When You Return to Me

by Dana Marton

  This story is dedicated to the women and men who wait.

  My most sincere gratitude goes to my wonderful Dana Marton Book Club on Facebook. My book club members picked the title, edited the story for me, and even helped me with the cover. I’ve never met a group of people who are more fun, more knowledgeable about books, and kinder. Being your friend is a privilege!

  Broslin Creek Series

  DEATHWATCH, book 1

  DEATHSCAPE, book 2

  DEATHTRAP, book 3

  DEATHBLOW, book 4

  BROSLIN BRIDE, book 5

  DEATHWISH, book 6

  WHEN YOU RETURN TO ME (A Broslin Creek short story)

  DEATHMARCH (coming soon)

  DEATHTOLL (coming soon)

  WHEN YOU RETURN TO ME Copyright © 2015 Dana Marton

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book maybe used or reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the author. www.danamarton.com

  ISBN: 978-1-940627-14-4

  Get started here: https://danamarton.com/lp3.html

  WHEN YOU RETURN TO ME

  (A Broslin Creek Short Story)

  By Dana Marton

  Sometimes, if she stayed very still and quiet, she could swear she heard Cam’s voice calling her name.

  Maggie O’Connor held her breath, standing in the middle of her backyard, as she listened to the wind. But instead of a distant whisper, the loud bang of a rifle rent the silence.

  Some people lived for danger, enjoyed the challenge, savored the rush of adrenaline. Maggie wasn’t one of them. As soon as she heard the gunshot, she ran like hell, slaloming around chickens that scattered with outraged cries and madly flapping wings.

  She didn’t stop until she was behind the barn. She pressed her back flat against the peeling red paint, and tried to catch her breath.

  Minutes passed. No repeat fire. “Crazy old geezer.”

  The bravest of the hens, already returning to the handful of corn she’d tossed earlier, clucked in agreement.

  “I need to start paying attention.” Maggie filled her lungs with crisp country air, drawing comfort from the scent of freshly fallen snow, summer hay, and herbs that hung by the bunch in the hayloft.

  She peeked around the corner.

  “Hunting season is over!” she yelled as loudly as she could.

  Not that shouting helped. Grandpa Gardner next door was as deaf as a milk bucket and twice as blind, and when he got it in his head he was wild turkey hunting…God help Maggie’s chickens.

  Keeping in the cover of the barn, she crept toward her house, then scooted in through the back door into the sanctuary of her blue and white country kitchen. She stepped out of her ankle-high boots and left them by the door, pulled off her sweater to hang it on one of the dozen pegs that held her collection of coats, hats and scarves.

  She combed through her waist-length hair with her fingers to get the dark mess under control, turned toward the middle of the kitchen, and took a steadying breath. The scent of armloads of lavender waiting for processing enveloped her. Instant aromatherapy—exactly what she needed to settle her nerves.

  She pulled aside the curtain and looked out the window but didn’t see anyone. Her neighbor was shooting from his bathroom window again. As he’d reached his nineties, Grandpa Gardner had turned from a rugged huntsman into a creature of comfort. At least Maggie was safe in the house. He still recognized large buildings, and he couldn’t shoot at her house from his bathroom window anyway—wrong angle.

  Her gaze settled on the dreamcatcher hanging in the window, the three lines of a Native American proverb written on the ribbons.

  “Listen to the wind, it talks.

  Listen to the silence, it speaks.

  Listen to your heart, it knows.”

  Her great-great-great grandmother had been Lenape Indian, her great-great-great grandfather an Irish immigrant. Cameron Gardner, the boy next door, used to say her innate knowledge of plants must have come from the Lenape side, her temper from the Irish.

  What temper? she’d ask every time, and Cam would laugh and kiss her.

  He’d first kissed her when they’d been fifteen. They’d first snuck up to the hayloft when they’d been eighteen. Now she was twenty-nine, and she no longer had him.

  She closed her eyes against the memories. She hurt, but she didn’t disintegrate from the pain that plowed into her. She could finally, more often than not, control the avalanche. She could dig out and drag her broken heart along.

  Maggie filled her lungs, opened her eyes, and went to pull an oversized rooster from the freezer. She tossed the freezer bag, then set the bird on a stoneware plate to defrost in the microwave.

  The rooster should feed Grandpa Gardner for a week, and if she was lucky, he wouldn’t feel the urge to hunt for a while. Not that he should be hunting at all, considering he couldn’t see worth a damn, and fall turkey season had ended over three weeks ago, at the end of November.

  She turned on the oven to preheat then busied herself at the sink, trying to figure out what to do with Cam’s grandfather next door. Sooner or later someone was going to file an official complaint, or worse, somebody would get hurt. He couldn’t go on like this, armed and semi-blind.

  The phone rang at the same time as the microwave beeped.

  “Maggie.”

  “Everything all right out there?” Captain Bing, Broslin PD’s police captain asked on the other end.

  Maggie winced. Somebody did call in the gunshot.

  “He’s wild turkey hunting.”

  “I figured. Blanks?”

  Maggie closed her eyes and lied to the police. Instead of mostly, she said, “Yes, sir.”

  Old Albert had been selling nothing but empty shells to Grandpa Gardner for the last couple of years, but ever since the store hired a new assistant, you never could tell. The kid couldn’t keep his teeth straight, let alone the special ‘needs’ of his customers. Maggie would have to go down to the gun store and remind him.

  Grandpa Gardner might wing a suspicious looking bush or a stray chicken now and then, but Maggie didn’t want him locked away—either in a retirement home or in jail. He was no threat to the public. He only hunted from his bathroom window. Couldn’t hold the rifle otherwise, since when he was on his feet, he needed both hands to hold on to his walker.

  Perfect spot, honey, he’d told her more than once. I can sit on the shitter, brace my elbows on the windowsill, and bam! Sure easier on these old bones than lurking out there in the bushes in the cold and the wind.

  From his spot, nobody was in danger but her chickens, and his eyesight was so bad, he never hit any of them. Maggie knew his hunting schedule, usually early in the morning, and arranged her barn chores around him. She’d forgotten this morning, her brain lost in experimenting with a new soap recipe for her online business. She’d run out for some lemon verbena without thinking.

  “How are you, Maggie?” Captain Bing asked, and Maggie knew he didn’t just mean after the scare of the turkey hunt.

  The captain’s wife had been killed years ago in what they’d at first thought was a home invasion. Her loss had taken the man to dark places, especially because as time passed, he hadn’t been able to bring her killer to justice. He knew how it felt to lose half your heart.

  But he had been able to move on eventually. He’d even remarried. He’d healed. He was so ridiculously in love with his new wife, Sophie, it felt good just to look at them when they were together.

  “How is the adoption going?” Maggie asked instead of answering his question, and she was grateful when he let her change the subject.

  “One more week. I don’t think Sophie puts that baby down for longer than she needs to go to
the bathroom.”

  According to Pennsylvania law, the birthmother had ninety days to change her mind about the adoption. Maggie could see why the captain and Sophie were holding their breath.

  “If she ever does want to put the baby down, I’m available for babysitting,” she offered.

  “I don’t know. The kid might be too old for a babysitter by the time she’s willing to let him out of sight.” The captain’s voice held so much love, it practically flowed through the line like water.

  They talked about the baby for another minute or two. Then Maggie thanked Captain Bing for checking up on her and understanding that all Grandpa Gardner wanted was to die at home in peace instead of some institution, and for not making a federal case out of the occasional turkey hunt.

  As Maggie hung up with the police captain, she pulled her blue, enameled roaster pan from an overhead cabinet and set it on the crowded counter, careful not to disturb the nicely rising bread loaves she’d worked on that morning.

  Two hours later, the rooster ready and steaming, Maggie pulled it from the oven to slip the six loaves of herb bread in its place. Doris Turbaum had ordered them for pickup for a Christmas party at the VFW hall.

  The oven door closed once again, Maggie eyed the golden, steaming rooster, pinched a piece of salty crisp skin from the end of a drumstick, and licked her fingers before putting the roaster’s lid on. She looked out the window. Across the yard, the Gardner house stood silent in the thick shade of tall pines.

  No more shots had sounded while she’d cooked. A good sign.

  As she turned to the sink to wash her hands, her phone rang again, and she wedged it between her ear and shoulder.

  “Hey, Maggie.”

  Zak Greenfield was a year younger than she was, ran the feed store with his father. He was smart, funny, hardworking. Half the girls in Broslin were in love with him. He had only a single fault: he was in love with Maggie.

  “Hey, Zak.”

  She washed her hands with soap, which turned out to be a mistake. Ah. She grabbed after Cam’s ring, but too late. The golden band with the diamond fell straight down, out of her reach.

  “So I have tickets to the high school musical,” Zak was saying with a smile in his voice. “Grease. I have to support my brat sister.”

  Maggie squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the edge of the sink so hard it made her hands hurt, but she barely felt the pain. She stared at the drain.

  Stupid. Since Cam had put that ring on her finger, she’d lost weight, her fingers were slimmer. She would either have to have the ring resized, or put it away before she lost it.

  She didn’t want to take it off and put it away. And the resizing… For one, she hated not having the ring on, handing it over to somebody. What if they lost it? And, at the same time, she was afraid of what having the ring resized meant—that after four years, she still wasn’t ready to let go, that she was never going to be able to let go.

  “Want to go to the musical with me?” Zak asked, so sweet and cheerful, Maggie could practically see his dimples.

  She had to say yes. If she said no, it’d mean that she was really stuck. That maybe she would be stuck forever.

  “I’m sorry, Zak,” she whispered.

  And after a drawn-out moment, he whispered back, the smile gone from his voice, “He’s gone, Maggie.”

  “I don’t feel it,” she confessed, even if she sounded crazy.

  “Do you feel anything?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let me help you feel again.”

  She bent down and opened the cabinet under the sink. She needed to take the P-trap apart to get her ring back. She straightened and headed to the garage for her toolbox.

  Because she’d been silent, Zak spoke again. “Are you still waiting for him to come back?”

  She couldn’t say the words, because even to her own ears, they sounded like sheer insanity.

  “Maggie, we buried him.”

  They’d buried a handful of ashes. “Even the Army makes mistakes.”

  “They found his dog tags.”

  She stood with her hand on the door to the garage, her chest so tight it hurt. Six soldiers had been on board when the chopper had been shot down over Afghanistan. The remains—what was left of them—had been recovered. Most of the dog tags had simply melted. Cam’s was one of only two that had been recognizable.

  A mangled mess, she had it in her nightstand.

  “Okay,” Zak said on a sigh. “So if you’re still waiting, what’s this alternative scenario that you’re thinking about?”

  She bit her bottom lip. “Maybe he went down with the chopper, but was just badly injured instead of dying. Maybe some local shepherds took him high up into the hills and nursed him back to life. He had amnesia from his injuries, fell in love with the lovely shepherd girl who nursed him, married her and by now they have three children.”

  Maggie filled her lungs. Maybe someday he would remember her. As long as he was alive and happy, she could deal with it, even if he wasn’t hers.

  “Oh, Maggie,” came from Zak, with tears in his tone.

  “Or maybe the bad guys took him and held him captive for the past four years,” she voiced a different, darker dream.

  “Even if that’s the case, and he was freed today, and he came back…” Zak let his voice trail off.

  “I know.”

  Even if Cam came back, especially after four years of captivity and torture, it didn’t mean they could pick up where they’d left off. Miraculously returning after an absence this long, even if he showed up today, he’d be a different person. A lot of soldiers came back changed.

  “I’m not going to try anything and push you,” Zak promised. “We can take it slow. Just come with me to the musical. I swear I won’t grope you under the cover of darkness in the high school auditorium.” The lightness came back into his voice. “Of course, if you want to grope me, that’s totally okay. More than okay.”

  He made her smile. But she said, “I just can’t, Zak.”

  After they hung up, she opened the door to the garage, then realized the wrench she needed wasn’t in her tool box. She’d left it at Grandpa Gardner’s house the day before. He’d had a dripping pipe in his bathroom.

  She closed the door. Fine. She was heading over there anyway. She just had to remember to bring the wrench back.

  She turned into the laundry room, and from the windowsill she grabbed one of the foot-tall potted rosemary bushes she’d grown from cuttings, forcing herself to focus on that instead of analyzing the conversation she’d just had with Zak. She carried the pot back to the kitchen, put it on the counter, and decorated the needled branches with red ribbons until the plant looked like a miniature Christmas tree.

  By the time she finished, the oven dinged, and she pulled out the loaves of bread, then lined them up on the cooling rack.

  She carefully placed the potted rosemary into a plastic grocery bag, then hung the bag from her wrist. She picked up the blue enamel roaster, holding the handles with a dishtowel, stepped into her boots, and walked out the door.

  She shivered as soon as she got outside, her flannel shirt insufficient protection from the chill. Going back for her coat hardly seemed worthwhile. The two houses had been part of the same soybean farm up until fifty years ago, before someone had subdivided. The distance between her and her neighbor was less than three hundred yards.

  “It’s Maggie,” she yelled as soon as she reached Grandpa Gardner’s front porch. “Found a dead turkey behind the barn. Heard the shooting earlier, figured you must have gotten him. I went ahead and cleaned and roasted him for you.”

  Balancing the roaster with one hand, she opened the door slowly. “It’s Maggie,” she shouted louder.

  Maggie passed through the living room, avoiding Cam’s picture on the wall. The photo had been taken after he’d passed boot camp. He’d worn a crisp green Army uniform, the flag of the United States of America behind him.

  They’d been eightee
n. By that time, she’d been in love with him for at least ten years. And he’d been in love with her, according to him, forever.

  Shutting down that line of thinking, she took the rooster straight to the kitchen and set it on the ancient stove, wondering if the old man was in the garage, sneaking a smoke. His wife, Mildred, had passed away twelve years ago, but he still kept her rules.

  The kitchen stood empty and sad with its faded wallpaper and stack of paper plates by the sink. She tried to remember what the place looked like when Mildred had been alive, making her famous walnut brownies for the invading hordes of neighborhood children.

  She’d been the warmest woman Maggie had ever known, raising her troublemaker grandson with her husband after the death of their daughter and son-in-law in a car accident. Tough woman, too. She’d been Broslin’s first female police officer in her day. Maybe even first in the whole county.

  The year Mildred died of breast cancer, Cam had gone into the Army like his father and grandfather before him. He’d planned to serve eight years, four to honor his father’s own service, four to honor his grandfather’s. While serving his country, he was also going to get an education, and gain skills he could turn into a civilian occupation. Then he was going to come home and they were going to get married.

  But he never saw the wedding dress that now hid in Maggie’s guest bedroom closet.

  “It’s Maggie,” she yelled again and felt guilty for not coming over enough. Grandpa Gardner had to be lonely.

  She popped in every day to check on him, but rarely stayed for more than a few minutes. The memories the house held made her heart bleed.

  She took the Christmas rosemary out of the bag and put it on the middle of the kitchen table, fluffed up the flattened ribbons a little. Then she pulled two plates from the cupboard next to the outdated avocado-colored fridge. She had enough time to stay for a quick bite and a chat.

  Neither of them could handle talking about Cam, so their conversations were pretty safe at least. She didn’t have to worry that her neighbor would say, Isn’t that a shame that boy’s chopper crashed in the Afghan mountains one week before he was scheduled to come home to us?