What Comes Next

by Desni Dantone

  “I don’t want you driving back alone,” he’d told me when I argued that I would gladly take him. Anything for the ten extra hours with him, even if they’d be spent on the road. “I’d rather know you were here, okay, and . . .”

  “Waiting for you to come back,” I finished without hesitation.

  He nodded solemnly, and pulled my head onto his chest. In the tranquil darkness of the treehouse, I listened to the steady beat of his heart under my ear. Tonight was it. He left tomorrow, and there was no way we weren’t going to spend it together.

  “It’s going to be a year,” he reminded me softly, as if I’d forgotten.

  “I know.”

  His arms tightened around me as he sucked in a deep breath. “I’m going to marry you the minute I get back.”

  “I’ll be ready,” I promised.

  Throughout the night, we made several promises to each other. To write. To wait. To make plans. Under the dull ache of despair was excitement over the future that awaited us. I chose to focus on that, and not the part that it would be a year before I saw him again.

  We took our time kissing, caressing, and loving each other as the hours until morning ticked by. I memorized the details of his face—from the softness in his eyes when he looked at me to the tiny scar above his eyebrow that he received the day we found my father—and the way he felt beneath my hands. When morning came, I knew that no amount of time could take that away from me.

  What happened next changed me forever.

  The first few months after Ben left dragged by impossibly slow. It seemed that no end was in sight. That spring, I graduated high school and started working more hours at the diner to help Ma with the bills. I helped around the farm, and sought Jen’s company during the down times.

  By the time Ben was halfway through his service, I had a sizable collection of letters from him. In the most recent ones, he insisted that I start making plans for our upcoming wedding. Jen was more than happy to help me with the details I never would have thought of.

  Two months shy of Ben’s return, I was in good spirits. I had an intimate wedding planned for the weekend after his discharge from the Army. A white dress hung in my closet, next to the unopened shoebox full of Ben’s money. The future I’d been waiting for was quickly approaching.

  My only worries were over Ma’s quickly failing health, and the Army enlistment papers stashed under my brother’s bed. With his own high school graduation coming in a few short months, there was nothing I could do to stop him.

  “Maybe Ben could talk some sense into Jeffrey when he comes back,” Jen offered as we walked along the dirt road that overlooked the Maxwells’ and Sawyers’ fields.

  We’d taken to walking in the afternoons a few times a week, on the days I had off from the diner and Jen had off from the grocery store. It was a nice routine that I looked forward to.

  “I honestly don’t think that will help.” I kicked at a loose rock with a sigh.

  “You could ask Mitch to tell Jeffrey about the bad stuff he’ll see,” Jen suggested. “I mean, sure he’s better now, but when he first came back, wasn’t he a mess?”

  “Yeah.” I’d noticed the change in Mitch about six months ago, right after he got a promotion at work. He had let his hair grow, slowed down on the drinking, and became a solid shoulder to lean on in his brother’s absence. “But he still doesn’t like to talk about what happened over there.”

  Jen nodded thoughtfully. “Speaking of that, how is Ben doing?”

  “Fine, I think. He says he’s fine. I still don’t think he tells me everything, but he’s maintained a sense of humor through it all. The letters have started to taper off, though.”

  I recalled one of the last letters I received from him a few weeks ago. He’d subtly hinted that I might not hear from him for a while, but didn’t go into the details why. Jeffrey, of course, explained that if Ben was sent into a battle zone, he wouldn’t have much access to the postal service, let alone time to actually write a letter. That hadn’t stopped me from sending him something nearly every day. We had learned early on that not everything made it through, so I made sure to send a lot, and often.

  Jen shrugged off my audible concern. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to worry you with—hey, what’s Mitch doing home?”

  “What?” I followed the direction of Jen’s gaze toward the Sawyers’ house as we passed.

  Parked in the driveway was Mitch’s yellow Camaro. Since he’d gotten an apartment on the coast a few months ago, he didn’t come back to Stone Creek as often. Usually only on the weekends, and never in the middle of the afternoon on a work day.

  I paused near the mailbox to observe the other vehicles in the driveway. Parked near the house was Old Red, which Ms. Sawyer had been driving. Wedged between the truck and Mitch’s Camaro was a strangely familiar dark-colored sedan.

  My steps faltered when I realized where and when I’d seen that car before. Outside Travis Winter’s house. Four months ago. Mrs. Winter cried as the car left. The next day, everyone heard of Travis’s death at the hands of a sniper. He was buried a week later.

  “That’s a military vehicle,” I whispered harshly to Jen.

  “What?” She glanced back and forth between me and the driveway. “How do you—”

  She stopped abruptly when the front door swung open. Mitch walked out of the house with his head down and two sharply dressed officers trailing behind him. The three paused on the porch to shake hands before the officers stalked toward the sedan.

  I couldn’t breathe. I knew Jen’s hand was on my shoulder, but I couldn’t feel it. I knew she was saying something to me, but all I heard was the sound of my own heart beating.

  I knew why these officers were here, but I didn’t want to believe it.

  It’s just an injury. He’s only injured, not—

  Did they send a military vehicle when Caleb Ritchey took a bullet to the leg last fall? He came home six months early. No funeral. Just lots of Jell-O and rest, I’d heard.

  That’s what this is. Ben’s only injured, and he’ll be coming home soon. Maybe he’s already here.

  I shuffled toward the house on unsteady legs while the officers filed into the sedan and closed their doors. Behind me, Jen called my name, but I didn’t stop. I already heard the fear in her voice; I didn’t want to see it in her eyes, too.

  Mitch looked up, over the roof of the car, and spotted me stumbling in his direction. One look into his watery eyes told me what I didn’t want to know.

  My knees crumbled beneath me as my world shattered. Above the sound of the blood rushing to my head, I heard the pitiful wail of a wounded animal in the distance. It wasn’t until Mitch’s arms looped under my arms and pulled my face out of the dirt that I realized the noise was coming from me.

  “She’s his fiancée.” I heard Mitch’s gravelly voice, and it knocked the air out of me.

  Nearly a year since I’d heard his voice, and I would never hear it again.

  There were some more mumbled voices around me, but Mitch’s was the only one I heard. So similar to his brother’s—but not the same. The similar brown eyes I peered into now were also not the same. They weren’t looking at me with love, but with pity.

  “I’ve got her,” Mitch snapped at someone. His voice trembled when he whispered to me, “Come on, sweetheart.”

  His arms opened and I dove into them, seeking a comfort I didn’t know how to find. Cradled in Mitch’s arms on the ground, I cried a steady stream of hot tears. My hands fisted his shirt in desperation as I pleaded, “Don’t say it. Don’t tell me . . .”

  At the same time, I needed to hear him say it. Otherwise, I would never believe it.

  “I’m sorry, Ana,” Mitch whispered into my ear. My worst fear became a confirmed reality when he muttered the two words that changed my life forever. “He’s dead.”

  He’s dead.

  The words echoed in my head. I screamed to drown them out, and feared I would never stop.

  All I had left
of Ben were his letters, a Polaroid photo taken of us the morning he left, and his Army-issued dog tags. Burnt nearly beyond recognition, all I could make out was the “–yer” that made up his last name, along with a series of difficult-to-read numbers that supposedly identified him as the owner.

  I rubbed the metallic pieces between my fingers for days, struggling with the reality that he was really gone, as the details of his death trickled in.

  Ambush. Massive explosion. No survivors. In most cases, no body to return home.

  In the end, nothing but his dog tags remained to be placed in an empty casket. Others filled the void with their own pictures, baseballs signed with personal messages, and Ben’s now-retired baseball jersey before it was lowered into the ground at the local cemetery.

  Eventually a marker would go in the ground, pinpointing this as the spot that he was laid to rest, but I knew better. He wasn’t there. I didn’t feel him there.

  I loitered in the cemetery long after the last mourner left, waiting for the moment that I would feel him, but it never came. I hadn’t stopped crying for days, but the tears fell harder when I realized that the feeling would never come.

  He wasn’t there.

  I wandered away from the vacant grave, and wound up standing in front of my mama’s small stone marker. There, I curled up on my side on the ground. For what might have been hours, I talked to my mama because she was there.

  That was where Jeffrey found me later.

  “Ana . . .” He dropped to his knees beside me, and ran a hand over my rigid back. “It’s almost dark, Ana.”

  “I know.”

  I laced the cool grass between my fingers as Jeffrey shifted to sit cross-legged beside me. I glanced up to find his gaze fixed on our mama’s name chiseled into the stone marker.

  “Do you miss her, Ana?”

  “Yes,” I answered honestly. “Don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think . . .” He lowered his head with a sigh. “I don’t know what I think.”

  Watching my brother’s warring emotions as they played out on his face, I knew what I needed to do. I pushed myself up, forcing his eyes to shift to me.

  “I met him. I met our father.” Jeffrey’s lips parted, but he offered no response as I laid a comforting hand on his knee. “Trust me when I say that she loved us. By protecting us from him, she showed us how much she loved us.”

  He was silent for a long time before he finally asked, “And you protected me by not telling me?”

  There was no accusation in his tone, but I found myself apologizing anyway. “I’m sorry. I guess that’s always been my job as your big sister.”

  Jeffrey’s eyes shifted over my shoulder, in the direction of the fresh gravesite several rows over, and he nodded. “I know you don’t want me to go. Especially now, but—”

  I stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. “I want you to do what you want to do, even if that includes enlisting. I’ll worry, but—”

  “I don’t want you to worry.”

  “I will no matter what you do,” I insisted. “I’m your big sister. It’s my job, remember?”

  “I don’t want to leave you after . . .” He swallowed hard. Admitting Ben was gone was almost as difficult for him to admit as it was for me. “And Ma isn’t doing well. What are you going to do?”

  I forced a faint smile, and answered honestly, “I don’t know.”

  The only thing I did know was that the time had come for me to let my brother make his own way. Though I would do anything to protect him, I realized I had to let him go. Even if doing so thrust him into the war that had already killed the love of my life.

  Watching Jeffrey leave a few months later was the second hardest thing I’d ever done. Second only to my failed attempts at letting go of Ben. For Jeffrey’s sake, I pasted on a smile the morning I hugged him good-bye. When Ma passed a month later, I found myself completely alone for the first time in my life.

  I had her buried in the plot between Pop and Mama. Ms. Sawyer and Mitch were with me every step of the way. While it was a blessing to have their help, I hated the reminder that one Sawyer was not at my side.

  Every time I saw Mitch, I was reminded that Ben was gone and that he wasn’t coming back. Though my heart ached a little every time I laid eyes on the older brother, nothing hurt more than the afternoon I spotted Mr. Pebbles’ ad posted on the wall at The Pit.

  He’d put the land Ben had intended to buy back on the market. Staring at the reminder of the life I would not have, I made the hardest decision of my life.

  Or the easiest, depending on how I looked at it.

  I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t live in this town, alone and faced with the reminders of the man I loved, and the life we would never have, anymore.

  That night was the night I left Stone Creek behind.

  I startle awake, tangled in my sweat-dampened sheets. I put my hand to my heart and look around the unfamiliar room. It takes me a moment to remember where I am, and even longer to remember how I got here.

  I came back. Yesterday. I found the photograph of Ben and me in this room a few short hours ago—a photograph that should have been destroyed when he died. I learned that Mitch came here to see me a year ago, and that his visit had something to do with Ben.

  But why leave the photograph?

  Furthermore, how did the photograph end up in his possession?

  Ben once told me in a letter that he carried it on him. In theory, it shouldn’t have survived the explosion that took his life. Yet here it is, laying on the nightstand beside my own copy.

  I always suspected there would be no coming back from Bennett Sawyer, and I was right. Even leaving Stone Creek has not made it easy to move on from him. My soul has been forever marked by the boy that stole my heart.

  Running away from his memory has not helped, and now it’s here, staring me in the eyes and refusing to go away. I don’t know where to go from here.

  What I do know is that I need to find out why Mitch came here. I have to ask him what he needed to tell me about Ben. If I ever have a chance of moving on from the only boy I have ever loved, I need to face his memory now.

  It was that constant drip . . . drip . . . drip of blood that did it every time. Again, as I had nearly every night for the past year, while I wasted away in this god-awful underground prison cell, I ripped from my terrifying dreams with a gasp.

  My arms flailed around, desperately searching the blackness that surrounded me for unseen threats. I found nothing but empty air, and after a moment, I settled against the cold wall at my back. As I tried to gain control of my erratic breathing, my ears picked up the sounds around me, and my eyes adjusted to the near pitch-blackness.

  Twice a day, we were rewarded with a few moments of daylight—and a fistful of food—before it went dark again. Just enough light to barely make out the shadows of my slowly dying comrades around me. Their moans never faded. When one died, another took his place. Many times, I thought about how I would welcome my turn at death.

  Two things kept me fighting.

  Two letters were hidden in the inner pocket of my Army jacket. One hardened by dried blood on the paper, and never opened. The other—the one my fingers reached for now—was thin and soft from overuse. Though I couldn’t read its contents in the dark now, the feel of the paper, and the photograph tucked away inside it, was enough to slow my racing pulse. I had the words memorized, and I recited them to myself now, submerging myself in her love for a few moments.

  Beside me, the wheezes and gasps of a soldier brought in earlier today grew louder. I resisted the urge to cover my ears. Instead, I tucked the photograph and letter away, and crawled across the hard ground to his side. In the near dark, all I could make out was the whites of his eyes as he stared up at me. I found his hand and squeezed. Sometimes that was all it took—for them to pull it together and live, or to give in to the injuries they’d received before capture.

  In this case, I held the hand of a nameless sold
ier as he gave up the fight.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” a voice whispered from the shadows behind me. Sounded like the guy that had earned the name Niner due to the fact that he just wouldn’t die despite everything the enemy put him through. Nice guy. Tough as nails.

  I nodded before I realized he couldn’t see me any better than I could see him. Clearing the lump in my throat, I answered, “Yeah, he’s gone.”

  “Third one this week,” someone else muttered.

  “Like we don’t all know that,” another voice sneered.

  Though it was difficult to keep track of, with all the newbies coming, and the sick and injured dying on a regular basis, my last count was eight of us stuck in this miserable hole. Only two of them had been in here longer than me now, and sometimes tensions ran high.

  Especially when we had a death in the middle of the night, and we all knew the smell of decay would eat us alive by morning.

  “Someone want to help me here?” I called out as I attempted to move the dead soldier closer to the door.

  As heartless as it sounded, it was the only thing that helped with the smell. The only time I had insisted on staying with a body was a year ago. I’d earned a wicked injury to my ribs when I attempted to fight the enemy off for possession of the body of someone close to me. They took him anyway, and I nearly threw away the sacrifice he’d made when I nearly died a few days later. Since then I’d vowed to do everything I could to hang on, to get out of there and fulfill his dying wish someday.

  Most of the time, I thought that day would never come. I thought I would spend the duration of my life in this hole, watching other men die and moving their bodies to the door, until it was my turn.

  “Stop,” a voice ordered from the back. Kansas, we called him. He rarely spoke up, but when he did, we all listened. He’d never admitted it, since that was basic survival as a POW, but I suspected he was an officer. And he commanded our attention now. “Does anyone else hear that?”