Chapter 17
Seventeen
The buzzing pulled Ethan from sleep like a fishhook yanked from deep water. Sudden, violent, disorienting.
His phone. His phone was buzzing.
He jolted upright on the couch, heart hammering, momentarily confused about where he was. Not his bed. Living room. Christmas tree lights were still blinking in the corner. Morning light streaming through the windows, too bright, too late?—
What time was it?
Ethan grabbed his phone from where it had fallen between the cushions, squinting at the screen. 9:10 AM. A text notification from the station about next week’s schedule.
9:10.
They should have been back ten minutes ago.
The panic was immediate and visceral, ice water dumped straight into his veins. Lydia had said 9 AM. Back by 9 AM. She’d been specific. And it was 9:10 and the house was still empty, still silent, still wrong.
Maybe they’d just run late. Maybe searching through the boxes had taken longer than expected. Maybe they’d stopped for breakfast on the way back. Maybe?—
No.
Ethan’s gut twisted, that old familiar feeling from Kandahar.
The one that had kept him alive when the logical part of his brain said everything was fine.
The one that made him check the street vendor’s cart twice, made him take a different route back to base, made him hit the ground three seconds before the mortar round landed.
Something was wrong.
He knew it the way he knew his own name. Some things you just knew, some warnings your body gave you that had nothing to do with logic or evidence or reasonable explanations.
Ten minutes. It was only ten minutes. People ran late all the time. Traffic. Flat tire. Lost track of time.
But Lydia wouldn’t be late. Not after last night.
Not after that fight. Not after writing him that note that sounded like goodbye.
She would have been back exactly when she said she’d be back, because she was trying so hard not to impose, not to be a burden, not to take up more space in his life than she thought she deserved.
Unless she couldn’t be back.
Ethan’s hands shook as he pulled up Lydia’s contact. The new number he’d programmed in after she’d gotten the replacement phone. He hit call.
It went to voicemail.
“This is Lydia. I can’t come to the phone right now?—”
He hung up, tried again. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe the signal was bad. Maybe?—
It went to voicemail.
His heart rate kicked up another notch. He tried a third time, his thumb pressing too hard on the screen, the phone slipping in his sweaty palm.
Voicemail again.
“Fuck,” he breathed. Fourth time. Fifth. Each ring feeling like an eternity, each click to voicemail like a door slamming in his face.
Six times. Seven. On the eighth attempt, Ethan forced himself to stop, to think clearly despite the panic clawing at his throat.
Her phone was off. Or dead. Or destroyed. None of those options were good.
Each unanswered ring ratcheted his anxiety higher, tightening around his chest like a vise, making it hard to breathe, hard to think.
Why wasn’t she answering? Even if she was driving, she’d pull over.
Even if she was searching boxes, one of the kids could have answered for her.
Even if she was angry at him, especially if she was angry at him, she’d answer just to tell him to stop calling.
Unless she couldn’t answer.
The thought made his stomach drop, made his hands shake harder, made the phone nearly slip from his grasp. He tried Caleb, but it rang, then went to voicemail.
“No,” Ethan said out loud, already moving. Grabbing his keys. Shoving his feet into boots without bothering to tie them. “No, no, no.”
Kandahar had taught him to never ignore foreboding.
Had beaten that lesson into him with blood and fire and the screaming of wounded soldiers.
The one time he’d dismissed his gut feeling as paranoia, as caffeine jitters, as stress, the one time he’d told himself he was overreacting, three of his guys had died when the building they’d been about to enter collapsed from a delayed IED.
Never again. Never again would he ignore the screaming certainty that something was wrong.
And right now, every instinct he had was screaming.
Ethan was out the door in seconds, not bothering to lock it, not bothering to grab a jacket despite the November cold. The truck started with a roar, and he was reversing out of the driveway before his seatbelt was even buckled, tires squealing on the frost-slicked pavement.
The farmhouse. Twelve miles. Fifteen minutes if he drove the speed limit.
He could make it in ten.
The truck fishtailed on a patch of black ice as Ethan took the first turn too fast. He corrected automatically, muscle memory from combat driving in worse conditions, and floored it down the empty rural road.
The drive felt endless.
Every second stretched like taffy, time moving wrong, too slow, the road unreeling in front of him like something from a nightmare where you run and run but never get anywhere.
The mountains loomed, dark and indifferent.
The sky was too blue, too bright, too beautiful for the terror clawing up Ethan’s throat.
His mind wouldn’t stop showing him images. Flashing them behind his eyes like a horror film he couldn’t turn off.
Lydia’s face when she’d kissed him that first time after Tom’s phone call.
Desperate and fierce and needing him to make her feel safe, to make her feel wanted, to make her feel like something other than prey.
The way her hands had fisted in his shirt.
The small sound she’d made when he’d pulled her closer.
Tom’s voice on Ethan’s porch, slurred and vicious: “It’s only a matter of time before she destroys you. Just you wait.” The rage in his bloodshot eyes. The whiskey breath. The coiled violence in his stance that said he was one wrong word away from throwing a punch.
The fire marshal’s assessment, delivered with professional detachment: “Accelerant-based. Multiple points of origin. This was attempted murder. Someone wanted these people dead.” The way he’d looked at Ethan when he said it, like he was measuring whether Ethan understood the gravity.
Lydia’s note, the words that had seemed so careful, so final. “Thank you for everything.” Like she was already gone. Like she’d already made up her mind. Like Ethan had been nothing more than a temporary shelter from a storm that was still raging.
Thank you for everything.
Like she was already leaving. Like she’d already decided. Like last night’s fight had been the final straw, and she was just being polite while she planned her exit.
What if he’d been wrong? What if she hadn’t been planning to leave at all? What if something else?—
Tom.
The thought hit Ethan like a fist to the sternum.
Tom knew where they were. Had been to the house.
Had threatened to burn it down. Had already tried once to kill them all.
And now Lydia was at the farmhouse, the isolated farmhouse, with just Caleb and the kids, and Tom knew she’d have to go back there eventually for the insurance, for her things, for?—
Ethan’s foot pressed harder on the accelerator. The truck’s engine roared. Sixty-five. Seventy. Seventy-five on a road posted for forty-five.
He should have gone with her. Should have called in sick to his shift, should have been there, should have protected her. But he’d been too proud, too hurt, too wrapped up in his own feelings to think clearly.
What had he done?
He should have told her that she wasn’t chaos.
That she was life. That his orderly existence had been a mausoleum until she crashed into it.
That he didn’t want things to go back to the way they were before.
Empty and quiet and so carefully controlled that nothing could hurt him because nothing could reach him.
Should have told her that he loved her.
The realization hit him with perfect, devastating clarity.
He loved her. Loved the way she laughed, bright and surprised like she’d forgotten how.
Loved the fierce protectiveness in her eyes when she looked at her kids, like she’d fight the devil himself to keep them safe.
Loved how she wore his flannel shirts, the fabric hanging loose on her frame, making her look both vulnerable and at home.
Loved that she made his coffee the way he liked it without being asked, without making a show of it, just doing it because she paid attention.
Loved her strength. The steel core underneath the fear. The way she kept going when most people would have crumbled.
Loved her vulnerability. The way she let him see her scared, her uncertainty, her struggle. The trust that took.
Loved her determination to keep going even when everything was falling apart, to protect her kids no matter what it cost her, to build something new from ashes.
Loved Eli’s serious concentration when he was reading, his nose scrunched up and his finger following along the page. Loved how the kid asked thoughtful questions, how he noticed things other people missed, how he tried so hard to be grown up when he was still just nine years old.
Loved Rosie’s endless questions and enthusiasm and the way she’d latched onto him like he was worth trusting, like he’d earned it somehow just by being kind.
Loved her giggle. Loved the way she said his name.
Loved how she’d wrap her arms around his legs and squeeze like she was trying to hold the whole world.
Loved the sound of children’s laughter filling his house, filling the silence that had been there for three years. Loved coming home to something other than emptiness. Loved having a reason to make pancakes, to buy chocolate milk, to check if the Christmas lights were working.
Loved them. All of them. The whole chaotic, broken, beautiful package.