Chapter 34
Seven Years Later - Tenth Anniversary of Dwight’s Death
Tyrone had been to enough military cemeteries to know they all had their own kind of silence. But there was something about Arlington that always ripped something in his soul a little bit deeper every single time he walked through its gates.
Mark and Dwight whispered behind him. They’d been instructed to keep their voices down and apparently considered whispering at roughly normal conversational volume to be sufficient.
Shane made the small, snuffling noises of a newborn.
He’d slept through the drive and the walk from the car, but protested now at every attempt Glenna made to reposition him against her chest.
Silence surrounded everything this hallowed ground held. Names, dates, wars, and the men and women whose lives had been reduced to a handful of carefully carved words while the people who loved them tried to figure out how to rebuild a life that was shattered without them.
Tyrone stood several feet from Dwight’s grave with his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans and looked at the name he’d spent ten years learning how to live with.
Ten fucking years. How has it been ten years, brother?
Some days it felt longer. Others, he could close his eyes and be back in a team room at Camp Lejeune with Dwight bitching about somebody touching his gear, or hear him laughing through comms, or see him standing in the doorway of his cage with that look on his face that meant he was about to say something guaranteed to piss Tyrone off.
“Daddy Zorro?”
Tyrone turned to where Kelsey stood beside Glenna. How was their baby girl now thirteen years old and somehow already tall enough that he was starting to suspect she would look her mother directly in the eye any day now?
The little girl who had once believed a green button possessed magical powers was disappearing faster than he fucking liked, replaced by a teenager with long legs, a smart mouth, and enough confidence to make every adult around her periodically reconsider the wisdom of encouraging her independence.
His gaze dropped to the flowers in Kelsey’s hands. “You ready, Kels- Bells?”
She nodded. He didn’t ask if she was okay.
Kelsey would tell him if she wasn’t. That had been one of the hardest things he’d had to learn about being her father.
He couldn’t intercept every hurt before it reached her.
Or turn his body into a ballistic shield between Kelsey and everything the world might throw at her, no matter how much some primitive part of him still considered that a perfectly reasonable parenting strategy.
His job was to be there when the hits came and to pick up the pieces they left in their wake.
The same way Glenna was there for him.
He held out his hand. Kelsey took it. She hadn’t done that automatically for a couple of years now, and Tyrone was man enough to admit the small weight of her fingers in his almost fucking finished him.
They walked together. Glenna followed with Shane tucked against her chest, one hand cupped protectively around the back of their newborn son’s head.
The twins came behind her, unusually subdued now that they could see where they were going, and Tyrone slowed enough to let everyone close the distance before stopping in front of Dwight’s headstone.
Nobody spoke immediately.
Kelsey stepped forward first. Of course she did. This was her father.
Tyrone watched her crouch and lay the flowers near the base of the stone before running her fingers across the engraved letters of Dwight’s name. “Hi, Daddy.”
Tyrone looked away toward the endless rows of markers because apparently seven years of fatherhood hadn’t made him immune to being emotionally ambushed by his daughter.
As if knowing how his heart ached, Glenna’s hand found his, and he closed his fingers around hers.
Kelsey stayed crouched. “We came back.” She paused a moment before continuing on, “I made varsity.”
Tyrone smiled. Kelsey had spent half the flight over trying to decide what she wanted to tell Dwight first. Not about school generally, or the argument she’d had with one of her friends.
Not about the fact she had recently informed Tyrone that his music was ancient, an insult he still hadn’t recovered from. She told him she’d made varsity.
“Dad says you’d have told everyone before I even got home.”
“He would have,” Tyrone confirmed.
“I don’t really remember your face,” Kelsey whispered quietly. “I wish I did.”
There wasn’t anything he could say to fix that. So he didn’t try.
Kelsey had memories of Dwight, but not enough.
Fragments mostly. A voice she wasn’t entirely sure she remembered or had constructed from videos.
The smell of something she associated with him but couldn’t name.
Sitting on his shoulders, or a ridiculous song Dwight used to sing wrong deliberately because it made her laugh.
Tyrone had spent seven years giving her everything else he possessed.
Stories…hundreds of them. Some cleaned up considerably until she was old enough to hear the uncensored versions.
Dwight drunk. Dwight furious. Dwight terrified during a firefight and doing his job anyway.
Dwight laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe.
Tyrone had never made him perfect. Perfect men weren’t real.
He’d given Kelsey her father as he knew him instead.
“I remember for you.”
Kelsey looked at him. Her smile was small. “I know.”
She stood and stepped into him. At thirteen, hugs had become unpredictable gifts. Tyrone wrapped both arms around her before she could reconsider, kissed the top of her head, and ignored the suspicious pressure building behind his eyes.
“Love you, Kels-Bels.”
“Love you too, Daddy Zorro.”
He’d expected the name to disappear eventually. It hadn’t. Sometimes he was Dad. Sometimes Daddy. When she was pissed at him, Tyrone. When she wanted something, usually Daddy Zorro. The combination she’d invented years ago had simply become part of him.
Mark tugged at his shirt. “Dad?”
Tyrone released Kelsey enough to look down. “Yeah?”
“Can we go closer?”
“Course you can.”
The twins approached the grave together.
Five years old and completely different from each other despite having entered the world eight minutes apart, Dwight and Mark had spent most of their lives treating every waking moment as a competition.
Mark was currently half an inch taller, a fact he considered a personal achievement rather than genetics, while Dwight had more teeth after Mark lost one falling off a bike and therefore considered himself ahead in a different category.
Little Dwight stopped in front of the headstone. He stared at the name, then turned to Tyrone.
“That’s my name.”
Tyrone’s chest tightened. “Yeah, buddy. Your name.”
The boy looked at the stone again. “But he’s Dwight, too.”
“He was Dwight first,” Mark said.
“No shit,” Kelsey muttered.
Glenna’s head snapped around. “Kelsey.”
“What?”
“Language.”
Kelsey looked pointedly at Tyrone.
“Don’t bring me into this,” he said.
“You taught me.”
“I absolutely fucking did not.”
Four pairs of eyes stared at him.
Tyrone sighed. “Okay. Bad example.”
Little Dwight touched the first letter of the name on the stone. “Why am I Dwight?”
Tyrone had known the question would come eventually.
They’d told him pieces. A five-year-old’s understanding of namesakes didn’t stretch much beyond knowing he shared his name with someone important to his daddy, mommy, and sister.
But bringing him here made the connection real in a way photographs never had.
He crouched beside his son. “Come here.”
Dwight moved between his knees. Tyrone rested a hand on his narrow shoulder and looked at the headstone.
“Dwight, meet Dwight.”
Mark giggled.
Little Dwight looked unimpressed. “He can’t talk.”
He pulled his son a little closer. “This is the man we named you after. He was one of my best friends. My brother.”
“Kelsey’s daddy.”
Tyrone looked up. Kelsey stood beside Glenna.
“Yeah,” he said. “Kelsey’s daddy.”
Little Dwight frowned at the headstone. “Like you’re my daddy?”
“Exactly like I’m your daddy.”
That required thought. Five-year-old logic was a terrifying fucking thing. “Then he's my...”
Tyrone waited.
Kelsey rescued him. “He’s Dwight.” Her little brother looked at her. “My first daddy,” she explained. “Daddy Zorro is my other daddy.”
“Your heaven daddy?”
“Yeah.”
Mark nodded as though this made perfect sense. “And Dad’s our earth daddy.”
“Please don’t start calling me Earth Daddy.”
Kelsey laughed. “Earth Daddy Zorro.”
“I will disown you.”
“No, you won’t.”
“No. I won’t.”
Glenna shook her head, but she was smiling.
Little Dwight looked at his namesake again. “Was he brave?”
Tyrone felt the question land. “He was the bravest man I’ve ever known.”
“Braver than you?”
“Some days.” He meant it. Bravery wasn’t a ranking system, and he had no interest in turning Dwight into mythology for these kids.
Dwight had been a man. A damn good Marine Raider.
A pain in his ass. A husband. A father. A brother.
And he’d been brave on days when being brave mattered. “He was funny, too.”
“Funnier than you?” Mark asked.
“Fuck no.”
“Tyrone.”
“Sorry, baby.”
Glenna adjusted Shane against her chest. “You’re not sorry.”
“Not remotely.”
The baby stirred, and every head turned toward him. Shane Power had been alive for twenty-three days and already possessed the ability to command the complete attention of the entire family by making one tiny noise. His face screwed up. Tyrone waited. Shane settled. Everyone exhaled.
Kelsey smiled. “He’s so dramatic.”
“You screamed for six months,” Glenna said.
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
Tyrone stood. “Your mom has documentation.”
“Traitor.”
“Facts are facts.”
He reached into his pocket. The quarter had been there since they left the hotel that morning.
Little Dwight noticed immediately. “Can I have it?”
“Nope.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s for him.”
His son’s gaze moved to the headstone. “You’re giving dead Dwight money?”
Kelsey made a strangled noise.
Tyrone crouched again. “Not exactly.” He held the quarter on his palm. “There’s a tradition. When people visit the grave of someone who served in the military, sometimes they leave a coin on the headstone.”
“Why?”
“To say they were here.”
Mark moved closer. “What coin?”
“Different ones mean different things.”
That got both boys’ attention.
“A penny means somebody came to visit and pay their respects. A nickel means you went through training with the person. A dime means you served together.”
Little Dwight pointed at the quarter. “And that one?”
Tyrone looked down at the coin resting against his palm. Ten years had passed since Kunar, but there were some memories time didn’t soften so much as teach a man how to carry them without bleeding all over everybody he loved.
“A quarter means you were there when they died.”
The twins went quiet.
Little Dwight looked from the coin to Tyrone’s face. “So that’s why you brought a quarter?”
“Yeah, buddy.”
“You were with him?”
Tyrone’s fingers closed slowly around the coin.
He remembered Dwight on the ground in Kunar.
Remembered blood on his gloves, Dwight looking at him for an answer Tyrone hadn’t wanted to give, and his own hands doing everything he had been trained to do and then more, cracking open his brother’s chest because accepting there was nothing left to try had never been an option.
“Yeah. I was with him.”
“Did he know you were there?”
That one went straight through him, and he looked at Dwight’s name on the stone. “Yeah. He knew I was there.” He placed the quarter on the top of the headstone and swallowed the lump in his throat.
Kelsey came to his side.
“Hi, Daddy,” she whispered again. Then she touched her fingertips to his name. “Love you.”
Glenna moved beside their daughter and rested a hand against her back. “I love you too,” she whispered toward the stone.
Tyrone gave them space. The twins came with him, one on either side, and he walked several yards before Mark suddenly stopped.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Do Marines really eat crayons?”
Tyrone froze. Behind him, Kelsey made a sound suspiciously like a cough. Slowly, Tyrone turned. His thirteen-year-old daughter had suddenly developed an intense interest in Dwight’s headstone. Glenna’s lips were pressed together.
“You.”
Kelsey’s shoulders started shaking.
“You told them.”
“I did not.”
“Bullhockey.”
Mark looked confused. “Kelsey said Marines eat crayons because they don’t know they’re not food.”
Tyrone stared at her. Kelsey lost it. The laugh that came out of her was so much like Glenna’s that he didn’t stand a chance.
Little Dwight tugged his hand. “Do you like red ones?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Are they strawberry?”
Tyrone pointed at Kelsey. “Seven fucking years you’ve been waiting to do this to me.” She was laughing too hard to answer. “Your biological father would be ashamed of you.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Glenna managed.
Tyrone looked toward the headstone. “No,” he admitted. “He really fucking wouldn’t. He’d be cackling along with you.”
Tyrone looked at his family standing around Dwight’s grave, at Glenna laughing with one hand pressed carefully against their newborn son’s back, at Kelsey wiping tears from her cheeks, at the twins arguing over whether crayons could technically be considered food if someone was willing to eat them, and felt something settle inside him.
Ten years. He’d once thought this date would always belong to the worst thing that had happened.
Maybe it always would in part. But grief makes room for the life yet to be lived.
That was the thing nobody tells you. It doesn’t disappear.
Life simply grows around it until the loss is no longer the only thing you could see.
He walked back to the headstone when the laughter finally faded. He rested his fingertips against the warm stone. “Your kid’s still a pain in my ass.”
Kelsey gasped. “I can hear you.”
“Talking to your father.”
“He knows you’re lying.”
“See what I deal with?”
Tyrone looked at Dwight’s name one final time. “I got her, brother.” His gaze moved to Kelsey. Then Glenna. The twins. Shane sleeping against his mother’s chest. “I’ve got all of them.”
He didn’t ask for forgiveness. Didn’t make promises to a dead man. Didn’t tell Dwight he hoped he’d done enough. That had belonged to another version of Tyrone.
This one simply tapped the stone twice. “Semper Fi, brother. Semper Fi.”
Then he took his family home to La Spezia.
***
Thank you, readers, for coming along with me as the La Spezia heroes found their happily ever after with the perfect people for them.
I adored writing each and every story. While the La Spezia stories have come to a close, The Four X’s Group isn’t over, as next we are headed to Agadir, Morocco, and another team under The Four X’s umbrella.
The Four X’s Group Morocco starts with MOJO’S STORY, which is coming soon.
SEE YOU IN MOROCCO.
XO
Bella