For long moments, Luke loses himself in the peaceful repetition of it. It’s the most relaxed he’s felt in a long time, and that’s why his guard slips. Mindlessly fitting gift cards into bags, he says, “I used to do stuff like this with my mom.”
“Hmm?” Sandy hums, encouraging.
“Yeah, always some kind of crafty stuff. She tried to get my sister to help but she always…” His heart stutters. Sadie is suddenly there, in his head, curled at the edges like an old photograph, the ghost of her laugh bursting behind his ears. “Screwed it up,” he whispers, and a gift card falls from his nerveless fingers.
Sadie. How long has it been since he thought of her actively? He locked her away, years ago, to spare himself the jagged pain of remembering her in every brown-haired girl he passed on the street, in the fog on the windowpanes, where she would have drawn a heart with her fingertip.
Sadie. With her shiny chestnut hair streaming behind her like a banner; her laughter bright and effervescent as bubbles.
Sadie. The first person he’d ever told that he liked boys; who’d frowned in her small fierce way, kissed his forehead, and dared the rest of the world to say anything cruel to her brother.
He remembers the Rycrofts’ living room, packed with people in black, and too many flower arrangements, the combined smells of florist carnations and too much perfume choking him. He remembers stealing to the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub, and thinking my sister’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead. And trying not to remember the way his mother had wailed when the police dragged her back from the crime scene tape. He remembers Hal coming to find him, and sitting on the hard tile at his feet, his head resting in Luke’s lap like a faithful dog. No words between them, just silent tears, and Hal’s strong, football-playing arms wrapped tight around his calves. He remembers knowing that his mother needed him, but that he needed this at the moment; to exist alone with his grief – alone, because being with Hal had always been like being with an extension of himself.
Someone touches his arm and it jerks him back to the present: Sandy Maddox’s kitchen, a cellophane bag crumpled in his left hand.
“It’s okay,” Sandy says, gently. “You went away for a minute there.”
His tongue is lead. His head is no longer connected to his body. He wants – viscerally, painfully – to feel Hal’s head on his leg, like the day of the funeral. He just…wants.
“My sister.” It sounds like his voice is coming from across the room, like it didn’t leave his throat. “She died. She was…killed.” When he closes his eyes, he can see her purple backpack with all its assorted pins lying at the edge of the shoulder like a run-over raccoon. Can see the way the grass leading down the hill is parted. Refuses to walk those steps he took in real life, and see again her crumpled form, a plucked flower left abandoned in the ditch.
“Oh God,” Sandy says in a low, strong voice. Not shock, only maternal love. “Oh God, baby, I’m so sorry.” Her hand leaves his arm and cards back through his hair.
The ticking clock on the wall counts out thirty seconds. The fridge hums quietly to itself.
“Would you like a really big shot of something out of the adult cabinet?” she asks.
Luke manages to nod.
11
Luke sits in an arm chair big enough for two in the Maddox living room, a mug of spiked coffee in his hand, a fire roaring in the hearth. He loves this room, he decides. It’s cozy, and warm, and it swims in and out of focus, swaying. The chair is deep enough to swallow him and it smells like cologne. Dark has fallen, and the house feels close and comforting.
“I love this room,” he says.
“Is he drunk?” Tara asks.
“Leave the boy alone.” That’s Will. The old man’s been an unexpectedly calming presence, seated on the couch and griping about the day in politics that’s playing out on the TV.
“He sounds drunk,” Tara persists.
“Been drinking all day,” Luke says, and takes another swig of coffee.
He lost an hour or so, sometime during the afternoon, someplace between the kitchen table and this chair. But now he’s good and rooted, only getting up to pee when he absolutely has to, enjoying the faded cologne smell of the chair, low murmur of the TV, the sense of having company and being in a safe place.
The sound of the garage door humming up and then down means that Matt is home. Which means Hal is home too.
Even though he’s drunk, Luke perks up a little, strains to hear the two sets of shoes come up the steps and enter through the kitchen.
“Hi, sweetie,” Matt greets his wife.
“Sandy,” Hal says, all respect and automatic kindness. The big asshole. But it makes Luke’s tipsy stomach flutter.
He hears what might be a kiss between husband and wife. And then Sandy says something too low to hear. And Hal says, “Oh no,” in a soft, sad voice.
A moment later, Luke’s view of the TV is obscured by Hal’s broad shoulders.
“Hi, honey, you’re home,” Luke says, and wow, he’s drunk. He laughs at himself, vision blurring.
“God, this is embarrassing,” Tara says.
“Why are you drunk?” Hal asks in a gentle voice, and suddenly he’s on his knees up against the chair, close enough to put his head in Luke’s lap if he wanted to. Which he doesn’t, of course; he doesn’t feel that way about him.
“Blame Sandy,” Luke says, still grinning like an idiot. It’s a grin that hurts his face, but he can’t seem to wipe it off.
Hal sighs, but a small returning smile touches the corners of his mouth. In a low voice: “You thought about her, didn’t you?”
Luke nods, throat suddenly tight. He takes another long sip, lets it burn away the tension. “Yeah.”
Hal pats his knee. “I know, buddy. Okay. So. You want to stay for dinner?”
“Don’t wanna get up,” Luke says, shaking his head, which sets the room to spinning.
“You don’t have to. Just sit tight and I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Okay…” Luke’s eyes shut, and they’re too heavy to open again.
~*~
He was sixteen when his sister died, and her death was a depth charge in the midst of their family. It had always just been the three of them, if you didn’t count the Rycrofts downstairs. Dad long gone, before Sadie was even born, but Mom strong enough to work fulltime and fill both roles. A quietly strong woman; with Luke’s mouth and eyes, and a gentle hand when it came to punishment. Handstitched Halloween costumes and homemade birthday cakes, always. Soft forehead kisses at night, and elaborate bedtime stories. Her imagination had inspired Luke’s, made him want to be a writer.
Luke was always the dour kid, the grumpy one, picked on at school. He’d always preferred his own company, or Hal’s, to anyone else’s.
Sadie was the sweet one, the vivacious one. The one who thought the sun coming up each morning was a miracle. Beautiful like their mother had been as a girl, with the kind of smile that attracted inappropriate glances from grown men. By the time she was thirteen, Luke had started putting himself between his sister and crowds, trying to keep her hidden, keep her innocent.
Safe.
But then…
Then.
He wished, in those first terrible weeks after it happened, that he hadn’t been sixteen, that he hadn’t understood words like sexual assault, asphyxiation, spermicide.
The perp wore a condom. The DNA beneath Sadie’s fingernails didn’t match anyone questioned. Luke had opened his mouth for the swab willingly, not caring the cops looked at him like he might be a suspect. He just wanted the fucker caught, whatever it took.
But he never was. And there was no closure. Someone snatched his baby sister from the bus stop, raped her, and killed her. Threw her down on the side of the road like garbage. And he got away with it.
Mom was never the same after that. Nothing was.
~*~
He knows it’s a dream, but he reaches for his sister anyway. She laughs, and dances awa
y, and shoots him a smile over her shoulder.
“Sadie, quit. Come here.” And she comes, ducking into his arms and wrapping her own around his waist, the light patter of her heart skipping against his stomach.
It’s a dream, because she’s thirteen, and his own breath is short from too much smoking, but he drops his face into her dark hair and inhales as deep as he can.
The smell isn’t her coconut shampoo, though. It’s low and crisp, something masculine. Sandalwood.
Hal.
He surfaces slowly, clawing his way up through the layers of heavy, suppressive sleep. It takes an age to open his eyes. Another for his nervous system to come back online.
He’s hungover; his head throbs; his tongue tastes like sewage. But he’s warm, and he’s in bed, and there’s a person in his arms who is definitely not his dead sister.
He’s in bed with Hal. Their heads nestled together on the same pillow. Luke’s arm flung across his chest, a handful of his t-shirt gripped tight. And the heartbeat is a steady strong throb, alive and real.
If he wasn’t hungover like this, he’d roll away immediately. But he is, so he lies still, desperately trying to remember what happened last night. He remembers Hal kneeling by the chair. Remembers calling him “honey,” and then it’s all black.
“Shit.” It hurts to talk.
Hal’s massive chest swells beneath Luke’s arm as he inhales. “How bad does your head hurt?”
“Shit,” he repeats, and Hal chuckles. Quietly. “Wha’ time is it?”
“Just after ten.”
“Shit, why aren’t you at work?”
“Matt said to take the morning off. Lee’s filling in until I can get there.”
Luke wants to ask why Hal was given the morning off when he wasn’t the one who’d gotten blackout drunk last night. But instead he presses his face more deeply into Hal’s tousled hair. “Did we have sex?”
“Very much no,” Hal says with another quiet laugh. “I had to carry you in from the car.”
Oh dear God. Kill him now. “Why am I in your bed?” The with you is implied.
“This mattress is ten times comfier than the couch. Also, I thought I might have to stop you from choking on your own vomit in the middle of the night.”
“Did I vomit?”
“Nope. There was no puking whatsoever.” Hal wriggles, which somehow presses them even closer together, Luke’s hip digging into Hal’s ribs. “Yet, anyway.”
“Asshole,” Luke accuses, without heat.
“Lush,” Hal fires back.
Luke takes a deep, deep breath, nosing against Hal’s temple. “It’s Sadie,” he whispers. “It’s like I opened the floodgates, and now she’s just there.”
Hal makes a sympathetic noise, and his hand tightens against Luke’s waist. Because, though Luke hasn’t noticed it yet, Hal is holding him against his side. Oh. “She’d be really proud of you, you know.”
Luke snorts. “Doubtful.”
“No, I mean it. You did what you always said you were going to. You tell stories for a living.”
“True stories.”
“Those are the most important ones,” Hal insists.
Luke sighs. Beneath the headache, and the grief that echoes through his bones, he feels an immense gratitude that Hal is giving him this moment. That they can put aside The Incident, and all their stilted conversations since it, and just be best friends right now, when Luke needs it most.
“I’ve been thinking,” he starts, hesitant. “That Will’s story might make a really good book.”
“Oh yeah?” Hal sounds excited, like a little kid. “He’s got some great old war stories, doesn’t he?”
“He’s told them to you?”
“Some of them. The funny ones.”
“Finn…” Luke almost can’t continue. “He doesn’t make it out, does he?”
Hal doesn’t answer.
This was never, Luke thinks, about some article. About a protestor getting hit with a cane. “Why is this the book you want me to write?”
“Well,” Hal starts, careful now. “Not a lot of people know anything about the Korean War. It was literally a paragraph in our high school textbooks. So you’ve got that in your favor – everybody and his brother’s written about World War II.
“But also because…I dunno. It just seemed like an opportunity.”
Luke hates opportunities; they’re always so open-ended.
He swallows. “Thanks for not letting me puke all over myself.”
Hal pats his hip. “Always.”
~*~
“…protests today on Capitol Hill in response to the rumors that Senator Maddox may intend to filibuster…”
Luke glances away from the TV and toward Hal, who’s eating Frosted Mini Wheats and watching the morning’s political news with interest. “Is Matt really the most hated senator on the Hill?”
Hal nods. “I think so, yeah.”
“Will I sound like an idiot if I ask why?”
“No.” Hal sets his bowl on the coffee table and turns toward him. “See, politics is basically high school, but with the fate of the nation in the balance,” he says with a rueful smile. “There’s a social structure to everything. Alliances, bribes, lobbyists, and more ambition than you can even imagine. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, or what sort of platform you ran on, once you get here, you have to fall in line. Shake the right hands, schmooze the right people, get on the right bandwagons. It’s expected that no one adheres to the agendas they proposed to their constituency.”
“That’s kinda what I figured.”
“Right? Well, the thing with Matt is, he doesn’t do any of that.”
Luke gives him a skeptical look.
“He really doesn’t. He had this mentor, old retired senator, who died about a year ago. But he has zero connections around here. And he isn’t willing to go back on anything he promised Virginia voters just so he can make friends. He snubbed – very politely, I’ll add – another senator who wanted him to change his vote on that reform bill because, quote, ‘his no wasn’t going to sway the rest of the senate,’ and he’d be ‘better off getting along.’”
“Huh.”
“Matt doesn’t try to get along. It’s all about his voters and his state for him. He won’t play ball with the popular kids, more or less. And so they – and the media – try to make his life miserable whenever possible.”
“Damn.” Luke can’t identify the twist of sentiment in his gut. He thinks it might be sympathy. “You never really escape high school bullshit, do you?”
“No.” Then Hal’s expression brightens. “Hey, you wanna come with us tomorrow? See Matt in action? Might be good background for the…” He falters.
“Book?” Luke supplies. “You can say book. That was your plan all along.”
Hal blushes. “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”
“Asshole,” Luke says again, grinning this time.
~*~
They take turns showering and shaving, moving around each other in the bathroom with the ease of brothers, in a way they haven’t in so long. That’s the reason, Luke thinks, their friendship didn’t dissolve after The Incident: they were brothers, too, and no fight, no blood, no kiss could destroy something like that. And he decides that, though it will kill him to watch Hal eventually fall in love with the woman who will become his wife, he doesn’t know if he has the strength to stay away anymore.
When Hal hands him a travel mug of fresh coffee and smiles at him like he’s important, special, Luke is helpless to do anything but smile back.
“Ready to go?”
“Yeah.”
~*~
“How’s the head, kid?” Will asks.
Crisp daylight pours in through the library windows, catching like diamonds in the assorted crystal bottles on the drink stand, teasing swirls of dust motes from between the books on the shelves.
“Kinda sucks,” Luke admits. “But not the worst I ever had.”
“Hal
get you home all right?”
Luke hides a smirk in his coffee. “You were worried about that, huh?”
Will grumbles something he can’t hear.
“Oh, I won’t be by in the morning. It’ll probably have to be afternoon, like today. I’m going to shadow Matt.”
“Good.”
“You don’t have anything to say about that?”
“Just said it, didn’t I?”
Luke smiles. “Alright, old timer. What are we covering today?”
~*~
February 1951
Will would always marvel at man’s ability to adjust under extreme circumstances. The way talk of home could take you back there, and make the day more bearable.
They ended their second day of marching in squad tents, gathered around a lantern and imagining it put out a heat they could feel. They were talking about the things they’d left behind.
“My Sarah,” Private First Class Murray said, “wants at least five kids.”
Murkowski whistled. “Shit, son.”
Murray was all red hair and freckles, a smattering of pimples along his jaw. He looked fifteen, but was apparently eighteen, nothing but elbows and knees. Will figured there was real strength under that exterior, though, or he’d have been in the Army instead of the Marines. “I can’t wait to get home to her.”
“Listen to you,” Caldwell said, laughing not unkindly.
“I don’t have a girl and I don’t want one,” Murkowski said. “Why’d you want to get all tied down before you’ve even had a chance to live?”
“You call chasing skirts living?” Murray shot back.
“Beats changing diapers.”
“That’s assuming anyone would have your kid, Ski,” Caldwell drawled, and they all burst into laughter. Except Murkowski, who put on a sulky face.
“What about you, Maddox?” Murray asked. “You got a sweetheart at home?”
“Me? No.” Will shook his head and flashed them all a rueful smile across the lantern. “I seem to like the taste of my own feet too much when I’m around a lady.” A few scattered chuckles. “I’m kinda hopeless. Finn, though.” He elbowed his friend lightly in the ribs. “He’s got the kind of girl the rest of us don’t have a shot with.”
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