It's Only Love(51)

“I want to know, Gavin. If we share the load it won’t be so heavy for you to carry alone. And there’s no timetable. No one is holding up a stopwatch and timing how long it takes you to get over your brother’s death. I’m certainly not doing that. I fully expect that you’ll never completely get over it.”

“You’re so sweet.” He put down his glass and ran his thumb over her jaw. “So strong and capable. I’m afraid of using your strength as a crutch.”

“It’s not a crutch if it’s freely given.”

After a long pause, he sighed deeply and began to speak. “I didn’t want him to go into the army. I had a bad feeling about it from the beginning. Hannah did, too. She and I talked about it a lot the year they were seniors and I was a junior at UVM. He had this great opportunity to play professional hockey, and he was going to turn that down to go into the army? Neither of us got how it was even a decision. I’ve since come to know that the desire to serve at that level is either in you like it was in him or it isn’t. It’s not in me. It never was, even after being brought up by a career army officer. I’ve felt guilty about that for a long time—that he gave so much and I had no desire at all to give anything to the military.”

Ella had to resist the urge to speak, to offer comfort. That he was talking about these things to her was a huge gift that she didn’t receive lightly. It might be the most important conversation they’d ever have. She was already surprised to hear that Gavin hadn’t wanted Caleb to go into the army.

“The last time he was home, before that final deployment, we went camping for a few days, just the two of us and Homer, of course. We never went anywhere without good old Homie. It was the first time we’d been able to get away by ourselves in a couple of years, and we had a lot of laughs as always. But the whole time we were gone and in the days before he left, I had this low buzz of foreboding. I didn’t recognize it then for what it was, but I had a knot in my stomach the size of a fist that would not go away. I thought maybe I was getting sick from Caleb’s camp cooking or something. I didn’t know then that it was fear. Raw, gritty fear. I never told anyone that when I said good-bye to him on the day he left for Iraq, I had the worst feeling I’d never see him again.”

“Gavin . . .” Ella brushed the tears off her cheeks, wishing she could be stronger for him, but her heart was breaking.

“At the time, I chalked it up to my overactive imagination. He was going to a part of Iraq where the fighting was mostly over. They were there to help train the Iraqi army and to provide aid. It wasn’t about active combat. Not this time. Even knowing that, I couldn’t shake the aching, gnawing fear. I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, thinking the worst. I was a f*cking mess for weeks.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone?”

“Who could I tell? My parents? Hannah? They didn’t need to hear that, not when they were contending with their own worries.” He shook his head. “At times, I seriously wondered if I was going insane. My brother was a grown man, the toughest dude I’d ever known. He was a highly trained army officer who could kick the shit out of anyone who dared to cross him. And here I was, a quivering, fearful wreck of a man in comparison. I hated myself for feeling the way I did.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Gavin. You can’t help the way you feel. None of us can.” It killed her to hear that he had suffered so profoundly in utter silence.

“I know, but still . . . It felt ridiculous to be so worried about a man who was more than capable of taking care of himself, especially when he’d been in far more dangerous situations than the one he was in then.” His shoulders hunched, he looked down at the floor, desolation coming off him in waves. “I was working outside of town, clearing land for a new development when my dad called. He asked if I could come to the house right away. I asked him why, and he just said . . . ‘Please come, Gav.’ I knew. I just knew. I didn’t want to go there. I actually thought about getting in my truck and driving north to Canada. I almost did it, too. Even all these years later, I’m still ashamed to admit how close I came to just driving away.”

“No one would’ve blamed you.”

“Wouldn’t have changed anything,” he said with a shrug. “And besides, I’d like to think I’m a better son than that. My parents needed me, so I went. I’ll never forget the sight of that blue four-door sedan with U.S. government plates sitting outside the house when I arrived. If I’d been looking for confirmation, there it was. I found out later that they’d already been to Hannah’s house.”

Ella couldn’t bear to remain separate from him any longer. She crawled into his lap and put her arms around him.

He was slow to respond, as if he didn’t think he deserved the comfort. But then his arms came around her, and he buried his face in her hair.

She was relieved that he was allowing her to comfort him. He’d been in bad need of some comfort for far too long.

“I finally went in there, and my parents . . . They were just wrecked. My mom was out of her mind. My dad had gone silent. He was blaming himself, I’m sure. He’d been so proud when Caleb went into the army. The chaplain told me what’d happened, and I remember thinking it was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. He’d been blown up while playing a game of soccer? For real? It made absolutely no sense to me, and it still doesn’t. It never will.”