47. Garrett
GARRETT
Zara and I sit in the pew near the middle of the church and wait for the funeral service to begin.
I’m vaguely aware I’m tightening my hold on her hand.
She’s the lifeline keeping me tethered to the spot.
So much loss. So many families missing those they loved.
Not just Kenda’s daughter and Tyson’s family.
But all the families who have lost a loved one to gun violence or while protecting the most vulnerable.
Shit, I miss Tyson. And I miss Clarke and Cooper. They were my friends, my family.
A movement in my periphery has me turning my head. An officer in Marine dress uniform walks down the aisle. I can only see the back of him, but it’s as if all the air in my lungs has been sucked out.
Clarke.
But that’s impossible. Joshua Clarke is dead and buried. I might not have been at his funeral, but I do know that much.
Driven by the haunting failure of my past, I release Zara’s hand and stand. Only one thing has my attention, and it isn’t the man in the coffin waiting to be laid to rest.
I stalk down the aisle, following after Clarke, ignoring the puzzled glances sent my way.
He walks to the main doorway and pulls open the door. The bright sunlight spills in, creating an ethereal glow that outlines the man. Like he’s a spirit sent from heaven.
I trail after him, stepping into the stifling hot air. Stifling, but free of the stench of death and despair. I keep following him, scrambling to find purchase on all the things I want to tell him. The same old apology hovers on my lips.
It’s only once he gets to the path leading to the sidewalk that he stops and turns, giving me a clear view of his face.
A face that doesn’t belong to Clarke.
Of course it doesn’t. He’s not visiting from heaven. He’s not here to blame you for failing to protect him from the explosion. For failing to save his life.
I release a long breath, trying to calm my heart. I can’t go back inside to watch the service. Not yet. I need to regroup first, find my footing. I walk to the nearby bench in the shade of a flowering magnolia and sit.
My forearms resting on my thighs, I stare at a discarded cigarette butt on the ground and disappear into my memory of the day everything went to hell.
As I sit on the bench alone, ignoring the occasional person walking on the sidewalk, I attempt more than once to will myself to stand.
To return to where I left Zara in the church.
To go watch the service. But the sweltering heat of the day has me glued to the bench.
Sweat trickles down my back, under the white dress shirt and black suit jacket.
I’m vaguely aware of the steady hum of vehicles driving past the church, but that’s the only noise that filters in.
I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting on the bench when the church door opens, and people file out.
Shit . I couldn’t even get my ass off the bench and go inside and sit through the service. I left Zara to mourn a man who was a near stranger to her. I left Zara to do what I couldn’t.
I keep staring at the ground, unable to look at the faces walking past me.
She sits beside me on the bench. Her familiar jasmine scent gently embraces me, and for the first time since stepping inside the church, I breathe a little easier .
Zara rubs soothing circles on my back. She doesn’t say anything but continues to ground me with her touch.
I finally look up at her, and tear-glistened eyes meet mine. “Sorry for leaving like that.” Shame is a heavy winter coat draped over my shoulders in the summer heat.
“You wanna talk about it?”
I shake my head. She’s got enough going on without me dumping my problems on her. I take her hand and straighten to my feet.
I don’t release her hand as we walk to the parking lot. And when we stop at the passenger side of the rental car, I still don’t let go.
I cup her face with my free hand and kiss her.
Kiss her like she’s the life preserver keeping me afloat.
My tongue glides over hers, and I get lost in the kiss for a little longer, paying attention to how her soft body feels against me, how she tastes, how her sweet moans escape with each flick of my tongue.
I capture each of her sounds and rest my forehead on hers. I can’t tell her why I’m unable to open my heart to someone, why I don’t deserve love in return, but there is one thing I can do that will benefit us both.
“I could use an orgasm right now.” The words come out broken, splintered. Pained.
She squeezes my hand, her breath fanning my kiss-swollen lips, and whispers, “I know.”
Two days after Tyson’s funeral, I’m sitting on my patio with Kellan. The turkey club sandwiches Athena made us while Kellan and I were running sit on a plate in the middle of the table. I bite into my sandwich. The low whirl of the vacuum inside reaches us through the open windows.
Peony is preoccupied, following a bug hopping through the sunny patch of grass.
“Who else knows what happened?” Kellan asks, grabbing another sandwich from the plate. I’ve just finished telling him about how Cooper and Clarke died.
I won’t tell Zara about it, to let her into the horrors I experienced there. But I can tell Kellan, the one person who knows what it was like in Afghanistan, who experienced the same nightmare.
“You mean other than the military? And now you?”
He nods, his face free of what he’s thinking after I dumped that all on him.
I wouldn’t have told him if he hadn’t called me out on it during our run. He knew something was off the moment we started up the trail, but it wasn’t until we were cooling down after our final sprint that he brought it up.
“No one. And I want it to stay that way.” I give him a meaningful look over my sandwich.
“You know it wasn’t your fault, right?”
I huff out a humorless laugh as Peony walks toward us, poking at whatever is in her hand. “I might not have put the bomb in the building, but I should have listened to my gut when it told me something was off.”
Peony stops in front of Kellan, cutting off whatever rebuttal he might have said. “Hi!” She grins at him and shows him the purple petal on her palm.
“What do you have?” He leans down and picks up the flower.
“You!”
“Is this for me?” He points to himself.
She rapidly nods, then toddles to me and stretches her arms across my sprawled legs. “Daddy. Up.”
I hoist her onto my lap, happy for the distraction, and bounce her on my thighs.
This, I can handle.
Talking about how I’m skilled at failing the people I love, like I failed Kenda and Cooper and Clarke, is something I’d rather not do with Kellan. Or anyone.
Peony giggles and chats with Kellan as if they’re life-long friends. He replies, though neither of us knows what she’s saying. But that doesn’t matter .
What matters is she’s cheerfully talking to us and is smiling.
The fear she initially felt toward us has vanished. In its place is a trust I will fight for, to make sure it never dies.
Kellan’s phone rings on the table. He checks the screen and accepts the call. “What’s up?”
He doesn’t have his phone on speaker, but his gruff tone softens, giving away the caller is Emily. I don’t think he realizes his voice does that whenever she calls him.
“Okay.…Okay.…” Anger flickers in his expression, but his tone is neutral, the anger obviously not directed at Emily. “I’ll be right there.” He ends the call and stands.
“Work emergency?”
He grunts—and just like that, he’s back to his shut-down self. The result of his fucked-up biological mother who abandoned him as a young child and a father he never knew.
“Bye, Peony.” He waves at her, but the smile he usually flashes for her benefit is now nothing more than a fizzled light bulb.
I tickle Peony’s tummy as he heads for the side gate. “How ’bout you and I search for fairies?” While Athena finishes whatever she’s doing inside. Then she can look after Peony while I work.
“Fai-wies.”
We walk through the backyard, checking the trees with the tiny doors and windows on the trunks. Zara and Jess were busy last weekend, setting up the fairy homes while I was away as a surprise.
Athena is standing on the patio, flipping through a stack of envelopes in her hand, by the time we return.
“Any sign of your replacement ID and Social Security Number?”
“Not yet.” She continues flipping through the stack, her expression not revealing her thoughts about the delay. If it were me, at this point, I’d be checking into what was taking so long. “They will come when they come.” She hands me the mail with a shrug.
I just don’t get how she can be so nonchalant about the long wait. It’s like she’s not interested in having a bank account.
“You do realize I will be telling the IRS that I’m paying you for childcare?” For all I know, she wasn’t planning to file her taxes for this year, which is why she isn’t in a rush to get a bank account. But I have no intention of being dragged into her mess if that’s her plan.
“I know.” She walks to the large toy truck on the grass and picks it up. “I’m sure everything will arrive in plenty of time for that.”
Let’s hope so—otherwise the government really needs to get its act together when it comes to these delays.
I kneel next to Peony. “Daddy’s going back to work now. Can I have a hug first?”
She tries to scramble onto my bent leg in an attempt to hug me. I scoop her up, balance her on my thigh, and embrace her. She returns my hug, her little body crushed against me. I kiss her cheek and lower her to the ground.
I straighten, wave bye to her, and walk to the house as I check through the stack of mail. Nothing exciting. And no letters from Annie Wilkes 3.0.
Two others have also shown up at my house following the first one a month and a half ago. I handed each letter over to the police.
I flip to the last envelope. My name and address are handwritten on the front. I don’t recognize the return address. The only thing I do recognize is the town it came from.
Cooper’s hometown.
The one his family moved to following his death.
The handwriting doesn’t look familiar. It might have been a while since I last saw his wife’s writing, but this isn’t it. Her handwriting is unmistakably feminine, the letters smaller and neater.
I carry the mail into my office, toss the rest of the stack onto my desk, and open the last envelope. I put on my reading glasses and remove the single sheet of lined paper.
Garrett,
You sit there in your fancy house, making more money than you could ever need because of those shit books you write.
Okay, not a fan of my stuff. I should toss the letter into the recycle bin, but something compels me to keep reading. Stupidity, perhaps ?
It’s obvious you don’t give a crap about the people you’ve hurt. The people who cared about you when they shouldn’t have bothered. It should have been you who died that day in Afghanistan. My brother should have been the one who came home.
You don’t even care what you did to his family. Cassie struggles every day with the loss of the man she loved and still loves. Their kids still struggle every day, waiting for their mother to be the next one who disappears from their lives. All because of you.
You know what pisses me off most? That you never did time for your gross negligence. There was no punishment for your crime against my brother, against the woman he loved.
I hope you burn in hell when it’s your time to leave this world.
Cooper’s brother didn’t bother to sign it, but I can picture in my mind the man who wrote the letter. Austin. Cooper’s younger brother.
Shit, how did he even know what went down when his brother died?
He’s right, there was no trial. I didn’t do anything wrong—other than not listen to my gut.
Ultimately, it was the enemy who ended Clarke’s and Cooper’s lives with the booby trap that Cooper accidentally triggered.
But you were there. And now, you’re here—and they’re dead.
My gut churns. The familiar sickening feeling of guilt resurfaces, and too much saliva coats my mouth. Why did it have to end that way?
I swallow back the pain and pull open my desk drawer. I shove the letter inside, remove my glasses, and rub my weary eyes.
Fuck. How do I make up for what I’ve cost their families? I reached out to their wives after I returned stateside, but at the time neither wanted to talk to me, caught up in their own grief. Instead of trying again later on, I clung to my guilt, letting it fester deep beneath the surface.
Guilt that flared up once more after Peony showed up, motherless, on my front stoop.