Captured(84)

And goddammit, there are the emotions again, shit going haywire. But she just kisses me like it doesn’t bother her that I’m a mess, that I’m grabbing her like I’m scared I’ll lose her. She just holds me back, just as tight, and eventually we go back up and rejoin our friends.

And they understand, too.

Knowing you’ve got people in your life that can take the worst shit you’ve got and not judge you? It’s the best feeling in the world.





CHAPTER 22





REAGAN





The farm is officially up for sale. There’s an agent, a list price, a whole slew of things to do to make the house, especially, sellable. It’s overwhelming. And I still have no idea what we’re doing if it sells. When it sells. I’m trying to hold it together, trying to be tough, but it’s hard. So hard. This is all I’ve known since I was nineteen. Tom’s family has farmed this land since the eighteen hundreds, and I’m just going to sell it off like nothing?

And I have zero other skills. I’m very literally following Derek on blind faith. But I know this is the only real option. There’s no way I can keep the farm going, not for much longer anyway. Not without Derek’s help. God, he’s working his ass off getting his mobility back, learning to function with as much normality as possible. But his ribs are still stiff, and he’s spending too much time moving around, so it takes a toll on him. This just isn’t a workable life for us anymore.

And, if I look deep down inside myself, I’m tired of the farm. I’m just exhausted. I can’t do it anymore, emotionally. I need a change. But the problem is, change is damn scary.

Rania’s been helping me sort things out. She and Hunter and the kids made a return visit to give us a hand. She and I have been packing up things I don’t want to get rid of yet, but don’t know what else to do with them except pack them. We’ve been cleaning areas that probably haven’t been thoroughly cleaned in decades. Derek and Hunter are touching up the paint inside, patching holes in the plaster, pulling down wallpaper in rooms that haven’t been touched since the sixties.

A week goes by quickly. Rania and Hunter are staying in Hempstead, in a little motel, and I can tell they’re ready to go home. But god, it’s been wonderful having them around. I haven’t had a friend like Rania in…probably ever. Not since I was a little girl in Oklahoma. And Hunter has been great for Derek, kicking his ass to stay positive, pushing him physically, keeping him busy.

I wouldn’t mind moving somewhere closer to them.

It’s a Friday afternoon, and the house is so clean and empty of clutter that it’s unrecognizable. I’ve been avoiding one room, though. Tom’s room. I’m standing outside the door, a stack of Rubbermaid storage bins in my hands. Rania is beside me, holding a broom and dustpan, rags and a bottle of Pledge.

“Perhaps…maybe this is not my place, Reagan,” Rania begins, glancing at me, assessing my obvious hesitation. “Perhaps I should do this myself.”

I shake my head. “No. I have to do this.”

Taking a deep breath, I place my hand on the doorknob and push it open. A double bed along the far wall, a hand-sewn quilt. A desk beneath the window, a Mason jar full of pens, a stack of Sports Illustrated. Baseball and football posters on the wall, as well as Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition centerfolds. I shake my head at that. Boys. A bookshelf between the desk and the bed, stuffed with old science fiction novels, westerns, some Tom Clancy. I pull out Patriot Games, open the hardcover; yep, it’s Hank’s.

God, Hank. He’s been really sick lately, in and out of the hospital. Derek and I visited them the other day, and Ida and I stood outside the door, trying not to listen as Hank and Derek passed idle chatter, but eventually the conversation turned serious. To Korea, and Afghanistan. Coping with life after war.

I shake my head. I can’t think about Hank right now.

I place the book, along with the rest of the novels, in an empty storage bin. Soon the shelf is empty. All the books are old, dog-eared, read a thousand times. Most have Tom’s initials on the inside flap. Rania takes the bin full of books and wrestles it out into the hallway, and we move the shelf. I laugh, finding a stash of Playboy magazines stuffed between the wall and the bookshelf, within reach of a certain boy when he’s lying in bed. I throw them away, struggling desperately against the image of a teenaged Tom, jerking off to some model on a centerfold. I end up half-laughing, half-sobbing as I check the other spot, between the mattress and box spring. There’s more porn there, along with a flattened pack of Camel Lights and what looks like a twenty-year-old half-smoked joint. God, Tom. What a little troublemaker.

Rania stuffs the clothes from the dresser and the closet into several bags, tying them closed before I can see them. We peel the posters off the wall, strip the bed of the sheets and the quilt. The sheets get tossed; the quilt I save for Tommy. Tom’s great-great-grandmother made that several decades ago.

I’m crying by the time the room is cleaned out. The floors are vacuumed, the bed and dresser and shelves moved and cleaned under and behind. The bins we leave at the top of the stairs for the men to move out to the barn. Finally, I stand in the doorway once more, looking into what is now just another bedroom.

“You are a strong woman, Reagan,” Rania says.

“It’s just stuff.”