Beginning with You

by Lindsay McKenna

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “We’re both brand spanking new to the base. I arrived yesterday and you, today.”

  “Is that an omen, sir?” she asked, smiling.

  “Omen? That sounds sinister. I’d hope our showing up here isn’t a negative. Let’s just say it’s symbolic—of what, I’m not sure yet.” He liked her sense of humor. She was attractive without makeup. Her fingernails were blunt-cut and unpolished. Her hair was short and shone like the wing of a raven. The cut was flattering to the structure of her facial features. Ward was pleased that her uniform was meticulously kept, but then, she was fresh out of boot camp.

  Rook sat stiffly in the chair, hands clasped in her lap. Captain Stuart was short. It was a shock—at first. But she saw the glint in his eyes and sensed he missed little. That kept her even more on guard. Was he pro- or anti-woman helicopter pilots? She’d find out soon enough. Stuart could either make her first tour—the foundation of a career she wanted for the next thirty years—a positive experience or a disaster. If he was a dyed-in-the-wool male, he could make it so tough on her that her fitness reports would get her drummed out of the service after her first five-year stint. Sweat popped out on her upper lip.

  Rook hung on to all her questions, realizing silence was proper while Stuart read over her personnel file. She wanted to fidget. Instead, she swung her attention to the white MH-60 helo with the international orange stripe on its tail as it lifted beyond the hangar, heading out in a westerly direction over the straits. She ached to be on board, to be part of the team trained to save lives. Would Gil and Reno arrive in time to save the two fishermen?

  “Your credentials are impressive, Lieutenant,” Ward complimented her. “I see you’ve been flying rotary-winged aircraft since you were sixteen. How did you get into that?

  Most sixteen-year-old girls have more pressing interests.” He was thinking of Kenny, who mimicked the latest fashions and made dating the highlight of his life.

  “We…my mother and I…lived near Brownsville, Texas, at the time. I hung around a crop dusting airfield after school every day, sir. The money a pilot made was pretty good, so I asked Old Jake if he’d teach me to fly. I was fifteen at the time. He sort of liked me. His daughter had died two years before, and I guess I reminded him of Becky. So, he’d take me on crop-dusting flights, and by the time I was seventeen I had my license.”

  Ward leaned back, folding his hands across his stomach, studying her. He saw Noah Caldwell’s stubborn chin and high cheekbones in her face. In some ways, they were similar, possessing that necessary drive to make something of themselves. “And you did this flying for the money?”

  “I did at first, sir. My mother would never accept welfare, even though things were pretty tight. I had a newspaper route in the different towns we lived in from the time I was eight, and that helped. Money was my first objective, but as soon as I flew in a helo I changed my mind.”

  “Oh?”

  Rook gave Ward a shy smile. “I fell in love with flying, sir. From sixteen on, I ate, slept and breathed it. Old Jake made me see the importance of top grades. He was the one who suggested the Coast Guard as a place to use my talents.”

  “Wise man, this Old Jake.”

  “Yes, sir. He was more of a father to me than my real one. During college, I made my tuition and living expenses by crop dusting in the summer with his company. I flew on weekends, too.”

  “Earning your own way through college is something very few young men and women do nowadays,” Ward observed wryly. Good, she had backbone and tenacity. He liked that kind of attitude. The distaste in her voice—a slight tinge of bitterness about her real father—pressed a warning buzzer in the back of Ward’s head. No one had the perfect family—he knew that from personal experience. Camelot existed in fairy tales, not reality.

  “It appears that Lieutenant Logan has a SAR case.”

  “Yes, sir. One came in while I was checking on board with him.”

  Ward smiled again and picked up the phone. “That means you’ll have some time to kill before he gets back. Why don’t you have a seat in my secretary’s office? I’ve got a pleasant surprise for you.”

  Frowning, Rook stood up. “Surprise, sir?”

  Ward nodded. Connecting with the cutter, he said, “Yes, this is the captain. Have Lt. Noah Caldwell come to my office immediately. Thank you.”

  Noah! Rook’s mouth dropped open and she staggered back a step. My God, no! Not her brother!

  “Lieutenant?” Ward demanded, watching her face drain of all color. Scowling, he watched her eyes darken with what could only be called pain. What was going on here? When the station secretary had made a note that Rook’s brother, Noah Caldwell, was stationed here, he felt they should get some time together. Now, watching her reaction, Ward wasn’t so sure.

  “Uhh…” Rook stumbled badly, trying to think, but only feeling. Her world was coming unhinged. She had to get hold of herself! The captain was staring at her. He mustn’t know the awful truth! That was one of the two worst secrets she’d carried, like a living nightmare, within her each and every day.

  “I think you’d better sit down,” Ward began, rising.

  Before, Rook had always been able to cap her feelings. Now, it was impossible. Struggling, she shook her head. “I-I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that—well, this is a surprise. I-I didn’t know my brother was here.”

  Smiling weakly, Ward watched her closely. “Yes, according to the personnel records, Noah’s been here a year.” Odd that she wouldn’t know that. He gave a mental shrug. There were too many other things pulling at him to give much attention to her reactions.

  Faintness swept across Rook, and she deliberately moved toward the door. “It’s been a long time since we saw each other,” she whispered huskily. “Is he on his way?” How was she going to deal with this? How?

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll meet him out in the hall, sir.”

  Perplexed, Ward nodded. Of course, she wanted their reunion to be private. He was sure that they had a lot to catch up on. “I understand, Lieutenant. Dismissed.”

  “Yes, sir.” Coming to attention, Rook made a miserable about-face and groped for the doorknob, her hand shaking visibly.

  Ward watched Rook close the door to his office. What the hell, this was Sunday. Give her a few minutes alone with her brother while Gil was on the SAR case. Right now, Ward wanted to make the transition for Rook as painless and pleasant as possible. On Monday, Lieutenant Logan would begin her orientation phase, and she could sink her teeth into some real work.

  Once out in the hall, Rook stood motionless, then buried her face in her hands. She had to get herself together. She had to! Noah was coming. Hatred mixed with anger and then anguish. She choked back a sob.

  Noah removed his baseball cap as he entered the admin building. He wore the dark blue work uniform and foul weather jacket that cutter crews donned when at sea or at work when docked. He wiped his hands on a rag, trying to remove the grease. The morning had been spent with his engineer chief, Dave Harper, tinkering with a valve problem. Noah had asked the new CO to call him when his sister came on board.

  Taking a deep breath, he slowed his ascent on the stairs leading directly to the captain’s office. Admin was empty, as usual on Sunday. For that, Noah was grateful. Rook hadn’t seen him face to face since she was fifteen, the last time she had run away from their home in D.C. Would she recognize him now?

  His eyes grew dark and troubled. Fear gripped him as never before. He couldn’t even remember feeling this scared—even when boarding a druggie’s boat in search of marijuana or coke. What would Rook do? He prayed she’d have the good sense to be calm, cool and collected. For all he knew, the captain might be waiting there with her.

  Rook heard someone coming up the concrete steps; the echo floated up to the second floor. A gasp escaped her as she recognized her brother.

  Noah hesitated on the last step, six feet separating them. He saw Rook’s ruddy-complected face
drain of all color. Swallowing hard, he took the final step. He knew that she had had no idea that he was stationed here, or that Grandfather Rufford had had a hand in having her transferred to Port Angeles. She would never know.

  “Rook?”

  Shock turned to rage. Rook retreated back a step as Noah moved forward, his hand offered to her. “What are you doing here?” she rasped.

  Noah halted, before offering her a faint, shy smile of apology. “I’m stationed here, like you are. When I found out you had arrived, I wanted to be the first to welcome you on board.” He cleared his throat, nervously searching her wan features. “Are you going to be all right? Do you want to sit down? I know this is a hell of a shock. I tried to contact you at Mobile after you graduated, but you left a week early and—”

  “Get out of here, Noah,” Rook grated under her breath. She caught and held herself in check, her emotions boiling wildly just beneath the surface. “I told you before. There’s nothing left between us. I don’t have a brother. I never did. Just get the hell out of my life and leave me alone!”

  He winced, hearing the raw pain and desperation in Rook’s husky voice. Fingering his cap nervously, he said, “That’s going to be a little hard to do. I’m stationed here, too. Look, there’s a pilots’ lounge right down the hall. Why don’t we go in there and talk?”

  Rook realized with a start that they were standing right outside the captain’s office. The door was shut, but that didn’t guarantee that Stuart hadn’t heard her snarling rejoinders to Noah. She straightened up, squaring her shoulders, chin tilted in a defiant position. Whether she wanted to or not, Rook had to admit that Noah had grown tall and strong and handsome. His face had matured into that of a man. She’d seen enough officers in the last eighteen months of training to acknowledge that Noah had the look and carriage of a superior commander.

  “We have nothing to discuss, Noah, and you know it.”

  “Please, Rook, can’t you give me…give us a chance?”

  Damn him! He was going to press her, as always. Rook looked down the deserted hall. Their voices carried too easily. She didn’t want their personal family problems to become gossip. “All right, let’s go to the lounge. But what I have to say to you is going to be short.”

  He shrugged. “Okay. Come on, I’ll show you where it’s at—that is, unless Gil gave you the tour already.”

  Irritated that Noah talked about Logan as if he’d known him forever, she muttered, “He’s on a case, and we barely got past formal introductions.”

  Heartened, Noah said, “Great. Maybe you’ll let me show you around the base. It’s quite an impressive operation.”

  Rook said nothing, following at a safe distance. Noah led her through one room, down a hall and then made a sharp left. The pilots’ lounge consisted of a television, a telephone, a few couches one could doze on and a large table with plenty of chairs around it. A number of pieces of art—one depicting a duck holding an umbrella over its head—were visible on the walls. Noah sat down, tossed his cap on the table and looked up at her expectantly.

  Shutting the door to the ready room, Rook turned, a scowl on her set features. “All right, Noah, what’s this all about?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Us. Stationed here together. How’d you manage to pull that off?”

  He feigned surprise. “I didn’t pull anything off.”

  “That’s an outright lie! You forget, I’m used to your stepfamily’s meddling! How many times did they send those detectives out to Texas to haul me back to D.C.?”

  Noah saw tears in her gray eyes. He felt for her and for himself. He placed his hands flat on the table and spoke, his voice quiet. It was a tone he used when in a boarding or emergency situation on the Point Countess, when his men were relying on him to keep calm. “Look, we’ve got to sit down, behave and talk like adults about this sometime, Rook. Sure, we were separated, but that doesn’t alter the fact we share the same blood. It was Father who sent those detectives to find you—not my stepmother or Grandfather Rufford. Jack was wrong to hunt you down.”

  She glared at him, folding her arms against her breast. “Noah, you can’t atone for what Jack or that foster mother of yours did to Mom and me, so quit trying!”

  “Then stop blaming me for it, dammit. I’m your brother, Rook. Look, I can’t help it if Jack found you and brought you back to D.C. Every time he did, you ran away.” He shook his head. “To this day, I don’t know how, as a nine-year-old kid, you made it back to Texas by yourself and in one piece. So many things could have happened to you….”

  “If I’d stayed, worse things would have happened!” Rook cried. “And you—you sided with Jack. You stayed with him when Mom and I left….”

  Her breath was fast and shallow. Rook allowed her arms to drop to her sides, fists clenched. “As far as I’m concerned, I have no family. Mom died a month before I graduated from Pensacola.” Tears blurred Rook’s vision, and with a croak of frustration, she turned her back on Noah to wipe them away.

  Noah rose, moving quickly to his sister’s side. The instant he put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, she jerked away from him. She whirled around, her face etched with anguish.

  “Don’t touch me! Just get the hell out of here, Noah! Get out of my life, once and for all!”

  He stood there patiently. “I can’t do that, Rook. I never could.” His voice grew hoarse with feeling. “Whether you accept it or not, we’re brother and sister. I love you. I always have. I want us to be family again.”

  She took a step back, swiping at the last of her tears. “I’ll never call those monsters who raised you family.”

  He frowned down at the carpeted floor. “Okay, okay. You never did like our stepmother or Grandfather Rufford. I don’t expect you to like them now. I can understand how you feel, Rook. Mom needed you and you needed her.”

  “Mom loved both of us, Noah, but you moved back East with Jack without a fight—without even a whimper. You gave up Mom’s love. Do you know how many times she cried herself to sleep after you abandoned her for Jack? Do you know how many times I woke up as a kid and heard her sobbing your name? That so-called father of ours split us apart, Noah, just as surely as if he’d taken an ax to all our hearts. He killed Mom by having detectives chase her all over Texas to find me and drag me back East. She had high blood pressure when she was twenty-eight. She died of a broken heart at forty-five, for Christ’s sake.” Rook sobbed, burying her face in her hands, “Alone in a little apartment in Odessa. I-I couldn’t even be there for her.”

  Tears blinded Noah and he turned away, unable to stand the suffering in Rook’s torn voice. He rested his hands against the table, staring vacantly off into space. As badly as he wanted to, he knew Rook wouldn’t let him help ease her grief. Heart attack—that was what the detective agency had said. Melody Caldwell had died alone, thinking that her son didn’t love her, when he did—fiercely. As a boy, and then as a teenager, Noah had written to his mother. His father, Jack, had said that the letters were being forwarded by the detective agency, but he’d lied. Noah found out about it only after entering the Coast Guard Academy. The post office had sent back his mail, address unknown. When he got his first leave from the academy, he had cornered Jack about it.

  Noah dragged in a breath of air and recalled that wrenching confrontation. At eighteen, it was hard for Noah to understand the depth of hatred his father held against his real mother. He never realized a human being could hate so deeply and for so long. Jack Caldwell had hated her enough to lie to his son. When asked where all Noah’s letters had gone, Jack stalked into his study and unlocked a drawer in the huge oak desk. There, neatly wrapped in rubber bands, were the hundred or so letters Noah had penned to his mother, hoping someday for a response from her. Jack had taken every opportunity to prove to him that his mother never loved him because she’d never written him. Somehow, Noah had never wanted to believe his father, but he had never understood why his letters went unanswered.

&nb
sp; Now, Noah knew why. And for the next two years, he understood what the word hate meant, because he hated Jack for what he’d done to him. The letters he’d written to Rook were also in that drawer. He looked across his shoulder at Rook, who was trying to dry her face. He ached for her. How could he get her to understand how much he’d always loved her and Mom? How?

  Straightening up, Noah grimly settled his cap back on his head. He dug into his breast pocket. “Look, I’ve got to get going. We’re having some trouble with one of the engines on my boat, and I promised to get back over there to help.” He cleared his throat and turned, walking over to Rook. She stared up at him, her eyes red-rimmed and filled with anguish.

  “I—uh…” He grimaced and held up a pair of gold wings. “I know when you graduate from Pensacola, family is supposed to pin on your first set of wings. No one was there to do that for you, Rook. When Captain Stuart found out that we were going to be stationed together, he thought it might be a nice gesture if I did it. He ordered this pair for me to give to you. It’s a little late in coming, but the sentiment is still the same.” He looked her squarely in the eye, his voice choked with emotion. “I’m proud of what you’ve accomplished. And I know Mom is, too….” The gold wings glittered in his fingers. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to see you graduate. I wanted to be, Rook, but I was in the hospital at the time, and they wouldn’t release me so I could make the trip.” He pressed the set of wings into her hand. “Here,” he muttered thickly. “These are for you. Maybe, if you want, we’ll see each other again.”

  Rook stared down at the wings. Noah turned and headed toward the door, shoulders hunched forward, hands deep in his pockets. “Wait!”

  Noah’s fingers hovered over the doorknob. He barely turned his head, trying to prepare himself for another explosion from Rook. There was so much to talk about and to explore. All his hopes had been crushed by her anger. What had ever led him to believe that Rook would forgive and forget? She was human—hauntingly human—and, if he didn’t miss his guess, very fragile right now. She’d just lost the only person in the world she thought had loved her. That wasn’t so. He loved her, too, but she didn’t know that—or refused to accept it. Noah tasted bitterness in his mouth as he stood there, waiting for her to speak.