19. Maria
Maria
I’m humming to myself as I set the breakfast table. Eight o’clock, and no one’s up yet except me. They must all be sleeping off those beers. The only reason I’m up is because of an urgent need to pee that had forced me out of Grant’s warm, comfortable bed.
Still wearing yesterday’s clothes, too. Oh well. I doubt anyone will notice. Or care. I decide I’ll wait to take a shower and get changed until after breakfast.
Just then I hear a loud banging of a bedroom door and footsteps coming rapidly down the hall towards the kitchen. The door swings open with a jerk to reveal Grant, as yet unshaven, wild-eyed. He glances around the kitchen, then looks to me.
“You seen Abe this morning?”
“No. Isn’t he in his room?”
“No. I’ve looked.”
“What about the—” but he cuts me off with a wild wave of his hand.
“Workshop? No, I looked there too. I looked everywhere. And anyway he…” His voice trails off into a grim silence. “I’ll get Regan,” he finally says. “You go wake your father. This is serious.”
A few minutes later, we’re all assembled in the kitchen sipping mugs of strong, hot coffee.
“What do you mean, ‘He’s gone’?” I ask.
“Upped and left,” Grant says. “Packed his kit, and headed off.”
“Packed his kit?”
“Yeah. He’s…” Grant fights back a gulp. Anyone can see how cut up he is about it. “He’s tidied his room up. Folded everything neatly. Put everything away in drawers and just taken what he needs and he’s gone.”
“But… it makes no sense,” Papa says, frowning. Trying to understand. “Did he leave a note or something?”
“Not a note,” Grant explains. “Not exactly, anyway. He left these. They were on his bedside table.”
In his hands are two slim, wooden boxes. On seeing them, Regan gives a start, his face grim.
“Shit,” he says.
“What are they?” I ask, looking first at Grant and then at Regan.
“Here, look for yourself.” Grant hands me the boxes and sits down, staring at the wall in front of him as if transfixed. If anything, Regan looks worse.
I open the boxes.
“These are medals… wait a minute… is that a Purple Heart?”
“Yeah.” Regan confirms. “And the other one is a Silver Star.”
“Abe’s?”
“Yeah. Abe’s.”
“Shit. I didn’t know.” I look again at Regan. There are tears in his eyes.
“Why would you? He ain’t the type to crow about it.”
“What has he taken, if he’s left these behind?”
“Well, I don’t know for sure,” says Grant.
“But some of his outdoor clothing is gone. Plus a lot of his survival equipment, headtorch, hiking boots, rifle—a nice one too, with a long-range laser sight and infra-red for night use—, a handgun, his fishing pole, his camping gear, probably a whole load of food and water, knowing Abe. Basically, everything he’ll need, and nothing he won’t. Nothing that will slow him down.”
“Jesus. He sounds like a one-man army.” I say, and Grant chuckles, mirthlessly.
“Yeah, that’s Abe. Always prepared.”
“So, where’s he gone?” I ask.
“No fucking idea,” comes Grant’s despondent answer.
“I know,” says Regan quietly. We all turn our heads to look at him.
“What, how?”
“Where?”
We all start talking at once, until Regan holds up a hand.
“And what is more,” he continues. “I know why he left us, as well.”
We’re all sitting round the kitchen table—Papa, Grant, Regan and me. Breakfast has been hastily consumed, and the dirty dishes are stacked in the sink. Regan had insisted we eat first and talk afterwards, and Grant had backed him up.
“Gotta keep our energy reserves up,” he’d said.
I suppose they had a point, but nobody had really felt like eating. The whole room feels tense somehow, thick with worry and too many unspoken thoughts.
“Right,” says Grant at last. “Spill the beans, Regan. What’s going on? Take it from the top.”
“Okay, Boss, but is it alright to be candid?”
“This is too important for pussy-footing about,” says Grant flatly.
Regan glances toward me and Papa. I nod slightly, and Papa gestures calmly with one hand.
“Go ahead, son. Just say it how it is.”
“Alright. Backstory first, but I’m gonna keep this short.
The three of us—that’s me, Grant and Abe—we came together by chance.
Flung together, you could say. What made us close is that we were the only three survivors of a particularly nasty firefight back in Iraq, back when we were all serving in Special Forces. ”
“Is that where Abe got his medals?” I ask quietly.
“Yeah,” says Regan. “But that ain’t really the important bit right now.
What matters is this: the three of us made a pact afterwards.
Sealed it in blood. Real old-school style.
” He pauses briefly. “The deal was simple. So long as the three of us needed each other, we’d be there for each other.
No questions. No excuses. We’d be there. ”
He glances at Grant, who gives a faint nod without looking up.
“So here’s the thing,” Regan continues. “This is about Maria. About me and Maria… and about Grant and Maria too.”
Papa says nothing, simply listening.
Regan shifts awkwardly in his chair.
“Sorry, Sandro… sir. But Maria and me… we’ve been intimate a few times. I swear to you, I meant no disrespect. It just… happened.”
Heat floods my face, but Papa merely sighs softly and motions for him to continue.
“And last night,” Regan says, rubbing tiredly at his jaw, “after everyone headed off to bed, I came back out for a glass of water. And I saw Maria going into Grant’s room.”
Grant says nothing.
Neither do I.
“I didn’t have a problem with it,” Regan says quickly. “Hell, I was surprised maybe, but that was about it. But this morning… putting everything together…”
His voice trails away.
“Abe knew.”
Silence settles heavily across the kitchen.
“You know Abe,” Regan continues quietly. “He’s a clever devil. Maybe too clever for his own good sometimes. If I figured it out, then Abe definitely did. And I think…” He swallows hard. “I think he decided he wasn’t needed anymore.”
Grant stares down at the table.
“You think he believed we’d become a unit without him.”
“Yeah,” whispers Regan. “I do.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah.” Regan’s voice cracks badly. “He must’ve felt so damn lonely.”
For a few moments nobody speaks.
Then suddenly Regan folds forward, elbows braced on the table, head in his hands.
“Oh, the fucking idiot,” he chokes out. “Doesn’t he know? Doesn’t he fucking know?”
Grant looks devastated, but says nothing.
Regan drags a shaking hand down his face.
“I never told him what he meant to me. Never said thank you properly. Never said any of it.”
Without even thinking about it, I get up and move around the table, wrapping my arms tightly around his shoulders.
“It’s okay,” I say as gently as I can. “We’ll find him. We’ll bring him home.”
“Yeah,” whispers Grant hoarsely. His face looks pale and rigid, like carved stone. “We’ll bring him home alright.”
“So, Regan,” Papa says quietly, speaking for the first time since the confession. “Two things.”
“Sir?”
“First thing, please stop calling me ‘sir’ and go back to calling me Sandro. You and Maria… Grant and Maria…” A faint smile touches his face. “Heck, she’s twenty-seven, not sixteen. It’s none of my business.”
“Yes, but?—”
“And if it was my business,” Papa continues calmly, talking straight over him, “then honestly, I’d tell her she’d fallen on her feet.” He glances at me, amusement flickering briefly in his tired eyes. “Picked herself a much better pair of men than the fool I chose for her.”
My face burns hotter still.
“In short,” Papa says, “you both have my blessing. All I’m sorry about is that I didn’t produce twins for you, but you’ll just have to manage somehow with the one.” He waves a hand dismissively. “Now let’s say no more about it.”
Grant gives a short nod.
Regan opens his mouth to speak, but Papa raises a hand before he can.
“That was the first thing. Second thing is this: Maria and I are partially responsible for upsetting the balance here. Oh, I know neither of us intended any harm, but intentions don’t really matter now.
What matters is fixing this.” He looks between Grant and Regan. “So tell us what we can do to help.”
There’s a brief silence.
“And as a starting point,” Papa continues, “you said you thought you knew where Abe had gone. So perhaps we should begin there.”
Nobody speaks for several long seconds.
Then Grant shifts in his chair and holds out his hand toward Papa.
“Thank you, Sandro.”
The two men shake hands quietly, looking each other straight in the eye. Then Papa offers his hand to Regan, who shakes it solemnly too.
And somehow that’s enough.
The awkwardness fades. Not gone entirely perhaps, but eased. Cleared away by honesty and a few carefully chosen words.
“Alright, Regan,” says Grant. “You still think you know where Abe’s gone?”
“I could be wrong of course, but yeah. I think so.”
“So where is he?”
“Reckon he’s at Silverlode Pass.”
“Silverlode Pass?” I ask. “Why there?”
Regan sighs deeply.
“I had a feeling that’d be your next question. You want the short answer or the long one?”
“The short one,” says Grant immediately.
“Alright. Because I followed him there once.”
Grant closes his eyes briefly.
“Fine,” he growls. “Now give us the long version. But Regan?”
“Yeah, Boss?”
“Try to keep it under five minutes.”
“Sure, Boss. No problem.” Regan settles back in his chair and takes a sip of coffee. “See, when we first came here three years ago, Abe and me kinda turned the whole thing into a game.”
“What sort of game?” asks Papa.
“Well, we treated everything like a military operation. Gave the whole setup a codename and everything.” A faint grin touches his face. “‘Operation Tow Truck.’”
To my surprise, Grant actually snorts softly at that.
“Oh, don’t laugh,” says Regan. “Both Abe and me took this place every bit as seriously as you did. We just figured somebody around here ought to have a little fun while doing it.”
Grant rolls his eyes but says nothing.
“So anyway,” Regan continues, “once we’d got established here, secured the perimeter, figured out supply runs and learned the terrain, we started doing what we’d been trained to do.”
“Which is?” asks Papa.
“Preparing fallback positions. Emergency bug-out locations. Somewhere to disappear to if things ever went sideways.”
“Like safe houses,” I say.
“Exactly. Only Abe turned it competitive, because of course he did. We each started searching for secret hideouts in the mountains, then trying to keep them hidden from the other guy.” Regan shakes his head faintly.
“Half the fun was knowing if one of us discovered the other’s location, we’d probably steal it or sabotage it just out of spite. ”
“You people are insane,” I murmur.
“Probably,” Regan admits.
“Anyway, one day I get called out on a recovery job near Summersville. Only before I arrive, the customer phones back saying they managed to get the engine running.”
“So you headed home?” asks Grant.
“Yeah. And when I got back, what do I see? Old Abe sneaking out in my F-150.”
“Your truck,” says Grant dryly.
“Yeah, my truck. Man had no respect for personal property.”
“You stole my shotgun for six months.”
“That was borrowing.”
Grant shakes his head.
“Anyway,” Regan continues quickly, “Abe didn’t realize I was back because I’d parked around behind the workshop, and I was over by the tree line taking a p—” He glances at me. “Using the bathroom.”
Despite everything, I almost smile.
“So I see him heading out loaded with gear, trying to look all casual about it, which immediately tells me he’s up to something. Naturally, I followed him.”
“In a tow truck,” says Grant flatly.
“From a distance,” says Regan defensively. “Very professional. Special Forces level surveillance.”
Grant gives him a look.
“Anyway,” Regan says quickly, “he headed toward Silverlode Pass. Eventually I had to ditch the truck and continue on foot, because Abe was good in the woods. Real good.”
“So what did you find?” I ask quietly.
“At first? Nothing. Which was exactly why Abe liked the place.”
Regan leans back slightly, eyes distant now as he remembers.
“Silverlode Pass looks like dead country unless you know where to look. Thick forest. Rocky ground. Old mining trails half swallowed by weeds and time. Most people avoid it.”
“But?” says Papa.
“But hidden behind the ridgeline there’s this little valley. Beautiful place too. Completely sheltered by the mountains and almost impossible to spot unless you’re right on top of it.”
He pauses briefly.
“There’s a lake there. Crystal clear water. Forest all around it. Plus a freshwater spring nearby, good fishing, plenty of game…” He exhales slowly. “And there’s an old abandoned hunting lodge up there too.”
Grant’s eyes narrow slightly.
“What kind of condition?”
“Not terrible. Roof needs patching in places, but structurally it’s sound enough. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if Abe’s spent the last three years quietly fixing the place up whenever he got spare time.”
A strange ache settles in my chest at that thought.
Abe, all alone up there.
“You really think he’s there now?” I ask softly.
“I’d bet money on it,” says Regan.
Grant pushes his chair back sharply.
“Then what the hell are we waiting for?”
“You go. I’ll stay here,” says Sandro.
“What? Why”
“Because he might come back. And if there’s no one here then he might go again. Someone ought to be here, and I’m the oldest by a long way, which also makes me the slowest—physically anyway. Plus, when you do meet… well…”
“What?”
“Well,” says Sandro gently. “Seems to me you’ll need to have a heart-to-heart conversation—all four of you.
” He gets up and starts collecting mugs and heading for the sink.
“No… you three go. I’ll wash up the breakfast things and get the place tidy for when you come back. Now go, and may God go with you.”