“I knelt in front of them and worked on deactivating it. My men surrounded me, protecting me, while they took fire. One was shot. I remember the sound of him hitting the ground. We had to fall back, but I didn’t want to. My lieutenant had to pull me away.” I feel it, the tight grip around my chest, the feeling of being dragged. “We were around the corner when I heard the bomb go off. A part of me died that day alongside that woman and child. I didn’t know them at all, but that didn’t matter. Something connected us, and I couldn’t understand what had reached out and touched me so deeply. I’d seen terrible tragedies over and over, and you get to a point where you’ve seen so much that your threshold for tolerating suffering is higher. But that day I felt her terror.” I palm my chest, where I keep it locked away. “My threshold vanished. She and the little boy, they were just human beings with a basic instinct to survive. I wanted them to survive, and I couldn’t make that happen. I feel guilty, but also I’m disgusted. Let down.” Around the table, each man listens closely. More than a few have tears in their eyes. “I got out after that, and I haven’t been able to adjust. I don’t find joy in very many things. Life’s shine has worn off. I see their faces, and I think, what was the point of it all?” Moisture hits my hand, and I realize it’s my own tears, sliding off my cheeks.
The men are quiet, and then Walt speaks. “I don’t know the point of most of life. My wife was the nicest, sweetest person who ever put two feet on this earth, and she passed away from cancer. Why?” He shrugs. “God only knows. But Wes, I was a lot like you for a long time. Angry and resentful, confused and embittered. Not only was it hard for me to find happiness, but I made sure I pushed it away if I did find it. It was a terrible way to live, and I regret it. I was in Vietnam, and I saw some things a person should never see. Here’s what I figured out. My real problem was not what happened, but how I felt about what happened.”
Walt’s words sink in, finding a home in the jumble of emotions. Each man has something to say, but Walt’s words are the ones that have grown claws and dug in.
When the meeting is over, Bill brings out coffee and store-bought cookies.
The coffee isn’t good, but for some reason that makes me like it. No attempt has been made to impress, and I like that. Taking a sip, I ask, “So, you guys meet every week, even though you all know one another’s stories?”
Creighton takes a bite of his cookie. “It’s nice to be around each other. I can’t speak for everyone, but sometimes I feel a restlessness and I need to break away from my family. Finding this group saved my marriage.”
Malcom claps his hand on Creighton’s back, which makes him cough because he’s chewing, and everyone laughs.
When I leave, I shake hands with everyone and tell them I’ll be back. And I will. Come hell or high-water, I’ll be here. This may just be what saves me.
And I have one person to thank for putting the idea in my head.
Dakota created a little bit of space in my chest, and it was a breath of oxygen for a drowning man. That lungful of air was enough to make me want more, but I can’t get it unless I make more space on my own.
I pull out of the parking lot of the VFW feeling like I just hit the jackpot.
30
Dakota
“You know you don’t have to be here all day long?” Scott leans against one of the poles of the tent I set up earlier today. After being here day after day without a place to sit other than my car, or shade over my head (also from my car), I bought the kind of tent well-suited for the sidelines at a kid’s soccer game. The gray tent is five by five, and the shade shifts with the movement of the sun (which is technically the Earth’s movement because the sun doesn’t move but details). Today is my first day using it and I’ve moved my chair and table every hour to capitalize on the shade. And it appears, by the barely concealed irritation and taut jaw muscles, that Scott would prefer I pack up my new tent and leave.
Too damn bad.
My dad trusted me with this job and I don’t plan to make him regret it. Besides, what should I do, stay in my hotel room and work from afar? No. My place is here, with my shoes (boots, for toe protection) digging into the dirt. My laptop works as well in this remote office as it does in my cramped hotel room. Not that my hotel room is all that cramped; Sheila got a bigger room for me since I’m booked for so long. But the same five hundred and eight square feet, all day long, eventually becomes claustrophobic. This wide open space makes me happier.
“I’m good.” I smile sweetly at Scott over the top of my laptop. “Being out here helps me focus on work.”
Scott sighs like I’m the world’s biggest inconvenience. Did I misread him calling me boss? Was it just to placate me? Let me think I’m in charge? I’m just about to tell him who’s signing his checks (technically, Wright Design + Build signs them, but guess whose last name is Wright?), when Scott says, “You make some of my guys nervous. They feel like you’re watching them to see if they’re making a mistake.”
Placing my flattened palms on the table, I push up so I’m half-standing, and lean over my computer. Scott reads my body language and leans forward to hear me.
I smile serenely. “Tell the crew that I won’t see them make a mistake unless they make a mistake. This is my project and this cozy little space you see here?” I gesture with one hand at my makeshift desk that is decidedly not cozy. “This is where I’ll be unless I’m needed elsewhere.”
Scott nods curtly, getting my drift. He doesn’t look angry or upset, just resolute. “Yes, Boss.” He throws in a salute and walks out from under the shade of the canopy.
“Hey, Scott?” I call after him. He turns. “You or anyone on your crew is welcome to steal some shade anytime they need it.”
“I’ll pass that along,” he says, turning back around and striding away.
I look back at my computer. The screen has gone to sleep, but I look at it anyway, as if it has something interesting on it. I refuse to look anywhere else. A hundred bucks says the crew is glancing my way after my exchange with the contractor, and I’ll be damned if I give them something to support their worry over my presence.
For the next hour, I search the internet for landscaping ideas, sketching out different concepts. I want something clean and pretty, but not too manicured. Something that looks lived in but not abandoned. I don’t look up again until the crunch of tires draws my attention.
A truck with the HCC logo on the side pulls up alongside my car. My heart beats double-time until the driver’s side door opens and legs that definitely do not belong to Wes hop out. A breath of disappointment slips from my lips. I’ve seen Wes every night this week, and somehow it doesn’t feel like enough. These pesky jobs of ours are really getting in the way.
Jessie steps back from the door and closes it. She shields her eyes from the sun and looks around until she spots me waving at her. She starts for me, and the crosswind pushes her sundress around her thighs. The construction workers try like hell not to make it obvious they’re checking out her long legs. I bet they’d cast their gaze back to the job if they knew she was seventeen. And a Hayden with three older brothers. At least, most of them would.