The Marine (Semper Fi; Marine)

by Cheryl Reavis

  They stared at each other until Sandra Kay suddenly smiled. “I was a handful, wasn’t I?”

  “You were far worse than that.”

  “Have . . . you heard from Josh?” Sandra Kay asked after a moment.

  “Not lately.”

  “Shouldn’t you have?”

  “He’s in a war. We’ll hear when we hear and even then, it might not be the truth. I understand they don’t always tell families how bad things really are.”

  “I worry about him.”

  “Sandra Kay—”

  “Grace, I know you don’t want me here—there’s no reason why you should. I know I don’t deserve anybody’s charity, especially yours, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t have any place to go, Grace!” She put her face into her hands suddenly, but whether or not she was crying, Grace couldn’t tell. After a moment she took her hands away and let them fall into her lap. “I need help. From you, of all people. Some irony, huh? But here I am—desperate. I’ll even beg if I have to.”

  “Where have you been staying?”

  “My car. I’m down to my last five bucks.”

  Grace waited, expecting Sandra Kay to point out that her mother had taken Grace in when she needed it and that the repayment for that generosity was coming due.

  But she didn’t. She sat there on the swing, looking like she’d barely survived being pulled through a keyhole backwards. She brushed her hair back from her face. Her hands trembled slightly.

  “Have you eaten lately?” Grace asked.

  “I’m fine. I’m not hungry, Grace. I’m living in a damn car. I thought maybe I could stay at the beach house for a while—between fishermen. I know you might not want me here.”

  “No, I don’t,” Grace said truthfully. “Just . . . wait here while I talk to the girls about this.” She went back inside and called Allison and Lisa downstairs.

  “What?” Lisa asked, for once ahead of her sister with the questions. She had her cell phone in her hand.

  “Tell Joe-B you can’t talk now. We’re having a family meeting.”

  “About what?”

  “Sandra Kay.”

  Both daughters looked at each other, and Lisa quickly ended her call.

  “Here’s the deal,” Grace said when they were all seated around the table. “She says she’s homeless—”

  “You mean like a street person?” Allison asked, taking ever-in-motion Elizabeth into her lap. Briefly.

  “She says she’s been living in her car. She’s asked for my help. The way I see it, I have several options. I can ignore her. I can give her some money and show her the door. I can let her stay here. Or I can offer her the beach house. But if I do, we won’t have that income anymore. That means we’d all have to cut back on the extras.”

  “What kind of extras?” Lisa asked.

  “I don’t know . . . cable TV, for starters.”

  “But not the internet,” Allison said. “We have to have that for Josh and for school.”

  “No, not the internet. Your allowances would have to be cut. Every other week instead of weekly, maybe. And we wouldn’t be eating out much, if at all.”

  “Why are we talking about doing any of this if you’re mad at her?” Lisa asked.

  “I’m not mad at her.”

  “You could have fooled us, Mom.”

  “Well,” Allison said. “She is family. About all we know for sure we’ve got, actually.”

  “She’s also a pain in the butt,” Grace said. “And she’s an alcoholic.”

  “She’s Elizabeth’s grandmother, too, probably,” Allison said. “I kind of like her. So . . . whatever you say is okay with me. She can be here or if she’s at the beach house, I can do without stuff.”

  “Lisa?” Grace said.

  “Are we ever going to get to know what she did?”

  “I’ll tell them now, Grace,” Sandra Kay said from the doorway. “If that’s all right. Maybe they should know before they decide.”

  “All right, then,” Grace said after a moment. “I’ll leave you to it.” She picked up Elizabeth and left the dining room, taking her out onto the porch to toddle around.

  The family meeting continued in the dining room for a long time—as did Elizabeth’s fascination with learning how to climb stairs. Grace’s back had begun to ache by the time the front door finally opened.

  “Your daughters drive a hard bargain,” Sandra Kay said as she stepped outside.

  “Do they?”

  “They’re very protective of you. And Elizabeth. Josh doesn’t want Angie around her because she’s a drunk, and as far as they’re concerned, that goes for me, too. If I fall off the wagon anywhere around Elizabeth, it is all over for me.”

  “I see. And?”

  “And . . . I can live with that, if you agree, too, that is. I’m going to AA meetings. I should be able to get more job interviews if I have an address. I’m a good waitress, you know. I don’t think I’ll have much trouble finding something.”

  “You’re planning on staying around here, then.”

  “I thought I would, at least until Josh gets back. I . . . want to see him again.”

  “You told the girls about the birth certificate,” Grace said, just to make sure.

  “I told them. I think they were . . . relieved, if anything. They knew something was wrong between you and Trent. What I did was bad, but not as bad as whatever they’d conjured up. Grace, I’d rather be at the beach house. It’s better that way—for us both. We’re bound to . . . disagree, and it wouldn’t be good for them or for the baby. I’ll pay you rent as soon as I’m working. My God,” she said abruptly. “Elizabeth is so beautiful, isn’t she?”

  “Mom?” Allison said from the doorway. “I forgot something else. There’s a letter from Josh’s lawyer.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “I DON’T HAVE MUCH time, Allison. What did it say?”

  “I don’t know,” Allison said, staring at the jumpy, blurred-edge webcam image on the computer screen. “Mom said it wasn’t addressed to her. She said she’d forward it to you.”

  “No, tell her to go ahead and open it. It’s probably the DNA results.”

  “That’s what we thought. Sandra Kay said we didn’t have to open it. She said you look too much like your father to need any tests. You’ve got his dimples or something.”

  When Josh didn’t say anything, Allison realized she must have put her foot in it. She gave a quiet sigh and decided to put the other one in too, while she was at it.

  “She’s going to AA.”

  “Who, Sandra Kay?”

  “Well, she’s going, too. But I was talking about Angie. Sergeant Kinlaw told me she was getting help. I thought I’d ask him about her, in case you ever wanted to know . . . anything.”

  He still didn’t comment.

  “It could help, right?” Allison said, blundering on. “Going to the AA meetings?”

  “That’s . . . the rumor,” Josh said.

  “She’s got a job.”

  “Angie?”

  “No, Sandra Kay. She’s working at Hooter’s.”

  “Say again?” Josh said.

  “She’s working at Hooter’s,” Allison repeated, and she watched the screen as the delay in her transmission caught up with him and he laughed.

  “Well . . . why not?” he said.

  “No, I was just kidding. It’s a seafood restaurant. I’m glad you’re back from . . . wherever. I was sort of worried.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” he said with a laugh.

  She didn’t know which he meant—that he was glad to be back or that he’d been worried, but she didn’t ask. She had recognized the smoke screen laugh he’d given when he said it. She’
d heard it more than once, though usually it came from one of the Marines who was facing yet another deployment or another round of surgery.

  Josh suddenly looked over his shoulder as if somebody was hurrying him.

  “If you can hold on a second, I’ll run really fast and get Elizabeth—and Mom,” she said.

  “No, that’s okay. I don’t want to wake them up. I’ve got to go. Thanks for the walking pictures and thanks for staying up so late.”

  “Josh . . .” She wanted to tell him that she couldn’t sleep and she had sneaked downstairs to play on the computer. She’d only just read his email about being on the webcam and there’d been no time to wake anybody up.

  “Got to go, Allison. Tell everybody I checked in and I’m still kicking.”

  “I will. We miss you—”

  “Okay, then,” he interrupted because of the delay. “Be good.”

  His image faded, and Allison sat staring at the empty screen. “If he’s all right, how come I don’t feel any better?” she whispered.

  But then she said, “Because he’s still over there,” in answer to her own question. The best she could hope for was that he felt better. She had promised him she would let him know what was happening here, the good and the bad, and not hold anything back, and so far she’d kept her word. She’d even told him about going to the bar to see Sergeant Kinlaw. He’d had a lot more to say about that than her mother had. And she’d told him about Sandra Kay moving into the beach house, though he didn’t have anything to say about that. She didn’t worry him with every little thing, though. She didn’t tell him that she thought Sergeant Kinlaw and her mother liked each other. They liked each other, and they weren’t doing anything about it.

  Allison looked at the clock on the computer. It was much too late to wake her mother and Lisa or to call Sergeant Kinlaw and tell them she’d talked to Josh.

  GRACE PUT ELIZABETH in the jogging stroller and headed out for her morning physical training because she’d promised Josh she wouldn’t backslide and because she’d actually progressed to the point where she didn’t completely hate it. The reason she didn’t hate it, however, had less to do with her improved physical stamina and longevity and more to do with the fact that Josh had been telling the truth when he said that the sessions would give her an essentially uninterrupted opportunity to think. She was getting a late start this morning because of the good news about Josh. She was so relieved that Allison had been able to see and talk to him—and a little miffed that she hadn’t awakened her. But Grace felt chipper enough to spend at least part of today’s physical training ritual considering Sandra Kay. Miraculously, Sandra Kay had started paying rent. She had a job, and even Grace had to admit she was trying. They were all trying, and for the most part, their fragile, patched-up family situation was actually working—so far. If anyone had asked, Grace would have had to say that Josh was ultimately the reason. Whatever animosity she felt toward Sandra Kay—and vice versa—they were both apparently willing to work around it for his peace of mind while he was deployed, and for Elizabeth.

  But somewhere along the jogging stroller route, she had a revelation, the kind Josh had assured her could happen. Two of them, actually. She suddenly realized that it had been as much Trent’s responsibility to ask pertinent questions regarding the state of their marriage as it had been hers. More so, even, because of his encounter with Sandra Kay. And the second epiphany was even more significant. Her behavior when she and Sandra Kay had been children, fear-driven though it had been, may have endeared her to Aunt Barbara, but it exacerbated Sandra Kay’s resentment. Grace by no means felt responsible for her cousin’s messed up life, but she hadn’t been entirely blameless, either. Grace had been trying to survive, and it had simply never occurred to her that Sandra Kay would see her as someone who was trying her best to insinuate herself into Sandra Kay’s rightful place.

  The trouble with epiphanies, however, was that she could no longer hide in a convenient storm of emotional confusion. The skies had cleared, and things needed to be done. Like going to look for Joseph Kinlaw.

  “You know what?” she suddenly said to Elizabeth. “We’ve got other fish to fry—metaphorically speaking, of course.”

  There was only one thing she wanted at the moment. She picked up the pace as she backtracked to the house, and when she got there, she dragged the stroller and Elizabeth inside, wrote a note for the girls, and then she and the baby left again.

  “I just want to see how he is,” she told Elizabeth as she buckled her into her car seat. She could do that. It would be a perfectly acceptable thing, because theirs was a no frills, no strings kind of relationship—or so she told herself, and despite her self-imposed ground rules, she’d had very legitimate excuses for not being able to see him before now. She’d had to deal with Josh’s lawyer and social worker visits and Elizabeth’s clinic appointments and school functions she’d agreed to participate in weeks earlier. But, it was also true that after she and Joseph Kinlaw had made love, she had lost what little bit of daring-do she’d had. Clearly, she could answer the call of the wild given the right emotional circumstances; she just didn’t know how to deal with the guilty-for-not-feeling-guilty aftermath.

  “Bye-bye,” Elizabeth said, waving at the porch where either Allison or Lisa usually stood waving back whenever Grace took her someplace.

  The drive to the pier was long enough to give Grace ample opportunity to change her mind about going, if she’d been so inclined, but she had wasted enough time already. Yes, there had been the whirlwind of things to deal with in the wake of Josh’s departure, but the rest of the time—time she could have spent with Joseph Kinlaw—she’d been doing exactly what he had expected her to do. Beating herself up.

  But that was going to stop.

  There were only a few pier rats casting their lines by the time she got there, early Saturday morning or not. There was plenty of room at the railing, but Kinlaw wasn’t in his usual spot.

  “How’s the fishing?” she said in response to one of the regulars who spoke to her as she carried Elizabeth onto the pier.

  “Lousy,” he said. “That’s Josh Caven’s baby girl you’ve got there, right? Cute little thing. I don’t think I ever saw him without her. I bet she misses her daddy.”

  “Yes. You haven’t seen Joseph Kinlaw this morning, have you?”

  “He was here, but I don’t know where he got to. Maybe he gave up and went home.”

  “Thanks,” Grace said. Unfortunately, in their kind of no-anything relationship, he could be anywhere.

  There was no point in staying. She walked out on the pier with Elizabeth for a short distance then turned around and headed back toward the shore. By the time Grace reached the beach, Elizabeth was fretting to get down, and after a moment, Grace let her stand on the sand and attempt her toddling skills on this new and fascinating terrain.

  “Uh-oh,” Grace said, catching her by the back of her shirt when she would have fallen. “Your wheels won’t run on this, will they?”

  She bent slightly to let Elizabeth hold on to both her fingers and soldier on, but their progress was slow because of the tire ruts in the sand—the only place Elizabeth wanted to walk—and because Elizabeth kept spotting tiny, barely visible things she wanted to pick up, most of which weren’t at all suitable for a baby. For a time they played tag with the ocean, with Grace swinging her above the waves as they rolled in and backing quickly away to keep from being overtaken. In the middle of one swoop and twirl, she realized that Kinlaw was standing not far away.

  “I think I’ve figured out what our problem is,” he said as he walked towards her. She tried to recover and set Elizabeth on the sand out of harm’s way.

  “Me, too,” she said. “I get my stage fright after the recital.”

  “You know I don’t have a clue what that means, right?”

  “Yes,” she sai
d, and she looked at him then, looked into his eyes.

  Looked.

  “What you’re doing right now is part of it,” he said.

  “What?” she asked, catching Elizabeth’s shirt, but not in time to keep her from plopping down on the sand.

  “You always look at me like you’re glad to see me. But you also look like it breaks your heart. And I don’t know what to do about that. Go away, stay, what?”

  She didn’t say anything, busying herself with wiping the sand off Elizabeth’s bottom.

  “The thing is, Grace, you make me . . . happy,” he said. “Happy to see you, talk to you, make love with you. I didn’t expect this to happen to me. You are the most . . .”

  “I’m scared, Joseph,” she interrupted before he could tell her what she was. “You make me happy, too, and you really, really scare me. I don’t mean things like motorcycle rides. I mean you. I need to play it safe, and I don’t know anything about you. The truth is, I’m afraid to know.”

  “My past isn’t as scary as you might think, Grace.”

  “It might be, to somebody like me.”

  “You can ask me whatever you want to know. I won’t hide anything from you.”

  Elizabeth managed to toddle the distance to him and hang on to his pant leg.

  “Okay, we might as well get it all out there,” he said, picking Elizabeth up. “Do you remember when I told you Joe-B was carrying a torch for Lisa?”

  “Yes.”

  His shirt pocket rang, much to Elizabeth’s delight, stopped, then rang again.

  “I better take this,” he said, handing Elizabeth back to her.

  She walked a little way down the beach while he answered his phone. She glanced at him from time to time, wondering what he’d been about to say. He was listening more than talking, his back turned to her. But when the call ended and he turned around, he had his Marine face on.

  “That was Allison,” he said without prelude. “She wanted me to look for you.”

  “Why? I’ve got my cell phone.”