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  Voss crushes me, then lets me down, and claps me on the shoulder so hard I stumble. “I can’t fucking believe it, man. I never thought I’d see you again, brother.”

  He’s joined by the rest of Golf Company: Hector and Isaiah and Deadly-Fredly and Spacey. They’re all crowding around me, calling out my name, reaching for me, chattering too fast to catch anything, and my head is spinning and my heart is hammering and I’m sweating, stomach in knots, eyes leaking fucking sissy-shit tears I can’t stop, and I just want to hide, go back into my hut in the darkness and the silence.

  I should be laughing and joking and calling them names; instead, I’m hyperventilating and about to heave, except there’s nothing in my stomach.

  Voss sees what’s happening, turns and bellows, “All right, y’all! Back off. Back off. Give the man some space. Ain’t none of you got work to do?” He wraps a burly bare arm around my shoulder, his massive paw on my head.

  I scrape the back of my wrist across my face, try to laugh off my mortification. “Sorry. It’s good—good to see you, too, man.”

  He pulls me against him in another hug. “No shame in it, man. No shame in it.” He lets me go, trots to the tent, calling back over his shoulder, “Hold up, hold up — I got something for you.” Returns with a clenched fist. Grabs my hand in his, places two sets of dog tags in my palm. “Been holding onto these. They found ’em, along with—when they found Barrett. Yours and his.”

  My tags. Barrett’s tags. My disbelieving laughter is part sob. “Shit.” I blink, duck my head, and cough away the lump in my throat. “Thanks, Bill. You don’t—you don’t even know…just—thank you.”

  His voice is a low rumble. “I ain’t even gonna pretend I know what you been through. But I’m here for you. All of us are.”

  “I—” Words stick in my throat.

  “The medics are waiting for us,” a sharp voice says. Captain Laughlin. “Reunions can happen later. As you were, Voss.”

  “Sir.” Voss nods at me, returns to the tent where Golf is cleaning their rifles and readying their gear for a patrol. “Glad you’re back, West.”

  My escort starts moving, and I’m compelled to go with them. In truth, I’m glad to be away from the guys. I ran a lot of patrols with Golf Company, spent a lot of downtime shooting the shit with Voss and Isaiah and Barrett in the gym. Seeing them…brings flashbacks of patrols, the clink of weights, Voss telling horribly racist jokes that none of us were ballsy enough to actually laugh at unless he did first. I touch the letter against my belly; it’s still sitting under the waistband of my pants.

  I’m taken to the medical facility. Most of my escort leaves, except one guy with a rifle held at rest—barrel down, butt up—eyes avoiding me, taking a place outside the door of the room. A jet takes off, rumbling loud, and then the room fades back to silence. A clock ticks. My heart thumps. I wonder what’s next. A hospital stay, like I’m sick? Cycled back into active duty? I don’t know. I can’t remember what happens next, according to policy. I don’t feel like a Marine. I feel scared, lost, overwhelmed, confused.

  A doc and a couple of orderlies arrive. I watch the orderlies, young guys, barely more than kids, probably only been shaving a year or two. They stay by the door and wait for orders. The doc introduces himself, looks me over. It feels like a normal physical evaluation, which is sort of anticlimactic.

  Then he starts poking and prodding, chest, lymph nodes, stomach, tugs the waist of the pajama pants down, sees the dirty sweat- and bloodstained olive-green packet. “What’s this?” He grabs for it.

  My fingers latch onto his wrist, and I shove him away. It’s automatic. Nobody touches the letter. “It’s nothing. It’s a letter.”

  He’s wary now, suspicious. “We have to check it out, Corporal West. Can I have it, please?”

  It’s totally normal. They just have to make sure it’s clean, safe. But I can’t give it up. I can’t. I clutch the cotton-wrapped paper in my hands. The doctor reaches for it again. “We’ll give it back, Corporal. You have my word.”

  I can’t let go. Rage seizes me, unreasoning, blinding. Terror. Claustrophobia. The walls of the room close in. My chest is tight, as if iron bands are strapped around my lungs, preventing breath, preventing thought, preventing reason. I see the doctor’s mouth moving, but hear nothing. The orderlies step forward, one to each side. They grab my arms. Someone is screaming and cursing. I’m thrashing, kicking, fighting. The orderlies are fucking strong for a couple of green little pukes. Something pokes my bicep.

  Warmth floats over me, stealing my panicked rage.

  I watch my fingers go limp, the shirt-wrapped letter tumbling, cotton drifting away, the envelope creased and wrinkled and stained with dark brown-red bloody fingerprints three years old. I struggle to stay awake, to get my letter back, but darkness is heavy and thick and—

  * * *

  I wake up in a bed. A real bed. It feels bizarre, after sleeping on a dirt floor or bare tile or concrete for so long. My head buzzes, and I feel fuzzy and muddled. Was the whole thing a dream?

  No. I open my eyes and realize I’m in the isolation ward. Or what counts for it in this part of the world.

  So much for cycling back to active duty.

  I couldn’t, even if they’d let me. I’m tired. Hungry. My arm hurts. I realize I’m hooked to an IV.

  “You’re severely malnourished and dehydrated,” I hear a voice say. It’s the same doctor, sweeping into the room. Middle-aged, buzzed military haircut, thick blond mustache. “Along with a whole host of bacterial infections, marked vitamin C deficiency….”

  He takes a seat on a plastic chair. “But all that is easy to fix.” He taps my temple gently with his pen, then my chest. “It’s the psychological and emotional damage I’m most worried about.”

  I nod. He’s right, and I know it. The freak-out over the letter proved as much to me.

  “You’re going to the San Antonio Army Medical Center for a while. They’ll get you back to normal physically, as well as helping you reintegrate socially.” He brushes a fingertip across his mustache. “You’ve been through a hell of an ordeal, Corporal West. You’ll need time to heal, emotionally, mentally, and physically.”

  I nod again.

  “In the meantime….” He reaches into the pocket of his lab coat, hands me my letter. “How in the hell did you manage to hold on to this all that time?”

  I shrug. “I made a promise.”

  He nods as if he could possibly understand. “I see. Well, tend to your own well-being first, okay?”

  “Yes, sir. I will, sir.”

  My own well-being. I don’t even know what that means. I should be dead. Should’ve died with my unit. With Tom. Instead of Tom. But I’m here, and I feel nothing but lost and disconnected, as if all these totally normal people who were once my service brothers and sisters are a circle I can’t penetrate, as if I’m an outsider looking in. Even hearing English is disorienting.

  I find myself whispering under my breath: “I’ve gone in circles over this a million times in my head. I’ve nearly told you so many times. But I just can’t. It’ll make it harder for you to leave, and I know it’s hard enough as it is. It’ll make it harder for me if I told you in person. You’re going to be mad at me for not telling you. I know, and I’m sorry. But this is just the only way that makes sense to me.” The lie of omission. The truth I withheld from a dying man. The guilt burning like a hot coal in the darkest corners of my being.

  “Tell her…she’s my everything. Those words.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “Swear.”

  “I swear. On my soul, I swear.”

  I hear it. Hear his voice. Am I crazy? Did the three years of captivity make me legit fucking crazy? Maybe. Probably. All I know is, I swore on my soul.

  Fuck my own well-being.

  I made a vow.

  CHAPTER 6

  REAGAN

  Houston, Texas, 2010

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Barrett, but we have to deny you
r loan application at this time. You simply don’t have the minimum credit score or income requirements. Again, I do apologize, but those are the rules. I didn’t make them — I just have to follow them.” The banker is a young woman, maybe twenty-five, put-together, coiffured auburn hair, perfect makeup, slim pencil skirt and sensible blazer. Snooty, but polite.

  I want to cry but can’t give her the satisfaction. “I see. Well…thank you for your time.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Barrett. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  I shake my head, let a wriggling Tommy slide off my lap to his feet. “No.”

  The young woman lifts her shoulders and clasps her hands in front of her, leans down toward Tommy, talking to him in that squeaky, shrill, horrible voice clueless adults use on children. “Would you like a sucker? Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “Sucker!”

  A sucker? Really? He’s supposed to be asleep right now, and I was counting on him taking a nap on the way home so I could gather my frazzled emotions. And this bitch is handing him a basketful of Dum-Dums. He takes three, rips the wrapper off one, and shoves it in his mouth. Glee lights his features.

  “I go’ a thucker, Mama!”

  “I see that, sweetie.” I level a glare at the girl. “Wasn’t that nice of her, to give you a sucker without asking me first? Sure was thoughtful.”

  The girl makes an innocent ooops, who-me? expression.

  “I go’ four, Mama, see?” Tommy holds up the two remaining, wrapped suckers.

  “You mean two, Tommy. One, two.” I reach for them. “But I think one’s enough, don’t you?”

  “No. How ’bout two?”

  “How about one, the one you got in your mouth?” I take the two extra suckers, which elicits screaming and stomping from Tommy.

  “NO! TWO! TWO!”

  I could throttle the prim little banker bitch. Deny me a loan, my last hope for keeping out of debt, and then give my toddler a sucker?

  “FINE.” I give him the treats back, too close to snapping to argue or deal with his tantrum. “Fine, Tommy. Okay. Okay.”

  “Fank you, Mama. You so nice.” He grins a purple sugar-slimed smile, tucks his little hand into mine.

  I lift him up to my hip, carry him out to the truck, and strap him into his car seat. He’s blinking hard, the sucker lodged firmly in his mouth, dripping purple drool from the corner of his mouth, which…yep, is now smeared all over my T-shirt. I drive home, the windows open to let some air into the superheated cab. The truck, a rust-and-blue 1972 F-150, was Tom’s, rebuilt from scratch during high school. Hank’s gone over the engine a dozen times to keep it running for me. He’s patched up the AC more than once, but it cuts out more than it works.

  By the time I make the hour-plus drive from downtown Houston back to the farm, I’m coated with a thick layer of sweat, and I stink. Tommy is dead to the world, the sucker stuck to his shirt, his face covered in a sticky purple mess, his fine blond hair pasted to his forehead. My little trooper, nearly three hours in a forty-year-old truck without AC in ninety-degree weather, and not one complaint.

  All that, and I didn’t get the loan.

  I park the truck beneath the old spreading oak tree between the house and the barn, the best shady spot to park. The temperature in the truck drops immediately, and I wipe my forehead, cheeks, upper lip. I rest my head against the steering wheel, peeling leather sticking to my skin.

  Let myself cry for a minute. Two. Three. When sobs threaten, I cut it off. Shove it down. Throw open the door and go around to get Tommy. I cradle him to my chest, head on my shoulder, the sucker dropping forgotten in the dirt and grass. I lay him on the couch and point the oscillating fan at him, and then I get a sippy cup of lemonade ready for him for when he wakes up.

  Not knowing what else to do, I sit down at the laptop, an aging Dell purchased secondhand, and go through my budget. There’s the twenty acres I lease to the Pruitts, and that brings in some. Meager income from the farm itself. Support from the Corps, also helpful. But none of it is quite enough. I sort through the bills, none of which I can pay.

  The phone rings, sudden and jangling and jarring. Tommy stirs on the second ring, and then falls back asleep as I pick up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Barrett? This is Sergeant Major Bradford. I wanted to share some news with you. Corporal Derek West has been recovered, and he’s currently at the San Antonio Army Medical Center for rehabilitation.”

  “You—they found him? Alive?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We received some intelligence hinting that he was alive, along with a possible location. Recon units verified the intelligence, and a detachment of MARSOC Raiders went in and retrieved him.”

  I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about this. “Is he—is he okay?”

  “He’s been through quite an ordeal. Three years as a POW…he has some recovery time ahead of him but I think, in time, he’ll be okay, yes.”

  “Should I visit him?”

  “Actually, I think it’s probably best to hold off for now. It’ll take some time before he can fully reintegrate socially, and medical personnel feel he needs to remain isolated at first, and then they’ll gradually introduce new elements. It can be very overwhelming at first, they say.”

  “That’s understandable, I suppose.”

  “Yeah.” An awkward pause. “Well, I just thought you’d like to know.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant Bradford.”

  “Of course. And, as always, if there’s anything I can do, you have my number.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Goodbye, ma’am.”

  “’Bye.” I hang up the phone, trying desperately to sort through my thoughts and emotions.

  Derek is alive.

  I remember Derek West as a big, easygoing man with blonde hair, dark green eyes, and a quick, charming smile. He had a reputation in the unit as a ladykiller, which I could easily believe, being fantastically good-looking. Tom always described him as deceptively laid-back, always ready with a joke, no matter the circumstances, and fiercely loyal to his comrades-in-arms. Derek raised hell when Hunter Lee went missing in Iraq, and went AWOL with his unit to rescue him when the brass wouldn’t send in a team. Tom admired Derek, and considered him closer than a brother, that special bond only men who have seen combat together can form.

  Tom died; Derek lived. Tom came back in a body bag; Derek likely came back to wild media coverage, touted as a “returning hero.” I doubt Derek himself would agree with that, but still.

  I can’t help wondering if Derek was there when Tom was killed. No one would tell me any details about his death, said they didn’t have any information they were at liberty to share. I suspected they did have information, but just wouldn’t tell me. Maybe Derek will tell me.

  Maybe Tom had last words for me.

  I can’t follow that line of thought any further.

  It hurts too bad.

  * * *

  Three months later

  An autumn downpour soaked me to the bone as I struggled to replace a broken fence board on my own. Hank is busy with his own chores, his grandsons back up in Dallas for the school year, and so I’m on my own. I’ve got three massive slivers in my palms from pulling the old board down, and I’m having trouble holding up the new one while trying to get the screw gun in position.

  I’m way, way out on the farthest northern fence line, nearly a mile from the house. My pay-as-you-go cell phone rings, the only way to reach me when I’m out of earshot. It’s generally only used for emergencies, in case Ida needs something while watching Tommy. When it starts trilling in the cab of the truck, panic hits me. I drop the board and the screw gun, and run to the truck.

  “Hello? Ida? Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, yes dear. Everything is fine, I’m sorry to worry you. It’s just that you have a visitor.”

  “A visitor?”

  “Yes. A young man named Derek. He says he knew your husband.”

  “Derek? He’s t
here? At the house?”

  “Yes, he is. He’s sitting on the front porch. I haven’t let him inside yet. Should I send him away?”

  “No, don’t do that. Let him in. I’ll be right there.” I hang up the phone, grab the boards, and toss them in the back of the truck. The screw gun goes on the passenger seat, and I set off toward the house.

  My nerves are on fire.

  It’s not until I’m parking the truck and heading up the stairs to the porch that I realize I’ve been outside in the pissing rain for the last hour. I’m soaked to the bone, my cut-off denim shorts and gray T-shirt pasted to my skin. I pull the wet cotton away from my stomach and chest, but as soon as I let go, it clings to my skin again. No point. I’ll just have to face Derek looking like a drowned rat in a nearly see-through shirt.

  I pull open the screen door and immediately cross my arms over my chest in an attempt at modesty. Derek is sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a mug of coffee, dressed in civilian clothes. Close-cropped military haircut, clean-shaved jaw. As soon as the door springs creak, he sets the mug down and rises to his feet. I halt in place, shocked at the change in him. He used to be fit, taut and muscular, his BDU T-shirts stretched across a broad chest and around thick biceps. His eyes were kind and full of good humor, although if you looked closely, you could see hints of the hardness of a combat veteran.

  The man before me is…not quite gaunt anymore, but its easy to see he’s not far removed from it. He still stands tall and straight, but the bulky muscles are dramatically lessened, and there’s an unconscious hunch to his shoulders. The easy grin is gone, replaced by lips pressed together in a hard, thin line. His eyes are…distant. Haunted.

  “Derek?” I step toward him, forgetting modesty, seeing only a man lost in the depths of pain and traumatic horror.