Between Here and the Horizon

by Callie Hart

  At that moment, the door opened again and Sam appeared, hurrying into the room. He gave us both a brief smile, and then held out his hand to Sully. “Second Lieutenant Coleridge. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Sully shook Sam’s hand, head tilted ever so slightly to one side. He looked perplexed. “Coleridge?” he repeated.

  “That’s right, sir. Sam Coleridge. Your brother pulled me out of that burning wreck outside of Kabul. I was only nineteen at the time.”

  Sully rocked back on his heels, recognition dawning on his face. “That’s right. Kabul.”

  “We’re almost done here, sir. If you’d just sign here, where we’ve indicated with the red crosses, then we can get you on your way.” Sam handed Sully the paperwork in his other hand, smiling wider.

  “I don’t understand. Ronan wasn’t—”

  “Don’t worry, sir. It’s all been taken care of. I personally testified that you weren’t the one to pull me out of that wreck. It was definitely Ronan Fletcher, as records of that night confirmed.”

  “But what about the letter I wrote? I confessed that—”

  Sam shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know of any letter being held in evidence relating to this matter. As far as we’re concerned, Ronan Fletcher served a total of five tours in Afghanistan, saving the lives of well over thirty-eight men during the period of his service. The USB drives that were found in his house were taken by him, under the proviso that they were something else entirely. We believe he had zero knowledge of their hidden contents.”

  Sully closed his hand around the pen Sam was offering him. “Ah. I see.”

  “Yes, sir. Luckily for you, this matter was resolved. You’d have been sent to Gitmo for sure, otherwise. Probably wouldn’t have stepped foot in the States again.” The tone in Sam’s voice made things very clear—he knew Sully was the man who saved him. He knew perfectly well that Sully had broken the law, but he was feigning ignorance in order to save him now.

  “Then I ought to be thanking you,” Sully said slowly. He signed the paperwork and handed it back to Sam while I watched on in amazement. Sam took the paperwork and reached into his pocket.

  “I always wished I’d seen Ronan again,” he said. There was an odd, obvious twist to his voice that made me want to cry. “I’ve wanted to thank him for a very long time for what he did for me. That wreck was catastrophic. I was badly injured. Beyond badly injured. It took me eighteen months to regain full use of my body. It was a long, hard, painful road, but I was grateful that I was alive to take each agonizing step of it. Ronan risked his own life to save me and the two other guys he dragged out of that truck that night. I’ll never forget it. Neither will my wife, or my two kids.” He opened up his wallet and held it out for Sully to see—inside was a photograph of a beautiful blonde woman, holding onto two tiny little boys who were unmistakably Sam’s. “They want to convey their thanks to the man that saved my life just as much as I do, Captain Fletcher. It’s a debt that can never be repaid.”

  Sully stood motionless, looking down at the picture. He nodded very slowly, his hands now curled into fists as his sides. “I’m sure my brother would be honored that you’d built such a beautiful life for yourself, Sergeant Coleridge. And he’d want to tell you that saving your life was one of the only things he was proud of accomplishing in his life, too.”

  Sam’s eyes shone brightly, filled with tears. “Well. Hoo-rah for second chances, huh, Captain?” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “For me, and for you, I think.”

  EPILOGUE

  Dr. Fielding was way taller than I’d assumed in person. His office smelled like worn leather, but not in a manly way. In the kind of way it might smell of worn leather if he’d gone to an interior design store and bought a candle called “Worn Leather” that he burned on a shelf, while he mentally assessed troubled children and their equally troubled parents.

  Connor sat on the very edge of his seat, pressing two Legos together and pulling them apart again over and over. Amie was happily entertaining herself on the floor on the other side of the room with another little girl, who seemed perplexed by Amie’s disinterest in her Barbie collection.

  Fielding, at least six foot four, refused to sit down and was standing by a bookcase, running his fingers absently over the spines of the books displayed there: Dr. Seuss mixed in with From Childhood to Adolescence and The Cambridge Anthology of Child Psychiatry. “So, Connor. Tell me. Are you happy to be back in the city now?” he asked.

  Connor stopped pressing the Legos together and pulling them apart. “Yes. I like it here a lot.”

  “And do you like your new place? Were you sad you weren’t moving back into your old apartment? The one you lived in with your mom and dad?”

  Connor put down the Legos and raised his head, looking Fielding right in the eye. “No, I’m not sad. I like the new apartment. You can see the park from my bedroom window. And the river, too.”

  A lot happened after Sully and I left Camp Haan. The restaurant was safe, and Mom was determined to be independent. I’d been worried about telling her I was going to move permanently to New York, but when I’d plucked up the courage and blurted it out, she’d been absolutely thrilled for me. Aunt Simone was moving into a house a couple of doors down the street, and she was going to run the restaurant with Mom. With the extra money left over from the payout Linneman put into my bank account, there was enough cash to rebrand the place and really give it a fresh start. Umberto’s was now “George’s Place,” and I couldn’t have been happier.

  When I’d gotten off the plane at JFK, Sully was by my side, smiling softly. To me, he hadn’t looked anything like his brother in that moment. He was purely Sully—a new man. Tall, dark, devastatingly handsome, and all mine. He’d picked me up and taken me into his arms, holding onto me like he was afraid I was some kind of mirage and I was going to disappear any second, and he’d kissed me hard. The world had stopped. There was no airport. There were no announcers over the tannoy. There were no crowds of people waiting for their loved ones, or hurrying to make their flights. There was only me and him, and our future lying out before us, and it was the most perfect moment.

  “Are you ready to go home?” he’d asked.

  “God, yes. So ready.”

  And so we’d gotten in a cab, and we’d driven through the traffic and the confusion of New York until we’d reached our new apartment building in Lower Manhattan. After he’d bundled me into the elevator, he proceeded to pinch and roll my nipples beneath my sweater and kiss my neck until I had to slap him and make him stop.

  Our apartment was pure perfection: high ceilings, and beautiful architraving. Parquet flooring, and south-facing sunshine all afternoon long. We only had two bedrooms, but that was enough for us. More than enough. Unexpectedly, Rose had moved with us. She’d signed onto a night course at Colombia, and was finishing her bachelor’s in English literature, which meant during the day she got the children up and ran them both to school. Later on, I collected them and brought them back to our building, but instead of taking them to the apartment I shared with Sully, I took them up one extra floor to the much larger, more spacious place the Fletcher Corporation had bought for Connor and Amie: four bedrooms, and a view to die for.

  Everyone was happy. Everyone loved the arrangement. We still felt like a family, all living together, sharing the responsibilities and day-to-day pleasures of growing together, but Sully and I got our privacy when we needed it, and so did Rose.

  “Do you miss being on the island?” Fielding asked, taking down a book from the shelf.

  “I do sometimes,” Connor said, which surprised me. He’d been perfectly happy to return to New York—it was all he’d ever known before Ronan had uprooted him and transplanted him to the tiny island off the coast of Maine. “Sometimes I miss the sound of the ocean,” he continued. “And the quiet, too. It can be pretty loud here.”

  Fielding smiled. “It can, can’t it? I think you’ll get used to it again, though. Then it w
ill feel like you never left in the first place.”

  “Mmm. I suppose so.”

  “And what about spending time with Ophelia? And Sully, and Rose? Do you like spending time with all of them at home?”

  “Yes. I really like it. I really like them all. Amie does, too.” He spoke quickly, as if he were a little panicked. Child Protection Services had conducted a very thorough, terrifying interview with all of us when we explained what we were planning, and ever since then Connor had been worried he and Amie were going to have to go away. As the days passed, he was more and more confident, showing more personality and more attitude than ever before. Still, he knew Fielding had the power to drag CPS back into our lives, and he really didn’t want that.

  Fielding nodded, smiling in a comforting way that seemed to settle Connor. “That’s really wonderful news. I’m so pleased to hear it. Is there anything you’d like to talk to me about today? Are you worried about anything? Is there something maybe you’d like to talk to me about alone?” Fielding shot me a perfunctory glance as he said this, barely acknowledging me, and I wanted to junk punch the man. I got it, though. I understood. Connor’s safety was his main priority. If Connor needed to talk with Fielding alone, then of course he could. The implication that I, or Sully, or Rose might have done something wrong was rather grating, though.

  Connor declined his offer. “No, thanks. Tomorrow we’re going to the Natural History Museum to show Amie the dinosaur skeletons. Real ones! And then we’re going to get pancakes for lunch. It’s Amie’s birthday.”

  “That sounds like it’s going to be a very special day, Connor. I hope you enjoy it.”

  Later, with Connor holding one hand and Amie holding the other, I managed to flag down a cab and get us across to Tribeca, to Sully’s warehouse. He’d set up shop making unique, handcrafted items of furniture for New York’s elite. He could easily have retired on the money Ronan had set aside for him in order for him to take care of the children, but he refused to touch a cent of it. It was all for them, he said. He’d made his way in the world just fine despite his brother, and he didn’t plan on that changing any time soon.

  We found Sully covered in sawdust and smelling like fresh cut pine at the back of his studio. Connor and Amie both whooped and hollered, racing to him and throwing their arms around his body. He held up his arms, looking down on the two little people clinging onto him, and he laughed.

  “Wow. Anyone would think you were happy to see me,” he said, grinning.

  “We are, we are!” Amie told him, giggling. “It’s time to go home for dinner!”

  “I see.” Sully looked up at me, and his smile transformed into something softer. His face was filled with light, where there was once such darkness and anger. It was as though he was a different man entirely. He was still as playfully arrogant as ever, and his comebacks were just as sharp and caustic as they had been when I’d first met him. But now there was a quiet calm to him that had made me fall even more impossibly in love with him.

  We traveled home, Sully in the front seat with the cab driver and me in the back with the children. The entire six miles from the warehouse back to the apartment, Sully had his hand wedged behind him through the gap between his seat and the door, gently stroking my leg, his fingers curled around my ankle, touching me in one way or another.

  We ate dinner with Rose and the children, and then stayed to bathe the kids and put them to bed.

  “Will you tell us a story, Uncle Sully?” Amie pleaded. “A story about when you and Daddy were little, like me and Connor?” Sully looked uncomfortable for a second, and then he sat down on the end of Amie’s bed, folding his arms across his chest.

  “All right. But your dad and I used to get into all sorts of trouble together, so you have to promise you won’t follow our lead, okay?”

  Both Amie and Connor nodded solemnly.

  “Right. Well. There was this one time, when Ronan and I were maybe a little bit older than you are now, maybe ten years old, and he and I did something very bad. We burned down the McInnes feed store…”

  I backed out of the room, cringing. Trust Sully to tell them something completely inappropriate like that. He’d taken to the children so well, though. He loved being their uncle. Would he have ever gotten to know them if Ronan and Magda were still alive? It was doubtful. Most likely, they would have grown into adulthood and never met him once. Now, despite the fact that their parents were both gone, Connor and Amie had a loving uncle and a loving aunt taking care of them, as well as me. I may not have had a familial title for them to call me, but the way they said my name—with love and buckets of affection—was enough.

  An hour later, Sully came down into our apartment, red cheeked and looking very sheepish. “Rose says she needs to vet my bedtime stories from here on out,” he told me, huffing as he sank himself down onto the sofa beside me.

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Sully stuck his tongue out at me, reaching up to stroke his index finger down my temple, cheek and underneath my chin. “You look very beautiful right now, Miss Ophelia Lang from California. Did you know that?”

  I bit back a smile. It would be no good if he knew how happy his compliments made me; he’d tease me over them without mercy. “Sure I do,” I said airily. “You don’t look so bad yourself, I suppose.”

  Sully laughed, rolling his eyes. “Come on. We both know I’m the most attractive man on the planet. Heavy lies the crown and all that.” He was joking, but he was also telling the truth—he really was the hottest guy on the planet to me. I leaned over him and planted a kiss square between his eyebrows, and Sully moaned softly under his breath.

  “A letter came for you,” I whispered to him, face still hovering only an inch above his. “It’s from The Causeway.”

  “Probably from Medical Center Gale, wondering when I’m leaving you and going back to her,” he told me, winking. He got up and collected his mail from the table, then opened it, scanning the letter he unfolded in his hands. There were two pieces of paper in the envelope. Sully read one and then the other in silence, then he just stood there staring at them both.

  “What is it, Sully?”

  He didn’t move.

  “Sully?”

  He folded the papers together and walked slowly back to the sofa, where he handed me both pieces of paper. “A voice from the grave,” he said quietly.

  The first letter was from Linneman. It was brief and to the point:

  Dear Sully,

  Before your brother died, he came to see me and he made significant changes to his last will and testament. As you know, he provided a significant sum of money to you, along with your childhood home to do with as you pleased. He also made sure the children were financially secure for the rest of their lives, thanks to their majority share holding in the Fletcher Corporation. Additionally, Ronan also left me in possession of a letter addressed to you, to be mailed to you wherever you were living as of today’s date, being October 19th. As such, please find enclosed his correspondence as per his instructions.

  I wish you all the very best in your new life with Ophelia and the children in New York, Sully. I can’t say that I will ever forget the drama and the chaos that came with knowing the Fletcher family, but then again I can’t say I would want to forget, either.

  We may not have been able to save my dear brother-in-law that night we climbed into that boat together and rode into the unknown, my dear friend, but I consider myself lucky to have had the opportunity to weather the storm beside such a man as yourself.

  My best regards,

  Robert Clyde Linneman.

  I unfolded the other piece of paper, holding my breath, not sure if I should even look at Sully to make sure he was okay.

  Brother,

  It’s been my greatest honor to call you this for the past thirty-one years, even if it has been your greatest shame to acknowledge me with the same title.

  I can’t say I’m sorry anymore. I can’t ever mean it enough, and so the word ha
s lost its meaning to me. Instead, I write this letter to you now, knowing the circumstances under which you will receive it, with the greatest of thanks in my heart.

  You always were and always will be the better man. I’m so grateful that you will be a father figure to my children. I’m so grateful that you have found happiness, too. The moment I laid eyes on Ophelia, I saw a great and beautiful love story laid out before you. I know this because I know I would have fallen in love with her, too, of course. Wasn’t that always the problem? We were doomed to love the same women throughout our lives? Not this time, though. This time the happily ever after belongs to you, dear brother. At least I hope it does, anyway. Good luck to you, and to Ophelia.

  Enough time has passed now that I also hope the hurt and suffering I caused you has dulled a little, and that as the coming years pass you by, you may even learn to forgive my weaknesses and my betrayal. Because my love for you is second only to the woman who died in my arms last year, Sully. Please know I would never have risked the precious bond I shared with you for anything less.

  Thank you for doing what I could not, Sully.

  Thank you for doing the right thing.

  Your brother always,

  Ronan.

  I folded the paper again, taking a long moment to consider Ronan’s words. He orchestrated this from the beginning? He knew Sully and I would fall in love? How could he possibly have known such a thing? But then again, perhaps he could see it. They had both loved Magda, after all. Perhaps Ronan knew when he met me what would transpire between his brother and I.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked quietly.