“He killed your girlfriend a few years ago. Ran her over in the snow in January.”
She said it without tone, but he still flinched.
“I think I remember that.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “The memories are coming back, but only in bits and pieces, and nothing feels easy or in the right place. I have a hazy memory of my wife and child, but I don’t recall how they died.” He braced a hand on the window sill. “Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe that’s just my brain repressing the things that still hurt.”
“Maybe,” she said softly, “but that tells me that you’re in no condition to leave. I think you should stay here in this town and recover. Get your memories back if you need to or…not.” She stood up. “York—Mack. You’re a different person now. One you’ve always wanted to be. You don’t have to finish this.”
He winced, then turned to her. “Not if there’s going to be more people who show up on Jethro’s doorstep. I might not know everything, but I know I have to put the past to rest before I can have another life. I don’t have a choice. I’m going to go get my stuff.”
“York—”
He ignored her and headed down to the lower level, to his tiny guest bedroom.
Went in and closed the door behind him. Sank down on the double bed, his head in his hands.
A soft knock broke through the quiet. “Mack?”
Jethro.
Thankfully the man hadn’t been seriously injured—more blood than wound when they shined the light on him.
“Come in,” York said, getting up. He didn’t really have anything to pack except a toothbrush. Hopefully he could take the clothes on his back, but…
“Taking off?”
He couldn’t even look at Jethro, at the massive goose egg on his forehead.
“Apparently I have some unfinished business with the man I used to be.” He didn’t mean for it to sound so dark, so jaded.
“That’s the key—the man you used to be. Not anymore.”
Jethro pulled a duffel bag from the closet and put it on the bed.
“Apparently the man I am is just a fake. The guy I was—”
“Is dead.” Jethro walked over to the dresser and opened a drawer. “He died when you went forward in church yesterday.”
Jethro scooped out a handful of T-shirts and put them in the duffel.
“Jethro, you don’t know what I did, I mean…I—”
“Regardless of who you were in the past, Mack, you are a new person today. When you gave your sins to Jesus and received forgiveness, He made you new. The past is dead. Now the question is, what are you going to do with your new life?”
Jethro pulled out another drawer. Jeans.
“It feels like I was just, I don’t know, playing a role. Wanting something so much that—”
“That God gave you a chance to have it. To see what it felt like to be free, to be whole, to be forgiven.” Jethro put the pants in the duffel bag. “You would have never stepped foot in a church in your previous state, I’ll bet.”
York considered him. “Probably not.”
“And yet, your soul yearned to be clean, to be new. And God, in His mercy, knew it. So, He gave you a clean slate. A fresh start. The opportunity to be the man you wanted to be.”
It wasn’t a question, but York nodded.
“So what that you were a killer in your past.”
York’s eyes widened. “You know—”
“I’m not stupid. I was a Marine. I know the look in a man’s eyes when he’s been through war—”
“I haven’t been through—”
“We’re always at war with good and evil in this world. No one escapes it. It’s how we see it, how we recognize it that engages us in battle. And if it’s not externally, then it’s in our flesh. In our soul. War is all around us. And sometimes…well, sometimes we find ourselves doing things in war that we would never do in times of peace.”
“Jethro. I really…I remember killing people.”
“Me too.”
York looked at him. “You were awarded the Medal of Honor. That’s vastly different.”
“Is it? Because here’s how I see it—I was asked to do a job by my country. We came under fire, and a couple of my fellow soldiers, as well as my platoon leader, were wounded and left in an exposed position. I was a medic. There to pull my men away from the battlefield. But out of sheer panic, I took command. We assaulted the position of the hostiles and killed them. Then we took out another position, during which I killed four men and took out an anti-tank weapon.” He zipped up the duffel bag. “One was a kid—maybe seventeen. But we rescued our platoon leader and those soldiers, and they gave me a medal. I wasn’t even doing my job—I was simply reacting. Am I more of a hero than the next guy? Maybe. I don’t know.”
He handed York the duffel bag. “What isn’t in the citation is that after the shooting stopped, after we evacuated our guys, after we got back to our positions, I found myself a corner and emptied my gut. I saw myself do things in the heat of battle that I would have never thought I could do. But that moment doesn’t define me, even if they gave me a medal. What does define me, tells me who I am? How I live every day. So you need to go and do what you need to do, but you do it as a new man. As a man who is not his own anymore but in the service of a new commander. The Lord God Almighty. Who, by the way, says, ‘I will fight for you. Your victory is already won.’”
York stood there, holding the duffel bag.
“What are you waiting for, kid? I’m going to say the same thing I said to Ace…God made you the way he did for a reason. Go, be awesome.”
York’s throat tightened, but he met Jethro’s hand. “Maybe I’ll be back.”
“We’ll be waiting for you.”
York wasn’t talking to her.
And RJ didn’t blame him.
It wasn’t like he was giving her the silent treatment—sure he was talking to her, like, I can get a hotel room, RJ. I don’t need to stay with your family.
And, I really think you should stay in Seattle, let Tate and me handle this.
That sort of thing.
But what she really longed for was a private conversation. One that told her that he didn’t regret knocking on her door, asking her to tell him about his past.
A conversation that might ease the clench around her chest that said she’d wrecked his life.
Or at least the life he’d hoped to have.
RJ stood on the balcony of Wyatt’s loft overlooking the Sound, staring out into the darkness. The Ferris wheel cast twinkle lights into the velvet sky, and out in the middle of the dark water, deck lights from ferries and dinner cruises glowed against the blackness.
The scents from Pike Place Market rose—bakery, exotic spices, even the faintest hint of fresh fish from today’s mongers. Of course Wyatt had to have the nicest place on the block—a loft with exposed beams, wood floors, copper counters and fixtures, hand-tufted rugs, deep coffee-brown leather sofas, and a table that seated fourteen. Three guest bedrooms were all accessed by sliding barn doors, and a master bedroom loft overlooked it all.