by A. Gorman
Spencer scoots a little closer to me, though his hands don’t leave his ears. I can tell he’s torn between his fear of the sound and his desire to see this firsthand. I sit between the two most important men in my life and turn my anger toward their illnesses, this constant war we wage every day against autism and PTSD. And as much as it pains me at times, as much as I give of myself and as much as sometimes it feels as if I’m getting nothing back in return, I realize I’ll always be doing this. If I let Jake in again, I’ll always be feeling the need to comfort him too, but who’s there to comfort me?
I’ve often wanted to scream at God, at the universe, at anything and everything for making Spence this way, and now I feel the same way about war. I want to run through those battlefields shouting at everyone to put down their weapons, because it isn’t just the enemy you kill—it’s the soul, and it’s the ability to trust, and it’s the families who pay in the end.
I watch absentmindedly as they play the “Taps” and the two Marines by the casket fold the flag and salute one another. The closest man marches off and the one holding the flag marches toward us and stops right in front of me. I look at Jake, not knowing what to do. He squeezes my hand and lets it go.
The Marine bends low before me and offers me the flag. “On behalf of the President of the United States, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s service to Country and Corps. My condolences.”
“Thank you.” I lay it on my lap and fight back tears. This should have gone to someone else. It should have gone to . . . but as I stroke the heavy fabric with my hands, I try to come up with any number of names of relatives or friends survived by Mr. Williams, and I realize that we are it. A single mother and an eight-year-old boy are the only family he had.
That just seems so wrong, and before long, I’m sobbing. Jake reaches out and puts an arm around my shoulder, drawing me into him. He kisses the top of my head, and I want to melt into his embrace but I can’t. I won’t let myself, because he might be here right at this very moment, but what about in two days’ time? Hell, what about in two hours’ time? What about when those black thoughts come creepin’ back in and he puts a gun in his mouth and I’m not there to talk him out of pulling the trigger? What about when I wind up sitting in this very same position, being handed a folded flag that I never wanted, while the man I love is laid out in a casket? Who comforts me then?
I pull back and Olivia draws Spence away with her, leading him over to the Marine who spoke such nice words about our neighbor. No doubt my son is asking the man endless questions about his association with Mr. Williams.
“Will you be okay?” Jake says. “To drive home, I mean?”
“Are any of us really okay Jake?” I fish another Kleenex from my purse and blot at my eyes. I probably look like a raccoon right now after falling apart the way I did. “When was the last time you felt okay?”
“When I came a scratching at your door during a rainstorm that night and you let me in. When you lay with me on my living room floor; when I had you in your bed; when I saw you sittin’ here today; when you took my hand as the volleys were fired. Anytime I’m with you, I’m okay.” With his soft white gloves, he takes my hand and brings it to his lips. I close my eyes, wincing in pain. “I’m better than okay. I’m whole again.”
“Don’t,” I say, and draw my hand away. “Please, just stop.”
“Elle.”
“No, I can’t do this. Not now.” I stand abruptly.
Jake stands too, running a hand over the back of his neck. “Can I come by the house later?”
“No.” I shake my head. “You can’t.”
“Angel, please?”
“I can’t be always wondering when it’ll be you they’re handing me a flag for. I can’t do it. I won’t do that to Spencer, and I won’t do that to myself. You need help, Jake. Help I can’t give you. You need to heal and forgive yourself and until you do that, I can’t be any part of your life.”
“Elle, don’t do this.” He takes my elbow and I wrench it free.
“I’m sorry. I love you, Jake. I really do,” I say, reaching up to touch his cheek. “But I deserve more.” I walk around him and call to my son, “Come on, Spencer.”
“But . . .” Spence says.
“Go on now,” Olivia urges. “Your mamma needs you.”
Spencer’s shoulders slump, and he glances between me and the only man he’s ever looked on like a father. “Bye, Jake Tucker.”
“Bye, Spencer,” Jake says, his voice thick with emotion. I can’t look at him. “You be good for your mamma, you hear?”
“I will.” Spencer hangs his head as he walks to me. Guilt gnaws away at my insides, but there’s nothing to be done for it now. It is what it is. Jake Tucker is a broken man, and for the first time in my life I’ve found something I can’t fix.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ellie
Disastrously late from a set of highlights that ran over time, I scurry out of the rain and into the fancy lawyer’s office downtown at five minutes after six. I’m shown to a door at the end of the hall by a bored receptionist who would clearly rather continue her phone conversation with her friend than help me. She opens the door, and I stumble over the threshold and into . . . Jake?
“I didn’t know you were going to be here.” I say, looking between him and Jacqueline Jenkins.
“Jacqueline called me this morning and said that I should.” He releases me and takes a step back and Nuke steps forward, wagging his tail and licking at my legs so I’ll scratch him behind the ear.
“Hi baby,” I coo to him. The wagging becomes more robust.
“I’m sorry for the lack of communication, Ms. Mason,” Jacqueline says, coming out from around her desk. She’s dressed in a long black pencil skirt, black pumps, and a deep emerald blouse. She looks beautiful and powerful, and a hint of jealousy stirs in my gut that the two of them were alone in here before I came. She also makes me feel really underdressed in my sun dress and denim jacket. “I just thought it would be simpler to do this all at once. Two birds with one stone, so to speak. I hope that’s not a problem.”
“It’s no problem.”
“Good. Why don’t you have a seat and we can get started?”
I smile and take one of the stiff-backed chairs across from her desk. Jake occupies the other and Nuke settles on the ground between us. “As you know, Mr. Williams had no family he was survived by.”
I nod. Jacqueline walks around the huge mahogany desk and takes a seat. She pushes a cream folder toward me and one toward Jake.
I frown. “You’re not going to read the will out loud?”
Jacqueline laughs. “No, that’s only done in Hollywood. In those folders, you’ll find documentation of Mr. Williams’s assets and their chosen beneficiaries in the event of his death. He had a one and a half million-dollar real estate portfolio that he left to you, Ellie, as well as the sum total of six hundred and fifty thousand dollars of inherited family wealth in cash and stocks and bonds, along with all his worldly possessions to do with as you see fit. He left all of his war medals to your son, Spencer, along with all of the military paraphernalia with the exclusion of his uniform, which he has left to Jake and requested that it be loaned to the USS Alabama.”
All the air is sucked out of the room with her words. Mr. Williams left me what? I’d packed most of our belongings into boxes while Spence was still in the hospital because I was afraid we’d be tossed out on our asses any day now and I wanted to make sure nothin’ got left behind. This whole time I’ve been waitin’ for someone to come kick me out of the house my son and I were occupying, and it turns out I own it anyway?
“I’m sorry,” I say in a shaky voice, sucking in air as if there’s no tomorrow. “Can . . . can you repeat that please?”
“He left it all to you.” She nods.
And that’s when it happens. That’s when I black out in Jacqueline Jenkins�
��s office.
* * *
When I come to, Jake is there. So is Nuke, who licks my face as he whines. I’m laid out on the buttery soft leather couch, and Jake strokes the hair back from my forehead. “Hey,” he says softly.
“Hi.” I grimace and attempt to sit up. My head swims and my stomach churns.
“Lay back down, angel. You hit your head pretty hard. Jacqueline’s gone to get you some iced tea. You’ll be fine.”
“No, I really don’t think I will be,” I mutter.
“Elle . . .”
“Don’t. Please? Seeing you here, finding out Mr. Williams left everything to me . . . I . . .” I sigh. “I can’t deal with any more today or I’m going to fall apart, and I have no idea how to put me back together this time.” I push up from the couch, taking a moment to right my head. Jake reaches out and places his hand on my knee, but I brush him off. “Please don’t touch me, Jake. I can’t.”
I push to my feet and head for the door.
“Elle, you haven’t signed the papers.”
“Tell her I’ll come back tomorrow.” I grab my purse from off the chair and make a beeline for the door. “I can’t be here now, not when you are.”
“Elle,” he calls to me, but I’m already pushing past a confused looking Jacqueline in the hall with my iced tea.
“Ms. Mason?”
“I’ll call you,” I tell her over my shoulder, and then I flee that office faster than I thought my legs could carry me.
* * *
For a long time, I sit in my car in the parking lot, completely numb. I know Jake will be out soon, but I don’t care. I can’t make my arms move at all, let alone drive my vehicle.
And before long, just like I knew he would, he finds me. Jake opens the passenger door and gets in, leaving it ajar with his foot so Nuke’s not shut out. “You don’t have to talk; just listen.”
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the headrest.
“I’ve been broken for a good long while now. You changed that, Elle. You and Spence. You gave me something to live for. I can’t promise it’s not gonna be hard. I still have nightmares, I still fall into the black hole, but now I see a light at the end of it, and that light is you.”
“I can’t be the light for you, Jake, if it means smothering my own.”
He flinches as if I just slapped him. “Do you really believe that? That I’m darkness for you, suffocating and holding you down the way Jimmy did?”
I give an infinitesimal shake of my head. “I don’t know anymore.”
“I’m not giving up, Elle. You tell me what I can do to fix this—to fix us. You trusted me before. Why can’t you do that again?”
I turn on him, sneering. “Because you broke me, Jake. The drinking, the attempted suicide? Do you know what it was like walking into that bedroom and finding you with a gun in your mouth? I couldn’t help you, so I’ve had to help myself. I had to help my son by never putting him in a position where he’d meet that Jake.”
“I’m getting help,” he says. “I’m on meds now, the right ones, and I’m seeing a doctor. After all this time, I’m finally talkin’. You did that.” He angles his body toward me. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be worthy of you, angel, but even if I have to fight those demons every day to be the kind of man you deserve, I will.” He reaches out and grasps my chin in his hands, gently turning my face so I’ll meet his gaze. “I love you. I think I loved you since the day you crashed your car into that footbridge. I ain’t a saint. I’m pretty damn far from it, but I’ll work every second of my life trying to be one if it means you’ll be by my side.”
I stare up into his eyes and shake my head. “I never needed a saint, Jake. I just needed you to let me in.”
“And now I need you to do the same for me.”
“I can’t,” I whisper with tears in my eyes.
He frowns. His hand slips from my chin and he turns away, looking out on the lot. Nuke whines from the wet footpath.
“I’m sorry.”
Jake nods. “I ain’t giving up on us, Elle. I’m gonna wear you down, I’m gonna come at you from every angle, and I will have you in my arms again. I may have screwed up a lot of things in my life, but loving you, and starting a war over this isn’t wrong. You’re mine Ellie Mason, and I’m yours. I never belonged to anybody before you, and I don’t intend to belong to anyone else ever again, how can I when you got my whole heart and you ain’t giving it back?”
“Jake—”
“No, I’ll leave you be, if that’s what you really want.”
I close my eyes again and take a deep, shaking breath. I can’t voice the words, because they aren’t true. I don’t want him to leave me alone at all, but I know it’s what’s best for all of us so I just nod. He climbs out of my car.
“Come on, boy.” He tugs on the lead but the dog stays put, glancing between me and Jake. “Nuke. Come.”
Jake turns and I watch them swallowed up by the dark street as they walk away. I start the car and I put it in gear, but I don’t go anywhere. And isn’t that the story of my life? Always in drive, but never moving. Never getting any further ahead.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ellie
“Hey baby,” I say, as Spence stalks into the kitchen—as much as anyone can stalk on crutches. He has a backpack slung over his shoulder and he’s dressed in his pajamas and one running shoe. The other foot is still in the cast. “You wearing that to school?”
It isn’t the first time my kid has decided PJ Fridays should be a thing.
“Not going to school,” he grumbles, sitting at the table. His crutches and bag fall to the floor with a clamor, and he picks up a piece of dry toast from my plate, shoving it in his mouth.
I blink in surprise, though I’m not sure what’s more alarming. The attitude, or the fact that he ate toast instead of Cheerios from his orange bowl. “Uh, yes, you most certainly are going to school. Aren’t you getting an award today for your writing?”
“School sucks.”
I whirl on him. “You watch your mouth, mister.”
“It does suck. Everything sucks. I hate you.” He stands and kicks his chair over.
I take a deep breath. I know they’re just words, and he’s frustrated and not communicating properly, but boy do they sting like a bitch.
Without his crutches, Spence heads for the back door and begins yanking on it, unable to turn the locks. He’s like Houdini, always wandering off. One minute he’s there and the next . . . gone.
He tugs at the door, and then starts screaming at the top of his lungs. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
I race over and pry his hands from the handle. All three locks are dead bolted, but it makes no difference—he’d claw his fingers down to stubs if he could.
Spencer gives up on the door and starts hitting himself in the head, turning his anger inward. He never hurts me; not intentionally, anyway.
With a fair amount of struggling, I loop one arm around his, restraining it behind him. He lashes out with the other, hitting himself over and over with a series of harsh slaps to the ear until I can get him under control, and then we fall back against the floorboards.
Panting from exertion, I whisper in his ear, “Spence, breathe, baby. I need you to breathe and count with me, okay? One, two, three . . .” I’m the only one counting. His whole body is rigid from head to toe, and he struggles against me again.
“I hate you. I wish Mr. Williams shot you instead. I wish Jake was my daddy and you just went away forever. You’re the worst mother ever.”
I wrap my arms tighter around him. I’m shaking, but I don’t know if it’s him or me, or our combined anger and devastation that’s causing the world to shudder.
“You are not allowed to hate me, Spencer Mason,” I whisper, but the dam bursts and the words come out on a sob. “I am your mother, and I love you with my whole heart, and you are not allowed to leave me because I’d be alone. I’d be heartbroken without you.”
�
��I don’t care. I wanna see Jake. You never let me see Jake and Nuke anymore. You pushed them away and now they hate us.”
“No, honey, Jake and Nuke could never hate you,” I say, smoothing my hand over his forehead. He flinches away from the touch and my heart breaks a little more.
“Everyone hates me.”
“No. Everyone loves you, Spencer. You have so much special inside you that everyone you meet can see it. People see it from miles away.”
“You’re a liar. Jake wouldn’t have left if he could see my special.”
“Honey, what happened with Jake had nothing to do with you,” I say. It was my fault. I hadn’t guarded my heart. I let him get too close and it ruined us both. I let him in and he broke me because he was broken, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t piece him back together. I didn’t realize those cracks had affected my son so badly. “Sometimes, no matter how much you love someone, sometimes you need to let them go so they can fix themselves.”
“Are you gonna let me go, Mamma?” he says morosely.
“No. You’re not broken. You’re just different, and different is beautiful.” I sniff. “No matter how long you walk this earth, no matter how many times you say you hate me, I’ll never let you go. That’s why I need you to love me back, because who else is going to do it as much as you?”
“Jake,” he says matter-of-factly, and I nod, because I don’t doubt that what he’s saying isn’t true. Not even for a second. I know Jake loves me, the same as he knows I love him, but it doesn’t matter, because I can’t be what he needs, and he can’t give me what I need, so we’ll always be at an impasse. We’ll always be outside, looking through the glass but never able to breach the walls we put in place to guard our hearts.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ellie
Two months later
I sit across the breakfast table from my son and stare out the kitchen window on the newly landscaped backyard. The fence Jake put up is still going strong, but I had a carpenter come in and finish it off with a gate, ready for today’s surprise. Spencer and I finally did the gardens, planting brightly colored petunias in the soil beside the back porch, and we even put in a vegie garden around the side and planted tomatoes, spinach, and a couple stalks of corn.
