by Lori Leger
She put her head back and laughed. “Let it go, Marine. There’s a P, I promise.”
With the brisk October breeze blowing, the kite was soaring high in the air in a matter of a few short minutes. Mitch lifted Buck to his shoulders and gave him the reel with the string on it while he held tightly to the boy.
He pointed to the bag on the table. “I have another surprise in there if you want to go take a look. I didn’t want to break it out before getting your approval, Meagan.”
Her eyes lit up as she pulled out packages of cotton candy. “Oh I love this stuff.” She held up the two bags, one pink and one blue. “Buck, look what Mitch brought us.”
“Oh, can I have some, Mom? Please?”
“Do you promise to eat all your veggies during supper?”
“I will, I promise. Except not spinach.”
“Even in a salad?”
Mitch could tell by the boy’s movements that he was nodding.
“It’s a deal,” she said, tearing into the bag of pink stuff.
“I don’t want the pink, Mom. I want blue.”
“There’s no difference. It tastes exactly the same.”
“I’m a boy, I want the blue stuff.”
“Yeah, pink is for girls,” Mitch agreed. “And we’re boys.”
Meagan shrugged. “Fine by me, that means I don’t have to share with either of you. I get a bag all to myself.”
The kite lasted another hour before a nosedive to the ground snapped its spine. As they stood around examining the toy, Buck asked Mitch if he could fix it.
“Not without some spare parts, buddy. I’m sorry.”
Buck reached out for it. “Can I hab-bit, mama?”
“May I have it?” she reminded him as she ruffled his hair. He nodded. “I’d say you need to ask Mitch.”
The boy turned large blue eyes toward Mitch, his voice pleading. “May I have it, Mitch?”
“Sure you can. You want to try and fix it?”
“No, I just wanna habbit. Thank you.” He grabbed the kite and took off running, making a squawking sound, with it raised high in his arms.
Meagan stared up at Mitch. “You didn’t have to do any of this, you know, but it was a nice gesture.”
“I loved flying a kite as a kid. I figured he would too.”
“Well, you did well with the one you chose, that’s for sure. He’s a dinosaur freak, just like his daddy was. Chris had dozens of books on dinosaurs. Loved reading all about them.”
“Books are always a good legacy, something to bring him and his father together when he reads them.”
She nodded, slowly. “It would be if I had them, but they all stayed in Texas at his folk’s place. Our parents…they…when we left home together, they refused to give us anything that we could have remotely considered help, or even a comfort. Their collaborative goal was to have us crawl home, penniless, disillusioned with life, and each other, so they could continue to mold us into whatever they wanted. It irked them that we actually made a go of it.”
The back of her hand plastered to her forehead, Meagan performed a typically dramatic rendition of Scarlett O’Hara. “We were a shameful reminder of their ‘failure’ as parents.”
Mitch grinned, filling in as the cultured southern gentleman. “Why, Miss Meagan, you surely do make a lovely southern belle.”
Her low chuckle reverberated as she seated herself in one of the swings. “Our parents are all friends, upper echelon members of this huge non-denominational church in the next town over. You know the kind, where the preacher judges you on how much you contribute to his bank account? His ‘services’ are so staged, set-up, to play on the emotions of everyone in there…it’s ridiculous…but they never saw it that way.”
She shook her head. “The preacher and his wife drive fancy cars and live in a flippin’ mansion, while his ‘flock’ has to tithe outrageous amounts and barely keep their heads above water. Makes you wonder what God thinks of people like that.”
Mitch grunted his disapproval. “Hm, giving to the church is fine, but what’s that old saying about charity beginning at home?”
Meagan nodded her head vigorously. “Exactly, but it turned out all four of them were good at the same thing. Holding grudges and belittling their children.”
“That seems kind of harsh. Were you already pregnant when you and Chris left town?”
“Nope.”
“So, what’d the two of you do? Elope? Get married without their knowledge?”
“No. Chris and I never married.”
“Oh, sorry. I guess I just assumed you had.”
“He tried to talk me into it. Especially the last time I saw him, for his pre-deployment leave.”
“You should have married him Meg. You and Buck would have been taken care of.”
“Hindsight’s twenty-twenty. At the time, I didn’t want to get married without our parents there. I just knew they’d soften up and realize how much we all needed each other. I even called our folks to plead with them to reconsider.” She looked off toward the slowly setting sun in the west, wiping at a tear in the corner of one eye.
The sight had Mitch wanting to pull her tightly against him, just to comfort her. Nothing else. “I gather they wouldn’t consider it?”
A snort accompanied her sharp comeback. “My own father hung up on me, just before telling me he didn’t have a daughter.” She released a hysterical little laugh. “Even after that, I still insisted on waiting to marry Chris. I told him God wouldn’t smile down on our marriage if we did it without our parents’ approval.” She sniffed loudly and kicked at a pebble.
“Do they know they have a grandson?”
She stared straight ahead, her eyes darkened with anger. “Chris had me listed as the contact for the Marines, so when I called his parents to let them know he’d died, I told them I was pregnant. It didn’t change a thing. They even blamed me for Chris enlisting instead of going to college as they’d planned for him.” She swiped at her eyes. “Hell, I didn’t want him to go. Did they think I enjoyed worrying about the man I loved? Did they think I haven’t wished thousands of times he’d listened to me and gone to college instead? We could have made it just as easily, both working part-time jobs and taking a few classes.”
He already suspected how she’d answer his next question. “And your parents?”
“They weren’t any nicer. My mother even asked if I was certain the child was Christopher’s.” She gave her head one final shake before lifting her chin. “I told all of them they could take their holier than thou values and stick ‘em where the sun didn’t shine. Told them my child was better off without grandparents who were such huge hypocrites.” She sniffed. “Turns out I’m pretty damn good at holding a grudge, myself.”
“Can’t say that I blame you, Meg. Seems like they all had it coming.” He shook his head, remembering all the wonderful times with his parents. “I can’t imagine my parents treating either Sarah or me that way. I know it’s none of my business, but had you or Chris given them trouble at home? Were either of you teenage terrors?”
Meagan snorted. “Both of us straight-A students, who never smoked, drank, or did drugs. Neither of us ever in trouble with the law, and did whatever they asked without any backtalk. Chris used to say that instead of them spoiling us, we spoiled them. The very first time we stood up to them, they bailed, couldn’t take it.”
He grunted, still trying to grasp how a parent could abandon their child. “How difficult could it be to reach out to their daughter or the mother of their future grandchild?”
“Apparently impossible for the four of them.” She turned to watch Buck climb his way up the tallest slide on the playground, then slide down, still hanging onto the kite. “I got the best part of that deal. The very best part of Chris. Our son. I’m so thankful for him.”
“I imagine Chris was pumped up when he found out you were pregnant.” He stepped closer, seeing her eyes tear-up suddenly. “What is it?” He could have kicked his own ass fo
r making her cry.
“He never knew.” Meagan clamped a hand over her mouth to smother a sob, but soon recovered and wiped hastily at her eyes. “I sent him an email with a picture of the ultrasound. Buck was just a tiny little bean.” She wiped at her eyes again with the hem of her light jacket. “He never got the chance to see it. I was notified a few hours later.”
“How?”
“A personal visit…one was a chaplain.” She glanced up at him, her lashes heavy and wet with tears. “If there is any moment in this world that’s worse than opening your front door to three Marines carrying a single envelope, I hope I never experience it.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder as she kicked nervously at some pebbles on the ground. “I’ve never been on that end of it. I’ve had to report Marines down to CO’s, but never family members. I’ve also visited the widow of a Marine brother, along with a few other guys once we got leave. We couldn’t attend his funeral so we paid our respects when we could.”
He sucked in his breath and cringed at the memory of Bobby’s wife crying, hugging each of them in turn. Touching their faces, their shoulders and chests as though she could somehow connect to her Marine through them. “That was almost as difficult for us as the day Bobby lost his life from that IED.” He snorted. “You know, for years, it was good enough to call those damn things what they were, pipe bombs or roadside bombs, or whatever. One day we were told to call them IED’s, an acronym for Improvised Explosive Devices. Different name, but they kill just the same.” He shook his head slowly. “I sure am sorry for you and Buck, Meg. I truly wish Chris had made it back home to you.”
“He made it back, all right, just not as I’d hoped and prayed.” The chain from her swing bounced and jangled as she stood abruptly. “I’m still a little angry at God for that. I’ve attended a couple of church weddings since then but still haven’t stepped inside my church on a Sunday since he took my Marine from me.” His grunt had her turning to face off with him. “Does that disappoint you?”
Mitch studied her. The tortured look in her eyes, the tears that threatened to spill at any second, the arms crossed tightly against her slim torso. He shook his head and smiled down at the stubbornly brave woman who was trying her damnedest to keep it together for her boy’s sake.
“I don’t know that you could ever do anything to disappoint me, Meagan.” He approached her slowly, reached out to smooth the furrows on her brow. “I don’t think you’ve lost your faith in God, simply misplaced it for a bit.”
Her hand closing around his fooled him for just a second. Had him believing she longed for his touch as much as he longed to touch her. Instead, she pushed it gently away.
“I haven’t lost my faith, Mitchell. I just can’t face God in his house right now. I talk to him, I pray and I teach my son to do the same, but it’s on my terms, my turf, in my house. What God did to me…that was a deal-breaker, you know? Hard to take. I figure, if I’m still speaking to him and believing, he shouldn’t hold that against me. I’m doing the best that I can right now.”
Mitch fought the urge to take her in his arms, to give this poor woman some kind of comfort. Instead, he reassured her the only way she’d want him to. “God doesn’t hold that against you, Meg. He wouldn’t dare.” Her quick response—the instant raise of her blue-eyed gaze locking with his, and the accompanying lift of the corners of her mouth in the slightest of smiles—told him he’d succeeded.
Just as quickly, Meagan seemed to shake it off. She wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. “That’s enough about me and Chris. What about you? No high school girlfriend waiting for your call? No girl you met while stationed in some other country? Or are you one of those men whose mistress was the Marine Corp all those years?”
He threw his head back and guffawed. “Damn, I wouldn’t call the Corp a mistress. More like a hard-assed task master, always there to whip my butt into shape if I relaxed too long. But no, there’s no woman anywhere waiting for me to call her, I can assure you of that.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Being in the Corp? Sometimes I miss the order. The structure. I always miss my friends, my Marine brothers. Some I’ve known for two decades. Like Tex.”
“Some of Christopher’s closest friends were those he went to boot camp with. Did you and this ‘Tex’ have that in common?”
“Yep, we plowed through boot camp together, but went our separate ways after that. It wasn’t until nine-eleven threw us together in Iraq that I saw him again. But, I’ve seen that son of a bitch nearly every damned day since then. He couldn’t be more of a brother to me if we were related by blood. He lives in small town east of Beaumont.”
“Did he get out too, or is he trying for thirty?”
“He’s out too. We decided together we’d had enough. The corps has changed an awful lot since we enlisted, some ways good, some not so good.” He started to sound off, but thought better of it, and snapped his mouth shut instead.
She nodded, let her arms drop, her shoulders relaxed just a little. “Did you lose many friends over there?”
He nodded. “Enough.”
“How?”
“Mostly IED’s…like your Marine, some in vehicular one’s set off with a detonator, some by sniper fire.”
“You ever been wounded?”
“A couple of times, but nothing serious. Got shot in the ass once.” He started playing with his belt buckle. “Want to see my scar?”
She lifted one hand in front of her face. “That’s quite all right, Forest…Forest Gump.” Meagan smiled as she continued her line of questioning. “So this Tex, does he have a real name?”
Mitch grinned. “Matthew Houston Broussard. Just in case you’re wondering, he was born before Lee Horsley brought the role of Matt Houston to the small screen.” Meagan’s confused look lead him to further explanation. “You know, ‘Matt Houston’, the television series?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Come on, it only ran from 1982 to ’85, but I grew up watching the re-runs.”
“I was born in 1985, Mitch, and my parents didn’t let me watch much television.”
He did the quick calculation in his head. That put her at twenty-seven or eight, depending on her birthday. “So, you’re twenty…”
“Twenty-seven until November 27th,” she finished for him.
“Huh.” He turned away from her. “Wish I was twenty-seven again.”
She scuffed her shoe on the grass. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable by asking all those questions. I’m just realizing that maybe you didn’t want to dredge up some of those memories.”
He waved off her apology. “It’s okay. It actually makes me feel good to talk about it. Kind of lightens the load, you know?” He did a couple of easy chin-ups on the crossbar of the swing set then stopped to meet her gaze. “You sure you don’t want to lighten your own load some, Meagan?”
The widening of her eyes told him she knew what he meant. She didn’t even bother playing dumb, but did remain silent.
“So tell me, what the hell is going on in that house of yours? You can trust me.”
She studied his eyes and finally gave him a slow nod. “It all started when Buck told me ‘the sad man’ was watching him.”
Mitch listened to her tale, fascinated at numerous events that had taken place in such a short period of time. It made him curious to know how she hadn’t lost her flippin’ mind over some of the episodes.
“One day I walked into Buck’s room to find Christopher’s Marine portrait frame face down. I picked it up and checked the frame—the stand is solid, perfectly sturdy. Next time I walked in it was laying on its back.”
“You think Buck knocked it over?”
“No.” She shook her head vigorously. “This happened several times the afternoon Niki took him to the park for me so I could study for a test. I was doing a week’s worth of laundry at the same time, and every damn time I walked in that room the portrait was in a different position.” She turned to him a
nd stepped closer, her voice dropped to a menacing whisper. “I swear, Mitch. One time I even left it on its back as I’d found it. When I walked by the room again, it was face down.” She raised her hands in a helpless gesture and dropped them. “I don’t know what to do anymore. If I insist Buck sleeps with me, it’ll only make him suspicious because I’ve tried never to do that unless he’s sick or something. So I get up at least a couple of times a night to check on him.”
Mitch cleared his throat quietly, thinking, a couple of times or more, from what he’d witnessed. “I’m amazed you can bring yourself to stay there. Most people would have performed a drop and smoke by now.” Her curious look had him explaining the military terminology. “That’s what we do when we have someone injured. We call for helo transport. When it gets close, we drop what we’re doing, throw lots of smoke grenades to hide the medics carrying the wounded.”
She nodded halfway through the explanation. “The fact is, Buck doesn’t seem the slightest bit afraid. I can’t afford to move, but if he was terrified to go to his room, I’d find a way to get the heck out of there.” She crossed her arms again and leveled a glare at him. “I suppose you don’t believe any of this, you not believing in spirits or ghosts or anything.”
“You’re right, I didn’t believe…but I do now,” he found himself admitting.
“You believe me?” she asked, eyes wide, arms dropping to her sides, and shoulders visibly relaxing.
“I’d be a damn fool not to after what I experienced that night.”
She dropped her head forward as she pushed her hair out of her face with one hand. “So, uh…What exactly did you feel the night you went into Buck’s room?”
He hesitated, until he caught her glancing furtively up at him through lowered lashes. “It was cold…like the desert at night cold—cold enough to make my breath smoke. But that’s not what got me.” He paused trying to decide how to put into words what he’d experienced that night.
“Please. Tell me. Please, Mitch.”
He released a long, slow breath. “God, Meg…it was the assault of odors. The smell of desert, hills of rock hard dirt and compacted sand, and dry heat. I’ve never been able to describe the smell of that place other than it smells like decades of decay…of a land just rusting away.” He leveled his gaze on hers. “I smelled fighting. I smelled war. The overpowering odor of gunpowder, overheated metal casings from used ammo, and that distinctly metallic smell of human blood.”
