No Perfect Hero(83)
I frown, my temper snapping awake. “Jesus, Warren, what's your problem all of a sudden?”
“My problem is, people who won’t let the dead lie,” he throws back. “What did she tell you?”
“I...” Damn. I can’t stay mad at him when we’re talking about his dead sister and the pain he’s so clearly carrying around like a boulder, fresh as the day it happened. “She told me Jenna was your sister, and there was an accident on deployment. Friendly fire.”
“Nothing fucking friendly about it,” he snarls, and it takes me a minute to grasp what he means.
He’s not saying she was killed by an enemy combatant.
He’s saying she was murdered, and – oh, God.
My free hand claps over my mouth, and I suck in a gasp. “Warren, I’m sorry.”
“What else did she say?” he demands, his eyes flat azure chips, reflecting nothing, glassy and hard. “What else did she tell you?”
“Nothing.” I shake my head quickly. “But Stewart said you came home to grieve. And that you need someone to keep you out of trouble.”
“The only thing I need,” he says, low and seething, “is for everyone to mind their damn business and let me mind mine. Everyone.”
I don’t need to be told twice.
I’m torn between calling him every name in the book and shoving this plate of turkey right in his face, but I’m not one to stay where I’m not wanted.
And no matter where I am, I’m not going to beat up on a grieving man.
I didn’t do anything wrong. Jenna was Ms. Wilma’s granddaughter.
She had just as much right to tell me about her as anyone else, but for once I’m going to check my temper and respect Warren’s space.
For once.
That doesn’t mean I don’t want to punch him just to get a real reaction.
Instead, I set the plate on the broad deck railing with a loud thud, leaving it there. “Enjoy your dinner,” I whisper harshly. “Good night.”
Nothing comes back.
Not even an acerbic answering good night whipped at my back.
Just the sound of Warren’s door closing, while I bundle up my hurt and frustration and confusion and a guilt I shouldn’t even be feeling to flee into the safe confines of my space.
16
Nightmare Balm (Warren)
Almost every time I fall asleep, it’s the same.
Maybe that’s why I can’t let go.
Because every night my brain yanks me back to the day she died like it was yesterday, playing out every graphic detail. I wasn’t even there to see it, but my mind is happy to concoct scenes to make sure I know what suffering feels like whether I’m awake or I’m asleep.
*
Bright desert sunlight.
It’s a photograph – one I’ve seen tucked between the window and the dash in Bress’ car, but this time the photograph’s alive.
Jenna, Bress, and Stew, three musketeers geared up before deployment, grinning at the camera and holding up two fingers in peace signs like they were just heading out for a Sunday stroll.
They've been watching too many dark comedy flicks about Vietnam. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong war.
Every day in this place is a reminder how truly damn different the very meaning of the word can be.
They've been assigned to cover a mine removal crew doing clearance over an old dirt road. The Russians left a lot of presents behind in the eighties when they were here. We've had too many good people hurt twenty years later by old buried explosives from a war that's not even ours.
Stewart’s cheesing it up for the camera, but Bress and Jenna only have eyes for each other.
Two lovers. One true and innocent, the other preparing a fucking knife.
Bress tries to look stoically forward, but it’s not hard to see he’s watching her from the corner of his eye.
Jenna’s not even bothering to hide.
I’d teased her about it just that morning.
After a string of failed relationships with men who couldn’t handle a military woman, Jenna swore she'd finally found The One in our own ranks. And goddamn I wouldn’t be her big brother if I didn’t give her shit about daddy issues with Bress being almost twenty years older than the lot of us.
But he makes her feel safe, makes her happy, and while I was gonna ride her ass about it at first and threatened to kick him up one sand dune and down another, in the end I was just glad they made each other smile.
Maybe there's a frozen moment. Some last peace caught in the glint of sunlight cast off smiling teeth and blue-eyed laughter.
One final bit of happiness, the tease of wind through messy bound hair, the blue of the Afghan sky so clean and clear it makes it seem like all's right with the world.
Until suddenly the sky splits apart.
The whole world breaks open, and the ground churns with bursting debris and shrapnel flying everywhere.
Mortars. Snipers. The same sneaky shit the pricks in the mountains always pull.
There's nowhere to run but straight, into the dust cloud kicked up by the big armored minesweeper.
Jenna races desperately ahead, then trips a mine the sweeper didn't catch.
Hell pops off in her wake like she’s being chased by a thousand underground explosions.