him access to the road, the john. But not on this particular winter day—this time it was a godsend. He’d like to keep Marcie boarded up in his cabin for a couple of weeks, but in reality, a day and night would be all he could really afford.
After making sure there was a path to the outhouse, he fitted the plow onto the truck and loaded the bed with firewood to make the truck heavier. He covered the wood with a tarp and drove down his access road. A couple of feet of snow wasn’t a big deal and if he cleared it today, tomorrow wouldn’t be as bad.
There was an old guy a couple miles down who had neither a plow for his truck nor a working tractor. In fact, it didn’t appear the tractor had been in use since Ian migrated to this mountaintop. The old boy’s road to Highway 36 wasn’t real long and tomorrow Ian would check on him to make sure he had a clear road and food. They weren’t friends; they’d hardly spoken. But Ian had been aware of him for a long time and just couldn’t stand the thought of him freezing or starving to death, stranded. It was a small thing; he only had to make the short pilgrimage a couple of times a winter.
When he finally made his way back to the cabin, she said, “Well finally! I’ve been wondering if I should come out and lend a hand!”
He pulled off his gloves. “We’re clear to the road if we have to get out of here. But there’s no reason we have to. Is my water hot?”
“Yes, and if you’re nice, I’ll make you eggs before they spoil.”
He took his jacket off and draped it over a kitchen chair. “You going to read your book while I take my clothes off and wash up?”
She grinned an elfish grin. “Not on your life.”
It was only two nights and a day, but for Ian it was healing and for Marcie, pure magic. They ate well, made love, napped in front of the woodstove, talked. The end of the snowy day found them together on the couch, Ian leaning back against the arm, stretched out, holding Marcie between his long legs, enjoying her closeness and their conversation. Her head rested against his chest and he stroked her soft hair, catching it between his fingers.
“I want to know more about Erin,” he said. “You two seem nothing alike.”
“Nothing,” she confirmed. “There are three different Erin’s. If you really want to know, get comfortable.”
He chuckled at her. “I’m comfortable.”
“Well, while we were growing up and she was so much older, she was just a bossy big sister. I think that’s the natural order of things, but it’s magnified when a mother is lost—the oldest daughter sometimes assumes the role. A giant pain in the butt. But then we lost Dad and she tried so hard to take care of us. We were beyond being taken care of, you know. A thirteen-and fifteen-year-old—we coped in our own ways, had our own lives. I had Bobby, and Drew had sports and buddies. I feel really terrible about that—we weren’t there for Erin at all. And she was just beginning law school, which demanded so much of her. But we were stupid kids—we didn’t know anything.”
“You told her that, of course,” he said. “Once you realized it.”
“Of course,” she said. “I was next to mess up her tidy little life, but at least she was already a lawyer in a nice practice when I hit her with getting married. She tried to talk sense to me, but I had only one thing on my mind. There were fights and tears between us, but in the end Erin did what Dad would have done—she gave me a wedding…”
“She did?” he asked.
“Or Dad did, depends on how you look at it. When Dad died, there was a house, insurance, stuff like that. Erin guarded it for things like educations. I wasn’t interested in all that—I wanted to marry Bobby. Since there was no stopping me, she did the only thing that would make me happy. And although I knew she was miserable about it, she beamed the whole time. She wasn’t upset about it being Bobby—she loved him and his whole family—it was just our youth.
“Then Bobby came home to us as an invalid. My big sister, who I’d spent so many years resenting and resisting, was the best advocate I had. She worked her legal brain for months to get us the best benefits available from the military. You know how it is getting stuff out of the military—you have to be a bulldog—relentless. Some people just luck into things like larger base housing or CHAMPUS for off-base medical care—but most people have to wait till stuff is available and then better be first in line when it is. That takes constant energy. She made phone calls, wrote letters, and I think she even got our congressman involved. And she was the one who found the perfect care center. And my glamorous sister? She got right in there, got her hands dirty, helped to wash him, change linens, brush his teeth, put salve on his eyes…She held him and whispered to him like the rest of us. She came through in every way.”
Ian felt his throat tighten. He tried to imagine that uppity broad who came to take Marcie away getting down and dirty like that. He couldn’t even get a picture in his mind of her taking a hike out to the “loo,” as they were fond of calling it.
“That’s the three Erins?”
“No—that’s the first two. The bitchy big sister, the dominant mother figure. Then there’s the one you met—she’s a very successful attorney. Very well-put-together, makes a good living, makes her clients happy and the senior partners proud. Her main concern is still me and Drew, making sure we have whatever support we need. But she’s thirty-four and alone. There have been a few very short-term boyfriends, but we’ve all lived in the same house together since Dad died, except that little while I lived with just Bobby. Erin has no life but us. She’s given us everything. She comes off looking domineering and maybe cold and calculating, but really she’s sacrificed everything, even her personal life. She should be married or at least in love, but she spent every free second making sure we were taken care of—me with Bobby, Drew with college and then medical school—you have no idea how much energy and expense is involved in just getting into medical school. Drew couldn’t have done it without Erin, just as I wouldn’t have known what to do about Bobby without her. Really, I owe her so much. I fight her when she bosses me, but I owe her big-time.”
He lowered his lips and kissed her head. “It sounds like you do.”
“That’s why I promised to be home by Christmas,” she said. She turned her head and looke
d up at him. “I could stay here forever, but I promised. And it’s not just for Erin—Bobby’s family thinks of me as a daughter, a sister, after all we did together…”
“I know. You held up pretty good in this place—it’s hard living here.”
“It’s not too hard for me. It’s cold on the butt when nature calls. And now I carry that skillet with me everywhere I go. But I’d take my frostbitten butt to see you feed that deer out of your hand any day.”
“That deer-feeding trick would get old after a while.” He twirled a red curl around his finger. “When you decided to come up here, what did you think was going to happen?”
“Not this.” She laughed. “In fact, I’d have bet against it.”
“But what did you want?”
“Peace of mind,” she said. “For both of us. I wanted to tell you what had happened in your old world, and I wanted to know that you were all right so we could both move on with peace of mind.” She sat up and turned around, kneeling between his long legs and sitting back on her heels, facing him. “Ian, why did you do it? Why did you stay here so long without getting in touch with anyone?”
“I told you, I was camping and—”
She shook her head. “There was more to it. I understand about how you stumbled on this place and ended up staying, but did something traumatic drive you away?”
He frowned slightly. “Do you think it had to be like that? Jack told me he came up here to get some space so he could think…”
“But he went into business. He has a lot of people in his life who depend on him. It doesn’t seem like the same kind of thing. Was it Shelly? Did that whole thing about the wedding—”
“Marcie,” he said, touching her cheek. “It was everything. Too much at once. It was Fallujah and Bobby. Then it was Shelly and my father…”
“Tell me about letting Shelly go,” she said.
He glanced away, then back. “Let me ask you something—did Shelly ever call you? Visit you and Bobby? Or were you the one to make contact with her?”
“I was looking for you…” she said.
Enough of an answer. “I had suggested to Shelly in letters, before the bomb in Fallujah, that she call you. You lived in the same town. Bobby was my friend,” he said.
“But, Ian—”
“I know. But what happened to me and Bobby was one of the biggest reasons I had to take a time-out to recover. Shelly knew what had happened. She knew Bobby was an invalid and you were taking care of him. She knew you’d been to Germany and D.C. and finally home—yet she never even wrote you a letter, never called you. A girl from your town, her fiancé’s best friend, my life in the balance getting him out…” He made a face. “Marcie, I didn’t know she was that kind of person. I thought she was more the kind of person who would—”
“Ian, once we were back in Chico, I didn’t contact her again either,” Marcie pointed out. “Not until I was looking for you.”
His expression changed. “Again?” he asked.
Caught. She looked down. “Before the bomb, I called her.” She looked up. “Because you and Bobby were good friends, I thought we could get together. She was very busy. She took my number and said if she ever had any free time, she’d get in touch.”
“And she never had any free time,” he said. “She never told me that, but somehow I knew.” He inhaled and let it out slowly. “You were busy taking care of Bobby, and Shelly had a wedding to plan. The difference in that scared me. It turns out Shelly had tunnel vision—she could only see one thing. I’m not sure I was even a part of what she saw.” He ran his finger along her cheek. “You aren’t kidding—I dodged a bullet there. I didn’t fully realize it, but I knew something wasn’t right.”
“Ah,” she said. “Ah. On top of everything else. And with your father? What did your father do?”
He looked away uncomfortably, but he knew he was going to be honest with her. “Nothing he hadn’t done my whole life.” He looked back. “My dad was always tough to please. He thought pushing me would make me a man, but I was never man enough. All I ever wanted from him was a word of praise, a proud smile.”
“What about your mother?”
He smiled tenderly. “God, she was incredible. She always loved him, no matter what. And I didn’t have to do anything to make her think I was a hero. If I fell flat on my face she’d just beam and say, ‘Did you see that great routine of Ian’s? What a genius!’ When I was in that musical, she thought I was the best thing to hit Chico, but my dad asked me if I was gay.” He chuckled. “My mom was the best-natured, kindest, most generous woman who ever lived. Always positive. And faithful?” He laughed, shaking his head. “My dad could be in one of his negative moods where nothing was right—the dinner sucked, the ball game wasn’t coming in clear on the TV, the battery on the car was giving out, he hated work, the neighbors were too loud…And my mom, instead of saying, ‘Why don’t you grow the fuck up, you old turd,’ she would just say, ‘John, I bet I have something that will turn your mood around—I made a German chocolate cake.’”
Marcie smiled. “She sounds wonderful.”
“She was. Wonderful. Even while she was fighting cancer, she was so strong, so awesome that I kept thinking it was going to be all right, that she’d make it. As for my dad, he was always impossible to please, impossible to impress. I really thought I’d grown through it, you know? I got to the point real early where I finally understood that that’s just the kind of guy he was. He never beat me, he hardly even yelled at me. He didn’t get drunk, break up the furniture, miss work or—”
“But what did he do, Ian?” she asked gently.
He blinked a couple of times. “Did you know I got medals for getting Bobby out of Fallujah?”
She nodded. “He got medals, too.”
“My old man was there when I was decorated. He stood nice and tall, polite, and told everyone he knew about the medals. But he never said jack to me. Then when I told him I was getting out of the Marine Corps, he told me I was a fuckup. That I didn’t know a good thing when I had it. And he said…” He paused for a second. “He said he’d never been so ashamed of me in his whole goddamn life and if I did that—got out—I wasn’t his son.”
Instead of crumbling into tears on his behalf, she leaned against him, stroked his cheek a little and smiled. “So—he was the same guy his whole stupid life.”
Ian felt a slight, melancholy smile tug at his lips. “The same guy. One miserable son of a bitch.”
“There’s really no excuse for a guy like that,” she said. “It doesn’t cost you anything to be nice.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Really. He ought to be ashamed. Everyone has the option to be civil. Decent. I knew when I met him he was mean and ornery.”
“Next you’re going to say I won’t be free of that till I forgive him,” Ian said. “They always say, not for the person who has been horrible, but for yourself.”
“Not bloody likely, coming from me,” she said. “Now if he asked for forgiveness…”
“Hah. Not in your wildest dreams,” he said.
“I wouldn’t expect so. I met him, remember. None of what you told me surprises me.”
“Marcie, I don’t hate him, I swear to God. But I can’t see why I’d want to say, ‘I’m perfectly okay with you being the coldest SOB I’ve ever known.’ And I’m sure not looking to be around that again. What’s the point?”
She leaned forward and laid her head against his shoulder. “Hmm. Why would you? It’s not likely he’d change. Ian, there’s nothing you can do to change him. Now I understand. Now it will be all right.”
“What is it you think you understand?”
She held him close. “You were battle scarred. You’d lost your best friend, even though he was still alive—technically—a complication that probably made things even worse for you. Your relationship floundered. That happens so often after a soldier gets out of a war zone—been happening since World War I and earlier, I’m sure. Too bad th
at happened, but I don’t think you could have helped it…. You had to have a little time…”
“I know I could’ve used some help, but if anyone had offered to help me, I’d have broken his jaw,” Ian said.
“I’m sure. You probably had a lot of rage stored up at that time. Well-deserved rage. The least a person can do is try to empathize. Be patient. Your loved ones—”
“It turned out I didn’t have loved ones,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Well,” she said, lifting her head and looking into those lovely brown eyes. “You do now. And thank you—I wanted to understand what happened. That’s all I wanted, and you didn’t have to tell me, but you did.”
He pushed some of that wild red hair over her ear. “You had some fantasy about what would happen when you found me, admit it.”
“I did.” She grinned. “I tried to keep it to myself, and it didn’t include fabulous sex. I fantasized that I’d find you, tell you some things that would ease your mind and then I’d take you home.”
“Home?”
“To Chico, or wherever home is to you,” Marcie said. “A lot of your old squad checked in on Bobby, asked if I knew where you were. You’re not as alone as you think. But you’d have to go to some trouble to find them now. You went missing too long. When people think you don’t want them, they let you be.”
“Not all of them.” He laughed.
“Well, I told you—I can match you for stubborn.”
“So, tell me about this forgiveness thing you don’t get,” he prodded.
“Oh, Ian—I’m in the same spot as you. If someone did something horrible to me and never apologized or asked for forgiveness, I wouldn’t break my neck trying to forgive them. Those insurgents in Fallujah? I’m not working on loving them like brothers. If that’s what I have to do to be an okay person, I’m going to remain the baddest little carrottop on the playground.”
“What about God?”
“God understands everything. And even He made a mistake or two. Look at the size of avocado seeds—way too big. And pomegranates? Too many seeds. What a waste of fruit!”