The Marine's Baby, Maybe

by Rogenna Brewer

Lucky shook his head. “I don’t know why you want to go back there. You don’t have anything left to prove.”

  “Is that why you’re getting out? Nothing left to prove?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You’re going to miss it, you know. You don’t know how to be anything other than a Marine. You’ll be like one of those ex-cons who gets himself thrown back in prison because he doesn’t know who he is without that prison cell to define him. Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

  “Semper Fi,” they said in knuckle-bumping unison.

  “You’ve been hanging around those Navy SEALs too long.

  You need a haircut.”

  “I just got a hair—”

  “Luke!” Cait screamed from the bathroom, and both brothers came running.

  Lucky reached her first. “Cait, what’s wrong?” She’d changed into her black dress and was standing over the sink.

  “Luke’s ring…” She barely choked out the words.

  “Turn off the water,” he said, doing it himself. “Do you have any tools?”

  “No, but Mrs. Pèna does.”

  Lucky steered her toward the toilet seat. “Stay put. Watch her,” he said to Bruce, dashing out.

  He was back in less than a minute; the landlady had stared after him as he took the stairs two at a time. Lucky crawled under the bathroom sink with the wrench and removed the S curve section of pipe. He turned it over in his palm and her engagement ring fell out.

  He gave it to her, thinking that would make her happy. She closed her fist over it and sank to the floor to bawl her eyes out.

  She sat with her back against the tub and her forehead to her raised knees. The black skirt of her dress covered her to the ankles. Her bare feet poked out beneath.

  After a few moments, her heart-wrenching sobs subsided.

  Lucky was no good at this. He crouched beside her, his hand hovering over her hair, thinking he should be able to soothe away her tears somehow. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of his brother’s curious scrutiny and sank back against the tub beside Cait.

  He looked to Bruce for help, but his brother just shrugged.

  Lucky heaved a sigh. “It’s okay, Cait,” he said. “You still have the ring. Why don’t you put it back on and you’ll feel better.”

  “My fingers are too fat,” came her muffled response.

  “Let me see.”

  She opened her left fist and he took the ring. Without looking up, she turned her hand over. Her fingers didn’t look fat, they looked delicate and graceful. He hesitated over her ring finger, then slid her diamond-and-emerald engagement ring past the first knuckle to the second where it would go no farther.

  She lifted her head to look at her hand. “See,” she said. “It was too tight. It took a whole bar of soap to get it off. I wish I’d never taken it off in the first place.” She sniffled. Her face was blotchy and her makeup running from her tears. His chest tightened.

  He was pretty sure the whole-bar-of-soap thing was an exaggeration. But the ring wasn’t going back on, at least not until after the baby was born.

  Lucky reached around his neck and slipped off his dog tags. “This is just a temporary fix,” he offered, unclasping it and sliding the ring down the chain. “I’m sure you have a much nicer chain to wear.” He slipped it on over her head, and she lifted her hair over it. His brother’s ring and his dog tags nestled together against her heart.

  She wrapped him in a hug right there on the floor and gave him a wet peck on the cheek. “Thank you, Calhoun.”

  Lucky cleared his throat. “I’ve got to put this sink together so I can get the pipe wrench back to Mrs. Pèna.” He turned his attention to replacing the S curve.

  “I’ll take it back,” Bruce volunteered. “I, uh, just remembered something I have to do….Can I get a rain check on dinner and a movie, Cait?”

  “I thought Calhoun was leaving after this weekend?”

  They both looked at Lucky. Caught in the middle, he shrugged. He didn’t want to leave Cait in her condition, yet he couldn’t keep pushing the date back indefinitely.

  “Cait, when’s the last time you had any real fun?” Bruce asked. “Why don’t the three of us take a road trip. We could go to Vegas—”

  “Not Vegas,” Lucky said.

  “Then Napa. Somewhere.”

  “She’s carrying around a baby on her bladder. She doesn’t need to be taking any road trips right now.”

  “It was just a thought,” Bruce said. “I gotta get going.” He helped Cait to her feet. And then he did something Lucky had only dreamed of doing. He put both hands on her abdomen. “Hey, Peanut.” He bent down to talk to Cait’s baby bump. “How you doing in there? It’s Uncle Bruce. Gotta go, but I’ll be back.” He looked up at Cait. “Don’t be sad. Luke’s not gone, Cait. He’s just gone on ahead.”

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” Cait said, giving Bruce a hug. He squeezed her back, and Lucky felt something for his brother he’d never felt before.

  Jealousy.

  CAIT WALKED BRUCE TO THE DOOR, and they spent a few more minutes saying goodbye before she closed it behind him. “I think I scared him off.” She sniffed back the last of her tears.

  “He’s not that easy to scare off.” Calhoun studied her from her bedroom doorway. More of his tattoo was visible under the shirt he wore over a T-shirt, but not enough to give it away.

  “Are you sure? Raccoon eyes can be very intimidating,” she said, dabbing at her face. “Waterproof mascara can only hold up for so long….”

  He stepped back into her bathroom and returned with a wrung-out washcloth.

  “Come here,” he said, and he began to wash her face as though she was a little girl. She closed her eyes and let him.

  She’d made some important decisions over the past three days. The first was not to name her baby after her husband. This baby needed his own name, one that didn’t cause conflict for the man who’d given her such a precious gift. The second was the house. She no longer planned to sell it. She planned to move into it.

  When he stopped washing her face, she opened her eyes again. They stared at each other for an instant before breaking the bond. She clenched her fist around his dog tags and Luke’s engagement ring. She didn’t want another chain. She wanted this one to carry the reminder of the other Luke in her life.

  “Look at us,” she said. “All dressed up and no place to go. Do you still feel like dinner and a movie? Since this is the last weekend in California for both of us.”

  “YOU’RE TALKING NONSENSE, CAIT,” Lucky said for the tenth time that evening. He’d taken her to the Gas Light district in San Diego for a nice dinner, followed by a movie—some chick flick he’d normally find hard to watch, made unbearable after the bomb she’d dropped.

  She was moving to Colorado.

  She’d hushed him throughout the opening credits when he’d tried to talk sense into her. “What about your lease?”

  “Month to month. I was on a waiting list to move into a two-bedroom after the baby was born. But why should I wait when I own a two-bedroom house?”

  “In another state!”

  “Shh,” some guy behind them said, and Lucky gave the guy a dirty look. The movie hadn’t even started yet. Cait reached over and squeezed his hand to keep him quiet throughout the rest of the movie previews. It worked, because all he could think about was how right, and how wrong, it felt to hold her hand.

  Now they were on some walking tour of every place she and Luke had ever been. It was well past midnight.

  “Actually this is the first thing I’m doing that makes any sense,” she argued. “Bruce was right. I need to get away from here.”

  He’d like nothing better than to get her away from here.

  They were in a seedier part of town. Her vintage car was parked in a gravel lot under a broken streetlight, and they were headed for some dockside watering hole called Manny’s. She’d be lucky if her hubcaps were the only things m
issing when they got back to her car.

  “This is the place,” she said, looking up at a neon sign that had seen better days and needed a few bulbs. “This is where Luke hung out with his buddies. Before we were married, of course.”

  Of course. A SEAL bar.

  Great. He looked at the cluster of motorcycles parked close to the door, including a Fat Bob. At least they had good taste in bikes.

  “Are you sure you want to go in there, Cait?”

  “Just one Shirley Temple,” she said. “I want to buy the room a round and see if they’ll ‘flame the bar’ for me. Luke said some SEALs even write that traditional send-off into their wills.”

  He took a deep breath, probably his last—he was a Marine walking into a Navy SEAL bar—and reached for the door handle. His haircut would give him away as a jarhead.

  He doubted she even knew the implication.

  “You don’t have to go in there with me if you don’t want to,” she said as he opened the door for her. Some guy came flying out and landed on his ass. He got up again and flew right back in.

  Lucky pushed Cait behind him. “You’d better let me check it out.”

  “And miss a bar fight?”

  “Stay behind me,” he ordered. John Wayne would have been proud. “If there’s any fighting going on we’re not staying in there. Do you hear me?”

  She agreed. They passed though a short hallway between the outer and inner doors. And then he was opening the inner sanctum to the Navy SEAL den.

  There was a fight going on inside. As Lucky turned to get them back outside, he realized he knew one of the brawling SEALs.

  “Bruce!” Cait said, just as stunned as Lucky was.

  Bruce was limping in a small circle with six of the biggest guys in the room surrounding him. His fists were up. He was a mess, his shirt untucked and buttons missing.

  It was clear nobody wanted to fight him. They were just trying to get a drunk and disorderly Navy SEAL–trained Marine under control. But they were also tired of getting in the way of his fists.

  The guy they’d met outside wiped his bloody nose on his shirt sleeve. “Calhoun,” he said to Bruce, “get your ass back to the barracks. Manny’ll call you a cab.”

  Lucky decided the bar’s namesake was the guy behind the bar in a wheelchair with a baseball bat in one hand and a phone in the other.

  Bruce seemed to consider it for a moment.

  The momentum of his circling slowed. He lowered his hands. Then he caught sight of Lucky and Cait and threw his head back and laughed. “Now you guys are in trouble.” Bruce pointed right at Lucky. “My big brother’s here and he’s going to kick some Navy SEAL ass!”

  Lucky had the attention of every SEAL in the place. Even if they didn’t see their injured, drunk teammate as a threat, they immediately sized him up as one. At least ten more guys stood from their tables. And the pool players and the dart players in back stopped shooting.

  Although he’d like nothing better than to teach these squids a lesson in hand-to-hand combat, he knew when he was outnumbered. Besides, he was with Cait.

  He held up his hands. “I’m not here to cause trouble.”

  Cait was snug up against his backside. And he imagined, as eager as she’d been to witness a bar fight, she was probably having second thoughts about that right now.

  “The lady here…” he didn’t know if they could see her behind him “…just wants to buy a round in honor of her late husband, Luke Calhoun.” As he’d hoped, the name sparked recognition. “My brother. Bruce’s brother,” he said, stating the obvious. “Then I’ll take care of getting this idiot out of your hair—”

  “Hey,” Bruce protested.

  “Ask them about flaming the bar,” Cait said, now at his side.

  The guy with the bloody nose nodded. The owner went back behind the bar and started lining up shots of whiskey. Chairs were set upright. Men in the back resumed playing pool.

  Finally, Lucky could relax. A bit.

  He nodded Cait toward the bar.

  Lucky grabbed Bruce by the arm on the way. “Hey,” Bruce protested again, “I just wanted to show ’em I still have some fight in me.”

  “You’re not proving anything with all of this,” Lucky said, forcing his brother onto a bar stool. “Stay out of trouble long enough for us to leave here in one piece.”

  “You’re the only one of us leaving in one piece.” Bruce laughed at the irony.

  “Do you think I wouldn’t trade places with you or with Luke if I could?” Lucky asked in a harsh rasp. He’d been the lucky one. That didn’t mean he felt lucky.

  Cait ordered her Shirley Temple and slid her credit card across the bar to pay for the drinks. The guys raised their shot glasses in salute. “To Luke Calhoun,” someone said.

  “To Luke,” Bruce repeated, throwing one back before Lucky could stop him. “What?” Bruce challenged. “I can drink to my dead brother.”

  Lucky was still scowling at him when Cait tapped him on the shoulder. She held out a shot glass for him. He shouldn’t. He was already running on adrenaline. The barkeep had cleared the bar and was pouring a line of whiskey down the center. Lucky could see the other burn marks left behind. And he didn’t want to insult her.

  “To Luke,” he said, just as the barkeep lit one end of that whiskey trail on fire. The flame roared down the line. Throwing back his shot, Lucky felt the burn all the way down his throat. There was a time when he would have choked on those words rather than pay tribute to his half brother. “Come on. Let’s get out of here,” he said to Cait, setting his shot glass down on the table.

  But, transfixed by that flame, she watched until the fire burned out. He stopped his brother from stealing any more shots and they left with Bruce tripping over his one good foot.

  Cait’s car and her hubcaps were still intact. “Are you okay, Bruce?” she asked.

  His brother didn’t deserve her sympathy. “If you have to puke you do it outside the car,” Lucky said.

  BRUCE RELIED HEAVILY ON BOTH of them to make it up the stairs to his barracks room. “You smell pretty, Cait.”

  He had an arm around each of them. But Lucky shouldered the burden of his brother’s weight.

  “Don’t breathe on her,” he warned. “You stink.” Bruce looked at him, and Lucky had to turn away. His brother’s breath was strong enough to knock a man out. “How much have you had to drink tonight?”

  “Not enough,” Bruce answered. “You two make a cute couple,” he said, looking from one to the other.

  “You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re saying. So just keep your mouth shut,” Lucky snapped. “Give Cait your room key so she can open the door.”

  His brother was quartered by himself in a room usually reserved for someone of a much higher rank. They stepped into a small seating area with a TV. Through two open doors, they could see a small bedroom and a small bathroom.

  “How do you rate? Your room’s better than mine.”

  “It’ll only cost you an arm or a leg.” Bruce laughed.

  “Say good night to Cait,” Lucky said.

  “Thanks for the ride, Cait.” Bruce staggered off to his bedroom and closed the door behind him.

  The front door was still open. Cait set Bruce’s keys down on a nearby end table. “Well, that was some memorable last stop. Is he going to be all right?”

  “I’ll stay with him tonight,” Lucky said, eyeing the serviceable couch and chairs, which looked like something you might find in a waiting room. Or a military barracks. “Can you make it home all right?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  It was almost 0200 hours according to his watch. And he didn’t want her driving home alone this late at night. He didn’t think her staying here was an option, either.

  Unless he kicked Bruce out of his bed.

  They heard a loud thunk from the other room.

  Lucky opened the door to investigate. “What the—”

  Bruce was passed out on the bed, his pants down around
his ankles. Seeing that adjustable pole where his brother’s leg should have been came as quite a shock. He knew the leg was gone. He’d seen that kind of battlefield injury before. But the distance between them these past months had kept it from registering.

  His brother’s leg was really gone.

  He picked up the half-empty tequila bottle from the floor. Beer. Whiskey shots. Tequila.

  Not necessarily in that order. What else had Bruce been indulging in tonight?

  Cait was already pushing past him to gather the prescription bottles spilling out of his brother’s overnight bag.

  For a moment, while Cait read the labels, opened bottles and counted pills, Lucky knew real terror unlike any he’d ever known in war. It didn’t take her more than a few seconds to assess the situation. The look on her face…

  “What and how many?” He’d already flipped open his cell phone to dial 911.

  “None.”

  It took a moment for what she’d said to register and for him to close his cell. “Then what’s wrong?”

  “He hasn’t taken any of these pills.”

  “You said that.”

  “I mean none! In the three months since these prescriptions were last filled, he hasn’t taken a single pill. These are some heavy-duty controlled substances. Pain meds. Sleep aids. Your brother is an amputee. He needs these medications…for now.”

  Lucky was still trying to digest what she was saying.

  “I’ve seen this before,” she continued. “Someone so afraid of addiction, they quit their meds and wind up self-medicating. And addicted to something else.”

  She didn’t have to point out the tequila bottle. He knew what she was talking about.

  She took Bruce’s limp wrist in her hand and checked his pulse. “I didn’t mean to scare you. He’s fine at the moment. I’m not a doctor, but we know he’s not mixing drugs and alcohol, so that’s not the concern here.”

  She was talking to him but looking at Bruce. “Have a talk with him when he’s sober. And if you need to, call his doctor. Or I will if you want me to.” She spared him a glance. “It’s better for him to be on controlled meds under supervision than to self-medicate with alcohol.”