Secret Lucidity(39)

He reaches above my head to where his phone sits on the end table and looks at the screen. “I have to take this.”

When he gets off the couch and heads to his bedroom to answer the call, I breathe a sigh of relief and sit up. I don’t know how I would explain all the scars if he were to ever see them. But how the hell do I hide them when they are all over my stomach? It’s not like I can cut anywhere else when I spend every day in a swimsuit.

I wander through his house while I fret over what I’ve done to myself. But when I walk into his study and see a wall covered in plaques and certificates from the United States Army, my attention takes a shift. I walk over to his framed Honorable Discharge Certificate, where his dog tags hang from the corner. I reach out and touch them, running my finger over the raised stamping as I read his name, social, blood type, and his religion marked as Catholic.

“Here you are,” he says from behind me, causing me to startle. “What are you doing?”

I look around the room that’s filled with memories of his time in the military, time I know nothing about.

“What exactly was it that you did when you were in the Army?”

“I collected intel and negotiated with tribe leaders in order to find terrorists.”

He offers me his hand, and when I take it, he pulls me down to sit on his lap in his leather chair.

“So you were overseas a lot?”

“Nearly four years over three different tours.”

“That’s a lot of time away.”

“There wasn’t much here for me at the time,” he says.

I want to know what he means by that, but I also don’t want to push, remembering how quickly he closed down the last conversation we had about his past. So I err on the side of caution when I ask, “What was it like there?”

“Unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I spent a lot of time with children.”

“Children?”

“I’d go into the villages with soccer balls and other toys. We would kick the ball back and forth, and I’d make them feel like I was a friend, someone who could be trusted so I could get information about their families in order to find our targets. I basically bribed them so I could manipulate them.” He takes my hand and threads his fingers through mine. “I knew I was putting them in danger. If ever their families were to find out the information those kids were giving me . . .”

“Did any of them get hurt?”

“Never stayed long enough to know, but I don’t doubt that some wound up killed because of me.” His hand clamps tighter around mine, but I still feel the jittering he’s trying to mask.

“And what about you? Did you ever get hurt?”

“I was at war for almost four years. You don’t come out of that unscathed.”

I look into his eyes, wishing to know everything they’ve seen. He’s lived years beyond me, has seen more, experienced more, loved more, and hurt more. I feel juvenile with my earlier complaints about petty high school rifts.

“You told me the other night that since your dad died, you’ve struggled to find the common ground you once had with your friends.” I nod, recalling that conversation. “I know what that feels like. When I returned, I realized how drastically the events I went through reshaped me. And now here I am, back home, and there isn’t a single familiar place I fit into anymore.”

Not allowing a single second to slip, my lips are back on his.

His fingers press into my soft skin, and in some morbid way, his pain comforts me. Maybe it’s the fact that he gets what no one else does. He understands what I feel because he feels it too. A shared ache that shakes us both to the core, letting me know that I’m not alone. He’s told me that I wasn’t time and again, but understanding it through him, I now believe it as truth instead of some guy simply attempting to pacify me.

I kiss him even more as we hold each other, licking wounds we don’t fully understand in the other, but understanding enough to know we need to tend to them. And in a world that we are both struggling to fit into, what if this is where we are supposed to be?

Right here.

Right in this very moment.

Because this is the place where our broken pieces have settled, connecting perfectly without any gaps.





THIS MORNING, FOR THE FIRST time since his funeral, I visit my father’s grave. It’s hard to believe he’s been gone for five months.

Five months.

It hasn’t even been that long, and yet nothing—absolutely nothing—is the same as what it was when he was alive.

I sit on my knees in front of the headstone, his name etched in the marble on one side as the other awaits for my mother’s descent. A part of me wonders if he’d even want her laid to rest next to him knowing that she’s already in bed with another man.

What if she finds someone new?

Will the other half of his marker remain empty—forever incomplete?

“She didn’t deserve you,” I whisper into the breeze.

I tug my wool coat tightly around me, holding the lapels with one hand as I reach out and lay my other upon the stone and pretend it’s him I’m touching. “I miss you so much, Dad. It isn’t fair. None of this is.”

Another gust of air sweeps by, rustling dead leaves in its wake.

I’m burdened by a thousand pounds of confliction and anger and sorrow, and I surprise myself when the words, “Please, don’t be disappointed,” fall from my lips without thought. “He’s the only one who understands me right now.”