Winston nodded. “I have to tell you as well that it is my fault that Danny’s body didn’t make it back to you. But I hope that in knowing the truth, you’ll appreciate that your son’s last, posthumous act is still saving lives today.”
Where those words came from, he didn’t know. They just showed up and shot out of his mouth.
He told them about his rogue plan. About changing identities with Danny in the desert that god-awful day. How he’d left Danny sitting up by a tree because sitting up against a tree was something he’d seen his comrade do at the end of a good day. And how, when he’d been forced to show his loyalty to the militants with whom he’d lived, he’d shot at Danny’s body from a distance, making it look as though he’d killed a living US soldier.
“I delivered his body to them,” he said. “He ended up in a burn pit with other US soldiers who died during that skirmish.” What the fiends had done to him first was between them and God—with Winston as a witness to horrors he would never forget. “I visited that grave every chance I got,” he said, and then, breaking eye contact with them, he bowed his head.
In shame. In regret.
For war. For things that had to be.
For not coming up with a better plan. Emily softly touched his thigh under the table. He’d forgotten for a second that she was there.
And that he wasn’t done.
“It was recently brought to my attention, by my therapist,” he admitted with difficulty, “that perhaps the reason I chose to use Danny’s body was because it made me capable of completing the mission,” he continued. “Danny was unattached—other than the two of you.” He lowered his head toward them and then forced himself to finish. “He’d made a promise to protect his country, even if that meant giving up his life. I’d done the same, but I’d also made a promise to my wife—that I would come back to her. The theory is that in my mind, I died in the desert that day. And with Danny’s persona, the strength I’d known him to have, with his identity, I was able to complete my mission.”
“Do you believe in fate, Officer Hannigan?” Clara’s voice brought his head up.
Her gaze was so hopeful, he almost nodded. He couldn’t lie to her. “Unfortunately, no.”
“No matter,” she said to him, looking at Harold, who nodded. “Because God doesn’t rely on us to put fate to work for us. She’s busy on our behalves all the time, whether we know, or believe, or not.”
Emily pulled away. Not so that anyone but him noticed, probably. But he felt her withdrawal.
Understood it. They were on the same page again for a moment. They both had learned the dangers in believing in those ethereal dreams. Finding out that “Santa Claus” wasn’t real had devastated her. And knocked him for a bit of a loop, too.
Clara wiped her eyes, a tissue balled in the palm of her hand, while Harold put his arm around her, patting her shoulder.
“There’s no mistake in the fact that you sat Danny up against that tree. No mistake that you’d seen him sit that way at the end of the day, prompting you to leave him that way at the end of his last day,” she continued, while Harold patted a little more quickly.
“That was fate,” Harold said. “She designed it all. Just as, I’m certain, it was her design that put you and Danny in the same unit.”
Talk about kidding yourself with a load of fantasy.
But he couldn’t blame them. Or point out their error. What did it hurt to leave them believing? Who’d be hurt by it? Certainly not this older couple who’d just lost their only child.
“You don’t believe us,” Clara said, looking from him to Emily and back again.
Emily sniffed, grabbed another tissue, but remained as silent beside him as she’d been since he’d begun.
Reaching behind her, Clara grabbed a pile of letters from a little metal plant stand in the corner.
He recognized the markings. They were military letters, from Afghanistan.
“Our son wrote to us about you,” Harold said, glancing down at those letters. “About both of you.” He nodded toward Emily and watched as Clara opened the top envelope.
Staring at those envelopes, knowing he’d been with Danny when he’d mailed most of them, had watched the young man writing some of them, Winston wanted to get up and head home. He hadn’t expected...
The day had been destined for difficult, but this was...
“‘I know you were worried when I left, Mom, but my whole life, you’ve talked to me about listening to the still, small voice inside. You’ve told me that as long as I follow that voice, trust it, my life will be what it is meant to be. That I will reach my true potential and do what I am meant to do...’”
Clara’s voice broke... Winston swallowed. For Danny, because he knew the soldier would want Winston to tend to his parents, Winston remained seated even though all he wanted was to get away. A barrier settled around him, similar to the one that had coated him in the desert the day he’d struck out on his own. And for the two years he’d been in captivity.
Emily sniffed. Grabbed yet another tissue.
Harold patted.
“‘I met someone over here, Mom. He reminds me of you and Dad more than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s got this wife...they’ve been together since they were fourteen...just like you and Dad. They grew up in the same small town, but met when they started high school, just like the two of you...’” Clara’s voice broke.
Emily’s breathing was erratic.
“‘He talks about how they just knew...how they planned their whole lives...’” Clara continued, crying openly now. “‘He proposed when they were fifteen, just like Dad did. He says that some people are just predestined to be together, like some are predestined to be heroes on the football field, or the battle field...’” She sniffled, caught her breath on a sob, blinked. “‘...or be millionaires.’”
Harold took the letter from her shaking fingers.
“‘Their grandparents died while they were in high school, and her father died, too, just like Grandpa Chambers,’” Harold continued. “‘His parents wanted him to follow his father into real estate, but he had to be a sailor, to join the military...’”
Looking up over a pair of reading glasses, Harold eyed Winston, his wet lashes taking nothing from the sternness of that look. “My father was a farmer,” he explained, putting the letter down for a moment. “A damned successful one. I was his only child and had been working the farm since I was old enough to ride on his lap on the tractor. But I wanted to be a police officer.”
Okay, this was getting downright eerie. He’d met people with whom he had things in common, but...
“Danny never said anything.”
He wanted to read the letter for himself. And didn’t at the same time.
“‘They want four kids, when you guys only wanted one, but then I was such a great one, who’d want more, right?’” Harold read, doing some sniffling of his own.
And then, looking at the paper in his hand, read, “‘I know I’m here to protect him, Mom, to see that he keeps his promise to his wife and gets back home to her...’”
Harold stopped. Clara and Emily were both crying.
And Winston broke.
Chapter Twenty-Two
They had a late-afternoon flight out of Milwaukee back to LA. Emily was just as happy to honor Winston’s seeming need for silence as they went about the business of traveling. Getting through security, boarding, landing, remembering where he’d parked his car in the garage early that morning, heading back to Marie Cove.
She had to work the next morning. He had appointments at the base, but not until later in the day.
“Why don’t you just stay here?” she asked him, weary beyond her means, as he pulled into the driveway of their home. He put the car in Park, but didn’t turn it off.
“Please, Winston. I won’t read more into it than is there. It’s lat
e. I don’t want to worry about you driving home after the day we’ve had. And... I don’t... Please, I just kind of need you close tonight.”
He still didn’t open the garage door. But he shut off the ignition. And walked with her to the front door.
Told her to go ahead and head to bed since she had to be up early in the morning.
“You’re coming in, right?” she asked him.
He hesitated, but then nodded, and she went down the hall to the suite that had started out as theirs. And now was just hers.
The Garrisons’ story, it had been nice. Okay, incredibly beautiful.
There’d been some pretty impressive coincidences between Harold’s and Winston’s lives.
But that didn’t mean Winston and Emily had what it took to make a marriage work in the real world. Not without the fantasy holding them together.
So it was a bit...confusing, that part about Clara teaching Danny that some lives are predestined to certain paths and mentioning couples...but that’s what made fairy tales fairy tales, right?
The fact that they contained things everyone wanted to believe.
And it’s what made fairy tales live from person to person, generation to generation, country to country—people’s need to believe in something bigger than what they had.
Still...
Clara and Harold were incredibly lucky.
As had become habit since Winston came home, she climbed into bed before he came into the room, leaving the bathroom light on for him. It was too late for television. She had to be up in six hours. And had been halfway across the country and back since she’d last slept.
Had she been alone, she might have dropped right off. As it was, she lay there, listening. Waiting. While he’d been appropriately moved in front of the Garrisons earlier in the day, Winston had been fairly tight-lipped since they’d left the other couple’s house.
Getting on the right road, dealing with traffic and getting back to the airport had consumed those first minutes. And then getting through security in time to catch their flight. Then there’d been the woman sitting in the aisle seat, preventing any real conversation between them. She’d figured him for as exhausted as she was in the drive home from the LA airport.
Too tired to deal with any of it.
She heard him in the office. Opening a drawer. Figured maybe he had another thing or two to pick up. The hall light went out and he was there, in the bedroom with her.
He made short work of the bathroom, grabbing a toothbrush out of the stash of extras—dentist giveaways—that she kept on a shelf in the closet. A cool breeze hit her skin as the covers lifted. The mattress dipped and Emily closed her eyes.
She woke up an hour or so later, with Winston spooned behind her. Not holding her. Just close. Turning over, she put an arm around his waist and he rolled to his back, sliding his arm beneath her shoulders. Settling her head on his chest, with his arm around her waist, her whole body pressed against him down to their feet, she went back to sleep.
* * *
Winston was awake when Emily got up and showered in the morning. Dressing in fresh clothes from his closet—some he’d left until he had more space—he went in to make her tea and get her vitamins down out of the cupboard they’d appeared in a couple of months ago. When she came into the kitchen, dressed in navy pants and a loose-fitting blouse beneath a cropped jacket, he asked her how she was feeling.
And told her he’d lock up behind her as she left.
He didn’t tell her he’d be there when she got back.
She didn’t ask, either.
He figured they both knew he wouldn’t be.
* * *
Winston got the call from Emily at nine thirty that morning. There was an active shooter not far from her office building just south of LA. Six miles, actually, but if he wasn’t caught, a guy could travel six miles in a number of minutes.
“Stay down, away from all windows,” he told her, grabbing his keys. Thank God he was still at their house when she’d called. He was halfway there already. “And stay inside,” he added, out the front door and heading toward the car. “I mean it, Em. Don’t go outside, for any reason.”
Bullets ricocheted and there was no predicting the path they’d take.
“Winston, I’m fine,” she said. “You don’t need to come. No one has been hurt, thank God. It’s a kid from the high school. They have him cornered, he’s just not in custody yet. I just wanted you to know, in case you heard something on the news, that it’s all okay.”
He’d heard her the first time.
“I’m on my way,” he told her.
“There’s nothing for you to do here.”
He knew that. He wasn’t losing his mind. But he wasn’t going to lose anything more, either.
“I’d like to take you to lunch,” he said, thinking on the fly. “Do you have time to go to lunch?” He was heading toward the freeway entrance ramp, easily ten miles over the speed limit.
“Of course. I have to eat.”
“I didn’t know if you had a business lunch planned.”
“Not today.”
Yeah, fate had a way of controlling things that way when she chose to do so.
He might be stubborn, and a bit too fond of being in charge, but he wasn’t completely dense. There was too much piling up for him to be able to continue existing in the emotional freezer he’d somehow built for himself-calling it reality. Because he couldn’t keep pretending he was unaffected. The reality was...he hurt so bad he didn’t know how to handle it. And so he hadn’t.
Danny had been willing to die to give him and Emily this chance. And her... She’d lived life every day with her heart open and hurting to keep them together.
And what had he done? He’d gone into hiding in the name of being a soldier.
Emily had been the strong one, hanging on to what mattered most, fighting the hardest fight, while he’d been the coward, hiding away in his safe lonely place.
It was a place he didn’t want to leave. Had planned to remain untouched for the rest of his life.
And as much as he wished to God he could stay there, guaranteed not to hurt anymore, he also needed desperately to be free. Free to love his wife. And his son.
It was time to be the soldier he’d thought he was.
Trouble was, he’d shattered Emily’s ability to believe in the miracle of love and had no idea in hell how to turn things around.
He was a soldier on the most important mission of his life and he had no plan.
“So hear this, Mrs. Fate,” he said aloud as he sped toward the only woman who’d ever held the position of wife in his heart, the only one he’d ever wanted. “You brought us together. You brought me home to her. This one’s on you. I hope to God you’ve got a plan.”
* * *
Emily walked out of the lobby to meet Winston when he strode up. He’d scared the bejesus out of her, hightailing it to LA when there was no reason to do so.
He looked perfectly normal, and sounded that way, too, as he said hello and asked her where she wanted to eat.
If it weren’t for the baby growing so voraciously inside her, she wouldn’t have wanted to eat. She opted for a row of food trucks in a park nearby so they could sit outside. She needed a good dose of serotonin. Something scientific that she could rely on to raise her spirits a bit.
His khakis, an older pair, she could tell by the fade in the fabric, were freshly pressed, down to the cuffs on the sleeves. He looked good, a sailor among the businesspeople milling about. Reminding her of a song she’d once loved by the Dixie Chicks about a soldier shipping out, and a young girl waiting for him, even though everyone told her he was too old for her.
The song had ended sadly. But what had spoken to her about that song was how that young girl had recognized real love. How she’d seen the soldier and just known. And then hadn�
�t let anyone convince her differently.
That was real love, she’d thought. The song ended badly because the soldier died. Not because love had.
They got wraps. Sat at a scarred and splintery picnic table to eat them. Talked about the people coming and going. Imaging their business, where they were off to, what they were thinking. Playing a game they used to play when they were kids on a date at the beach, with each scenario getting just a little bit more ridiculous than the last. When he started talking about an older woman who he claimed had just come from skinny-dipping on the beach with her twenty-five-year-old lover, someone too exhausted to keep up with her, which was why he wasn’t in sight, she burst out laughing.
He stared at her. She stared back.
“I haven’t heard you laugh in...”
Not since he’d been back. Not any real laughter.
Real.
“You scared me earlier,” she said. “Rushing up here, talking about windows and bullets...”
He shrugged. “So I’m still a bit shell-shocked from my time in the desert,” he acknowledged. “I was also just scared senseless at the thought of losing you before...”
“Before what?”
He shrugged again. “I was just heading back to the base when you called,” he told her. “But then you knew that I would be, didn’t you? Knew that I wouldn’t be at the house when you got home tonight?”
She nodded. Not sure where he was going with all of this.
“Before what?”
He shook his head. “Not here.” After clearing up their trash, he tossed it several feet into a can. Made the basket, just as he always did.
She’d once told him he should play basketball. He’d told her, way back then, that he was made for more serious pursuits. She’d thought, at the time, that he’d meant he wanted to spend all of his time with her, not practicing on the court.
“You mind if I stay at the house one more night so we can talk?” he asked as they headed back up the street toward her office. “I can pick up some steaks.”
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