A Soldier's Heart

by Marta Perry

  “We had some therapy together.” He kept his tone neutral.

  Ragan leaned forward, elbows on the chair arms. “I figured it was time we had a talk about your future.”

  His jaw tightened, and tension knotted his hands into fists. “My future.”

  “With the department.”

  Ragan frowned, and Luke steeled himself. If he was about to be offered retirement, he’d like to have been a little better prepared for this conversation.

  “So?” Ragan’s brows lifted. Obviously he expected a response. “You figure on coming back? When the army lets you go, that is.”

  Truth time. He took a brief look at how far he’d come. At how much farther he could expect to go. He wanted to rage at God, at the lieutenant, at his own stupidity for charging in without thinking. But what good would any of that do?

  “The army docs say they don’t know how much use of my legs I’m going to get back.” It took more effort than he’d thought possible to get the words out evenly. “If I can’t be one-hundred percent, I won’t be on the street again. I won’t let someone else’s life depend on me if I can’t hack it.”

  Ragan studied his face for a long moment. Then he gave a slow nod. “Fair enough. Either on the street or in the office, you can still be a cop. When the army lets you go, there’ll be a place waiting for you, either way.” He stood, holding out his hand.

  Luke took it, still trying to process Ragan’s words. The offer was more than he’d expected, but not what he’d hoped for. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Glad you’re back, Marino.” Ragan waved him back when he would have gotten up. “That’s all I came to say. You call me when you’re ready.”

  When he was ready. But if all the future held was a lifetime behind a desk, would he ever be ready for that?

  “That’s enough for today.” Mary Kate took out her frustration on the exercise mat, rolling it into a tight cylinder. “You’re not concentrating.”

  Luke got to his feet, using the canes. He glanced at her, but he didn’t deny the charge. “I have something on my mind.”

  “What?” She shook her head instantly. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

  “Maybe it is, in a way. I had a visit from my old boss.”

  “From the police department?”

  He nodded, and she tried to decipher his expression. She couldn’t.

  “What did he say?” If Luke had just learned he’d never be a police officer again, it would go a long way toward explaining his lack of attention.

  “Asked me if I wanted to come back.” Luke didn’t meet her eyes. “The bottom line was, if through some miracle I get back to normal, I can have my old job back.”

  “And if not?” She hurt for him, but she kept her voice level.

  “He offered me a desk job.” His tone made it clear how he felt about that.

  “That’s not so bad, is it? At least you’d still be a cop, even if you weren’t out on the street.”

  “Pushing papers around.”

  She just looked at him for a moment. Why did he have to be so blind? “If you don’t want a desk job, don’t take it.”

  He looked up, startled, at the snap in her voice. Well, good. At least she had his attention.

  “Honestly, Luke, sometimes I want to shake you. You have a lot to offer, and there’s a world of things you could do, even if you never got a bit better than you are today. Why don’t you see that?”

  He didn’t say anything, and his face was so stolid that she couldn’t tell whether her words had angered him or not. Finally he shook his head. “I guess maybe you see more than I do, Mary Kate. I wish I had your faith.”

  Her heart hurt with the need to reach him. But she couldn’t. He was the only one who could convince himself that his life was still worth living.

  The thunder of feet on the back porch warned her, and she turned toward the kitchen in time to see Michael erupt through the screen door.

  “Hi, Mommy. Hi, Luke. Grammy said we could come over and see if you’re finished yet.” He sent Luke, who’d followed her to the kitchen, the melting look that usually persuaded people to do what he wanted. “I thought maybe Luke had time to work on the car a little bit.”

  “Not now,” she said quickly. Luke had enough on his mind right now. “You two go out in the backyard until I’m ready to go. And behave.”

  Shawna, standing at the door behind her brother, nodded. “Come on, Michael. Don’t be a pest.”

  Michael went out, but his high voice floated back through the screen. “I’m not a pest. You are. You’re a pest and a scaredy cat.”

  Whatever Shawna answered, she was far enough away that they couldn’t hear it. She tried to manage a smile as she glanced at Luke. “At least he’s gotten past the stage of using potty words when he’s trying to be annoying. Sorry about that.”

  “No problem.” Luke turned to the counter, fiddling with the coffeemaker, presenting a broad, uncompromising back to her. “You can go now, if you want.”

  “Thanks.” She bit off the word. “I’ll put the equipment away first.”

  She stalked back to the workout room before she could give in to the temptation to begin the conversation about Luke’s future again. Arguing with him wasn’t going to do any good, and she wasn’t sure what would.

  Chapter Thirteen

  She began cleaning up the equipment, putting it away automatically, trying to keep her mind on each task. And not on Luke.

  She wanted so much to help him. She couldn’t, not in the healing that really mattered.

  Please, Lord. Luke needs to turn to You. He has to find acceptance, and I don’t know how to show him that. I have enough trouble with that myself.

  She was almost finished when she heard a hoarse shout from the kitchen. She dropped the five-pound weight she was holding and raced toward the kitchen. If Luke had fallen—but she’d have heard it, wouldn’t she?

  She burst through the kitchen door. No Luke, but the back door stood open, and she could hear Michael’s shrill cry from the yard.

  Heart thudding, she raced across the kitchen, through the door, onto the porch. Please, Lord, please, Lord…

  It took a moment to understand what she was seeing. Luke, full-length on the grass, struggled to get to his feet. Michael stood under the tree in the corner of the yard, wailing. And Shawnie lay crumpled in a tangle of broken branches on the ground.

  She sprinted to her child, dropping to her knees beside the small form. “Shawnie, are you all right? Talk to me.”

  She had to pull broken branches away to see Shawna’s face. Blood streamed from a cut on her forehead. Her cheek was scratched, her eyes dark with shock, but she was conscious and moving.

  “Michael, stop that!”

  Michael stopped in mid-shriek and looked at her, blue eyes wide in a white face. “She fell, Mommy. The branch broke and Shawnie fell.”

  “I see that. Now go in the kitchen and bring me a couple of clean dish towels from under the sink. Right now.”

  “Yes, Mommy.” He turned and ran.

  “Is she all right?” Luke’s voice was so tight she almost didn’t recognize it.

  “I’m okay.” Shawna tried to push the branch away, her face set in a stubborn look that announced she wasn’t going to cry, no matter what.

  “You’re going to be fine.” She had to keep her voice calm. She was the mom. She had to be calm. She pulled the branch free. “Does anything hurt besides your head?” She ran her hands along blue-jeans-clad legs, praying.

  “I’m okay, Mom. Don’t make a fuss. I’m not a baby.”

  “You’re also not okay.” But at least there didn’t seem to be anything other than the gash on her forehead. “We’re going to have to see the doctor about that cut.”

  Michael bolted across the yard to them, a wad of clean dish towels in his hands. She took them, focusing on using them to apply pressure to the cut.

  Luke had gotten to his feet. He must have seen Shawnie fall and tried to get to
her. Satisfied that she had pressure on the cut, she glanced at him.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” He cut the word off. “Can I do anything? Call someone?”

  She put one arm around Shawna, holding the pad against her forehead as she helped her to her feet. “Think you can walk as far as the car, sweetie?”

  “I can walk.” Shawna’s stiff upper lip was operating overtime.

  She sent Luke a harried look. “I’m going to have to take her to the doctor—stitches, I’m afraid. If you’ll keep Michael for me…”

  “No.” Luke’s face darkened with some emotion she couldn’t name. “I can’t.”

  She blinked. “It will just be for a little while, until I can reach my mother to pick him up.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t be responsible for him. Don’t you get it? I saw Shawna, but I couldn’t get to her. I can’t be responsible for anyone else.”

  She had to talk to him. Had to make him see that this wasn’t his fault. But Shawna was bleeding, and Michael looked as if tears weren’t far off. The kids came first.

  “Michael, get in the car.” She led Shawna, still protesting, toward the car.

  Luke needed her. But her kids came first. That was the bottom line. Her kids came first.

  Mary Kate stood in the doorway of Michael’s room that evening, listening to the sound of his quiet breathing. The glow from the night-light was enough to show the mound in the covers, the glint of red hair against the pillow and one small hand outflung. For these few moments, he was her baby again.

  Resisting the impulse to go in and pat him, she closed the door quietly and crossed the hall to Shawnie’s room. The light beside the twin bed was on, and Shawna sat propped up in bed, a book open on her lap.

  “Not sleepy yet, sweetie?” She sat on the edge of the bed, patting her daughter’s leg.

  Shawna put the book aside, shaking her head. The bandage stood out, stark white against her red curls.

  “Does your head hurt?”

  “It’s okay.”

  There it was again, the quick denial that anything was wrong. Her heart ached. Luke had been right. Shawna had developed a stoicism that was far beyond her years. The question was, what was she going to do about it?

  “The doctor said it would probably feel a little sore tonight. It’s okay to admit that.” She tried a teasing note. “You don’t have to act like a superhero, you know.”

  Shawna’s long lashes veiled her eyes. “I know, Mommy.”

  That was a little heartening. For the past year, Shawna had been convinced that calling her anything but “Mom” was baby stuff.

  “You know, I miss hearing you call me Mommy once in a while,” she said softly. “No matter how big you get, in some ways you’ll always be my little girl. Just like sometimes I’m Grammy’s little girl.”

  Sitting here in the quiet bedroom just reinforced that feeling. She remembered the day Kenny put the crib together, talking about the baby. They hadn’t wanted to know ahead of time if it was a boy or girl, so they’d decorated the nursery with a Noah’s Ark border on pale yellow walls.

  But Shawna had outgrown the Noah’s Ark theme, and now Mary Kate faced her child’s troubles alone. The cut head and stitches she could handle. That was what Luke had failed to understand. The run to the hospital for stitches, scary as it was, still had an element of familiarity for any mom of two active kids. When she’d been growing up, it was a rare month when someone in the Flanagan family didn’t damage himself or herself in some way.

  No, it wasn’t the physical injury that scared her. It was the emotional pain that Shawnie was doing such a valiant job of hiding—that was what wrung her heart.

  And she had to find some way of handling it. Alone. Kenny had never seemed so far away. So dead.

  “Aren’t you going to scold me for climbing Luke’s tree?”

  “Do you know you shouldn’t have done it?”

  “Yes, Mommy.” Shawna hung her head. “I was trying to show Michael I wasn’t scared. That was dumb.”

  “Well, if you know that, then I guess I don’t need to tell you.”

  Shawna nodded, her face still troubled.

  She breathed a silent prayer for wisdom and put her hand over Shawna’s. “I know something is wrong at school, sweetie. I really wish you’d tell me about it.”

  Shawna’s lips tightened. “There isn’t anything you can do, Mom. Mommy,” she amended.

  Her heart twisted. “Maybe not, but I’d still like to hear about it.”

  Shawna shrugged, seeming determined to hold the words back. Tears gleamed in her eyes, and she blinked rapidly.

  “Casey says she doesn’t want to be my friend anymore. And she got some of the other girls to say they don’t want to be friends, either.”

  “Shawnie, I’m so sorry. That must really hurt.” She wanted to rage at the unfairness of it, but that wouldn’t help Shawna in the least.

  Shawna’s mouth firmed. “Today Casey acted like maybe she wanted to be friends again, but I’m not going to be friends with her again, not even if she wants me to.”

  Lord, give me wisdom. “You and she have been friends for a long time, since kindergarten, I think. It would be a shame to lose that. Sometimes people can start a quarrel and then not know how to get out of it.”

  “Casey started it.” Shawna’s anger spurted out. “She should tell me she’s sorry before we can be friends again.”

  “Honey, holding on to a grudge doesn’t hurt anyone but yourself.” Her mind flickered briefly to Luke, desperately hanging on to the grudge against his father. “If you want to be friends again, you might have to forgive first. Will you think about that?”

  The blue eyes that met hers swam with tears. “Okay, Mommy.”

  Answering tears formed in her eyes. “It hurts when someone you care about lets you down. It’s okay to cry about it.”

  Shawna swiped at her eyes with the back of her hands. “Crying is for babies. You hardly ever cry, even about Daddy dying.”

  The words pierced her heart like a knife, taking her breath away. “Oh, honey, that’s not true. I’ve cried a lot about Daddy.” She let the tears spill over onto her cheeks. “I guess I should have let you and Michael see that, but I thought it might make you feel scared if you saw me crying. Maybe we should remind each other of that sometimes, okay?”

  Shawna nodded, and then lunged forward to wrap her arms around Mary Kate fiercely. “I love you, Mommy.”

  “I love you, too, baby.” She held Shawnie against her heart, her cheek against the bright hair, and let healing tears flow.

  It was nearly an hour later when she finally came into the living room, feeling drained but relieved. She and Shawna had gotten past something major, at the cost of a few stitches. If it hadn’t been for the accident, how long might it have taken her to realize the truth of what Luke had said about Shawna? And why could he, a relative stranger, see what eluded her?

  She glanced around the slightly cluttered living room, taking comfort from the familiar. This could sometimes be a rough time, once the children were in bed and the house was quiet. A time when loneliness could creep in and blossom into grief if she didn’t hold it at bay.

  As she reached for the remote, intending to fill the silence with something, anything, the doorbell rang.

  Some family member, coming by to see how Shawna was?

  But when she drew aside the window curtain, Luke stood on her front stoop. For a moment she was so startled she froze. Luke, here? Luke, who never went anywhere unless she badgered him into it?

  She pulled the door open quickly. “Luke?” She couldn’t entirely keep the amazement from her voice.

  “I came to see how Shawna is.” His tone was clipped, his face tense, as if he braced himself for bad news.

  “But how did you get here?” She shook her head, the answer obvious. A taxi waited at the curb.

  Luke jerked a nod toward the cab. “He’ll wait for me.” He raised an eyebrow. “May I come
in?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Flustered, she stood back to give him room to enter. He moved slowly, but he was using the canes instead of the walker.

  “Please, sit down.” She banished a faint regret that she hadn’t used the few minutes she’d had to tidy the living room. She whisked two toy cars off the recliner that had been Kenny’s favorite chair.

  He sank down, setting the canes aside and leaning toward her. “Shawna?”

  “She’s fine. Really, she is. I thought the doctor might just put a butterfly bandage on it, but she decided to put in a couple of stitches, just because of where the cut is.”

  His face relaxed visibly. Guilt took a bite out of her. Why on earth hadn’t she thought to call him?

  “I’m so sorry.” She sat down in the rocking chair opposite him. “I should have called to let you know that she’s all right.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t owe me any apologies, Mary Kate. I understand. You were completely taken up with the kids.”

  That was true enough, but somehow it only increased her sense of guilt. “If I’d called you, you wouldn’t have had to come over.”

  “Didn’t you think I could?”

  “I think you can do just about anything you set your mind to. I’m just surprised this is what made you do it.”

  “It was my tree, after all.” A glimmer of humor showed in his dark eyes. “Maybe I was afraid you’d sue.”

  “If I blamed other people every time one of my kids got hurt, I’d spend my life in court. It’s amazing what two normal, healthy kids can manage to do to themselves.”

  “There was nothing normal about what happened today. When I saw Shawna on that branch and knew it wouldn’t hold her—” He stopped, jaw tightening. “I don’t know when I’ve been so afraid.”

  “I understand.” She was unaccountably touched. “That’s what turns mothers’ hair gray. It’s a wonder my mom didn’t have a headful of gray hair by the time she was thirty, raising the bunch of us.”