A Promise of Forever

by Marilyn Pappano

  He shrugged. “I’ll probably sell it. It really won’t suit us once we move back to Oklahoma. We’ll need a second bedroom, and a third and probably a fourth.”

  Marriage. Babies. Happily-ever-after. They were going to get it, after all. Every bit of it. Just the thought made her heart do a little happy dance in her chest. “What about your sisters?”

  He grinned sheepishly. “They informed me today that they’re all grown up and that I can boss them as well from here as there. What they didn’t mention was that they can ignore me all the more easily from here than from there.”

  Everything inside Avi softened and melted and turned all girly and gooey. They would be all right, she’d told herself the night before leaving Tallgrass, and she’d believed it, in a long-time-comin’ sort of way. In a year or two or eight.

  But he’d proven her wrong. He had left everything he loved because he loved her more. They would be all right, starting from this very moment, forever and ever.

  She lifted her fingers those few inches and touched him for the first time in more than a week. It felt sweet and wonderful, like being made whole again after losing a part of herself. Raising her other hand to cup his cheek, she grinned a million-watt grin. “I love you, Doc.”

  He kissed her, the kind of kiss that made her weak-kneed and easy, that stole her breath and made her nerves tingle. Then he took Sadie’s leash in one hand, Avi’s hand in the other, and said, “Let’s walk the baby.”

  His smile turned wicked. “And then you can show me just how much.”

  Since she had her heart broken, Bennie finds solace in her friends in the Tuesday Night Margarita Club. But when she falls for Calvin, an old friend who is dealing with his own trauma from serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bennie discovers that love may be the only thing that can save them…

  Please see the next page for a preview of

  A Chance of a Lifetime.

  Chapter 1

  You can’t go home again, someone had famously said.

  Someone else had added, But that’s okay, because you can’t ever really leave home in the first place.

  Calvin Sweet was home. If he tried real hard, he could close his eyes and recall every building lining the blocks, the sound of the afternoon train, the smells coming from the restaurants. He could recognize the feel of the sun on his face, the breeze blowing across his skin, the very scent of the air he breathed. It smelled of prairie and woodland and livestock and sandstone and oil and history and home.

  There were times he’d wanted to be here so badly that he’d hurt with it. Times he’d thought he would never see it again. Times he’d wanted to never see it—or anything else—again. Ironically enough, it was trying to ensure that he would never come back except in a box that had brought him alive and unwell.

  He didn’t close his eyes. Didn’t need a moment to take it all in. Didn’t want to see reminders of the streets where he’d grown up, where he’d laughed and played and lived and learned with an innocence that was difficult to remember. He just stared out the windows, letting nothing register but disquiet. Shame. Bone-deep weariness. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be in Tallgrass. He didn’t want to be anywhere.

  “You have family in the area,” the driver said, glancing his way.

  It was the first time the corporal had spoken in twenty miles. He’d tried to start a couple of conversations at the airport in Tulsa and in the first half of the trip, but Calvin hadn’t had anything to say. He still didn’t, but he dredged up a response. “Yeah. Right here in town.”

  When the Army sent troops to the Warrior Transition Units, they tried to send them to the one closest to home so the family could be part of the soldier’s recovery. Calvin’s mama, his daddy, his grandma and aunties and uncles and cousins—they were all dedicated to being there for him. Whether he wanted them or not.

  “How long you been away?”

  “Eleven years.” Sometimes it seemed impossible that it could have been so long. He remembered being ten and fourteen and eighteen like it was just weeks ago. Riding his bike with J’Myel and Bennie. Going fishing. Dressing up in white shirt and trousers every Sunday for church—black in winter, khaki in summer. Playing baseball and basketball. Going to the drive-in movie, graduating from grade school to middle school to high school with J’Myel and Bennie. The Three Musketeers. The Three Stooges.

  The best memories of his life. He’d never thought it possible that All for one and one for all! could become two against one, then one and one. J’Myel had turned against him. Had married Bennie. Had gotten his damn self killed. He hadn’t spoken to Calvin three years before he died, and Bennie, forced to choose, had cut him off, too. He hadn’t been invited to the wedding. Hadn’t been welcome at the funeral.

  With a grimace, he rubbed the ache in his forehead. Remembering hurt. If the docs could give him a magic pill that wiped his memory clean, he’d take it. All the good memories in his head weren’t worth even one of the bad ones.

  At the last stoplight on the way out of town, the corporal shifted into the left lane, then turned onto the road that led to the main gates of Fort Murphy. Sandstone arches stood on each side, as impressive now as they’d been when he was a little kid outside looking in. Just past the guard shack stood a statue of the post’s namesake, Audie Murphy, the embodiment of two things Oklahomans valued greatly: cowboys and war heroes. Despite being scrawny black kids and not knowing a damn thing about horses, he and J’Myel had wanted to be Audie when they grew up.

  At least they’d managed the war hero part, if the medals they’d been given could be believed. They’d both earned a chestful of them on their tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  With a deep breath, he fixed his gaze outside the windows, forcing himself to concentrate on nothing that wasn’t right there in front of him. They were passing a housing area now, the houses cookie cutter in size and floor plan, the lawns neatly mowed and yellowed now. October, and already Oklahoma had had two snows, with another predicted in the next few days. Most of the trees still bore their autumn leaves, though, in vivid reds and yellows and rusts and golds, and yellow and purple pansies bloomed in the beds marking the entrances to each neighborhood.

  They passed signs for the gym, the commissary, the exchange, barracks and offices and the Warrior Transition Unit. Their destination was the hospital, where he would be checked in and checked out to make sure nothing had changed since he’d left the hospital at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington that morning. He tried to figure out how he felt about leaving there, about coming here—psychiatrists were big on feelings—but the truth was, he didn’t care one way or the other.

  His career was pretty much over. No matter how good a soldier he’d been, the Army didn’t have a lot of use for a captain who’d tried to kill himself. They’d diagnosed him with posttraumatic stress disorder, the most common injury suffered by military personnel in the war on terror, and they’d started him in counseling while arranging a transfer to Fort Murphy. Soon he would be separated from the Army, but they would make a stab at putting him back together before they let him go.

  But when some things were broken, they stayed broken. Nothing could change that.

  Within an hour, Calvin was settled in his room. He hated the way people had looked at his medical record, hated the way they’d looked at him. He’s a nut job, a weak one. Killed the enemy in the war but couldn’t even manage to kill himself. What a loser.

  More likely, those were his thoughts, not the staff’s.

  He sat on the bed, then slowly lay back. He could function on virtually no sleep—he’d done it too many times to count—but sometimes his body craved it. Not in the normal way, not eight or nine hours a night, but twenty-hour stretches of near unconsciousness. It was his brain’s way of shutting down, he guessed, of keeping away things he couldn’t deal with. He could go to sleep right now, but it wouldn’t last long, because his parents were coming to see him soon, and Elizabeth Sweet wouldn’t let a little thing like sleep
deter her from hugging and kissing her only son.

  Slowly he sat up again. His hands shook at the thought of facing his parents, and his gut tightened. Elizabeth and Justice hadn’t raised a coward. They’d taught him to honor God, country, and family, to stand up for himself and others, to be strong and capable, and he’d failed. He’d tried to kill himself. He knew that sentence was repeating endlessly, disbelievingly, not just in his head but also in theirs.

  He was ashamed of himself.

  But he’d do it again given the chance. The only difference would be the next time he would succeed. No public park, even if he’d never once seen anyone there in all the times he’d been, and no misguided teenage punks to intervene. Diez was the name of his particular punk. After “saving” Calvin’s life, he’d stolen his wallet and car and disappeared. Some people got the Good Samaritan. He got the thieving one.

  Announcements sounded over the intercom, calling staff here or there, and footsteps moved quickly up and down the hall, answering call buttons, checking patients. Calvin sat in the bed and listened, hearing everything and nothing, screening out all the extraneous noises until he heard the one he was listening for: the slow, heavy tread of his father’s work-booted feet. Justice had a limp—arthritis in knees punished by years laying floor tile—and the resulting imbalance in his steps was as familiar to Calvin as his father’s voice.

  The steps stopped outside his door. Calvin took a deep breath and imagined his parents doing the same. He slid to his feet as the door slowly swung open and his mom and dad just as slowly came inside. For a moment, they stared at him, and he stared back, until Elizabeth gave a cry and rushed across the room to wrap her arms around him.

  She was shorter, rounder, and he had to duck his head to rest his cheek against her head, but he felt just as small and vulnerable as he ever had. There’d never been a thing in his life that Mom couldn’t make better with a hug—until now—and that just about broke his heart.

  It seemed forever before she lifted her head, released him enough to get a good look at him. Tears glistened in her eyes, and her smile wobbled as she cupped her hand to his jaw. “Oh, son, it’s good to see you.” Her gaze met his, darted away, then came back with a feeble attempt at humor. “Or would you prefer that I call you sweet baby boy of mine?”

  He managed to phony up a smile, or at least a loosening of his facial muscles, at the memory of her response when he’d complained about being called son in front of his friends. “Son is fine.” His voice was gravelly, his throat tight.

  “You know, I can come up with something even worse.” But there was no promise behind her words, none of that smart mouth that she lived up to quite nicely most of the time. She was shooting for normal, but he and she could both see there was nothing normal about this situation.

  Justice stepped forward. “Move on over a bit, Lizzie. Let a man give his only boy a welcome-home hug.” His voice was gravelly, too, but it always had been, rough-edged and perfect for booming out amens in church or controlling small boys with no more than a sharp-edged word.

  Elizabeth stepped aside, and Justice took his turn. His hug was strong and enveloping and smelled of fabric softener and the musky aftershave he’d worn longer than Calvin had been alive. It was so familiar, one of those memories that never faded, and it reminded Calvin of the person he used to be. The one he’d liked. The one who could do anything, be anything, survive anything, and prosper.

  The one he would never be again.

  After his dad released him, they all stared at each other again. Calvin had never seen them looking so uncomfortable, shifting their weight, wanting to smile but not sure they should or could. His fault.

  The psychiatrist in Washington had tried to prepare him for this initial meeting, for the embarrassment and awkwardness and guilt and disappointment. For no one knowing what to say or how to say it. For the need to be honest and open and accepting and forgiving.

  Calvin had been too lost in his misery—and too angry at Diez—to pay attention.

  Should he point out the elephant sitting in the middle of the room? Just set his parents down and blurt it out? Sorry, Mom and Dad, I tried to kill myself, but it wasn’t you, it was me, all my fault. Sorry for any distress I caused. Now that we’ve talked about it, we don’t ever need to do it again. So…how’s that high school football coach working out?

  And, as an aside: Oh, yeah, that suicide thing…I’m getting help and I haven’t tried anything since. We’re cool, right?

  At least, until he did try again.

  His throat worked hard on a swallow, his jaw muscles clenched, and his gut was tossing about like a leaf in a storm, but he managed to force air into his lungs, to force words out of his mouth. “So…it was cold outside when I got here.”

  “Dropped to about thirty-eight degrees,” Justice answered. “Wind chill’s down in the twenties. The weather guys are saying an early winter and a hard one.”

  “What’s Gran say?”

  Elizabeth’s smile was shaky. “She says every winter’s hard when you’re seventy-six and have the arthritis in your joints.”

  “She wanted to come with us, but…” Justice finished with a wave of his hands. “You know Emmeline.”

  That Calvin did. Emmeline would have cried. Would have knelt on the cold tile and said a prayer of homecoming. Would have demanded he bend so she could give him a proper hug, and then she would have grabbed his ear in her tightest grip and asked him what in tarnation he’d been thinking. She would have reminded him of all the switchings she’d given him and would have promised to snatch his hair right out of his scalp if he even thought about such a wasteful thing again.

  He loved her. He wanted to see her. But gratitude washed over him that it didn’t have to be tonight.

  “Your auntie Sarah was asking after you,” Elizabeth said. “She and her boys are coming up from Oklahoma City for Thanksgiving. Hannah and her family’s coming from Norman, and Auntie Mae said all three of her kids would be here, plus her nine grandbabies. They’re all just so anxious to see you.”

  Calvin hoped he was keeping his face in a sort of pleasantly blank way, but a glimpse of his reflection in the window proved otherwise. He looked like his eyes might just pop out of his head. He’d known he would see family—more than he wanted and more quickly than he wanted—but Thanksgiving was less than a month away. Way too soon for a family reunion.

  His mother went on, still naming names, adding the special potluck dishes various relatives were known for, throwing in a few tidbits about marriages and divorces and new babies, talking faster and cheerier until Justice laid his hand over hers just as her voice ran out of steam. “I don’t think he needs to hear about all that right now. You know, it took me a long time to build up the courage”—his gaze flashed to Calvin’s, then away—“to get used to your family. All those people, all that noise. Calvin’s been away awhile. He might need some time to adjust to being back before you spring that three-ring circus on him.”

  Elizabeth’s face darkened with discomfort. “Of course. I mean, it’s a month away. And it’ll be at Auntie Mae’s house so there will be plenty of places to get away for a while. Whatever you want, son, that’s what we’ll do.”

  They chattered a few more minutes, then took their leave, hugging Calvin again, telling him they missed him and loved him, Justice thanking God he was home. Her hand on the door frame, Elizabeth turned back. “I don’t suppose…church tomorrow, family dinner after…It would just be you and me and your daddy and Gran…”

  Calvin swallowed hard, looking away from the hopefulness on her face. “I, uh, don’t think I can leave here yet. Being a weekend, they’re a little slow getting things settled.”

  Disappointment shadowed her caramel eyes, but she hid it with a smile. “Of course. Maybe next time.”

  Calvin listened to the door close behind them, to his father’s heavy tread walking away, and his mother’s earlier words echoed inside his head. Whatever you want, son, that’s what we’
ll do.

  The problem was, what did a man do when he didn’t want anything at all? How did he survive? How did he let go? Was there any conceivable destination that made the journey worthwhile? Or was he going to suffer until the day he finally died?

  * * *

  Lifting as many reusable shopping bags from the trunk as her two hands could carry, Benita Ford hurried along the path to the back door of the house she shared with her grandmother. Lights shone through the windows, and the central heat and air system hunkered against the house on the back side was rumbling, meaning it would be warm and cozy inside. Why in the world had she worn a dress, tights, and her new black boots to go shopping today? She’d lost contact with her toes a long time ago, and every time the prairie wind had blown, it seemed the cold had headed straight up her skirt for a woo-hoo of the sort she didn’t need. Jeans, wool socks, leather running shoes, a long-sleeved T-shirt, a long-sleeved sweater, and the gorgeous wool coat that reached almost to her ankles—those were shopping clothes.

  “Brr! At least I know my ice cream didn’t melt on the way home.” Mama Maudene Pickering was waiting in the kitchen, ready to unpack the bags while Bennie went after the rest. The old lady wore black sweatpants that puddled over her shearling-lined house shoes, along with an orange, black, and purple Halloween sweater that was scarier than much else having to do with the day.

  “I don’t remember ice cream being on the shopping list,” Bennie teased.

  Mama shook a finger at her. “You don’t want to give an old woman palpitations. But if you do, be sure to ask for good-looking firemen when you call 911.”

  “And you do the same for me if I ever need it.” Ducking her head, Bennie rushed out into the cold again. She had another six or eight bags, along with four cases of bottled water that she had to haul in or risk finding her trunk covered in icicles the next day.