Captured(19)

His voice goes a little sharp. “Reagan. I don’t need any of that shit. I’m fine.” He strides across the mud toward the barn. “Thanks for the hospitality,” he says over his shoulder.

I let him go, sensing his need to be away, alone.

In the house, Tommy is leaning against the doorframe, watching me through the screen. His eyes are heavy, tired. I pick him up and cradle him against me.

“Mama?”

I kiss his temple. “Yes, baby?”

“Who guy?”

I hesitate. “He’s…a friend.”

Tommy lifts his head, leans back in my arms, peers at me. “Mama sad?”

Damned perceptive child. I blink, summoning a smile. “No, baby. I’m fine.”

He doesn’t believe me, clearly. He puts a hand to my cheek. “Kiss?”

I kiss his forehead. “Kiss.” I tuck his head against my shoulder and carry him upstairs to his room, lay him down in his bed. “Time for bed, sleepyhead.” He doesn’t argue, and he’s asleep within seconds, Buzz Lightyear clutched under one arm.

Back downstairs, Ida is drying the last of the dishes. She sets a plate in the cupboard, drapes the towel over the oven handle. She turns to me, eyes assessing. “That boy…he’s very troubled.”

“Derek, you mean?” I sigh. “He served with Tom.”

Ida nods. “I saw a news program about him. A psychologist was saying that someone who’s been through what he has…they never really recover.” Ida rummages in my junk drawer, finds the tube of hand lotion and rubs some onto her wrinkled hands. “My Hank, he served in Korea, you know. He doesn’t talk about it much, never has, really. But I know it still affects him. The things he experienced, the things he saw and did.”

“Tom never talked about it, either,” I say. “I asked him once. After his second tour in Iraq. He just told me there wasn’t much to say. He did his job, and that was it. But I knew he was…protecting me. From the truth.”

Ida nods, then glances out the screen door, watching headlights approach. Hank coming to pick her up. “Men will do that.” It’s clear she has more on her mind, but she just sighs and hangs her purse from her shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Ida.” I lean in and hug her. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

She smiles at me, pats my cheek. “That’s what family is for, dear. And you’re family.”

Tom’s parents are both gone, his mother from cancer before I met him, and his father from a heart attack a few years after Tom and I married. My own parents are both alive, living in Tulsa. They never approved of Tom, and they’ve never forgiven me for eloping with him at nineteen. They’ve never met Tommy, and I don’t think they ever will. So Ida and Hank are really my only family. Except Brian, my brother, a career Marine stationed in Okinawa. He visits sometimes, when he gets leave long enough to get back Stateside, which isn’t often.

Hanks honks the horn, and Ida leaves.

The house is silent, and I’m finally alone. I pull the envelope from the back pocket of my jeans. Gather the dog tags in the palm of my hand, stare at Tom’s name. Allow myself a few tears, wipe them from my chin.

“I miss you, Tom.” I whisper it to the dog tags. “Why didn’t you come back? You promised you’d always come back.”

I can’t look at the letter. I simply don’t have the strength. I’ll lose it if I read those words, written so long ago. If I imagine him reading them. If I imagine Derek and Tom, huddled together in some cave or whatever, Derek reading the letter over and over….

I should bring Derek some food. A blanket. A pillow. Something. But…I just can’t. I can’t face him. Can’t handle seeing the ghosts in his eyes, the ache of memory in his posture.

A dirty secret: Sometimes I sleep on the couch, because I hate the memories that live in the empty expanse of my bed.

Another, dirtier secret: Sometimes the weight of loneliness is heavier than the weight of missing Tom.





CHAPTER 7





DEREK





Sleep is impossible. At the hospital they gave me drugs to help me sleep. They were necessary, physically, because it’s literally impossible to find rest. At best, I’ll doze off, wake up sweating, screaming, panicked, reliving combat, imprisonment, beatings, torture.

I never told anyone about that, the torture. Not during debriefing, not to any of the psychologists or shrinks or doctors. The Taliban f*ckers, they’d shove slivers under my fingernails, long jagged shards of wood, for no reason I could ever fathom. Burns, cigarettes or lighters. They broke the ring finger of my left hand. Kept re-breaking it, over and over again, day after day, until the pain drove me insane. If I’d had so much as a hunk of rock to hand, I’d have cut the finger off. Eventually they left the finger alone. I re-broke it myself and tried to set it, but it’s crooked, hurts sometimes. Aches when it rains, shakes now and again.

The hospital made me crazy, too. Cooped up in a little room, a hospital bed, a window overlooking a parking lot. TV, tuned to sports, as if I cared. I used to care. Football. I loved football. Now? It’s just irrelevant. I can’t make myself care. I tried to watch Sports Center during the long hours alone in the hospital between rounds of physical therapy and head-shrinking. It seemed so stupid, so empty. So pointless.