A Conard County Homecoming

by Rachel Lee

  * * *

  Ashley didn’t know what to make of this. His words had been an apology of sorts, but he’d still pulled her onto his lap. She twisted her head, trying to read his face, knowing he’d been honest in his way, but seeing doubt begin to creep into his eyes.

  It was true she didn’t like being manhandled, even in small ways, but this felt different to her. As if actions had needed for once to replace words, even with her. But the doubt troubled her. She didn’t want him to think he’d offended her or done something wrong. It had taken a long time to get this close to him, to get him to go out to Cadell’s place, to see him willing to enter the diner and share a meal with her in front of other people. The last thing she wanted was for him to crawl back into his hole.

  Taking a huge risk, she lifted her hand and pressed his cheek until his head turned toward her. Then she stole a kiss right from his lips. She couldn’t be any clearer. She just hoped he wouldn’t think she was a tease, given his paralysis.

  Instead he wound his other arm around her and pulled her in for another kiss, his mouth warm and firm on hers, his tongue entering her mouth as if he hoped to find her soul within.

  Glorious desire ran through her like a hot river. She’d thought a lot about Zane, but she had never allowed herself to think very much about how sexually attractive he was. He was in a wheelchair. She didn’t want to make him feel bad in any way. But now...now...

  He tore his mouth from hers and pressed her ear so close to his chest she could hear his heartbeat. It seemed to be racing as fast as hers. She just wished she could melt into him.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m going to let go of you.”

  Of course he was, she thought as disappointment caused her stomach to drop and her mood to sink. What else could he do?

  Without a word, she slid off his lap. She thought about leaving but decided that might be a bad thing to do so soon. Hard to believe that late-afternoon sunlight still poured into the kitchen, that everything slammed back into place as if an earthquake hadn’t just happened.

  She struggled to find her voice. “I think I’d like a beer.” Go for the normal, as if nothing had happened. Don’t make him feel worse.

  “In a sec,” he answered, his voice still rough. “You need to know something.”

  “What?”

  “That being in this wheelchair doesn’t make me harmless.”

  She blinked, not sure what he meant. Not harmless? She’d never thought of him as being harmless, legs or no legs. He looked as if he could be a threat with just his upper body. “I never thought—”

  “That’s not what I mean. I don’t mean I might hurt you, although I guess I could. No, damn it. I meant... I can still have sex. I didn’t lose that. So... I—I shouldn’t be pulling you into my lap. I have no right, and I don’t want to upset you.”

  “Upset me?” Her head was whirling now. He’d just given her some wonderful news—for him, at least—and he was worried about upsetting her? “I think that’s great, Zane. Really great. It makes me so happy to hear.”

  “Yeah.” He looked away. “Thanks. But I got a whole bunch of problems you don’t want to deal with, so...”

  He was confusing her more by the minute, bouncing around, trying to say something he couldn’t quite get to, she guessed. Was he trying to say that nobody would want a paralyzed guy? Hardly. That no one would be willing to deal with the emotional toll war had taken on him? Some might not be, but she knew some spouses who did and never complained.

  His isolation struck her anew, and she wished she knew how to ease it. “That beer?” she said again. Give him time to figure out what he wanted to say. Give her time to try to figure out why he’d said it.

  Without a word, he rolled to the fridge, maneuvered the door open and brought two beers to the table.

  “Thanks,” he said as he popped the caps off the longnecks.

  “For what?”

  “For pushing me to help Mikey. Kid’s a real pistol. I think he had a good time.”

  “I’m sure he did. Did you?”

  “Yeah, actually. Even enjoyed myself at Maude’s.”

  She smiled, holding the icy beer. “So I guess you don’t have to be a hermit all day, every day.”

  “Maybe not.” He took a pull on his beer. “Being in Maude’s, though...”

  She waited, trying to get a handle on her own roiling feelings. She wasn’t sure what had just happened or what might happen next. Or if anything was going to happen. But her stomach felt full of butterflies, her entire body still ached with need from being in his arms and she had a strong suspicion he’d probably find a way to keep away from her. Maybe that was best. She still didn’t know him that well. She’d seen plenty in him that she liked, and plenty that ought to be worrisome.

  “Something about being at Maude’s,” he said, starting again. “I don’t think much about my days before the navy. Especially now. That person seems like such a stranger.”

  “You said something about that, didn’t you? Like a book you’d read?”

  “Did I say that out loud?” He arched his brow. “Anyway, yeah. A character out of a movie. Doesn’t feel real to me anymore. But I was thinking back to it and realized I was a bit of a knucklehead.”

  She hadn’t heard that expression in forever. “How so?”

  “I told myself I was joining the navy so I could go to college. Considering how fast I leaped on the chance to become a SEAL, I don’t think so anymore.”

  Again she was hesitant to speak for fear of saying the wrong thing. This man had warned her he could be a minefield with his PTSD, and she sure didn’t have any idea what might trigger it.

  A sound drew her attention, and she saw Nell contentedly chewing on a bone nearby. Apparently, the dog thought everything was okay.

  “So, I’ve been kind of wondering at what really happened. What I was really thinking. Was it that I couldn’t give up being an athlete, a big fish in that little pond? That I still had something to prove to myself? God, I can hardly remember that kid. All I know is I volunteered for the toughest, dirtiest job in the service.”

  She nodded silently.

  “Something made me take a sharp turn within a few months of enlisting. But maybe it wasn’t a sharp turn at all.”

  “Maybe not,” she said cautiously. “If you don’t regret it...”

  “I don’t, which probably sounds fairly crazy coming from a guy in a wheelchair who sometimes loses his marbles and needs a dog to keep him in the here and now, but I don’t regret it. I don’t like some of the memories. Hell, no. But I did an essential job. Nothing will take that awareness from me. Wait a sec.”

  He pulled back from the table and left the kitchen. She heard his chair rolling down the hall, then a little while later rolling back again. Nell never left her bone, and Ashley considered the dog to be the best barometer around.

  When he pulled up to the table again, he put a wooden box on it. “My medals.” He opened the lid and pulled out the presentation cases, opening them and laying them out before her. The only one she recognized was the Purple Heart, and it had a cluster. Did that mean he’d been wounded more than once? She’d ask later, not now. Let him get through all this.

  He pointed. “Silver Stars, Bronze Stars, the Navy Cross...all those say I was a hero. But you know what? I don’t feel like a hero. I did a job. An important job. And there wasn’t one of my comrades who didn’t deserve those medals at least as much.”

  He sighed and stared at the cases. “No hero. But I don’t regret it.”

  “But you’re troubled?” she asked tentatively.

  “Only by wondering why I jumped into it when that wasn’t my conscious plan. It’s like something knocking on the door in my head and I can’t let it in.”

  She stared at the medals, thinking they were poor symbols
at best of what he’d been through. Impressive, but nowhere near like the doing of all that.

  “I used to talk about throwing these away,” he said, closing the cases and putting them back in the box one by one.

  “You didn’t think you deserved them?”

  “I didn’t think I deserved them any more than anyone else. Plus, they were like a reminder, which at times I didn’t want.”

  “But you kept them.”

  “Yeah, a Vietnam vet talked me into it. Told me that someday someone who knew me would want them. Or that I’d get around to wanting them, because they were the only damn reward I was ever going to get.”

  Ashley drew a sharp breath as her heart squeezed. The only reward he would get? A pile of medals?

  But in her heart she knew he was right. People thanking him for his service didn’t begin to touch on all he’d done for his country. How could it? They didn’t know; they hadn’t been through it. Maybe it was a nice but nearly meaningless gesture from his point of view.

  “So,” she said, “you ever get annoyed by people thanking you for your service?”

  He surprised her by laughing. “Sometimes. The first few times it feels good. Then it begins to sound rote. When I ditched the uniform, I was glad not to hear it anymore.”

  “I can imagine. Then you get treated like crap by your neighbors.”

  He shrugged, his laughter vanishing. “We all had our problems. They had theirs. Mine were adding to them.”

  “Are you really that forgiving?”

  “Who am I to judge?”

  Good Lord, what an amazing man. He might be gruff and sometimes prickly, and want little to do with people, but he’d just said he couldn’t judge the neighbors who’d kicked him to the curb like so much trash.

  She suspected he judged himself a whole lot and far more harshly. “Zane?”

  He looked up from the beer he was turning slowly in his hands. “Yeah?”

  “Apply a little of that forgiveness to yourself.”

  His brow lowered, and she wouldn’t be able to blame him if he grew angry with her. She had no right to tell him anything, and certainly nothing so personal.

  Then his brow smoothed. “You got it in one, Teach. I’m my own judge, jury and executioner.”

  “Executioner?” The word made her heart stop. Was he suicidal?

  “Figure of speech. I’m not going to do anything that crazy. Too much karma to work out.” Then he smiled faintly. “Sometimes you see right through me. When I got some therapy, they told me the same thing. Quit blaming myself. I did my job. I’d have something to apologize for if I’d deserted. Give myself the same breaks I’d give the next guy. Good advice, hard to do.”

  “Advice is usually hard to act on,” she said drily. “If I’d followed all the good advice I’d been given, I’d be a nominee for sainthood.”

  That drew another laugh out of him, and almost helplessly, she joined it. He was a bit mercurial, but she was so glad he could still find laughter in himself. Not only glad, but relieved.

  But the laughter faded, the quiet settled in again, and he seemed lost in thought. Nell was still content, apparently unconcerned, so he must be all right.

  Taking a chance, she asked, “Didn’t you have Nell when you were in your apartment? Before those people...well, they were horrid. What could you possibly have done?”

  “No Nell then. As for what I did, I don’t remember most of it. You see, when it hits, I’m somewhere else. Back over there. On a mission. Being shot at, seeing my buddies get hit... I’m really not aware of what I’m doing here sometimes. So I guess I was noisy, angry and did a lot of cussing in front of children, and I scared some people. At least that’s what they told me. About a week after I moved into that motel, my buddies brought me Nell. It’s because of her I didn’t get evicted again, I’m sure.”

  She just shook her head, hurting for him.

  “It’s better now, obviously,” he continued. “Nell. It’s been a year. Mostly I’ve learned to avoid triggers. She’s good at sensing when something is disturbing me, and she distracts me. And she never lets me get too far away mentally. I gather that’s a big improvement. Well, I know it is. I’m here more often than not now. A year ago I wouldn’t have dared to go out to Cadell’s ranch for fear something would happen. I wouldn’t have wanted to meet a kid, because I might lose touch and say things no kid should ever hear.”

  Impulsively, she reached out and took his hand. He didn’t pull away, but he glanced at her before returning his gaze to the wooden box in front of him and the beer bottle beside it.

  “You have a really bad case,” she said.

  “I did, I guess. Not unheard of. Better now. So I’m grateful. Especially grateful for Nell.”

  “I’m sure.” She squeezed his hand gently, then let go. “We don’t do enough to care for our vets. One of our high school teachers was widowed by the war. A year or so later, his best buddy came to visit her, to keep a promise. He’d suffered brain trauma and was kind of wandering, wondering what he could do. It turned out he was pretty good at helping around her farm, and they married eventually.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I don’t think he got very good care, at least not until he met my friend. They discharged him with all kinds of problems, and except for the way things fell out, he’d probably be living under a bridge.” She tried to tamp down her anger, but it had already sparked. “No, we don’t take good care of our vets. Not in some ways.”

  “There’s no cure for PTSD,” he pointed out.

  “Well, maybe they need to get to work on it. It’s not just vets who have it. All kinds of people who’ve been traumatized have it. Some can talk it out. Sometimes it never goes away. For some it just eases eventually. I have a college friend who became a journalist. She has PTSD from covering the scenes of accidents, fires, murders, plane crashes... She had to quit finally. A decade later it doesn’t bother her as much. And talk therapy didn’t help her deal with those pictures burned into her brain.”

  “It wouldn’t,” he agreed. “It can’t. But with time... I hear they’re not as strong and don’t pop up as often. Nell’s helped to give me some time.” He paused. “Does Mikey have a problem?”

  “Not that anyone’s aware of. Not yet, anyway. He doesn’t remember his accident at all. He woke up four days later in a hospital bed with no memory of it.”

  “Maybe that’s a blessing.”

  “He sure has enough to deal with as it is. I just hope the memory doesn’t come back. The darn kid still wants to ride a horse.”

  “Really?” Zane smile faintly. “Guts and gumption.”

  “Maybe. Somebody’s talking about building him a special saddle, but his mom won’t hear of it. Not yet, anyway.”

  “I can kinda understand her viewpoint.”

  “So can I.” Ashley leaned back in her chair. “Listen, am I overstaying my welcome? You’re an avowed hermit, remember?”

  Again she drew a laugh from him. Something about today had made him feel very good. Getting out? Meeting people?

  “I may be getting over being a hermit little by little. But in all seriousness, don’t be surprised if I pull back into my shell occasionally. Sometimes it’s best just to leave me alone.”

  “I can deal, as long as you understand that if I start to worry about you, I’m going to be knocking on your front door. And unless you lock it, I suspect Nell will let me in.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, she probably will. Walk in any time, Ashley. You give me hope.”

  Hope? Her heart slammed. “Me?” She almost squeaked.

  “Here I am hanging out with you. You’ve put up with me for hours now. I never thought that would happen again.”

  Wow. Just wow. She was complimented and stunned all at once. “I don’t feel like I’m putting
up with anything,” she said truthfully. “You’re okay to be with.”

  “Just okay?” The words sounded as if he were teasing, then he said, “Want to join me and Nell on a walk around the block? I need to get a bit of a workout, and I’m sure she needs to stretch her legs.”

  Nell’s ears had perked the instant she heard “walk,” and now she was looking hopefully at Zane. Ashley smiled. “I’d like that, but I need to run next door to get a warmer jacket. It was getting cold out there. Be right back.”

  “I’ll meet you out front.”

  * * *

  The air had turned bitterly cold, making the autumn sunlight feel warmer by comparison. The early twilight was setting in as the sun sank behind the mountains, especially with the days shortening. Very soon it would be dark. Definitely time for a winter jacket.

  Hers was hanging in her small hall closet, and her gloves were still tucked in the pockets. All ready to go. Her ears felt nipped just from the brief time outdoors, so she pulled up her hood before stepping outside.

  Zane and Nell were waiting for her. Nell was dancing a bit at the end of her leash. Zane wore what appeared to be a down-filled black jacket, which added to his bulk. He’d turned his head over to a stocking cap that sheltered his ears, and he gripped the push rims with hands clad in leather gloves.

  “Nell’s certainly ready,” he said as she skipped down her steps to the sidewalk.

  “This has got to be cold even for her,” Ashley remarked. “Holding still is probably painful.”

  “Do you jog at all?”

  “When I can. Why?”

  “I like to keep up a good clip. It won’t be an easy walking pace, so let me know if I’m getting ahead of you or wearing you out. I mean it.”

  “No problem.” She really didn’t expect one. She did jog several times a week unless something intervened, and she couldn’t imagine that he could go that fast in his chair.

  She was shortly proved wrong. He wasn’t kidding about keeping up a good pace. He pushed those rims over and over as hard as he could. Nell was trotting quickly at his side. She was probably the only one of the three of them who could have gone any faster, and not for long.