Chapter 20 Four Hundred and Ninety-Eight Feet
The kitchen was smaller than she'd expected.
Marlene stood in the narrow galley, her hands braced against the counter, staring at a refrigerator that hummed like it was on its last legs.
The contents were sparse—a carton of eggs, half a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter with a knife still stuck inside.
Bachelor food. Grief food. The kind of sustenance a man kept when he'd stopped believing meals were worth the effort.
She pulled out the eggs. The bread. The peanut butter disappeared back into the fridge, its knife still embedded like a flag planted in conquered territory.
French toast. She could manage French toast.
The skillet was in the dish drainer, still wet. She dried it with a paper towel. The motions were automatic—cracking eggs, whisking with a fork, soaking bread. Muscle memory from a thousand diner shifts. The first piece hit the hot skillet with a sizzle that filled the silence.
Through the wall, she could hear Gideon breathing. The hospital bed creaked when he shifted. She'd left him staring at the ceiling, the letter still on the floor where it had fallen. Three pages of secrets he'd carried for three years. Three pages he'd finally let someone else hold.
He told me. The thought landed in her chest and stayed there. He actually told me.
The French toast was browning at the edges when she heard the knock.
Not a polite knock. Not the tentative rap of a neighbor asking to borrow sugar. This was three sharp pounds—fist against wood—the kind of knock that didn't request entry so much as demand it.
Marlene's hand froze on the spatula.
"Marcus T. Gideon." The voice was muffled through the door, but she recognized it. Not Colonel Gideon—someone else. Someone with the flat, practiced authority of a man who'd said these words a hundred times before. "This is the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department. Open the door."
The spatula clattered into the skillet.
Gideon's voice came from the bedroom, sharp with alarm. "Marlene?"
"Stay there." She wiped her hands on her jeans. Her heart was pounding now, a hard staccato against her ribs. "I'll handle it."
She crossed the living room in five steps.
The door had a peephole—cheap plastic, the view distorted—but she could make out two figures in the hallway.
One in the khaki uniform of a sheriff's deputy, his hat tucked under his arm.
The other in the crisp polo shirt and pressed khakis she'd last seen retreating down this same hallway less than an hour ago.
Colonel Thomas Gideon. Gray eyes. Hard jaw. A manila envelope in his hand.
Marlene opened the door.
"Miss Cross." The colonel's voice was silk wrapped around steel. "I believe I told you to leave."
"And I believe I told you to make me." She looked at the deputy. He was young—maybe thirty, with a sandy mustache and the uncomfortable posture of a man who'd rather be anywhere else. "Can I help you, Deputy?"
The deputy shifted his weight. "Ma'am, we've received a complaint of trespassing. This gentleman—" He gestured at the colonel. "—says you've been harassing his son and refusing to leave the premises."
"Harassing." Marlene's laugh was bitter. "I flew here from Germany to see him. He invited me in. You can ask him yourself."
"That won't be necessary." The colonel opened the envelope. Pulled out a sheaf of papers. "I have a temporary restraining order, signed by a judge this morning. It prohibits you from coming within five hundred feet of my son or his residence."
The words didn't register. Not at first. They arranged themselves into nonsense, like the receptionist at Landstuhl telling her Gideon had been transferred, like the email that said don't look for me, like every door that had slammed in her face since she'd crossed an ocean to find him.
"You got a restraining order." Her voice was flat. Disbelieving. "Against me."
"For his protection." The colonel's gray eyes were unreadable. "My son is a wounded veteran recovering from severe trauma. He's not in his right mind. He's vulnerable to manipulation by people who might take advantage of his condition."
"You son of a bitch."
"Marlene?" Gideon's voice came from behind her, closer now.
She turned. He was in the doorway of the bedroom—not walking, no, not walking, but in the wheelchair she'd seen folded in the corner.
His left arm was still in the sling, his face pale with the effort of transferring himself from the bed.
But his eyes were on his father, and they were burning.
"Dad. What did you do?"
The colonel's expression flickered. Just for a moment. "What I had to. You're not thinking clearly, Marcus. This woman—"
"This woman crossed an ocean to find me." Gideon's hands gripped the wheels of his chair. His knuckles were white. "She stood up to you when I couldn't. She read my letter. She knows everything. And she's still here. So don't stand there and tell me she's the one who's hurting me."
"Son—"
"Don't call me that." The words cracked through the apartment.
The man in the hallway—the one in the wheelchair near the mailboxes—stopped laughing.
Everything went quiet. Even the radiator held its breath.
"You pulled strings to get me on that convoy. You convinced the doctors I was unstable. You flagged my file so she couldn't find me. You've been controlling my life since I was eighteen years old, and I'm done. Do you hear me? I'm done."
The colonel's jaw tightened. The envelope trembled in his hand—just slightly, just for a second—before he steadied it.
"The order is temporary," he said. "It can be made permanent at the hearing next week. I've already spoken with the judge. He understands the situation."
"The situation." Marlene's voice was ice. "The situation where you're trying to isolate your son from anyone who might help him? The situation where you're using the legal system to punish a woman you've never even met?"
"The situation where a waitress from Oklahoma inserted herself into my son's medical care and refused to leave when asked." The colonel turned to the deputy. "I'd like her removed now."
The deputy looked at Marlene. At Gideon in the wheelchair. At the colonel with his manila envelope and his cold gray eyes. His mustache twitched.
"Ma'am," he said. "I'm going to have to ask you to come with me."
"She hasn't done anything wrong." Gideon wheeled himself forward. The chair caught on the edge of the rug, and he had to shove hard to free it. "She's my guest. My invitation. You can't—"
"The order says five hundred feet, sir." The deputy's voice was apologetic now. "It's temporary, like your father said. You can contest it at the hearing. But right now, she needs to leave."
Marlene looked at the French toast burning in the skillet. The eggs she'd cracked. The bread she'd soaked. A meal she'd been making for a man who hadn't eaten a real dinner in weeks.
"Can I say goodbye?"
The deputy hesitated. The colonel opened his mouth, but the deputy held up a hand.
"Two minutes." He stepped back from the door. "I'll be right here."
Marlene crossed to Gideon. The wheelchair was cheap—VA-issue, the armrests scuffed, the seat cushion flattened. He looked smaller in it than he had in the hospital bed. Smaller than he had in her apartment, standing in her doorway with a packed duffel and a promise to come back.
"This isn't over," she said.
"I know."
"He's going to try to make it permanent. The hearing. He's going to—"
"I know." Gideon caught her hand. His grip was weak, still weakened from the sling, but his fingers laced through hers. "But he doesn't know you. Not yet. He doesn't know what you're capable of."
"I'm capable of burning down the world. We've established that."
A ghost of a smile. There and gone. "Don't burn it down yet. Save that for the hearing."
She leaned down. Pressed her forehead to his. His breath was warm against her lips, and she could smell the hospital soap still clinging to his skin, and somewhere behind her the deputy shifted his weight and the colonel cleared his throat.
"I love you," she said.
"I know." His eyes were wet. "I love you too. That's the only thing that still works, remember?"
"Not the only thing." She pressed her lips to his forehead. His eyelid. The bridge of his nose. "I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to find somewhere to stay. And I'm coming back."
"Marlene—"
"You told me not to come. I came anyway. You told me not to look for you. I looked anyway. Do you really think a piece of paper is going to stop me?"
She kissed him. Not a goodbye kiss—she refused to call it that—but a kiss that said wait for me. A kiss that said this isn't finished. A kiss that lingered long enough for the deputy to clear his throat and the colonel to make a sound of disgust and the man in the hallway to start laughing again.
Then she pulled back. Slipped the chain of his dog tags over her head. Pressed them into his palm.
"Hold onto these for me," she said. "I'm going to need a reason to come back."
Gideon stared at the tags. At her. His jaw worked, and for a moment she thought he might cry, but he didn't. He closed his fingers around the metal and nodded.
"I'll be here."
"Ma'am." The deputy was in the doorway now, his hat still tucked under his arm. "It's time."
Marlene straightened. Grabbed her bag from where it had fallen near the door.
The colonel stepped aside as she passed—not a retreat, never a retreat, but a calculated movement that put him between her and Gideon.
The last thing she saw before the deputy closed the door was the colonel's back, broad and unyielding, blocking her view of the wheelchair and the man in it.
The hallway stretched ahead of her. The radiator clanked.
The man near the mailboxes laughed at something no one else could hear.
And Marlene Cross walked out of Building C with a deputy at her elbow and a fire in her chest that had been burning since the day she'd walked into her father's hardware store and realized she was already gone.
Outside, the November sun had climbed high over Silver Spring. The sky was the color of old pewter.
She had no money. No place to stay. A restraining order that kept her five hundred feet from the only person she'd crossed an ocean to find.
But she had her brother's photograph in her purse. And she had the taste of Gideon's kiss still on her lips. And she had a hearing next week, and a colonel who'd made the fatal mistake of thinking she was just a waitress from a town of eight hundred people.
"Ma'am?" The deputy was holding out a card. "Legal aid. If you need help contesting the order. I'm not supposed to give this out, but—" He shrugged. "My ex-wife's sister went through something similar. The system's not always fair."
Marlene took the card. "Thank you."
"Good luck."
The deputy walked back toward the building. Marlene stood on the sidewalk, her bag heavy on her shoulder, the card crisp in her hand.
Five hundred feet. She turned in a slow circle, measuring the distance in her head. The building's entrance. The wheelchair ramp. The window on the ground floor—Apartment 14—with its dirty glass and its view of the bare November trees.
She backed up. Counted her steps. Stopped at the edge of the parking lot.
Four hundred and ninety-eight feet.
Close enough.
She pulled out her phone. Texted the number Gideon had used that morning—the Maryland area code, the one he'd sent from a phone she didn't recognize.
Colonel got a restraining order. Deputies just escorted me out. Can't come within 500 feet of you until the hearing.
But I'm standing at 498 feet. And I'm not leaving.
She hit send.
Three seconds later, the reply came.
Stubborn.
She almost smiled.
Damn right.
She found a bench at the edge of the parking lot. Sat down. Pulled out the legal aid card. Studied the number printed on the back.
The November wind picked up, cold and sharp, but Marlene didn't move. She was four hundred and ninety-eight feet from Gideon. She had a phone number. She had a hearing to prepare for. And she had a colonel who thought a piece of paper could stop her from loving his son.
He was wrong.
She dialed the number.