by Lee Kilraine
A high school kid jogged over with a bag of balls and a handful of sticks. “Hello, Mr. Cates. Officer Cates said I should help you today.”
“Boyd.” He’d given Boyd a part-time job over the summer. The kid reminded him of himself at that age. “What’d you do this time?”
The teen kicked at a tuft of grass in front of him. “Spray painted graffiti.”
“You’ve got to think these things through, Boyd.” Tynan didn’t put up with his excuses. “We talked about this last time, remember?”
“I know. It’s just—” He stopped when he realized who he was talking to. “Yes. I remember.”
He knew what this kid was going through. Hell, twelve years ago he was this kid. A bundle of an excess of pent-up energy. Full of piss and vinegar and the focus and discipline of a gnat.
“Okay, well, how about you start by jogging them around the field once?”
“Sure, Coach.” Boyd dropped the equipment in the grass and jogged off as directed.
Someone pulled on his pants leg. He looked down at Henry Lee. “Hey, HL, how’s things?”
The kid shrugged. “Where’s Coach Quinn?”
“He had to stay at work late.” Hawk was a cop, so Henry Lee was probably used to it. “Guess you know about that, huh?”
“Yeah, but I wanted to ask Coach Quinn a favor.” Henry Lee kicked his lacrosse stick with his cleat-shod foot, then released a big shoulder-slumping sigh.
“Can’t you go by the station after school tomorrow and ask him?” Quinn was the kid’s godfather. Tynan was pretty sure he was going to say yes to the kid no matter what it was.
“I guess.” The kid swooshed his stick at the grass, then looked up, his face sober. “Can I ask you instead?”
“Sure, I guess.” How bad could it be? The kid was six years old. Dammit, Quinn was better at this stuff. “Although you probably should talk this over with your daddy. I know my dad always has the best advice.”
Henry Lee’s face fell like he’d lost his puppy. Oh, hell. He hoped he didn’t cry. He wasn’t very good with crying kids. Tynan had one just-rub-dirt-on-it speech in his repertoire that he’d used in the Army. It might not work with a six-year-old.
“Could you find my daddy a girlfriend?”
Tynan choked and coughed. “You want me to do what?”
“I been looking for a mommy for us for a while now. But every time I find one there’s always something wrong with her.”
He really wanted to know what was wrong with these didn’t-make-the-cut women but knew that would only encourage Henry Lee. Tynan let himself imagine the fun he and Quinn could have with this, setting Hawk up with women, then filed it away with things mature men didn’t do to their friends.
He got down on one knee so he could talk to Henry Lee on the same level, resting a hand on his shoulder pads. “HL, you really need to talk to your daddy about this.”
“I did.”
“And what did he say?” It was hard to see the kid’s whole body sag, but life deals everyone a crappy hand at some point. Those crappy deals and how they dealt with them were what shaped a person and made them what they were. And sometimes you got those crappy deals at six.
“He said he can’t marry a lady just because she’s a good mommy.”
Looking into Henry Lee’s sad eyes, Tynan felt stark sympathy for him. Hell, he felt worse for poor Hawk. Guilt must stab him daily looking into that face. He tried to channel a six-year-old’s logic. “What’s your most favorite toy in the world?”
HL scrunched his face up in concentration. “My Super Ninja Squirrel.”
“Why? What’s makes it special?”
“It has a cape and mask, and it fights bad guys, and it has a turbo-action tail that spins around and knocks out his enemies like this”—Henry Lee dropped the lacrosse stick and spun around in quick, ninjalike moves, as if fighting an imaginary bad guy—“and it can karate chop a T. rex or a shark.”
“HL, dude, your Super Ninja Squirrel sounds awesome.” Tynan raised his hand and they gave each other a high five. “So, what if I said I was replacing it with a toy I picked out, say a Tickle Me Elmo doll or one of those new Transformers action figures?”
Henry Lee frowned up at Tynan. “I wouldn’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“ ’Cause it’s not the same. My Ninja Squirrel is special.”
“Right. Just any old toy isn’t the same.” Tynan stood up and placed his hand on HL’s shoulder. “It’s the same for your daddy and finding a girlfriend. You can’t just pick any woman for him. He has to think she’s special, and he has to pick her out himself.”
Tilting his head, Henry Lee squinted an eye up at him.
“Does that make sense, HL?” Tynan gave himself a mental pat on the back for having successfully navigated this conversation. “Are you good?”
“Uh-huh.” Henry Lee swung his stick and hit himself on the head. Good thing he was wearing his helmet. “Ouch. Can you help me find a girlfriend my daddy will think is special enough to pick?”
Well, hell.
Chapter Eight
The next day Tynan sat on a stack of sheetrock in the center of the library’s lobby. It had been another long day, but he looked around satisfied with the rate of progress. Miraculously, the pixie wasn’t slowing them down.
He snorted because he knew that was only because every man on his crew wanted to keep her, so even though they were flirting and joking with her, they were working damn hard to stay on schedule. Surprisingly, Lu had made it through the first week with absolutely no prior construction experience. That much was obvious. But damn, she was a fast learner. She picked up most tasks darn quick. And she could multitask because she’d talk his head off while she worked. Yep, she was a regular worker bee—with anything below six feet.
Tynan assigned her jobs and Lu did the ones that fit within her parameters of a “low-construction specialist.” Which meant Tynan was climbing the ladder more than usual. Sure he thought about cutting her loose on each of his trips up the ladder, but then his brain talked him out of it. Whatever reason pushed a woman to take up construction out of the blue, it probably wasn’t good. Whatever it was, he figured paying her for two weeks wasn’t going to break him.
No, it was going without a full night’s sleep again that was going to break him. Reaching down for the bottle of water at his feet, he crooked his head left and then right, trying to work the kinks from his neck. Damn, he was tired. It felt a lot like when he’d first gotten home.
When Tynan had returned from his last deployment in Afghanistan, he had needed time to reorient himself. Time to decompress. Time to pack away some of the mental and emotional baggage he’d brought home with him. He knew his family had worried about him back in those early days. Days when he’d hole up in his house or disappear off into the woods for days on end. Hell, he even looked for answers in the bottom of a liquor bottle for about a month, but mostly he’d just check out mentally while surrounded by the people he loved and trusted the most. Even though he could see the worry in his family’s faces, he couldn’t pull it together those first few months.
He was never alone during that time because all the guys he’d lost showed up in his dreams every night. He had to fight to work through the pain and guilt. Because over there, in the middle of a war, there wasn’t time to mourn. He’d had to pack up all the emotion in order to stay focused on the next mission.
So his first few months back were a hard slog, but not as bad as other vets he knew. He didn’t suffer from PTSD. Nope. No flinching at loud noises. Which was helped by the slight hearing loss; hanging around artillery and loud plane engines will do that to you. Sure he might still check his six and tense up a bit when he saw something on the roadside or just before turning a corner on the sidewalk, but hell, in today’s world, didn’t everybody?
He came back in one piece when not everyone in his squad did. Torrez lost an arm from small-arms fire. And O’Reilly got sent home with a head injury and burn
s after the rocket-propelled grenade hit his Humvee. And then there were the four they lost. Those haunted his dreams until he’d come up with a solution.
One night, after months of being unable to sleep because his men kept showing up every night in his dreams, he sat them down at a poker table and started to play. And slowly, as the nights piled up, he sat around the table with Murph, Shughart-daddy, and Alphabet. They bluffed over crap poker hands, laughed, talked shit, and, some nights, talked about life. In a sick, twisted way it helped him deal with the loss. It kept his band of brothers with him and helped him find his footing again. That was a comfort.
Except Joey. He couldn’t coax Joey to the table and into the game. Joey always sat slumped in the shadowy corner, staring at him like he was waiting for something. Like there was some unfinished business. Some unfinished conversation or deed Joey was expecting from him. Hell if he knew what it was.
After weeks of drinking at home by himself, too many sleepless nights, and his parents and brothers constantly checking on him, one day his brother Kaz finally stepped in.
Kaz was wicked smart and just about the calmest, most laid-back guy he knew. It took a lot to piss Kaz off. Which was why Tynan was a little surprised when, of all his brothers, it was Kaz who showed up at his house one day demanding he get his shit together. Tynan had been holed up in his house for four days and still crawling out of a two-day hangover, so not in the mood to listen to Kaz’s decrees.
He remembered his response: make me. Kaz had made a deal. The two of them in the backyard. Mano a mano. If Tynan won, he could carry on with his new hermit lifestyle. If Kaz won, Tynan had to make a real effort to join the living again. A two-day bender and a two-day hangover didn’t lend themselves well to a receptive attitude. Or a crystal-clear memory—or he would have thought twice about making that deal. Because he forgot that while Kaz might be a bottomless well of inner peace, he also possessed a fourth-degree black belt.
Kaz beat his ass that day. That had been the day he pulled out of the flat spin his life had been in. No one in the family asked about his black eye or bruised cheek. They just looked darn happy and relieved he was back.
After that Tynan finally made some changes. He removed all alcohol from his house and only drank around other people now. It wasn’t that he had a drinking problem. The problem was he’d been using alcohol to isolate himself.
He began by surrounding himself with family. He and his brothers had always been close, but in order to fight the need to isolate himself, he found hanging out with his brothers the best medicine. He’d started his own construction business; home renovations mostly, and he made handcrafted furniture in between jobs.
The second key for him was to keep his once wildly crazy life under tight control. Schedules were good. Schedules helped avoid surprises and helped him maintain control. He woke up at five every day. Worked out. Showered. Put in an eight-to-ten-hour day, then grabbed a meal with family or friends.
There was definitely a dividing line between his life before the war and after. The war had changed him. But that didn’t mean he was damaged, just different. War had tamed his wild soul. He didn’t like surprises anymore. He liked order. Now he kept tight control of both his life and his emotions. It was what worked.
Eventually, his life began to smooth out. Just a normal guy living a normal life. The nightly poker games in his dreams disappeared as he started sleeping at night again. He’d been back in his hometown of Climax, NC, for two years, one month, and seven days, and he had almost got to the place where he could say life was back to normal. Almost. Until six months ago, when he’d gone to the wedding of one of his men.
Tynan’s chest constricted with the memory. The conversation from that day careened through his dreams like a high-speed express train, keeping him awake and rattling his world again.
“Happiest day of my life, Sarge. But there’s a pain”—Dietz had tapped his chest—“right here, that Joey isn’t here.”
A big, gaping silence fell around the group as thoughts turned to Joey. Joey had been like everyone’s kid brother. He was funny, happy, and easy to get along with. A free spirit, like he’d found out the secret of life.
“You know he had his whole life planned out? He was going to marry his high school sweetheart and then get busy having kids. He’d even picked out names. Joe Jr for a boy and Ashley for a girl.”
More silence.
Dietz shook his head. “Why do I get this and he doesn’t?”
It was like getting sliced by burning hot shrapnel all over again. Hell if he knew. Tynan raised his beer bottle up in the air. “You know what Joey would say to that?”
The men laughed and snorted. They all raised their drink of choice in the air and together said, “It’s all good.”
It’s all good. Joey’s tagline. His response when things were about to hit the fan and everyone else was losing it. It’s all good, Sergeant.
Only it wasn’t, because he hadn’t been able to get that conversation out of his head since. Why was he alive and not Joey? What the hell was he doing with his life to deserve being one of the lucky ones?
He would never forget the look of fear on Joey’s face that night. Hell, they were all scared, but that night Joey’s fear was deeper—bleak, bordering on all-out terror. Tynan had almost ordered Joey to take a guard rotation on base, but he hadn’t wanted to play favorites. No one’s life was more important than another’s. That didn’t stop the second-guessing.
What if he’d been five feet closer? What if he’d heard the incoming a second sooner? He used to remind his men before every mission to be careful, keep their eyes moving, but he couldn’t remember if he’d said it that night. Had he droned his mantra before that mission? He couldn’t remember now.
He’d shouted at Joey to run, but to this day he still remembered the look of fear that had cemented Joey’s feet in place. And then everything had exploded. It had felt like forever by the time Tynan’s ears stopped ringing and he could reorient himself. He was the first one to reach Joey and he’d been quick to apply pressure where blood was pulsing out of his thigh.
“Sorry, Sarg . . . eant Cates. I fucked . . . up.” Joey had looked right up at him with his little brother grin. “Letter in pocket . . . for Stanley. Tell Stanley to find another fishing partner.... Promise.”
Other squad members arrived to help. Someone had called in for a chopper. Joey’s hand clawed at Tynan’s wrist. “Promise.”
“I promise, but you’ll be fishing with Stanley before you know it.”
“Sure.” Joey’s hand fell away. “Sure. It’s all . . . good.”
The whole mission had been a clusterfuck. They’d lost three other men that night. Tynan had clung to the fact that at least Joey hadn’t died, that they’d gotten him safely on the chopper. It was two days later when they found out Joey hadn’t made it through surgery.
And Tynan thought he’d dealt with it. Worked through it. But it turned out he’d just taken that guilt and buried it deep because guess who was showing up to play poker in his dreams again? Only now Joey had come out of the shadows in the corner and it was just the two of them going card for card at the table. They sat at the table and talked about sports, fishing, Joey’s girl, and life.
Every dream ended the same way. Tynan would look at Joey and say how sorry he was. How he would have traded places with him if he could. Joey would just slide on his lopsided grin and say, “It’s all good, Sergeant, but don’t forget to tell Stanley to get a new fishing partner.”
He hadn’t forgotten. When he’d finally come back stateside, he’d gone to see Joey’s family and had asked his parents and brother where he could find Stanley. They’d said Joey didn’t know anyone by that name. Not a first name or a last. Joey had been in shock and losing blood pretty fast. It was entirely possible he had been delirious. So he’d let it go.
Yet here was Joey, haunting his dreams again. Damn if Tynan wasn’t right back where he had started two years ago. Feeling a desperate,
burning need to earn the life he’d flown out of Afghanistan with and wondering who the hell was Stanley?
“Hey, Ty. I thought you’d be long gone by now.” Kaz stood silhouetted in the wide-open front entranceway in a soft orange glow of the setting sun. “It’s six o’clock. Don’t you usually knock off by now?”
“We’ve been working longer days because of the pixie, but I think everybody cleared out about twenty minutes ago.” He chugged the rest of his water back before tossing the bottle into the large tin trash barrel.
Kaz stepped in and let his gaze move from left to right around the library. “Looks like demo’s almost done, but maybe you need a day off. You look beat up.”
Tynan ran a hand down his face, scrubbing it over his gritty eyes. “What I need is a full night’s sleep.”
“Oh?” Eyebrows raised, Kaz walked in farther and sat on the other end of the drywall stack, settling in for a talk. “What’s keeping you awake? Is your business okay? I can float you a loan if you need it, Ty.”
“My business is fine.”
“Then what gives?”
“Can’t a guy just have trouble sleeping?”
“Look, Quinn and Sijan are busy with their women. So unless you want to get lawyered by Paxton—I’m it.” Kaz crossed his arms, looking like he wasn’t going anywhere soon.
“Is this about my sex life?”
“You tell me. But that reminds me”—Kaz tossed the white bag in his hands at Tynan—“I stopped by the bakery at lunch and Georgie gave me these magic-sex muffins for you. She said they’re packed with ginseng and will have you buttering biscuits in no time.”
“Dude, a guy has one off night—” Tynan tossed the bag to the side. With the way his body reacted around Lu, magic-sex muffins with ginseng were the last things he needed.
Kaz shook his head. “I’m not falling for that. You’ve been acting more and more like when you first got back. Spill it.”
“It’s nothing really. I went to that wedding back in May. Hell, was it really six months ago?”
