A Promise of Forever

by Marilyn Pappano

  Calvin heard the thunk of metal on metal as a boxcar with an open door passed. The kid whooped with glee, confirming that, against odds, the pistol had landed inside the car.

  Calvin sank from his knees to sit on the ground, watching hopelessly as the gun, his only chance of escape this cool, damp night, rumbled on down the tracks.

  The red light that had replaced the cabooses of his childhood was passing as the boy came back. He looked pleased with himself, but not exactly satisfied—like he knew that he hadn’t prevented the solution to the problem. He’d just delayed it.

  “Come on.” Grabbing hold of Calvin’s good arm, he heaved him up. “You need to go to the hospital and get your arm looked at.”

  “I don’t care about my damn arm.” Having gained his feet, Calvin shoved the kid away, dug his keys from his pocket, and took a few staggering steps toward his car. Why, God? Why give me the courage, the hope, the relief, then stop me like this? I should be dead now. I want to be dead now.

  The kid caught up with a few light steps, snatched the keys from his hand, and grinned. “I’ll drive.”

  * * *

  If good-byes weren’t one of the hardest things in the world, would hellos still be sweet?

  The thought ran through Avi’s mind as she drove away from her parents’ house, losing sight of her mother and father, Patricia and Sundance and Nyla and Ben, after a few blocks. Her parents and Patricia had still been waving. Ben had stood to one side, hands in his pockets. She hadn’t looked at him more than a second in her rearview mirror. That wasn’t how she wanted to remember him.

  She had one stop to make before leaving Tallgrass, one that she’d put off as long as she could. Driving east on Main, she flipped on her signal and turned through the gates of Fort Murphy National Cemetery. Her dad had given her directions to the colonel’s gravesite, one of far too many recent ones in the cemetery. She parked in the shade to protect Sadie and walked to the marble stone, still looking white and fresh, not yet showing the signs of weathering.

  She stood there a long time, until a chill washed over her. She hadn’t needed to see the colonel’s marker to bring home the fact of his death. She’d lived with that for more than three months. But, somehow, it did just that. It made her realize that she would never see him again. Ask his opinion. Listen to his advice. He wasn’t just stationed at another post across the country or around the world. He wasn’t just out of reach.

  He was gone. And no matter how deeply her life had been touched by his—inspired, enriched by his—she had lost him. Forever.

  Tears streaked down her cheeks, and she made no effort to wipe them away. She had cried over him before—good-byes had never been easy—but every time until the last, she had known she would see him again. That wasn’t going to happen in this time.

  From the front seat of George’s car, Sadie made a low, mournful sound. Erooo. Avi turned to find her leaning her chin on the door frame, her big brown eyes looking puppy-dog sad. But she followed the wail with a bark. There was a time for sadness, and a time for moving on and facing new adventures, and in Sadie’s opinion, that time was now.

  Turning back to the marker, Avi pressed her fingertips to the stone. “Duty, honor, country,” she murmured, the U.S. Military Academy motto. Straightening, she drew back her shoulders and snapped off a crisp salute.

  “At ease, sir. You’re now at rest.”

  * * *

  Over the next week, Ben went to work, saw patients, and did surgery, but his heart wasn’t in any of it. He wasn’t concentrating during the day or sleeping much at night. He couldn’t count how many times he reached out in bed, expecting to find Avi there, or even Sadie or Sundance, and getting a handful of cold sheet instead. Every evening when he came up the stairs to the loft, there was a moment where he’d forget, when he’d slide the key into the lock and think I’ll be glad to see Avi before the bleak emptiness of the loft brought him back to reality.

  He knew Avi had arrived safely in Augusta with Sadie. He’d been at Patricia’s house that Sunday evening when Beth called to tell them that. He had hoped Avi would call him herself, and he’d prayed she wouldn’t. He’d been enough of a mess. Hearing her voice again would have been that much worse.

  Not hearing her voice, he’d decided, was worst of all.

  Living life without her was the absolute worst of all.

  And the hell of it was, he didn’t have to.

  Sometime before dawn Saturday morning, he’d decided he wasn’t going to. The only thing keeping him from Avi was his own stubborn self, and today he was getting out of his own way.

  He’d spent much of the morning on the phone: getting airline reservations, talking to the office manager about his schedule, talking to his partners about his plans. No one had been happy, except possibly the airline that had filled one more seat, but he didn’t care.

  After a lifetime of taking care of others, of being the responsible one, not caring was a huge relief.

  Now he had to tell his sisters, say good-bye to Lainie and the boys, and call Patricia. The first two tasks would be easy—easy being a relative thing—since the five of them, plus Sara’s husband and Brianne’s new boyfriend, were gathered around the kitchen island, eating bakery treats before the Drillers double-header started at eleven.

  Though he sat in the living room, not yet having brought up the subject.

  “How’re you doing?” Brianne dropped down on the couch beside him, bumping shoulders with him.

  “I’m okay.” Looking at her sweet sympathetic smile, he reconsidered his use of the word easy. For twenty years, they’d been more than brother and sister, more than family. She and Sara had been the two most important people in his life, the ones he loved best and worried most about. They’d been the focus of his life for so long that he’d forgotten how to focus on anyone else. Leaving them, the family he loved so damn much, would be the hardest thing he’d ever done.

  For the woman he loved, God help him, even more.

  “Aw, you miss Avi.” Her tone was soft, full of sympathy. “You didn’t know you’d miss her this much, did you?”

  He smiled wryly. “Knowing it in my head and actually feeling it in my heart are totally different things.”

  “Yeah, you’ve always been a head kind of guy when it comes to women.”

  They sat in silence a moment, shoulder to shoulder. Ben knew he should call Sara over and tell them his decision, but before he bothered to look over his shoulder and open his mouth, Brianne spoke again.

  “Remember, when we were kids, when you were planning for college in high school?”

  Curious about where she was going with this, he shrugged. “Of course I remember.”

  “You were going to move to Stillwater, live on your own, do all the things kids on their own in college did. Then Mom left, and Dad fell apart, and you went to OSU, but you had to commute because you couldn’t leave home. You couldn’t leave us. And you wanted to go to medical school at Baylor, but you couldn’t do that, either, for the same reasons. And after Daddy died, you had to do your residency right here in Tulsa so you could look after Sara and me.”

  “It was no big deal.” His family had needed him. Of course they’d come first.

  Brianne scowled at him. “It was a very big deal. You settled, Ben—on your school, your residency, your practice, your life. I know other clinics and hospitals have tried to lure you away with offers doubling what you’re making here. But you’ve always settled for what was best for us instead of what you wanted.”

  So that was where she was going with it: She was weaving a little trail to Augusta. To Avi.

  He hid his smile. “Yeah, I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t live in Stillwater.”

  “Or go to Baylor for medical school.”

  Or apply for a residency at Massachusetts General or the Cleveland Clinic. “I’m happy with the education and training I got. After all, my reputation is good enough to get those job offers that would double my income.” He didn
’t spend what he already made, and his roots had been planted deep in Tulsa.

  But he’d realized in all those painful moments alone that a healthy tree’s roots had to spread far beyond the tree itself. If they didn’t grow deep and wide, the tree would never survive the first drought or strong wind. They could spread halfway across the country—halfway across the world, if needed.

  “Well, you know what, Ben? Sara and me—we’re all grown up. We have jobs and homes and pay our bills and everything. Truth is, we don’t need you the way we used to.”

  Overhearing, Sara left the table and came to sit on the coffee table in front of them. “Way to be tactful, Bree.”

  Brianne’s frown matched Sara’s. “You try tactfully telling someone you don’t need him, O master of subtlety.”

  Ben couldn’t help smiling at her taunt. Sara and subtlety didn’t belong in the same sentence. It was a fact: Their younger sister was blunt. She didn’t coax or wheedle; she demanded. There was never a question of what she wanted. She made it crystal clear from the start.

  “You’ll always be the head of our family, Ben,” Brianne went on. “The one we go to when we need help, the one we depend on to be there. You’ll always be in charge.” Then she very softly added, “But we’re grown enough now that you can be in charge from a distance.”

  Ben angled toward her. “Just a week or two ago, you were in my office wanting me to promise that I wouldn’t move away. Why the change of heart?”

  “Because now I see how much you miss Avi. Besides, haven’t you heard that home is where the heart is? And your heart is not here. If I loved Nigel—really loved him—I’d move to Chicago with him in a heartbeat. And look at Mom. She moved new places every few years, and it was okay because she was with George, and she would have lived on Mars to be with him. Besides—” Her voice quieted to what Ben thought of as her tattling voice. “Sara said I made the biggest fuss, so I had to be the one to undo it.”

  “Bree!” Sara pinched Brianne’s knee, making her jump and squeal.

  “Ben!” Brianne shrieked, and he automatically responded, “Sara.”

  Sara reached out to pat his knee, and he automatically moved away to avoid a pinch. She graced him with a frown, then stuck out her tongue at him. “Listen, bubba—”

  Bubba. She hadn’t called him that since she was still little enough to need tucking into bed at night.

  “I’ve got to get my tribe to the game so they can get their picture taken with Hornsby. You can come, too, but I don’t think even posing with a blue bull will cheer you up. Personally, I’d prefer you stay here and pack some bags because you know what? You’re not gonna be happy in Tulsa without Avi, so you just gotta go where she is. And we want you to be happy. Really. You’ve earned it.”

  With a squeeze of his knee that was a little harder than strictly necessary, Sara stood, but before she could gather the others, he caught her hand, pulling her down again. He also took Brianne’s hand in his. Theirs were smaller, softer, more delicate, but every bit as capable as they needed to be. Brianne was right: They were all grown up. Imagine that.

  “You know what?” he began, his voice unsteady. “My job is just a job. I can always get another one. And the loft…it’s nothing special. But the three of us—we’re always going to be together no matter how far apart we are. So I’m taking your advice. I’m going to Augusta today, and I’m going to ask Avi to marry me, and wherever the Army sends her, I’m going, too.”

  Their shrieks hurt his ears as they both grabbed him in a fierce hug. He held on just as tightly for a long moment before gently disentangling himself. “I’ll have to come back to settle things here, and you and the kids will have to teach me how to Skype. But right now, you’d better head over to the field. You never know how much fun you might have with a blue bull.”

  Once Sara and Brianne had herded everyone out, he went to his bedroom, pulling a suitcase from the back of the closet, tossing clothes into it. With his cell braced between his shoulder and ear, he called Patricia. Her hello, cheerful and happy and light, took him back twenty-five years and made him smile, really smile, for the first time in a week.

  “Remember last Friday when you said ‘Drink the wine. If someone needs you tonight, they’ll just have to settle for second best’?”

  She chuckled. “It sounds like something I’d say.”

  “You know what? In my career—my job—second best is good enough. I might have been named the best, but there’s nothing I can do that the second-best surgeon in town can’t also do. And I’ll always be Bree and Sara’s big brother, but I can do that long distance. I can be your son long distance.” His voice got a little unsteady, and he swallowed hard to steady it. “But I’m the only man who can love Avi the way she deserves to be loved, and I can’t do that long distance, not and do it justice.”

  His mother could get weepy faster than anyone he knew. “Oh, sweetie…I’m going to miss you so much, but it’ll be the best kind of missing there is. When are you leaving?”

  “My flight leaves in two hours.”

  “Are you surprising her?”

  “Yeah. It’s a kind of thing that should be done in person, don’t you think?”

  “I do. Call me.”

  “I will. So often that you’ll wish I was back here so I’d leave you alone.”

  She choked up again. “Never, Ben.”

  He tossed in his toothbrush, toothpaste, and razor, then zipped his bag and started toward the door. “I love you, Mom.”

  With that, as he’d known she would, she burst into tears.

  * * *

  Saturday afternoon in a new town, familiar though it was, was a lonely place to be. Avi stretched out on the couch with Sadie near her feet, flipping through an insane number of channels on the television to find one that she could bear to watch for more than five minutes.

  Her workdays hadn’t been awful. She’d kept busy from the time she reported to the office until she drove out the main gate of Fort Gordon every afternoon. She’d become friendly with some of her fellow instructors. She’d gotten familiar with her neighborhood and spent a lot of quality time with Sadie.

  Today, though, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, had been brutal.

  It was okay. Tomorrow would be better. Next Saturday she would make plans to go shopping, to a movie, or out clubbing with her new friends. Next Sunday she and Sadie would go for a long drive, maybe to Clarks Hill Lake. She, Jolie, Kerry, Rosemary, and Paulette had had a lot of good times there back when they were going through Signal school.

  Realizing she’d gone through all however many hundred channels, she turned off the TV, tossed the remote onto the cushions, and scanned the apartment for something to do. Sadie had fresh water. The dishes were done. She’d vacuumed and dusted that morning, scrubbed the toilet, and done a load of laundry. She’d bought groceries at the commissary last night and had enough leftovers from lunch’s takeout for dinner.

  Then her gaze wandered to her phone. She could call her parents, but she’d talked to them three times already this week. She could call Patricia, but it would just make her blue. She could try to catch Jolie or Rosemary or Kerry, but surely Jolie was busy with the kids on a Saturday afternoon, and she wasn’t up to figuring time differences for Germany or Korea.

  Truth was, there was only one person she wanted to talk to, and she shouldn’t call him. Shouldn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t.

  Sadie lowered her front feet to the floor, stretched long and hard, then hopped off the couch and trotted to the door, where she sat politely and waited.

  Despite her melancholy, Avi checked her watch, then laughed. If this was a typical weekday, she would have been climbing the stairs about now, then opening the door to find her sweet girl waiting for her. Since she was already here, she decided Sadie’s behavior was a quiet request for a walk. That was the first thing she did after work every day: change out of her uniform and take Sadie out.

  She stood up, stuck her cell in her pocket, and got t
he leash. The sun was shining, the pines that lined the trail were sweet-smelling, and schedules were good for dogs, right? After tucking the last two of the cookies Lucy had made for Sadie into her pocket, Avi hooked on the leash and walked out the door.

  Her second-floor apartment opened onto a small stoop shared with the apartment across from hers, then directly onto stairs that made a straight shot to the sidewalk. She was holding the leash loosely in one hand while locking the door with the other when the dog plunged forward, jerking free and racing down the stairs, the leash a bouncing lime-green blur behind her.

  “Sadie!” Gripping the handrail, Avi ran after her. The dog was so well behaved that she didn’t even so much as tug on the leash when they walked. Avi couldn’t have been more surprised by her behavior until she raced around the corner at the foot of the steps and skidded to a faltering stop.

  Sadie was sitting in the grass ten feet ahead, not just her tail but her entire body quivering. Bent over her, giving her ears a good scratch, was Ben.

  Slowly he raised his gaze from the dog to her, and a look came into his eyes that was so intense, it made her entire body quiver. “Hey, gorgeous.”

  “Hey, Doc,” she said, and her voice trembled on those two small syllables. “What are you doing so far from home?”

  “I’m not far at all.” Straightening, he closed the distance between them, standing very, very close to her, so that all she would have to do to touch him was lift her fingers a bit. “Haven’t you heard that home is where the heart is?”

  Her eyes grew watery with no breeze to blame it on. “What about your career?”

  “It’s portable. I’m guessing people injure or wear out hips, knees, and ankles here just as much as they do in Tulsa.”

  Her voice got softer, wobblier. “What about your loft?”