Grace realized a bag of frozen potstickers had numbed her fingers. Rationally, she knew the news that had Jenni in a tizzy must be a misunderstanding. Her last date was two weeks ago, and she didn’t know a Reynaldo Cruz, but she’d attended the University of Washington with at least four other Grace Kims. One of them probably had a fiancé. Hopefully the woman would change her last name.
She retrieved her laptop to uncover what another one of the Graces had going on.
The story was easy to find. A Special Operations soldier named Reynaldo Cruz, twenty-nine years old, from her own 675-person hometown of Pateros, had rescued a boy from an irrigation canal in Afghanistan. Climbing out, he’d stepped on a land mine. A reporter and a photographer had documented the incident, beginning with the child in the water and ending with the helicopter evacuation. The story was a blow for people in Pateros who’d known him, but the hometown connection wasn’t what had motivated her sister to call.
That reason was the last picture of the online photo essay. It was the one with the slew of comments, the most shared, the one that mattered, in the juggernaut way that a temporary internet sensation mattered for a day or at most a week. The close-up showed a printed photo of two people identified as the soldier’s fiancée and Sergeant Cruz. Spattered with ominous dark spots, the couple’s images stared from on top of a pile of shredded clothing and used bandages. “Aftermath,” the photographer had titled the shot.
She zoomed her screen, dared it to change, but it remained her: Average Asian Girl eyes, medium-snub nose, forgettable mouth, oval face. The staff directory used that photo, and that blouse and suit hung in her closet. Her hair was longer now, but that was her.
Who the hell was Reynaldo Cruz? A shiver made her wrap her arms around her torso as she tried to guess why a soldier would carry her photo in Afghanistan—why?
Then the phone on the end of the breakfast bar rang, but talking to her family could wait until she had more answers. She checked the caller’s number: her boss.
“Grace, how are you?” His warmth and concern sounded genuine.
“Fine, I guess.” Words to describe her situation did not freaking exist.
“I’m sorry to phone so late, but I wanted to reassure you not to worry about the office or your annual review. Focus on your fiancé.”
His sympathy was too much. “But he’s—”
“Your hero needs you now. I’m proud that we can support a soldier’s loved ones. As an American, that’s my duty. If it was my son—” he broke off.
Crap. She’d forgotten his oldest child graduated from the Naval Academy next month.
“Your emergency leave is approved for next week so you can be at his side.” His worry projected through the phone to create an almost physical feeling of her condo filling with kindness and pressing on her to suffocation. “Hope it wasn’t presumptuous, but I also used my frequent flier miles to arrange a ticket for you to D.C. tomorrow night on the red-eye.”
“Washington, D.C.?” When her supervisor rambled at work about Pacific currents or ocean temperature models, she enjoyed following his thoughts, but this conversation was becoming surreal. She stared around her loft, hoping for rescue, even for an ugly clown to pop out screaming joke’s on you!
“I heard soldiers arrive at Walter Reed Hospital within twenty-four to thirty-six hours, so you should go right away.”
“Right away?” The phone bounced against her cheek, and she realized her hands shook, perhaps from lack of food, or perhaps from the crazy events of this evening.
“When I say we’re behind you, it’s not a bumper sticker. If you need extra days from the leave bank, they’re yours.” It sounded like his voice cracked. “We care, Grace. You’re part of the Fisheries team. We want to help.”
A response seemed to be expected, so she whispered her thanks.
“By the way, congratulations. Have you set a date?”
“Ahhh—” She didn’t want to lie, but the knowledge that he’d reserved a plane ticket for her stuck the truth in her throat.
“I’m sorry.” He half laughed. “My wife would flash-freeze me. A wedding must be the last thing on your mind.”
“Er, yes.” Lies by omission were still lies, and still tasted like cardboard.
How, she wondered after they’d disconnected, was she going to tell her boss that the latest American hero wasn’t her fiancé, he was a liar?
* * *
“Grace! Grace!” a familiar voice called from across the check-in area at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Her sister, Jenni, approached pushing a luggage cart that held a large cardboard apple box. “Ha! Thought you could sneak away like you always do.”
“Jenni.” Even at eleven p.m., her sister’s lipstick looked fresh and her long hair was tangle free, making Grace aware that she had chosen to wear fleece and clogs for the red-eye flight.
The airport wasn’t crowded on Saturday nights. Grace was the next customer at the counter. Her plane started boarding in twenty minutes, but apparently the way her boss had arranged the ticket required her to see a desk attendant, which didn’t leave her time to deal with Jenni. Five minutes earlier and she would’ve missed the unexpected Spanish Inquisition.
“Glad I caught you before you checked luggage.” Jenni wheeled the cart through the exit lane to reach Grace.
“I’m not checking a bag.”
“Yes, you are.” At the open position, Jenni heaved the box onto the scale. “We had a school assembly and everyone made cards and signed a banner. The teachers who remembered Rey spoke, and so did his sister. Lucky I caught you so I don’t have to pay postage.”
Jenni’s words meant everyone in town had discussed Grace’s supposed engagement. People had speculated about her and a man she didn’t know, their couplehood suddenly a given. Her stomach plummeted into her clogs, and no smiling cartoon apples and pears on the side of a box were going to reassure her.
As the digital scale settled at fifty-four pounds, Grace asked, “How did you know I was at the airport?” She hadn’t told her family she was flying to D.C., because she didn’t have answers for the inevitable questions.
Jenni was too wrapped up in bargaining with the woman on the other side of the counter over the extra eighty-five-dollar charge for overweight items to hear or respond. “But she’s taking it to her wounded fiancé! He was hurt in Afghanistan.”
She tuned out the rest of her sister’s spiel by staring at the departure monitors. Boarding began in fifteen minutes. Without her sister’s interference, she would already be finished here.
“Thank you so much.” Jenni beamed at the clerk. “What’s your name so she can submit a compliment card?”
Score another for her sister, and two more minutes of time at the desk. “Let’s just go.”
“I realize you’re in shock.” Jenni headed with her toward the security lines. “But you need some game face.” She glanced sideways at Grace. “Start with makeup. You look blah.”
“Big surprise. I feel blah.” She’d spent most of the last twenty-four hours online trying to understand her situation. She shouldn’t have read internet comments, but she was cursed to be a researcher. The women who wanted to trade places were weird, and the nuts who thought people like her and Cruz ruined the United States were scary, but the men who posted graphically lewd comments describing what they wanted to do to her had made her spend the darkest hours of last night locked in her bathroom.
“You can’t show it. You need to look good. How long since you last saw Reynaldo?” Jenni’s pronunciation sounded Spanish, reminding Grace that her sister was a bilingual elementary teacher.
“Never. I have to tell you—” Her sister hustled into the line at a coffee stand before Grace finished speaking.
“Let’s get you snacks for the plane. What do you want?”
“Nothing, thanks.” Although the
security line was as short as check-in, she didn’t think there was time to stop.
“Two double tall nonfat lattes.” As usual, Jenni knew best and didn’t hesitate. “Oops, can’t take that through security, just one. And a bag of chocolate almonds and a croissant.” She turned to Grace with her eyebrows raised as if conveying a significant fact. “It’s nine dollars.”
Eight sixty-four, but Grace pulled a twenty from her wallet. Before she said goodbye, she wanted to make her sister understand. “The engagement isn’t real.”
“Whether he formally proposed down on one knee or not doesn’t matter. It’s too late to dump him.” Jenni shifted the latte to her other hand and pulled Grace’s rolling suitcase through the rope line toward the security station without stopping her mouth. “It’s not what’s on the outside, whatever that might be after his injuries, that matters. He’s still the same person on the inside. Even my students know that.”
“Will you listen?” She quickened her pace to keep up with her sister. The urge to make Jenni shut up before they reached the security desk filled Grace’s chest until she wanted to scream, deny being the local hero’s fiancée and kick a path free. However, only deranged people begged to be Tasered by airport police, so she blew out a breath and tried again in the calmest voice she could manage. “He lied.”
“Whatever he lied about, forget it. He’s hurt, everyone thinks you’re engaged and your boss bought your ticket. So you go.”
“It was frequent flier—” she recognized a verbal detour, Jenni’s specialty. “How do you know that? And how did you know I was going to D.C. tonight?” Jenni hadn’t answered that question at check-in.
“Umma called him because that one little text you sent her saying everything was fine and not to worry made her worry.”
Her life was a deep pile of kimchi, getting deeper. “The point I’m trying to make is, we’re not engaged!” This time she failed to modulate her voice, and both the security officer and the passenger ahead of them at the podium looked up, frowning. Chill, she cautioned herself.
“What, because he hasn’t bought a ring?” Her sister shook her head as if Grace had failed the good citizenship category on her report card. “You never cared for jewelry or status stuff. Living in the city’s changed you.” Jenni snatched the paper ticket out of Grace’s hand and slapped it in front of the officer before Grace could respond.
“I’m not talking about a ring. I’m talking about me. I don’t know this guy!” It seemed like the world only listened to women who yelled.
“Picture ID?” the TSA screener asked.
“Then you ought to be more careful about what you write to people! It said Love, Grace on that photo. For a smart girl, sometimes you’re so dumb.”
“Identification for Grace Kim?” The guard projected his voice over the conversation. Even Jenni stopped talking. “Which one of you is—”
“Her.” Jenni pointed, passing the blame for stalling the line to her big sister, but not offering to hold the snacks while Grace unzipped her purse and fished for her wallet.
She was out of time. When Jenni fell deep into her own narrative, in this case Miss Wiser than Thou delivering tidings from the entire town, it was impossible to correct her. Grace had to let this conversation go until she arrived in Washington, D.C. The big hero could straighten out the record, her life could return to normal, her parents would be fine and their hometown could settle back into rural bliss.
“Have a safe trip.” Jenni’s hug stopped Grace from stuffing her driver’s license back in her purse and crushed the croissant trapped between them. “Be strong and call me from the airport in the morning,” her sister said as she ducked under the retractable barrier.
“Sure.” She’d rather talk to a rental car navigation system. It would listen better.
Chapter Two
The rose-tinted stone buildings and immaculate landscaping of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, reminded Grace of a university campus more than a military hospital. On the parking shuttle route, signs pointed to the Warrior Center and celebrated Warrior Pride, and she half expected men in blue paint and kilts to swarm the bus.
The massed display of flags inside the main lobby pressed home the weight of her false pretenses. The closer she drew to reception, the harder the fictions she hadn’t created but had been too obedient or timid to unravel squeezed her stomach. Five feet from the front desk, her charade bit more uncomfortably than the airplane seatbelt she’d worn all night.
“May I help you, ma’am?”
No one else was behind her. She was the ma’am.
The man on the other side of the desk smiled at her. “Are you here to see someone?”
Although she’d read his name in dozens of news articles, she hadn’t said it aloud. Her first attempt was a whisper. “Reynaldo Cruz.”
The keyboard clicked as he asked, “Are you Sergeant Cruz’s next of kin?”
“No.” Her stomach somersaulted as another lie rose to the surface to join so many others.
“Whoa, ma’am.” He reached across the desk as if to catch her. “Sergeant Cruz arrived yesterday from Landstuhl, but we have to ask because sometimes people pretend to know soldiers who’ve been in the news.”
That was her, a pretender. She clutched her jacket over her chest, chilled even inside the building, and hoped the airplane bagel didn’t revisit the scene.
“Name and photo identification, please.”
“Grace Kim.” Her driver’s license shook until she dropped it on the counter.
More clicking and peering before he said, “I don’t have you listed.”
If she couldn’t find out why Reynaldo Cruz had turned her life upside down, she’d never put it back together. Her chest expanded with bottled frustration.
“Hold on, I’ll call the ward to get permission.”
While the receptionist muttered into the phone, she willed the hot ball in her throat to dissolve. If she had to leave, this farce would end without an explanation to share with her family, her boss, her co-workers. The reporters calling her parents would change their tone, and people in Pateros would stop eating at the restaurant.
“Duty nurse confirmed you’re Sergeant Cruz’s fiancée.”
Relief snapped through her, even as the label made her squirm.
“Petty Officer Boichek will escort you. Visiting hours until twenty-hundred.” He clarified, “That’s eight tonight. I’ll add you as a permitted visitor. Here’s your temporary badge.”
Her escort was a woman, younger than her. “Morning, ma’am. This way to the elevators.”
As they left the lobby, Grace’s clogs clomped on the gleaming bare floor. At least her escort wouldn’t hear her thudding heart.
“No matter what, when you see your warrior, smile.”
Her sister had said the same thing. The last twenty-four hours must be etched on her face.
“And say his name. People forget.”
A man waited in front of the elevator bank and joined them inside. He wore a short-sleeved T-shirt with graffiti-style writing, but she couldn’t decipher it because the rounded blob hanging from one sleeve stole her attention. It looked more like a chunk of frozen salmon that had been thawed, pink and shiny, than like an arm.
“It’s okay to touch him.”
“What?”
When the other woman continued speaking, she realized him didn’t mean the man sharing their elevator. “Go ahead and hold your fiancé’s hand or kiss him, within reason. Touch helps them heal and think of themselves as still men.”
At the ninth floor, the doors opened onto a man in a motorized wheelchair.
“Hey, Mike!” They exited, and her escort held the doors while the smiling blond entered and swiveled to face them. “Looking good!”
“Ba
ck at you, Boichek.” This soldier’s shirt read Some Assembly Required and his grin was like any twenty-year-old’s, except he didn’t have legs. “Going dancing tonight?”
“If you’re coming.”
“Next week I’m due C-legs. Try keeping me away.”
The two stared at each other, and Grace realized she was watching a crush play out.
“You up here visiting?” Boichek finally asked, sounding as if she’d been running.
“Checking on the new arrivals.” His grin slipped. “One doesn’t have family in yet.”
The petty officer nodded at her. “She’s a fiancée. For Sergeant Cruz.”
“That’s him.” He looked at Grace for the first time. “Those snake-eaters never quit. I had to tell him to knock off trying to do arm curls with his water jug. Your man is a crazy dude.”
“You have no idea.” If Reynaldo Cruz was like this soldier, they’d share a laugh, and then he’d explain and her life could return to normal.
With Mike gone, Boichek patted her lightly on the shoulder to urge her forward. “You should feel free to kiss him.”
She knew where Boichek’s imagination had been, but kissing Reynaldo Cruz was so far down her list, it wasn’t there. As she lifted her arms for a disposable hospital gown, she almost laughed at her escort’s suggestion, then she noticed a nurse push a wheelchair toward her. This soldier’s face had scabs. His shaved head showed a jagged set of Frankenstein staples. No grin, no laughter or chat like Mike. For a heart-stopping moment she searched for features she recognized from pictures, but then she saw that his stubble was reddish-blond. He wasn’t Reynaldo Cruz, but he could have been.
“Help me.” The plea to her escort burst out. “I don’t want to make a mistake.”
“You won’t.” The petty officer rested a hand on her shoulder. “Like I said, say his name, look him in the eye, touch his arm, then do what feels right.”
Nothing felt right, nothing, but with her surgical gloves and hair cap on, delay was futile.
Reynaldo Cruz looked terrible. Two fat rolls of bandages stopped above where legs and feet should fill the bed. Tubes emerged from the wrappings and disappeared under the sides. He’d lost both legs, that was obvious. He also had an oxygen tube taped under his nose and an intravenous line in his hand. Dark hair stuck to his head, and his tan skin shined as if coated with lotion or sweat. His eyes were closed.
His Road Home Page 2
