She stumbled a step, then squared her shoulders and strode on.
Sam’s cell phone rang. Since his hands were full, pouring oil into the crankcase, he said to Craig, “Get that, would you?”
“Sure.”
Craig plucked the cell phone from the holder at Sam’s waist and punched the connect button. “Sam’s personal secretary,” he wisecracked.
Chuckling, Sam shook his head while Craig listened to the caller’s response.
Craig snatched the phone from his ear and shoved it at Sam. “It’s some mean-sounding dude,” he whispered. “Says it’s a matter of national security.”
Sam dropped the oil stick and swore when it dropped down into the engine.
“I’ll get it,” Craig offered and bumped the phone against Sam’s arm. “You better see what he wants.”
Mindful of the oil that slicked his hands, Sam gingerly lifted the phone to hold between his shoulder and ear while he pulled a rag from his back pocket. “Forrester,” he said curtly, then chuckled when he recognized Jack’s voice.
“Your timing sucks,” he said to his friend. “I’m hip-deep in a Mustang’s engine.”
He listened a moment, then caught the phone and held it closer to his ear, his amusement fading. “Say that again.”
He listened intently while Jack repeated his findings. “Are they sending in a team?” he asked.
“What do you mean, ‘That’s the good part’?” he said, in response to Jack’s reply.
He sank weakly against the Mustang, bracing his hips against the grill. “Yeah,” he said drily after Jack explained. “That’s ironic, all right. Guess I better call headquarters and find out when I’m scheduled to leave.”
“Yeah, me, too,” he said to Jack’s wish that he could go along for the ride. “But desk jockeys aren’t allowed in the field, remember?”
Smiling, he nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard that story before.”
He listened again, then shook his head. “No, I haven’t made a decision yet.” He glanced down as Craig scooted from beneath the Mustang, the oil stick in hand. Noticing the stricken look on the boy’s face, he said to Jack, “Listen. I gotta go. Appreciate your help, buddy. Next time I’m in D.C. I’ll buy you a beer.”
He disconnected the call and pushed the phone back into the holster at his waist, then extended a hand and pulled Craig to his feet.
His eyes fixed on Sam’s, Craig asked hesitantly, “You’re leaving?”
Sam dropped his chin to his chest. “Yeah. Looks that way.”
“But what about the car? You haven’t got it running yet.”
Sam heard the panic in the kid’s voice and knew it was more than the car he was worried about. He slung an arm around the boy’s shoulder. “It will be by morning. You can bank on that.”
Sam figured it was an indication of a masochistic side of his personality he wasn’t aware of, but he felt it only right that he should let Leah know that he was leaving in the morning.
Since he no longer considered it appropriate to use the key she had given him, he knocked on the kitchen door, then waited for her response.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“What do you want?” she asked curtly through the small crack she’d made in the opening.
He stuck his hands in his pockets to keep himself from shoving the door wide and shaking some sense into her. “Just wanted to let you know I’ll be leaving in the morning. I’ll strip the bed and do the laundry before I go. The keys to the apartment and the house will be on the kitchen table.”
There was a long stretch of silence in which Sam held his breath, silently praying that it was a sign that she regretted the things she’d said, might even be about to beg him to stay.
His hopes were dashed when she said, “Fine,” and closed the door in his face.
Leah knelt before her bedroom window, her gaze on the canopy below. Sam had hung lights on each of the poles supporting the covering, directing their beams on the Mustang. Though it was dark, the lights gave Leah a clear view of the canopy and the immediate area around it. But the canopy’s canvas blocked her view of Sam.
She glanced at the illuminated dial of her wristwatch and saw that it was three in the morning. She turned her gaze back to the window, unable to believe he was still outside working. She supposed when he’d told her he finished what he started, that, at least, hadn’t been a lie.
She felt the swell of tears and bit her lip, willing them back. A soldier, she thought, balling her hand into a fist against the sill. Of all the men in the world to choose from, why did she have to fall in love with a soldier?
She heard the whine of an engine cranking and held her breath, waiting for it to catch. The sound stopped, started again. Stopped, started again. When it caught, the powerful roar of the engine filled the night, then settled to a low hum.
She smiled through her tears, remembering that sound and the long nights Kevin had spent as a teenager doing exactly what Sam was doing now. Revving the engine, letting it idle to listen to the purr, revving it again. Boys and their toys, she had teased Kevin.
But Kevin had been determined to make the car run again. It was if he’d believed that in doing so he could bring their father back to life, too.
Sighing, she propped her chin on her arms on the windowsill. Their mother wasn’t the only one who’d never given up hope on their father returning home. That same hope had burned in Kevin, too.
Seven
When Leah returned home from work, her gaze settled on the two keys sitting on the center of the table. He was gone. Sam had really left her.
Feeling the swell of tears, she set her jaw and turned away, dropping her briefcase over the top of the keys to block them from sight. “Craig?” she called. “Where are you?”
“In here,” he yelled.
Prepared to deliver a lecture if he was watching television without having completed his homework assignments, she strode to the den.
She found him sitting on the floor in front of the bookcases. “What are you doing?” she asked in puzzlement as she squatted down beside him.
He lifted an opened book from his lap. Her stomach knotted when she saw that he was holding the family photo album.
“Look at this,” he said and plopped the book on his lap again to point. “It’s a picture of Dad standing beside the Mustang.”
She gulped but eased closer. She remembered when the picture was taken. It was the day Kevin had registered the Mustang and received the new set of license plates making the vehicle legal to drive. He’d spent months working on the car, putting it back in running condition and doing the repairs required to pass state inspection. His pride was obvious in the swell of his chest, the smile on his face. He’d been seventeen at the time and obsessed by the memory of a father he’d never known.
She sank down beside Craig and draped an arm along his shoulders. “You look like him,” she said softly.
He turned his head to peer at her. “You think so?”
Smiling, she brushed back his much shorter bangs from his forehead. “Yes, I do. Sometimes when I look at you, it’s like seeing him at your age.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Really? Cool.” He dropped his gaze to study the picture again. “See that?” he asked, pointing to a dent on the Mustang’s rear panel. “That’s not there anymore. Sam took it out. Used this giant suction cup. Said if it had been any deeper, a body shop would’ve had to do the work because it would require filling and sanding.”
She gulped back emotion at the mention of Sam. “Yes, I would imagine it would.”
He turned to peer at her. “He’s gone, you know.”
She swallowed hard. “Yeah, I know.”
“He left me a note.”
Pain pierced her heart at the thoughtfulness in the gesture. She wanted to ask what Sam had written in the note, if he had mentioned her, but said instead, “That’s nice.”
“He’s going to Vietnam.”
Stunned, for a mom
ent she could only stare. “How do you know where he is going?”
“Sam told me. And get this—he’s on a secret mission to recover MIAs.”
She closed her eyes, afraid if she didn’t she would shatter into a thousand pieces.
“He’s hoping he’ll find my grandfather.”
She flipped open her eyes. “Your grandfather is dead,” she said furiously.
He drew back, with a frown. “I know that. But his body was never found. That’s why he doesn’t have a grave like Grandma’s.”
She surged to her feet. “He doesn’t have a grave because your grandmother refused to accept the fact that he was dead!”
“Why are you yelling at me?” he shouted back at her. “I didn’t do anything.”
She dug her fingernails into her palms, fighting for calm, knowing Craig didn’t deserve her anger. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.”
Scowling, he slammed the book shut and shoved it back onto the shelf. “Sam was right,” he grumbled as he pushed to his feet.
When he would’ve brushed past her, she caught his arm, stopping him. “Right about what?”
He snatched his arm free. “You’re mad at everybody for dying. My dad, your dad, Grandma. You’re mad at ’em all.”
Leah couldn’t sleep that night. She kept thinking about what Craig had said.
You’re mad at everybody for dying. My dad, your dad, Grandma. You’re mad at ’em all.
She wanted to deny his statement. In fact, she had spent the last six hours attempting to do just that, if only to convince herself.
But she couldn’t deny it any longer. She was mad. At her father, her mother, her brother. Each of their deaths—in her mind, at least—had been senseless, avoidable. If her father hadn’t joined the Army, he wouldn’t have been killed. If her mother had accepted her father’s death, she never would have committed suicide. And if her mother had focused on meeting Kevin’s needs rather than infecting her son with her own obsession, Kevin wouldn’t have joined the Army and been killed in Iraq.
Whether their deaths had been avoidable or not, they were gone, and being angry with them for dying wasn’t going to bring them back. She knew that…or at least she did intellectually. It was her heart she couldn’t convince.
She heaved a sigh, thinking of all the years she had spent resenting her mother for clinging to the hope that her husband would come home someday. She had considered her mother’s obsession foolish, misguided, an emotional sickness that kept her, as well as the rest of their family, from living a normal life.
In retrospect, Leah could see that her anger wasn’t all that different from her mother’s obsession. By clinging to it, she had allowed it to control her life, her actions…and, it seemed, destroy her future.
She turned her face to the pillow, ashamed of the way she’d treated Sam. She’d said such horrible things to him, insulted his choice of career, something he obviously felt strongly about. Worse, she had let him leave without telling him she cared for him, too, that, like him, she wanted a chance to let their relationship play out, see where it took them.
And all because he was a soldier.
With a groan, she rolled to her back and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes as her mind circled back to the source of the problem: Sam’s chosen career.
It didn’t matter how much she cared for him. She couldn’t live the life of a soldier’s wife. The fear, the worry, the loneliness. She hated the military. It was the military that had destroyed her family, cutting huge chunks out of her heart, her life.
No, she’d been right in letting Sam leave without sharing her feelings with him or asking him to stay. If she had, she would’ve only been postponing the inevitable. She could never become seriously involved with a soldier and she certainly could never marry one. How could she when she knew that would mean living her life in fear of having what was left of her heart ripped from her chest?
She rolled from the bed. But she could do something for him, she told herself as she tugged on her robe. She could return at least a part of the kindness he’d shown her. She could help him keep his promise to Mack.
She didn’t know if the piece of paper he’d mentioned existed, but she knew where to look.
Leah stood in the doorway of the attic, staring at the tower of mismatched boxes that lined one wall. The sight alone was enough to make her skin crawl, as they represented her mother’s obsession. Crammed inside the boxes was every document, report or newspaper clipping printed about the POWs and MIAs from the Vietnam war. Pictures and souvenirs her father had sent home. The hundreds of letters he’d written to her mother.
After her mother’s death, she’d intended to throw the entire mess away, had even carried one load to the curb for the garbage service to pick up. But when she’d returned with the second, she’d discovered she couldn’t do it, couldn’t throw her mother’s dreams away. So she’d loaded up the boxes and brought them to her home to store in her attic.
And there they’d remained, undisturbed for the past six years.
She had never opened the boxes, never had a desire to explore their contents. She knew what was inside. Throughout her life she had watched her mother build her stash, filling box after box with her dreams, her hopes. Sometimes she’d find her mother sifting through the contents, tears streaming down her face; at others she’d be digging through them with a frenetic frenzy, as if the key to locating her husband was buried inside and she had only to find it.
Taking a bracing breath, Leah forced herself to approach the wall of boxes and scanned the scrawled words on their fronts until she found the one marked Letters. She carried the box to the center of the room and knelt down, placing it on the floor in front of her and folding back the flaps.
She balled her hand into a fist to still her fingers’ trembling, then reached inside and pulled out a handful of envelopes. Giving in to her need for order, she sat down and, using her lap for a desk, began to sort them by the postal dates stamped on the front. She tensed when her own name seemed to leap at her from the front of an envelope. Unlike the other letters, where the addresses were written in cursive, this one was penned in a first-grader’s print, each letter standing alone. She blinked back tears, knowing that he’d written it that way especially for her.
Anxious to read what he’d written, she dashed the tears away and pulled out the single page tucked inside.
Hi, pumpkin!
How’s my little girl doing today? Daddy sure misses you. I hope you’re taking good care of Mommy. I really liked the picture you drew of her. Her belly is really getting big! I’ll bet you grow up to be an artist someday.
Mommy tells me you don’t want a little sister, only a little brother. Well, I hate to tell you this, pumpkin, but you don’t get to choose. God decides whether our baby will be a boy or a girl. Since He knows best, we’ll love whatever He sends us. Right?
Every night before I go to sleep I pull out the picture of you and Mommy I carry in my pocket and tell you good night. Do you hear me when I say it? I hear you saying it back to me. And when I put the picture against my cheek I can feel your sweet good-night kisses.
I bet you’ve grown a foot since I saw you last. Tell Mommy to put a rock on your head so that you won’t grow any more, okay?
You be a good girl and take care of Mommy for me. I miss you, baby, and I can’t wait to see you again.
Love,
Daddy
Choked by tears, Leah stared at the words he’d written, sensing his loneliness, overwhelmed by the love that all but poured from the page. Pressing the letter against her heart, she closed her eyes, trying to draw an image of him in her mind. She had no memories to pull from, only the photographs her mother had kept scattered around their home. She was too young to recall the things he’d mentioned in the letter—kissing him good-night, him calling her “pumpkin.” But it was obvious that he’d remembered and had treasured those memories while he’d been away, in order to keep her close to his heart.
Guilt seized her, a shame that sliced to the marrow of her bones. He’d clung to her memory while she’d done everything humanly possible to block his.
Not any longer, she told herself and scooped up the letters, stuffed them back into the box. Lifting it, she stood and stumbled her way downstairs, then returned for the box of pictures and souvenirs.
Her movements were frantic as she pulled item after item from the boxes, determined to get to know the man she’d spent a lifetime shunning.
“Aunt Leah?”
She jumped at the sound of Craig’s voice, then called, “In here!” and went back to her sorting.
“Are you sick or something?”
She glanced up and saw the concern in his eyes. “No, sweetheart. I’m fine. Why?”
“It’s almost noon and you’ve still got on your pajamas.”
She looked down and sputtered a laugh, not realizing until that moment that she’d never bothered to get dressed. From the moment she’d hauled the last box to her den she had thought of nothing else but the box’s contents.
She cleared a spot on the carpet. “Come and help me.”
He dropped down beside her. “What are you doing?”
“Getting to know my father.”
He looked at her warily. “Are you sure you’re not sick?”
Laughing, she gave him a hug. “No. I’m perfectly fine. In fact, I’ve never felt better.”
“If you say so,” he said doubtfully.
She picked up a pile of letters and dumped them in his lap. “We’re on a treasure hunt,” she told him and picked up another stack for herself to examine.
“Treasure?”
“Yes. A torn piece of paper. I don’t know what it looks like or what it is exactly, but I know it’s got to be here somewhere.”
“A torn piece of paper,” he repeated doubtfully.
“Yes. Sam told me about it. That’s why he came here. To find it.”
He picked up an envelope from those scattered on his lap. “Is the piece of paper a clue or something he needs to find the MIAs in Vietnam?”
A Piece of Texas Trilogy Page 38