by Julia London
“Hey, pal,” the bartender said sternly as more people turned to look. “Keep your voice down and be nice to the lady.”
“You talking to me?” Finn asked, squinting at the bartender. “Aren’t I your hero anymore?”
“Look, I’m all for giving a soldier a break,” the bartender said, and picked up the two whiskey neats he’d put down on the bar. “But I’m gonna have to cut you off. You’ve had too much.”
“Says who?” Finn demanded, suddenly very angry, the force of it surprising him. “I don’t give a damn what you think. I want that whiskey.”
“You’re not getting it,” the bartender said evenly. “You need to go on now.”
“You think you’re man enough to make me?” Finn snarled.
The bartender sighed. “Come on, Sergeant Lockhart. Don’t embarrass yourself. Why don’t you get up and go home, huh? Is there someone you want me to call?”
Finn laughed and turned his head to say something to Kristen, but she was gone. Macy was watching him, as were half the people in the bar. Finn turned back to the bartender. “What are you waiting on?” he demanded. “Give me the damn drink!”
The bartender shook his head and started to turn away, but Finn was drunk and angry enough to be stupid. He lunged across the bar and caught the bartender’s shirt with his fingers, startling the man. “I’m not kidding around here, dude. Give a hero a damn drink.”
The bartender threw him off and from somewhere—Finn never saw them or sensed them—a couple of guys grabbed him. Finn snapped. The rage that had been simmering just beneath the surface seemed to break, and he swung wildly with it. He connected with a chin, he thought, and swung again, and people started shouting.
Whoever Finn hit swung back, and the force of the punch sent Finn and the other guy who’d attacked him tumbling over a table.
Finn kicked and swung his arms, but he was too drunk to fight well and was quickly thrown up against the door of the bar. He saw his attackers then—a couple of bouncers—and wanted to throw himself on them and let them beat the piss out of him. That would make him feel better than he’d felt the last several days.
But he was stopped by Macy’s sudden appearance. “Finn!” she cried, grabbing his head and forcing his gaze down so he would look at her. “What are you doing? Are you insane?”
He was. He was insane with crazy anger and despair. He couldn’t even find the words to answer her. He sucked in air, felt a jolt of pain through his jaw. He had no idea what he was doing; he just wanted to feel human again, to feel something other than disappointment.
“If you don’t get him out of here, I’m calling the cops,” the bartender threatened from somewhere behind Macy. “I don’t want to do that because he’s obviously been through a lot, but I’m not going to have him coming in here wrecking my place.”
“We’re leaving,” Macy said, her eyes never leaving Finn’s. “Right now.”
“Macy, you can’t go with him! He’s acting crazy!”
Finn recognized Emma’s voice. She sounded afraid of him. “Emmie,” he said thickly. Emmie, Emmie, it’s me, it’s Finn!
“He’s fine,” Macy said resolutely. “He just needs to regroup.”
“He needs to sober up,” someone said. “He probably learned to drink like that over there.”
Oh yeah, right, as if alcohol was easy to find in a Muslim country and the Taliban were kind enough to let him drink even if it was.
“He knows he needs to sober up,” Macy said coolly. She draped Finn’s listless arm over her shoulders. She dabbed at his nose with a cocktail napkin, which was surprisingly painful. He glanced down and noticed blood all over his shirt.
“Macy, please don’t leave with him,” Emma said again. “He could go off.”
Finn saw the flash of anger in Macy’s eyes. She turned away from him. “For God’s sake, Emma! This is Finn! He’s not going to go off, and even if he does, he would never lift a finger to me. You know that. Stop making him sound like a monster,” she said heatedly as she dug through her purse. “Here are my keys,” she said, shoving them at Emma.
“Wait!” Emma cried. “What are you going to do? How will you get back to Laru’s?”
“I am going to take his truck,” she said. “And he is going to sleep this off!”
The door abruptly opened at his back and Finn stumbled through, Macy at his side. Her strength was surprising—she kept him from falling flat on his ass and somehow managed to move him down the street, away from the bar.
The night was warm and the air heavy, weighing down on him and the various parts of his body that were beginning to ache from the fight. The fog in his brain was beginning to lift a little, thanks to the dose of adrenaline that had pumped through his veins.
“Of all the dumbass things you’ve done, this has to take the cake,” Macy snapped as she marched him down the sidewalk. “Are you insane?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“You could be in jail right now,” she chided him as she looked back toward the bar.
“How could you laugh?” he asked thickly.
“What? I’m not laughing! Do you see me laughing?”
“In the bar,” he tried to clarify. “You were laughing,” he said, and in a lame attempt to demonstrate, he leaned back, did his best ha ha ha, and almost fell over.
“Do you mean with Emma and Chloe? God, Finn, I wasn’t laughing. I was being polite! I can’t even tell you what they were saying. Jesus, how did you get so damn drunk?”
Finn couldn’t help but grin at that. “Kind of surprised me, too, to be honest.”
Macy sighed irritably and looked around. “Where is your truck? There it is,” she said, and grabbed his arm, pulling him along.
“Wait—where are we going?”
“To your mom’s.”
“God, no, Macy, no,” Finn said, shaking his head enough to make himself dizzy. “Have a heart. Anywhere but there.”
She sighed and peered at him curiously. Her gaze softened; she pushed the hair from his eyes. “I should kick your ass, you know that?”
“Someone beat you to it,” he said with a wince.
She held up her hand, palm up. “Keys.”
“Baby, you know I’m not going to let you drive my truck—”
She suddenly thrust her hand in his jeans pocket, and when she didn’t find them there, she thrust her hand into the other pocket. Swaying a little, Finn held out his arms and let her. Macy pulled the keys from his pocket and dangled them in front of his face. “Get in,” she said. “And if you even think about arguing, I will pick up where the bouncers left off and finish you, Lockhart. You are in no condition to drive.” When Finn didn’t move immediately, she shoved him toward the passenger door.
22
Macy had never been as mad at Finn as she was driving that old truck down Cedar Creek Road. Drunk and fighting? What next, a night in jail? She glared at him.
Finn winced a little. “I know that look,” he said, and slid further down in his seat. “Where are we going?”
“Someplace where you can sober up,” she said curtly, and turned onto a gravel-packed road.
He looked up and saw the direction they were heading. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to go to Two Wishes. Turn around, Macy. Go someplace else, I don’t care where—just not there.”
She ignored him.
“Turn the damn truck around!” he shouted.
“Hush,” she said. “I can’t take you home with me and I can’t take you home to your mother, although that would serve you right, having to listen to Karen go on about you being drunk and disorderly. But even as mad as I am, I won’t do that to you. So there is only one place I know to take you.”
“Just take me home then. I’ll deal with Mom. I’m fine, anyway,” he said petulantly. “Nothing can knock a good drunk out of a man like a couple of fists.”
“You’re not fine, you’re a mess!” She punched the gas; the truck bounced over another bump
in the road and Finn groaned. She careened around the corner, coming to an abrupt halt outside the gate of the Two Wishes Ranch, the headlights pointing directly at the huge FOR SALE sign on the fence. Macy was out of the truck before Finn could even reach for the handle. She wrestled with the heavy chain that attached the metal gate to the fence post, and when she’d unlashed the gate, she pushed it back against the fence, cursing that the dirt was ruining her sandals.
She returned to the truck in the glare of headlights, climbed into the driver’s seat, put the truck in gear, and started down the gravel road to the old house. The road was pitted from early summer rains, and the truck dipped and bounced over it. By the time they reached the house, Macy felt exhausted. She killed the motor and the lights and sagged back in the seat, looking out the front windshield at the summer night.
It was lit by a full moon and sprinkled with stars, and it was one of the many things about the ranch that Macy missed. Out here, the stars were so big and clear that a person could almost believe she could reach up and touch them. It was a spectacular summer view, particularly on a night like tonight with the smell of honeysuckle and roses filling the air. Finn had planted a pair of rosebushes on either side of the front door when they’d first married, and those bushes had grown wild, both sagging under the weight of so many pink blooms.
“Now what?” Finn asked.
Macy’s answer was to get out of the truck. She walked around to the front bumper and leaned against it. There was no electricity out here now, but the full moon bathed everything in a soft, silver light. She hadn’t been out here in months. It was too painful; this place held her best and worst memories, and in the last few months, the worst overshadowed the best. When she looked at the house, she thought of the officers driving up, of those endless days after she’d been told that Finn had been killed.
Finn appeared on her right and leaned up against the grill alongside her, propping one boot on the bumper. “Next time I take to drinking whiskey, shoot me, will you?” he said, and rubbed his forehead a moment. He looked up, sighed, and shoved his hands into his jeans. “Nice night.”
“Beautiful night,” she agreed.
“Know what’s funny? There aren’t nights like this in Afghanistan.”
“Really? What sort of nights are there in Afghanistan?” she asked cautiously. The army had said not to push his memories of the war or captivity, but to allow Finn to come to them naturally.
He didn’t answer straightaway. “Long,” he said at last. “And cold as hell.”
She looked at him. He had sobered, although he was standing a little crooked. He glanced down at her, his brown eyes black in the moonlight. There was something else in them, too, a painful distance, and Macy suddenly needed to know what had happened to him, how he’d managed to survive, to come back to her. “What was it like?”
He snorted and looked up at the sky. His body tensed; he folded his arms tightly across his body. “Nothing I’d want you to know,” he said quietly.
“I want to know,” she said. “I need to know.”
“Why?” Finn asked, looking at her curiously.
“Because I love you. That’s why.”
He smiled wryly. “You know, I used to dream I’d hear you say those words to me. The first time, I was lying on a gurney and I heard you whisper in my ear that you loved me. It woke me up. Weird, huh?”
“Not at all,” she said, and touched her fingers to his waist. “I used to hear your voice, too. Once, when I was riding Fannie,” she said, referring to his best cutting horse, “I heard you say, Ease up, Macy, before you snap the poor girl’s neck. I actually thought I heard you say it and I turned around, expecting to find you behind me, surprising me with an unscheduled visit home.” She laughed at her own wishful thinking. Finn had taught her how to ride. Or had tried. Macy was a horrible rider. She would cling to the pommel while he trotted in circles around her. “It’s okay, she’s not going to hurt you,” he’d say.
“She might throw me,” Macy would insist.
“Not unless you choke up on the reins or hit her flank too hard. Ease up, Macy. Pretend she’s one of those little kids you help.”
Macy would laugh at that. “Not exactly easy to make that leap.”
“Try,” he’d urge her.
She looked at him now. “I guess you told me to ease up so many times that my mind heard it as clear as if you were standing there.”
Finn gave her a fond smile. “Did you ease up?”
Macy laughed. “I think so.”
“I bet you didn’t,” he said. “I bet you thought you were giving her some slack, but you were clinging to her as tight as a new pair of jeans.” He chuckled softly. “You are so good at most everything you do, but when it came to riding, you were just about the worst I ever saw.”
“Hey!” Macy cried, laughing.
“It’s true, baby.” He smiled, folded one arm over his chest, and looked down. “I heard your voice clear as a bell that day. I woke up in a gray room on a gurney. I looked down and saw dirty sheets and a lot of blood, and an IV hooked up to my arm. Then I looked to my right—and right into the barrel of an assault rifle.”
“Oh my God!” Macy exclaimed.
“I guess I knew that I’d been operated on, but I didn’t know if it was to kill me or to heal me, and I remember being so…” He paused and looked away a minute. “So scared,” he said, his voice breaking.
Macy’s heart began to ache. She slipped her hand into his. “That must have been so frightening. Thank God they kept you alive.”
“Only because they thought they’d get something out of it. They had a little guy named Tariq who spoke some English. He’d say, Please, Mister America, you know where the enemy goes, please,” Finn said, mimicking him. “But I wouldn’t tell them anything. And though they tried, there was nothing they could do to me that made me hurt any worse than I was already hurting.”
Those words made Macy feel ill.
“It didn’t go on forever,” he said reassuringly. “After a few days passed, even they knew whatever they thought they could get out of me had gone stale.” He spoke so casually.
“What…what happened then?”
“Then? I don’t think they’d intended for me to live. But I can be kind of ornery, and I wasn’t going down that easy.”
Macy squeezed his hand. It seemed a ridiculous gesture, but the only thing she knew to do.
He told her about living in hovels and rooms carved into the sides of hills in and around Kabul as he was moved around to avoid detection. He said that for weeks, he was certain the army was coming for him, because they would never leave one of their own behind. But he finally realized, as time passed, that they had to believe he was dead. His dog tags were gone, he sensed no urgency from the warlords who tossed him between each other like a hacky sack, and time was passing. Finn knew, he said, because he counted every moment.
Macy tried to imagine the fear once that gut-wrenching realization set in, but she couldn’t fathom it.
“Once I realized they weren’t coming for me, I was a maniac,” he said with a lopsided smile. “I tried everything I could think of to get out of that hellhole.” He described escape attempts that inevitably ended in beatings, or worse. He was heavily guarded and routinely beaten and Tariq, the little guy who had spoken to him the first day, told him in broken English that there was a debate among the warlords whether or not to kill him. “I figured I was in the middle of some power struggle,” he said, shoving one hand through his hair. “But I knew I was near Kabul, and if I could manage to escape, I had a reasonable chance of making it to safety.”
“You were right,” Macy said.
Finn shrugged. “Sort of. I’ve never told anyone this, Macy. I had a duty to escape. And I had an opportunity about a year ago, and I choked.”
“Choked? What do you mean?”
He avoided her gaze. “Just that—I choked. I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t run. I’m no hero. I had a duty to escape and I could
n’t do it.”
Macy listened, spellbound, as he told her that the warlord who usually held him ignored him, but his young son was fascinated by Finn. “Nasir was his name. I think he was about three or so when I first saw him. They’d leave me in a bare room with an open door most days, but with one leg chained to the wall. Nasir started coming around with the woman in the chadari who brought my meals. When the weather warmed, the kid would play in the central courtyard and I’d watch him. About the same time, a stray dog showed up. The old mutt was starving and I would feed him some of the food I’d hidden away.”
Macy could believe that, given his extraordinary affinity for animals. He’d talked a little about that stray while they were in Washington.
“That boy saw the dog, and that was it,” Finn said with a small smile. He said the boy began to venture closer to the dog and Finn. It wasn’t long before Finn had befriended Nasir and began to teach him words in English. Doggie, of course. Foot, because Finn said he was barefoot for much of his captivity.
“I’m glad you had something,” Macy said. “I know that sounds stupid, but at least you had a dog and a boy—”
“Yeah, well, Nasir is the reason I couldn’t escape,” he said, almost bitterly. He told Macy that a couple of times, he would hear gunfighting nearby and assumed it was Coalition forces closing in on the Taliban. He’d been in the same place about ten months when the gunfighting was on top of them. The woman in the chadari hurried out one morning to unlock his chains; Finn supposed it was because they meant to move him quickly. “I had my chance,” he said. “A missile hit and took the door and wall from the courtyard and started a fire in half of the house. So I took off. But when I was crossing that courtyard, I saw Nasir. His mother was in that fire, and he was trying to run inside to get her.” He swallowed. “He was terrified, Macy. He was screaming for her and wailing like you have never heard a child wail. The fight was moving closer, and I…I had a choice. I could run and save my life and know that Nasir would probably lose his, or I could save his life and lose my chance to escape, maybe even my life. I only had a moment to decide, but I…I just couldn’t let that boy die.”