“Actually, he had a house not far from Windsor, in Stockbridge. He lived there for a number of years. There’s a museum there now. And,” she paused. “If I remember correctly, before he moved to Stockbridge, he actually lived here in Vermont,” she added.
He smiled. “Well, then, it would make sense that this drive reminded me of him, then,” Garret answered.
“Hmm.” She was silent for several long moments before she spoke again. “What were you really thinking, Garret?” she asked. “Was it about what’s going on?”
He took in a deep breath and let it out, debating how to answer. “In a way, yes, but mostly no,” he finally said.
She rolled her head toward him. “What does that mean?”
He lifted a shoulder and felt somewhat uncomfortable, though he didn’t really know why.
“Talk to me, Garret,” Kit said, placing her hand on his thigh as he continued to drive.
He shrugged again, but this time he spoke. “It’s hard to explain. I did the kind of work I did for a long time. Certain habits were ingrained into me as a matter of survival.”
“Such as?” she pressed.
He hesitated, then answered—if she was in it with him for the long haul, she needed to understand how his mind worked. At least, to the best of his ability to explain or describe it.
“These mountains would make a perfect spot to ambush someone,” he said. “With a long range sniper rifle, it would be really easy to hit a driver or someone in a car.”
Kit sat up and her eyes shot to the mountains. “You don’t think Kašović is there, do you?” she demanded.
He reached down and wrapped his hand around hers as he shook his head. “That’s the thing. I no more think he’s up there than Santa Claus, but that’s the way my head works. I see things and I assess the risk and options. I do it all the time, constantly. It’s a part of who I am at this point.”
“And you wonder if that will affect your ability to live a so-called normal life, don’t you?” she asked, putting his worry to voice. To be honest, it wasn’t that he doubted he could live a normal life, but he did wonder if he would ever be able to just simply enjoy it.
“I don’t know, Kit. And I don’t even know if it’s worth thinking about all that much since, right now, it’s serving us well, and I’m not sure I can change it anyway,” he said.
She said nothing for a long moment but he could feel her eyes studying him. “I’m—”
“Don’t, Kit,” he cut her off. “Don’t apologize for any of this.” Because he had no doubt that was what she had intended to say, to do—to apologize for bringing him into this mess. “There is no other place I would want to be right now, and to be honest, at the risk of sounding a little love sick, I’m not sure there is anywhere else I could be right now, Kit.”
“You know you can’t always protect me from everything, don’t you?” she pointed out.
He slid her a rueful look, “And that’s exactly what keeps me up at night,” he responded.
He felt her gaze on him for another moment before she turned her eyes back to the countryside. Several more miles of snow and turns passed as they started climbing up again, nearing one of the local ski resorts.
“How long do you think this will go on?” she asked.
Garret weighed his answer. “I’m not sure,” he said. “My guess is not long. If he’s going to come after you, he’ll want to do it sooner rather than later.”
“Because?” she prompted.
“Because the longer he stays here in the US, the harder it is for him to stay under the radar. He’ll need money and places to stay, and I would guess the places he’ll be staying are not quite the standard he’s used to at home. Like anyone who travels a lot, getting home is probably a priority.”
“And he can’t go home unless he finishes the job,” she muttered.
“Not if he wants to get paid,” Garret added. “Or if he doesn’t want to piss off some really bad dudes who know where he lives.”
Kit inclined her head, “I guess we have that going for us,” she said with a wry laugh. “And your job?” she asked. For about the tenth time.
“My job is fine,” Garret responded, giving her the same answer he’d been giving her since she’d first expressed concern that their open-ended visit to Vermont might affect his new job. “They have what and who they need in place already. I was ramping up and not contributing too much yet anyway. The cabin has Wi-Fi, and I’ll be able to stay in touch. Besides, being sequestered away will give me a lot of time to study the city’s roads and transportation systems. It’s stuff I need to know for incident management, but probably wouldn’t have been able to spend much time on if we were still in the city.”
She gave another short laugh. “Always looking on the bright side, aren’t you?”
He lifted a shoulder, “It’s practical, Kit. You know better than most that life doesn’t always go the way you expect it to, and that when it doesn’t, you have two choices: you can let it get to you or you can figure out how to deal with it and move on. You’re a master at moving on; I’m not bad at it myself.”
“But does it ever get to you?” she asked. And he knew she wasn’t asking about this situation.
The car downshifted as they headed up another grade. He let the feel of the motor vibrating beneath them wash over his body, as if it were shaking up bits of his past.
When they reached the top, he let out a long breath and answered. “Yeah, it does sometimes.”
“And what do you do when it does?” she asked.
He had to smile a little at that. A lot of people were more interested in what he did for a living rather than what his living did to him. He shrugged again, feeling a little uncomfortable. It’s not that he thought Kit was going to judge him, he was just, well, out of practice was the best way he could put it. He was out of practice when it came to talking about himself, about things he cared about, about what he did to stay sane, or even how hard it was to stay sane sometimes. But he wasn’t reluctant to try.
“There are a few places I go when we have down time, when I need down time.”
“Such as?” she pressed.
“I have a place on the beach in a remote part of Mexico. I go there when I,” he paused, not so much debating what to say, but surprised at the truth that was coming out of his own mouth. “I go there when I need to regroup, when I need to find my own humanity. There are other places I go too. There are a few orphanages where I like to spend time—in Afghanistan and Rwanda and Guatemala. I go and play with the kids. We kick the soccer ball around, I help the staff a bit.”
“But the place on the beach?”
He took in another deep breath before answering. “The place on the beach is where I go when I can’t be around other people. I’ll go there sometimes, for even a few days, before going to spend time with the kids.” He paused again, struggling to find the right words to describe what his life was like at times, to describe who he was.
“Sometimes,” he started, “the things we do, Caleb and I—the things we see, the people we have to deal with—can strip me of my own humanity. Or they try anyway. I know this sounds crazy, but there are times when I don’t feel alive at all, like some of the things I’ve done or seen have killed something inside me.”
He felt her hand curl into his, but he kept talking. “And that’s when I go to the beach. Because I know I’m dead inside. I have a healthy sense of self preservation and no interest in dying, literally or figuratively.”
“And so you go to the beach,” she said softly.
He nodded. “And so I go to the beach and sit on my porch and watch the tide come in, day in and day out. Sometimes there are whales and sometimes there are dolphins. But there is always an immense horizon and the ocean stretching as far as I can see.”
“And that helps?”
“It helps to remind me of how small I am in this world. And although I don’t belittle what I do or what Caleb does for a living, the truth is, we’re no
t here all that long. And while we’re here, we have choices.”
“To let it get to us or to figure out how to deal with it and move on,” she said, echoing what he’d said earlier.
Again, he nodded. “And once that knowledge resettles itself in my body, I usually pick up and go spend time with the kids.”
A companionable silence filled the car for several long moments. Then Kit gave his hand another squeeze. “You’re amazing, you know that?” she said.
He let out a little laugh. “I’m not. But I’m happy to let you think I am,” he answered, echoing her words from what now felt like eons ago.
She smiled and leaned over to brush his cheek with a kiss. “Thanks, Garret. For doing this, for doing what you do, for being who you are.”
“You’re going to make me uncomfortable,” he said, his skin itching from the compliments.
“Too bad, because I am grateful. But if it will make you feel better, I can give you something else to think about.”
He turned and raised his eyebrows at her question.
She grinned. “If it will make it easier for you to accept the compliment, when we get to the cabin, I’ll be happy to show you how grateful I am.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, that might make it a little easier.”
***
Having been lulled back to sleep by the miles of road, Kit came awake as they pulled up a long, gravel driveway that had been recently plowed. Snow banks were piled several feet high on either side, making the drive’s one lane feel even tighter. But just as a twinge of claustrophobia washed over her, they rounded a gentle bend and the cabin came into view.
Drew must have told his groundskeeper that someone was coming as a few lights were on, lighting the covered parking area, walkway, and porch. The walkway between the parking area and the front door had also been cleared of snow.
With the stop in Windsor on the way up, the drive had been long; night was already falling. As Kit stepped from the car and inhaled a sharp breath of frigid air, she looked up to see a crystal clear sky full of stars.
Tugging her hat down and pulling her coat tighter across her body, she took a minute to absorb the beauty around her. Her eyes drifted to the full moon. It was hard to believe that only four weeks ago, she’d stood in her own bedroom looking at the same moon, Garret newly returned.
The footsteps of the man on her mind sounded in the snow-dampened silence as he came up behind her.
“You should go inside,” he said, slipping his arms around her.
She leaned back into him. “I know. It’s just so beautiful up here, isn’t it? I mean it’s not all that different than Windsor, but it just feels a little different. A little wilder, a little tougher.”
He chuckled behind her. “It is Vermont, you know—the ‘Live Free or Die’ state.”
She laughed back. “That’s New Hampshire; Vermont is something about freedom,” she responded as she turned toward him.
“I think I like the thing about freedom more than the thing about death,” he murmured, nuzzling her ear the best he could given that it was mostly covered by a hat. When his attempt proved fruitless, he sighed, moving his arms from around her waist to her hips and giving her a little nudge. “Inside,” he ordered, “we can look at the stars through the windows.”
The cold was seeping through her pants and her thighs were starting to go numb so, obligingly, she turned and headed inside. Walking through the door, she stepped right into the eat-in-kitchen area. The cabinets, counters, and floor were all made of a thick-grained, unfinished wood and a sturdy table for four was pushed against the wall opposite from where she stood. Next to it was a staircase leading upstairs. The right wall of the kitchen was a half wall that was shared with a living room and into it was built a wood-burning stove that opened to both rooms.
She moved into the cozy living room to allow Garret to pass by her as he carried the bags upstairs. Though still a bit chilly, the whole place was inviting and, well, relaxed. Which is what really struck her, since “relaxed” and “Drew” didn’t really go together in her mind. But still, the large sofa and chair looked well worn and welcoming, and the bookshelves overflowed.
Unable to resist, Kit walked directly to the shelves along the back wall of the living room; she was someone who firmly believed that everything you ever needed to know about a person could be discovered by browsing his or her bookshelves. Perusing the titles before her, she was both surprised and not. Drew had quite a few history titles and even all of Kit’s books, but what surprised her was a cluster of what she would call self-help books. They weren’t really self-help—well, at least not the old-school you-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be kind of self-help books—but a number of them dealt with issues ranging from PTSD to depression and all sorts of other mental health topics that survivors of trauma, in all its forms, might experience. Thumbing the spine of another book, she frowned. She knew if she asked Drew about it, he’d likely say that they were to help him understand the people he worked with. But seeing how dog-eared some of them looked, she wondered.
“Everything okay?” Garret asked, coming to a stop at the bottom of the stairs.
Not wanting to call attention to anything that might be so deeply personal to Drew, she turned and smiled. “There’s a bedroom down here, along with a bathroom and an office. It’s not exactly what I expected from Drew, but now that I’m here, it’s kind of funny how perfect it seems for him.” She’d peeked through a door between the bookshelves and discovered the three rooms off the main part of the house. They could be closed off with a door, but the extra space would be perfect for them to use as offices.
Garret inclined his head then knelt behind the half wall to build a fire in the stove. “There’s a bedroom and bathroom upstairs for us,” he said as he stacked the wood and lit a match. She watched him study the fire as it flickered then caught. Garret stayed kneeling before the stove a few minutes longer, making sure the fire would grow, then closed the door and rose.
She loved the look in his eyes when he looked at her. Sometimes it was tender, sometimes it was hungry, and though it hadn’t happened yet, she had no doubt that sometimes it would be angry. But whatever tone it took, the underlying intimacy of what she saw reflected in his eyes, what she felt when her gaze caught and held his, was something she’d never experienced before.
Garret came around the half wall and walked toward her. She couldn’t help the smile that touched her lips as she watched him.
“We can each take one of the rooms down here for our offices,” he said, wrapping his arms around her.
That gave her pause. “I know I said in the interview that I was going to hole up in Vermont for the rest of the winter, but how long do you really think we’ll be here?” she asked again. It was March and the “rest of the winter” wasn’t actually that long, but it was still longer than she hoped to be there.
Garret shook his head, then took her hand and led her back to the kitchen. After ushering her into a seat by the fire, he started rummaging in the cabinets. Drew’s groundskeeper had also apparently left them, if not well-stocked, stocked enough for a day or two.
“Like I said, I don’t know, but I don’t think it will be that long,” he answered, pulling a pot out of a drawer and placing it on the stove. In silence, she watched as he found milk in the refrigerator, added it to the pot, and then added some cocoa and sugar to the mix.
“How did you know he’d have stuff to make hot chocolate?” Kit asked, her thoughts momentarily off of the more serious question at hand.
“A guess,” Garret answered with his own smile as he stirred the pot.
“A guess?” Kit queried, realizing that in some ways Garret and Drew were probably more alike than she would have thought. And that this place in Vermont was probably Drew’s equivalent of Garret’s place in Mexico—the place he went to find his humanity again.
“Do you all have places like this?” Kit asked.
Garret didn’t pretend not to know what she was t
alking about, but he didn’t raise his eyes either. “I don’t know. Probably not,” he answered.
“Why? Is it money?”
Garret shrugged, still watching the milk. “Honestly, I doubt it. I mean look at us—me, Caleb, Drew.” He let his voice fade and was silent for a moment before continuing. “I mean, I know Drew has a lot of personal wealth so that’s not an issue for him, but even for someone like me who had nothing when I started in this business,” he paused again, then lifted his eyes to meet hers.
“People like me who have no one. We don’t have family to spend money on, we aren’t around long enough to want to buy a nice house somewhere, we’re on the road three hundred and fifty days a year. No family, no expenses, and no way to spend the money we do make. So, while I’ll never be rich, I can tell you that for people like me, if we don’t have a stockpile of all our wages in some bank somewhere, there’s probably something wrong.”
Kit let that sink in for a moment. She hadn’t ever thought of it that way—the bleak way—Garret had just laid it all out. She knew how much her brother traveled, and had some insight into how often Drew traveled, and she could see the honesty in Garret’s words about everything else. She didn’t know what her brother did in his spare time, but she knew he didn’t have anyone or anything else that needed whatever resources he had. On occasion, he’d send her little gifts, but certainly nothing that would drain a bank account.
“So, if not money, then what?”
Garret lifted the pot from the stove and poured the hot chocolate into two mugs. He placed one in front of her as he sat down across the table.
“I don’t know, really,” he said. But she thought he did.
“It has to do with who you are, doesn’t it?” she pressed. “And I don’t mean what you do. I mean who you are as a person and how you see your place in this world. An awareness that maybe not everyone has.” She knew the moment she said the words, she was right. In the line of business Garret and Caleb and Drew were in, there would be those who would not only place a value on maintaining their humanity but would have the insight to know when they were losing it.
Frailty of Things Page 21
