The Colonel

by Beau North

  “We aren’t even supposed to be here.” He couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he looked down at her. “We’re crashers,” he whispered.

  “Shhh. They don’t know that!”

  She gave the father of the bride a dazzling smile and a slight wave. He returned the wave good-naturedly if a tad befuddled. Richard shook his head with a chuckle. It had been a month since that fateful day at the pier—the day he saved her life. The day she saved his life.

  The packet of papers in his room had been put away. For safekeeping, or so he told himself. Every day he thought of it less and less—and her more and more. He’d been relieved when his last job had ended, freeing up his days to spend with her. She was spending the summer with her aunt and uncle, “a reprieve from four sisters and a loony mother,” she’d told him, laughing. Always laughing.

  He didn’t have to worry about money, at least. He had saved up a tidy sum in the months he’d been back, and he could always dip into his accounts if needed. Thanks to Darcy, he had an ocean of wealth sitting untouched and waiting.

  He liked that she didn’t know about that part of his life. The rich boy. The admiral’s son. To her, he wasn’t the disappointment he’d been to his father or the rake he’d been to countless women before the war. She only asked him about his family the one time. After that, she never asked again. If his lack of a past ever bothered her, she didn’t let it show.

  Richard wondered whether he might be falling in love and found that he liked the idea. He’d never been in love before. She was intelligent and kind, funny and lovely in an artless way. His only reservation was the eight-year difference in their ages. She was only nineteen, full of the joyous vivacity that time and war had long since sapped from him. He found himself thinking on more than one occasion that there had to be something else out there for her, someone pure and unsullied by violence and death.

  “You’re in a brown study again,” she said, smiling up at him as they danced to “I Wish I Didn’t Love You So.” Their steps were unconsciously graceful. They moved well together, and this pleased him too. Her dark eyes shone in the evening light, her curls pinned back to show off her neck and shoulders in a tantalizing way. She stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his, catching him off guard. God, so sweet. How could anything be this sweet? He pulled back, breaking the kiss.

  “Slim…”

  “Stop it,” she said. “I want what I want, Richard. Now kiss me before I get sore with you.”

  Richard did as he was told.

  He sank into her, burning, melting, their strange alchemy transforming him into something different, something new that his mind had no concept for. He looked down at the vision under him, her hair spilling out against the threadbare sheets, eyes hooded and glittering, cheeks still flushed from the time he’d spent showing her his favorite way to please a woman. He hoped he never lost the taste of her, the feeling of her fingers in his hair.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, brushing her hair off her brow. “Does it hurt?”

  “It hurts,” she said honestly. “But I’m all right.” To prove her point, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pulling him closer. Her lips met his, her kiss mirroring the happiness he felt at having this moment, having her in his arms, in his bed. His fingers plunged into her hair as he withdrew slightly before sinking further. The heat of her closed around him, making him groan against her mouth. After that, instinct took over. He had no thoughts except to marvel at what he was feeling in that moment. He’d been with more women than he could remember. He’d drowned himself in hedonist pleasure from the time when he first learned the concept, but what he felt with her went beyond pleasure, beyond physical. The remnants of his former self crumbled at her touch, the breathy sounds of her sighs. It was nothing so simple as sex. It was destruction; it was creation―as if they were quite literally making love.

  After, he lay in her arms, the bevy of emotions making him feel strange and out-of-sorts.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, stroking his hair. He opened his mouth to answer, but the words wouldn’t come. “You’re trembling.”

  He nodded, nestling his face into the crook of her neck.

  “Thank you,” he managed to say at last, making her chuckle. He kissed the rounded slope of her shoulder. “Slim, thank you.”

  “For what? For that?”

  “For trusting me.”

  The corner of her lips pulled up in a crooked grin.

  “My pleasure, I’m sure.”

  July 1945

  Riverfront Park

  Charleston

  “How did they turn out?” Richard slung an arm around her shoulder, peering at the strip of small pictures from the photo booth.

  “You weren’t looking,” she said, showing him. While she smiled at the camera, he only had eyes for her.

  “Oh, I was looking, all right.” His hand roamed greedily down her hip, giving her bottom a playful pinch. A couple of passing sailors saw and wolf-whistled.

  “Rascal!” She laughed and slipped out of his arms, her sandals slapping against the boardwalk.

  Richard smiled and followed her contentedly. He vaguely remembered the days before he met her. He found it was like trying to recall the faces in a faded series of photographs.

  The packet of papers stashed away in his room was all but forgotten. His room had become a special place. When they made love in the afternoons, it wasn’t a tattered seaside studio but a palace, and she its jewel.

  “Not a jewel,” he thought. She was the sun, banishing the shadows and cobwebbed corners he had lived in before. Watching her run, he felt a familiar stirring. While she had become an adept learner, he still felt new and coltish in her arms.

  Something caught his eye, glittering in a shop window.

  July 1945

  Harbor Inn Motor Lodge

  Charleston

  “I honestly can’t believe you did that.”

  Her curls tickled his face as she leaned over to look at the new tattoo on his arm, the skin around it still bright pink.

  They were lying in bed, the covers and sheets kicked off in the afternoon heat. He winced slightly as she touched it, the sacred heart. The dark-skinned sailor who’d drawn it had called it the milagro, the miracle.

  “People are going to wonder why it says ‘Slim.’” His other arm went around her waist as if it belonged there. And it did. It had always belonged there. I’ve always belonged to you. He drank in her profile, the curve of her smile. And I always will.

  He was tired but contented for the moment. His sleep had been troubled the night before. The memories he’d pushed down were beginning to surface like bubbles. He woke some nights covered in cold sweat and convinced that his guts were hanging out; the smells of gunpowder and blood seemed to fill the room.

  It was turning out to be a strange time for Richard. He was so happy, so full of love and love of life, but there was an emptiness under it all that he tried not to see. He worried that the dirt he kept sweeping under the rug might really be quicksand that would one day swallow him whole.

  “Let them wonder,” he said, looking deep in her eyes as he brushed her hair back from her face. Here was something pure and lovely and good that chased away his ghosts for as long as he held her. “You can tell them all that I called you skinny the day we met.”

  She laid her head against his chest and laughed. “Rascal,” she said, play-punching him, careful to avoid the shiny patchwork of scars. He loved that, as mangled as he was, he felt perfectly comfortable being naked with her.

  “I have something for you,” he said, reaching into the nightstand. He pulled out the locket, a simple gold oval on a delicate chain.

  She gasped. “This is beautiful! How did you afford it?”

  Richard only smiled, happy she was happy. He felt a little guilty using the Fitzwilliam account at Croghan’s. It’s where his father had bought his mother’s engagement ring, where Grandfather Fitzwilliam bought the sapphire earrings that his da
ughter had worn when she married John Darcy, and where Richard and James had purchased the little pearl bracelet for Georgiana’s fifth birthday. To Richard, this offering was no less special.

  “Open it,” he said, smiling broadly. She sat up, her fingers finding the delicate clasp and popping it open, making a little sound of surprise at the photo inside. It was one of the pictures from the photo booth they’d taken that day on the boardwalk.

  “Oh! Oh, Richard.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her hair. “I could only ever look at you.”

  “Help me put it on,” she said excitedly, handing the locket to him. She pulled her hair up out of the way so he could slip the chain around her neck, locking the clasp, kissing the spot where it rested for good measure.

  “There,” he said.

  She let her hair fall and turned around. The oval rested on her bare breastbone, the chain twinkling in the afternoon light that filtered through the thin curtains. “How does it look?”

  “C’mere,” he said in a growl, pulling her to him and kissing her deeply. Her fingers twined through his hair, too long now, but he’d been loath to cut it for this very reason.

  “Do you like the necklace?” he asked finally.

  “Are you kidding? I love it.” Her smile faded, and her face turned serious. “And…I love you. Do you love me?”

  “Oh, Slim.” He sighed, touching her face with trembling fingers. “I’ve never loved anything else.”

  * * *

  August 1945

  Harbor Inn Motor Lodge

  Charleston

  He woke all at once, in a finger-snap of a moment, soaked in sweat with his heart slamming in his chest. For a few seconds, he wondered where he was until the midnight emptiness of his room became familiar to him again. He could hear the ocean outside his window, the sound of the tide beating against the sand in its own helpless rhythm. Charleston, he reminded himself. The scars on his abdomen throbbed dully; his fingers probed the area with care. When he was satisfied everything was where it should be, he sat up, putting his feet on the floor. It helped acclimate him to his surroundings. Still shaking from his dream, he made his way to the tiny bathroom, snapping on the light before splashing his face with cool water from the sink.

  His reflection in the mirror rattled him. He thought he’d been getting so much better, but his hollowed cheeks told him he’d lost weight, and the shadows under his eyes spoke of his recent sleepless nights. The puffy scar on his collarbone shone garishly against his tan. Richard shuddered and touched the tattoo on his arm. He could trace the lines of it with his fingertips. It soothed him somewhat, though the vestiges of his dream still clung to him. The specter of James hovered over him in that bombed-out café in Brest, his flesh bloated and gray. Richard could still feel the rubble digging into his back, the stickiness of the German’s blood as it cooled on his skin. James opened his mouth to speak, and rank, briny seawater spilled out in a flood, drowning him.

  Richard turned off the bathroom light and flopped back on the lumpy bed. He closed his eyes and conjured her image. Slim laughing. Slim running. Slim tired and happy in his arms. It wasn’t enough to send him to sleep, but after a few minutes, his heart resumed its normal rhythm. Brandishing his thoughts of her like a miner holding a lantern, Richard felt himself plunged into an unnavigable despair. Would he ever know sleep again? Or peace and calm? Helpless tears rolled down his face. It can’t go on this way.

  Richard brushed as much of the sand as he could off his shoes. He’d taken a longer walk than usual that day. The sky was turning violet by the time he reached his hotel.

  He missed the gray sedan parked across the lot. His troubled thoughts were of her as they were most often.

  They had a fight that day. Their first. She wanted to leave college, to stay there and be with him. It hit him just how much she was willing to give up for him. He knew he had to tell her the truth about himself, and soon. The nights had been getting worse; his sleep was brief and full of terrors. He’d been quieter of late, sometimes barely speaking a word all day.

  The only thing that hadn’t changed was his need for her, but that didn’t reassure him. If anything, it made him feel worse. What if I’ve only been using her? He loved her, he knew that, but he couldn’t say his love was entirely selfless. The truth was, he wanted her to quit college. He wanted to marry her so she’d never get away. She’d be his sun and keep his darkness at bay for as long as she could. Every day he could feel it closing in a little more.

  He hated himself for thinking these things. What kind of a life would that be for someone so young and unfettered by life?

  “Richie,” a cool voice spoke from behind him as if Richard’s thoughts had summoned him to the spot. He froze at the sound of it, ice forming in his veins. That voice belonged to a ghost, one of the faces from those faded photographs. He stood slowly, turning toward his visitor.

  Darcy still cut an impressive figure, even sweating in his lightweight linen.

  “Hello, D,” Richard said cautiously. “Been a long time. How did you find me?”

  “Croghan’s,” Darcy said, somewhat apologetically. “The bill came to Pemberley.”

  The locket, of course. Richard frowned. “Why would that bill come to you? It’s my father’s account.”

  “You have to come home,” Darcy said without preamble. Richard snorted, shaking his head.

  “Nice try, D. I am home.”

  “Something’s happened,” Darcy said. “I don’t know what you’ve been doing all this time, but your family needs you.”

  “What’s happened? Is it Georgie, or Anne?”

  “No, they’re fine.” Darcy exhaled heavily. “It’s…there’s no easy way to say this, Richie. Your father had a stroke three weeks ago.”

  Richard frowned at the shoes in his hand as if he’d never seen them before. He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing with them. Darcy put a hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Richie. He didn’t make it.”

  Something inside of Richard snapped. He barked a laugh and threw his shoes down onto the walk, shrugging off Darcy’s hand. I’m the last Fitzwilliam. The joke’s on me. He started to walk away, then stopped, and turned around.

  “And what am I supposed to do about it?” He seethed. “I’m no good to him now just like I was no good to him then.”

  Darcy, who had loved and been loved by his father, was taken aback by Richard’s response. “You don’t mean that.”

  “God knows, I love you, D. You really don’t see anything wrong with our family, do you? You wonderfully naive son of a bitch.”

  “Richie…I know you two were never close, but it’s not just about that. He wasn’t your only family. You still have me and Georgie and Anne and, damn it, even Aunt Catherine! We’ve been worried sick about you for months! And you’ve been out here, surviving on god knows what—”

  “I get by.”

  “Clearly! Do you have to pay extra for fleas, or are they included in the rent? You’re buying jewelry, so there must be a woman… I don’t know what kind of woman would come into a place like this, even with you, but I’m willing to bet that she—”

  Richard reached out without thinking, grabbing Darcy by the lapel. His cousin’s back slammed against the side of the building, Richard’s arm an iron bar across his chest. He wasn’t as brawny as Darcy, but the months of manual labor had given Richard a wiry strength he hadn’t had even in the army.

  “You want to be careful about what you say next,” Richard said with rage. “You don’t know a goddamned thing about it.”

  A second later, he released Darcy, leaning miserably against the wall, burying his face in his hands. “Oh god, D. I have to go back, don’t I?”

  Even as he said it, he knew the truth of it—that he was damaged, maybe beyond repair—that she deserved better than whatever broken half-life he could give her. He didn’t want to see their love die a slow death or watch the years of resentment steal the lig
ht in her eyes. If he could do one thing right by her, one selfless act in his whole life, it would be to let her go.

  “Do you need a day to…say your goodbyes?” Darcy asked with more tact than Richard ever would have credited him. The thought of saying goodbye to her, to laying these burdens at her feet, was almost too much for him, and he knew all it would take was one look at her to shake his resolve.

  “No,” he said finally, miserably. “Can someone pick up—?” He gestured to his motorcycle.

  “It’s already done,” Darcy said reassuringly. “We can leave now.”

  Richard closed his eyes and listened to the ocean—the relentless push and pull of the tide on the beach.

  “Just let me get my things,” he said, and slipped into his room, shutting the door behind him. He took a minute to grieve for what he was about to lose. He looked around the little room where he’d been so happy and saw the truth of what Darcy said.

  Cobwebs laced the high corners of the room. The painted plaster was swollen and cracked in more than one place. It was a sad room, or it would have been if not for her. She seemed to haunt every corner; he knew if he buried his face in the pillows, he would still smell her there.

  “My father is dead,” he said to the empty room.

  The room didn’t answer.

  He didn’t bother to check his tears as he packed hastily, stuffing his clothes into his battered duffel bag. He was about to leave when he turned back and opened the nightstand. Inside were the box her locket had come in and a copy of the King James Bible. Tucked under the bible was a packet of papers, prepared what seemed like a lifetime ago, and yet closer now than ever.

  He grabbed the packet and stuffed it into his bag, not bothering to lock the door behind him as he left.

  8

  September 3, 1945

  Dear Slim,

  I’ve been wretched in these days since I left you. Has it only been a handful of weeks since I saw you, held you? I know I did right, but I also know I’ve made the biggest mistake. Will you ever know what a surprise you were to me? I thought myself completely unloved and unlovable, and I turn around and there you were. You put me on my head, Slim. You spun me around. We were strange arithmetic, an illogical set of variables that somehow added up.