23. Ticking Clock
Ticking Clock
Bo
It’s been two hours since Melodie last called Falon.
As a marine pilot, there is always a certain amount of risk.
We were all aware of this going in, but even as the enlisted know the risks, the ones left behind are often the ones who unwillingly pay a price.
They are the ones that get the call when things go wrong, and this is no exception.
Tyler’s plane had crashed due to faulty landing gear.
Add that to high winds, his speed, and a moving trajectory, and his landing became nearly impossible.
He’d saved his men, got them out of danger, and done his job, but heroism does not come without a price. I would know more than most. We are taught to land on a dime, but when the dime keeps moving, and you’re coming at it at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, that dime gets a little small.
After the call, I take Falon into the living room, and the two of us sit on the couch, her in my arms, and Rowdy close to me.
The pizza comes at five as I’d planned. Only now, two slices of pizza sit untouched, and she isn’t watching the show at all.
Her blank stare tells me everything I need to know.
“Falon, honey, you need to eat. It’s past eight. Your mom will call as soon as they know more.” I try to reassure her, but she doesn’t say much.
“I know,” she finally says.
Rowdy curls between us on the couch, his chin on Falon's knee. He's the only one watching whatever home improvement show is on. I don't know what they're building. I haven't actually seen the screen in a while.
I pull her closer and into my arms until she rests her head on my shoulder and finally lets a tear fall.
She’d placed her phone face-up on the end table, waiting for news.
We know he survived, and they told us they were taking him to the hospital, but we didn’t know much more than that.
I told myself it was just a few bumps and bruises.
He and I have flown and landed in worse, but I wasn’t there; I don’t know.
Rowdy is practically in my lap, trying to ground me from spiraling with guilt that I wasn’t there.
I am here, snuggled up with his sister, instead of fighting alongside him as we’d done for years.
The shift in my spiral was getting a little hard to control.
I wasn’t there, but I could still hear the gunshots and the sound of the helicopter blades spinning.
The soldiers yelling and the shift grab Falon’s attention.
She turns to me and places her hand on my cheek, bringing me back to the here and now.
I have to stay present for her; this isn’t about me. This is Falon’s brother, and mine too, I add for myself, because Tyler is a brother even if we weren’t from the same family. He is more a brother than anyone had ever been. The tension in the room is high.
Rowdy’s tail thumps once against the couch. Falon drops her hand to the back of his neck and pets him.
She's been doing that for an hour. He hasn't moved.
"They said they'd call when he was out of surgery." Her voice is flat. "That was?—"
"I know."
She exhales.
"He's going to be fine." I rub her back, and she leans on me.
I've been telling myself the same thing; Tyler is stubborn and has survived worse. The concussion worries me. The broken arm doesn't. A broken arm is just time.
I know broken arms. I had one after a training exercise when the pilot panicked. After that, I became the pilot. He'll be on medical leave. Most likely on base, then after that, he’ll be back on duty.
That last thought hit a little differently now. Would Tyler stay on base, or would he come home to recover?
"I keep thinking," she starts.
"Don't."
She almost laughs. The corners of her mouth move. "That easy, huh. Just don’t?" Her tone was a little lighter, but she still carried the weight.
"No. But don't anyway."
She leans her head back and looks at the ceiling. There's not much else to do when someone you love is in a military hospital, and all you have is a bad TV show and a dog who's glued to your side because he knows how unstable you are at the moment.
"He's going to want to see the house," she says.
That's not what I expected.
"Tyler?"
"He hasn't seen it. Not since I started on it." She shifts. "Not since I bought it, actually. He's been gone."
"It still needs work," she adds.
"It always needs work."
"No, I mean, it needs work." She sits up straighter, and I recognize this look.
This is Falon in panicked list mode. I've seen it at seven in the morning when she's mapping out fence repairs, and at noon when she's reorganizing the tack room.
"The kitchen backsplash isn't finished. The back bedroom still has that patched drywall that I haven't painted. And the guest house bathroom?—"
"Falon."
"—the tile isn't grouted on the left wall, and there's a trim piece missing over the?—"
"Falon." I say it more quietly this time.
She stops.
"Your brother just had surgery," I say. "He's not coming to grade the tile."
She's quiet for a second. Then: "He will."
I don't argue with that, because she might be right.
He’s always been the hardest on her.
"Okay," I say. "Then we'll get to it."
She looks at me.
"We?" She looks hopeful and worried.
"I'm not going anywhere." I kiss her forehead
She holds my eyes for a long second, then turns back to the TV. On screen, someone is extremely excited about the subway tile, and Falon laughs.
Rowdy thumps his tail again, and just like that, Falon had added a new level to the stress we were already under.
Melodie called right as we were falling asleep. It’d been almost eight hours since any of us had heard anything. I’d gotten the phone call right after Melodie, but none of us had heard much.
Falon lunges for the phone and knocks it off the end table. It skitters across the floor, and she chases it like a cat. I catch it, hand it to her. She's already on her feet.
"Mom."
I watch her face.
That's all I can do.
Her shoulders drop. Then her chin drops, and her eyes close, and she presses her free hand flat against her chest.
"Okay," she breathes. "Okay. Yeah. I know. I know, Mom, I will." A pause. "Tell him I said.” She wipes away a tear. “Just tell him he's an idiot, and I love him."
She drops the phone and falls back, lying across the cushions.
"He's out." Her voice breaks on the last word. "Concussion's stable. They had to pin his arm, but they said it's clean and it'll heal just fine."
"Good." I lay down next to her and put my arm under her head. She turns into it, and that's the first time all night she breathes a sigh of relief. Her forehead goes to my shoulder. I feel her exhale move through her whole frame.
Rowdy barks, then groans as he lies down. He’s the most chill dog I’ve ever met.
We lay there, while the home improvement show wraps up its dramatic countertop reveal.
After a while, she says, muffled against my shoulder, "Medical leave."
There it is.
"Yeah," I say.
"How long?"
I think about what I know. I think about the arm, the pin work, the concussion protocol, and flight medical clearance. I think about what it takes to get back in a cockpit.
"Minimum twelve weeks," I say. "More likely fourteen."
She goes quiet.
"Mom says he's coming home and will be here for the Fourth," she says.
"Probably."
Another quiet stretch. The TV cycles into a new episode.
I know what she's thinking, because I'm thinking it too. Tyler coming home is good news. Tyler is stable and alive, and he is coming home. Every part of me knows that.
The other part of me knows what he'll find when he gets here.
She falls asleep in my arms. I pull the covers over her shoulders and pull her in close.
One minute she's smiling, but still a little worried, the next her breathing changes and her weight shifts, and she's out like a light.
I can't sleep, not now. Not after all the stress and worry. Not after my friend crashes, then has surgery, and not after I find out he’s coming home to see his sister in my arms. The more I thought about it, the worse it was.
I’d been lying to him by not telling him.
He was being heroic, and I felt a little like a coward, afraid to face his rejection.
I gently pulled out of her arms. I need to clear my head. Rowdy followed me outside, and we walked together. I check on the horses. Mischief is awake, gnawing on the wood paneling that Falon put up to keep him from the hay.
“She is not going to like that,” I tell him.
At this hour, there wasn’t anything for me to do, not without waking the ranch hands and the dogs, so I headed back inside and sat at the table.
The farmhouse is quiet. Except for the creak of the floor near the pantry, and the tick of the baseboard heat.
I stand in the kitchen for a while. This is Falon’s heart and soul. She loves her family, her house, and her ranch, and I think I’m in there too.
Falon's been at this backsplash for two weeks. I can see where she stopped the other day. Like most days, life sometimes gets in the way. She was mid-row, dead center, when Mischief went barreling past the window. He’d gotten out again.
Falon dropped the whole thing to wrangle the horse.
When she returned later, she bagged the whole thing, and we sat on the porch and watched the stars.
The leftover grout sits in a sealed bag on the counter.
The tile scraper is clean and set aside, like she expected to come back to it.
I pick it up. Put it back.
Not tonight.
But I walk through the kitchen slowly, and I look at what she's built.
The cabinets she sanded and repainted herself.
The window trim is perfectly level. The little rack of hooks by the back door, where she hung a metal dog paw for Rowdy's leash, even though he mostly stays in the guest house, because she thought about it and made room for us here.
This house is going to be beautiful.
Tyler is going to see that. Whatever else happens, he's going to walk in here and see what his sister built, and he's going to know.
I lean against the counter and look at the far wall.
Six weeks. Give or take.
Tyler arrives, and he's going to take one look at the situation, and he's going to know that too. He's not slow. He’s never been slow. He's going to know about me and Falon inside of ten minutes, and the promise I made him at seventeen is going to explode between us like a time bomb.
She comes around the doorway.
I straighten up fast. She waves me off, squinting in the kitchen light.
"Couldn't sleep," she says.
"I know. Me either."
She crosses to the counter and leans against it next to me, shoulder to shoulder. Rowdy drops to the tile with a groan.
"The backsplash is going to drive me insane," she says.
"I can finish it."
She looks at the wall, then at me. "You don't have to?—"
"I know ."
She bumps my shoulder with hers. It's a small thing. And I know she is thanking me.
I put my arm around her and pull her in close. She fits so perfectly there, like she was made for it.
I rest my chin on top of her head.
She says, "He's really okay."
"He is."
"We should do something. Before he gets here."
"July fourth is coming."
"I know."
"Town does it big."
"I know that too." She tips her head up and looks at me. Her eyes are tired. She's still the best thing in any room.
“He might be home then, Mom said, a few days to a week or so before he can come home.”
I look at her.
There's a whole conversation in that look.
I can see by the look on her face what she’s thinking.
Her eyes are glossy, and the crinkle between her brows tells me we're thinking the same thing. Will Tyler’s coming home destroy everything we’ve done, and if I choose her over my friendship with Tyler, the honest answer is, Tyler will be mad as a hornet, but I love Falon more.
"I think it's going to be complicated," I say. "And I think we’ll be okay, but let’s cross that bridge when we get there. Fretting never did anyone any good." If only I could follow my own advice.
"Okay," she says. "We’re crossing bridges later; today we're grouting.”
We stand there in her kitchen, in the two a.m. quiet, with her house half-finished around us, with a hope and a wish that Tyler accepts it.
I just need?—
My phone buzzes on the counter.
One vibration. Screen up.
Tyler Gates.
I stare at it. Falon sees it at the same moment I do. I feel her go still beside me.
Tyler doesn't call at two in the morning. Tyler texts in short bursts, never more than he has to. Tyler calling in the middle of the night means he's awake and wants to talk.
I reach for the phone.