The Last Letter(13)

I didn’t break down.

Not until New Year’s Eve.

That’s when the uniforms came to the door and ripped my strong facade to shreds with a simple sentence: We regret to inform you that your brother, SSG Ryan MacKenzie, has been killed in action. Due to the nature of their unit, that was all I could know. The details—where he’d been, what had happened, who he’d been with—that was all classified.

When there were no more letters from Chaos, I had at least one of those answers.

They were both gone.

I broke.





      Four Months Later





Chapter Five


Beckett


Beck,

If you’re reading this, blah, blah. You know the last-letter drill. You made it. I didn’t. Get off the guilt train, because I know you, and if there were any chance you could have saved me, you would have. If there were any way you could have changed the outcome, you would have. So whatever deep, dark hole of guilt you’re wallowing in, stop.

I need one thing from you: Get your ass to Telluride. I know your ETS date is right with mine. Take it.

Ella’s all alone. Not in the alone way that she has been, but really, truly alone. Our grandmother, our parents, and now me. It’s too much to ask her to endure. It’s not fair.

But here’s the kicker: Maisie is sick. She’s only six, Beck, and my niece might die.

So if I’m gone, that means I can’t get home in January like we’d planned. I can’t be there for her. I can’t help Ella through this, or play soccer with my nephew, or hold my niece. But you can. So I’m begging you, as my best friend, go take care of my sister, my family. Do whatever you can to save my little Maisie.

It’s not fair to ask; I know that. It’s against your nature to care, to not accomplish a mission and move on, but I need this. Maisie and Colt need it. Ella needs it—needs you, though she’ll fight you tooth and nail before she ever admits it. Help her even when she swears she’s fine.

Don’t make her go through it alone.

I’ll save you a seat on the other side, brother, but take your time. Take every single second you can. You are the only brother I would have wished for, and my very best friend. And just in case no one ever told you—you’re worthy. Of love. Of family. Of home.

So while you’re searching for those things, please make sure Telluride is where you look. At least for a little while.

~ Ryan

…

The mountains rose up above me, impossibly tall considering I was already at almost nine thousand feet. Sure, the air felt thinner, but it was also somehow easier to breathe.

Havoc rested her head on the leather console between our seats as I drove my truck through downtown Telluride. It was Norman Rockwell perfect. Bricked and painted storefronts, families strolling with children. Not quite the tourist haven I was expecting.

It looked like a hometown was supposed to.

It just wasn’t my hometown.

It was Ryan’s. Mac was buried here, at least that was what I’d been told. They’d only sent back Captain Donahue and a couple other guys for the funeral. I’d been kept in the field with the rest of the unit, too valuable to be given leave.

I knew the truth: it wasn’t me—at least not with the state I was in then. It was Havoc. They needed her, and she would only listen to me.

I rubbed the top of her head, promising her silently that she’d have a peaceful life from now on. That as quickly as we’d both been given terminal leave, she deserved a little peace.

Me? I lived in a hell of my own making. One that I more than deserved.

I stopped to fill the tank before heading out of town, following my GPS to the address online for Solitude.

Solitude. How fitting. Alone.

I was alone.

Ella was alone.

And we’d remain that way, because we’d never be together. I’d seen to that when I’d stopped writing the day Ryan died.

But I could do this. For Ryan. For Ella. But not for me. Thinking it was for me implied there was some kind of redemption that I was worthy of.

There wasn’t. What I’d done was beyond any redemption.

My jaw flexed, and my hands tightened on the wheel as I approached the private drive. I made the turn, my gaze catching the mailbox that hung at a haphazard angle on the post. How many times had she gone there looking for my letters? How many times had she found one and smiled? Twenty-four.

How many times had she made the walk without one? Wondered what happened to me? Maybe she thought I’d died on the op with Ryan. Maybe it was better that way.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

I drove up the asphalt drive, under the budding aspen trees that lined the way. Ryan would have said there was something fitting about arriving in spring, during the period of rebirth, but that was a load of crap.

There was no rebirth for me. No new beginning. I wasn’t here to watch life begin; I was here to help Ella if it ended for Maisie. If Ella even let me near.

The pit in my stomach was entirely too familiar, reducing me to that skinny, quiet kid I’d been twenty years ago, showing up at yet another family’s house, hoping this one wouldn’t find a reason to make him someone else’s problem. Hoping this time he wouldn’t pack his stuff in another garbage bag when he accidentally broke a dish or some rule he hadn’t known existed, then be labeled “troubled” and shuffled to another, stricter home.