A Chance of a Lifetime (8 page)

“Joint Base Lewis-McChord. In Washington State.”

A long way off. Practically as far as he could get while staying in the contiguous States. “I hear it's beautiful up there.”

“If you don't mind the rain.”

“Which you don't.”
He must be part fish, as much as he likes being wet,
Elizabeth Sweet had once remarked.
More likely part fungus,
J'Myel had snickered.

How could a memory be so sweet at the same time it hurt her heart? All the good times they had shared…The three of them had been inseparable, but they'd each had their roles. J'Myel was the joker, the clown who never took anything seriously. Bennie was the bossy one who tried to keep them in line but failed—exasperatedly and happily—as often as she succeeded, and Calvin…He'd been the rock, the one she'd shared laughs with while J'Myel was being goofy, the one she'd discussed serious subjects with, the one she'd turned to in times of need: her first birthday without her daddy, her first boyfriend breaking up with her for another girl, her worries about Mama and school and life. He'd gotten her through all of them.

And now she couldn't think of anything to say to him.

“Mama says you're going to nursing school.”

She grasped on to the question quickly. “Getting my associate's degree. OSU has a program through the community college here. After this semester, I have one more year, and then I figure I'll work for a while before I finish my bachelor's.”

“She says you want to work with babies.”

“Or the elderly. They both like me.” She shrugged, hoping the immodesty she was aiming for came across. “Believe it or not, everyone likes me.”

“I believe it.” He wasn't looking at her when he said it. Instead, his gaze shifted over the dining room, landing briefly at each table. When he'd finished the visual survey, he started again.

Was it so hard for him to look at her? Was it guilt? Discomfort? Sadness? Regret? Lord knows, she felt all those things with regard to him. And anger and betrayal and…something small, isolated: something better, happier. Gratitude? Was she grateful he'd returned home? To see him again, to hear his voice, and to remember happier times? No. Maybe someday, but she wasn't ready for it yet.

But she was grateful for his parents that he was back. They had missed their only child. They needed some time where they could look at him and touch him, reassure themselves that he was okay. She imagined Elizabeth Sweet had awakened every morning for the past two weeks, thanking God, “My son is
home
.”

“You keep in touch with many people from school?” he asked, his voice steady, cautious.

A slow breath lessened the tightness in her chest. Everyday conversation—she could handle this. “Trinity Adams is in my class at school and works my floor at the hospital. She's been married and divorced twice but not to the fathers of either of her kids.” Bennie loved Trinity, but she didn't envy her friend's situation. She'd been raised that there was an order to things—love and marriage came before babies, and commitment came before any of it—and no matter how old-fashioned it seemed to some, Bennie still believed it.

“Hence, the divorces.”

“Ooh, a man who uses
hence
correctly.” The teasing came automatically, Bennie's brain forgetting that her heart wasn't anywhere near forgiving him yet.

His automatic response to her teasing in years past—a smile that spread ear to ear and scrunched up his eyes—didn't put in an appearance. Instead, his mouth thinned, and his eyes went flat as a muscle in his jaw twitched a few times.

And a man who's lost his sense of humor.
What else? she wondered. What other parts of himself had he sacrificed in his years of service? “Rickey Duncan is senior pastor at the big Baptist church in town. Whoever would have guessed that drugs, alcohol, and sex would lead him straight to God?”

Calvin's stiffness slowly faded. “Wasn't he the one we thought most likely to spend the rest of his life in prison?”

“Yup. He reminds people of that in his sermons sometimes.” She thought for a moment. “Bethany Green is our U.S. senator. Shay Barefoot is a doctor. Marc Harjo
is
spending the rest of his life in prison. The Holloway twins were killed five or six years ago when they tried to beat the train across the railroad tracks.”

“Kind of hard to feel sorry for someone who messes with a train.”

She nodded. “Most of our class are living normal, everyday lives: going to work, getting married, having kids. Some of them drink too much or smoke too much weed. Some run around on their spouses or mooch off their parents. Some ran far away, and some are trying real hard to get back.”

A muscle twitched at the corner of his left eye. “You didn't run away.”

She could have. College would have been an easy out for her. Get a degree, get a job outside the state, settle someplace where she'd be no one's friend, no one's family, where she could find out what she was made of.

“Why would I want to leave?” she asked. “I love Tallgrass. The happiest years of my life have been here.”

He took a long drink, and when he lowered the cup, bold, dark wisps of steam perfumed the air. “J'Myel wanted to leave.”

She caught her breath that he'd brought up J'Myel, and without anger or resentment in his voice. Granted, there'd been no other emotion in it, either. “He intended to come back here when his Army time was done.”

Calvin shook his head. “That wasn't his plan in the desert. He talked about settling in Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle.”

If the two of them had been on speaking terms then, those conversations must have taken place well before she and J'Myel got married. Maybe being with her had changed his mind, because there had been no way on earth she would have moved to Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, or Seattle, and he'd known it.

Insecurity sparked inside her. He
had
known that, hadn't he? Had understood that much about her? Naturally, his years in combat had changed him. He'd had to grow up, grow tough. Instead of planning their future ten years down the road, he'd had to concentrate on surviving each day. But with all the changes, he was still the boy she'd grown up with, the man she'd fallen in love with. And he'd loved her.

But she hadn't known his plans, beyond coming back to her; he'd never wanted to discuss them. She hadn't known any of the new friends who had replaced Calvin; he hadn't wanted to talk about them, either, not when time was precious. She hadn't known anything about his life but what he chose to share in e-mails and phone chats.

Unsettled, she fingered the necklace she always wore, a gold heart on a chain, a gift from J'Myel. With a shrug, she pushed on with the conversation. “His mom moved to Edmond. Too much sadness here for her.”

Calvin didn't say anything like
I heard that.
She was sure he had. Once the falling-out had occurred, Mama and Miss Emmeline had kept each other filled in on the grandkids' lives. Bennie was sure at least some of it had been passed on.

The young kid behind the counter flashed the lights once, and a chorus of groans came from around the room. Bennie glanced at her watch, surprised by the lateness of the hour. “It's closing time.”

She threw her cup and napkins in the trash, then, with Calvin behind her, wended her way to the door. The temperature was in the fifties, and the weather folks were predicting typical November weather for the weekend with highs in the seventies. “I'm parked over here.” She gestured toward her vehicle. “Where's your car?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

His cryptic answer earned him an unwavering look. He lifted one shoulder. “It got stolen before I left Washington.”

“Then how did you get here?” She gestured to Java Dave's. She knew the Army had provided transportation to Fort Murphy.

“A friend with a car was going out to Bronco's and invited me, but cowboy bars aren't my thing, and I've had only one decent cup of coffee since I got here, so I asked him to drop me off. I'm going to meet him there.”

“You want a ride?”

“No, thanks.” He walked with her to her car and stood there on the sidewalk, hands stuffed inside the hoodie's pockets. She unlocked the driver's door, swung her purse to the opposite seat, then straightened, her hands gripping the door frame. She felt the need to say something at least halfway conciliatory, but since she couldn't think what, she smiled stiffly, got inside her car, and slowly backed out of the parking space. He didn't wait for her to drive away before he began walking again.

She watched, gaze flitting between her driving and him, as he took the shortcut behind the courthouse, his lanky legs climbing the gazebo steps, crossing the warped boards, climbing down again on the other side. A few more strides, and he was in the shadows of a giant oak, and she was ticking off the teenagers kicked out of Java Dave's. She accelerated to a normal speed, traveled the block to the red light at the intersection of Main and First, and glanced to her right.

The bar Calvin was headed for was three blocks away on the right side of the street. If she hadn't been looking for him, she wouldn't have spotted him, already halfway there, sticking close to the buildings, walking in the dim light under the awnings of the shops.

As a kid honked a horn behind her, she noticed the light had changed and she pulled away from the intersection. Within a few minutes, she was home, letting herself into Mama's, warm and sweet-smelling and safe. After chatting with Mama a few minutes, she carried a glass of warm milk and her backpack into her bedroom. She intended to complete the studying Calvin had interrupted at Java Dave's, but concentrating on microbiology was hard when her heart was all fluttery and unsettled.

Calvin had seen some awful things in Iraq and Afghanistan, things no naïve kid from Oklahoma should have to see. That had to be the reason he'd changed so much, the reason he and J'Myel had fallen apart, why he hadn't been able to send even a damn note of sympathy for the funeral. Maybe she shouldn't be angry with him. Maybe he was the one deserving of sympathy.

Probably he was. But it wasn't about just them. It was about J'Myel, too, and the disrespect Calvin had shown him. And it was about, heavens, every emotion that simmered through her at the thought of him, that could so easily boil over at the sight of him. It was about who they'd once been and what they'd since lost.

Bennie had experience with loss—her mother, her father, J'Myel, Calvin—but the others were gone: Lilly disappeared God knows where, Daddy and J'Myel in the grave. Calvin was the only one still here. The only one she could at least find out why.

“Do you like dogs, Captain?”

Calvin dried sweat from his forehead, then tossed the towel over the treadmill controls before focusing his attention on Captain Kim, one of the psychologists with the unit. “My grandmother used to send her Labrador retriever swimming at the lake with us. He never let me get in water deeper than my waist. Other than that, I guess I liked him fine.”

“Did you have a pet of your own?”

“It was hard enough with my mother expecting me to be clean and shiny and well behaved all the time. Would've been impossible for me and a dog.” The treadmill beeped and slowed to a stop, signaling that he'd reached his five-mile goal. “Why the questions? You have a dog you're trying to get rid of?”

She smiled. “Nope. My pilot program is starting today, and you're one of the lucky guys taking part.”

He'd heard of programs involving patients with various animals, especially horses. If they could help troubled kids and physically disabled patients, he wasn't surprised they'd be doing some version of it with soldiers.

Both the physically disabled and the troubled.

“What does this program involve?”

The captain, with black hair, dark eyes that sparkled, and an impossibly white smile, made a note on her tablet, then shook her head. “You'll find out as soon as I gather the others. Meet us at the front door in fifteen minutes.”

“Can I shower first?” His skin was sticky, and his PT clothes were soaked, smelling more than a little ripe.

“If you can do it in fifteen minutes. But it's really not necessary. You'll probably need a shower when we come back anyway.”

Giving her a cynical look as he stepped off the treadmill, he dryly said, “I'll make it quick.”

He kept his word. With one minute to spare, he arrived back at the entrance, where the captain was waiting with six other patients. All of them, Calvin had learned by now, diagnosed with PTSD.

A van drove them to the middle of town before turning north. Just before the railroad tracks, the driver turned back east again, and a moment later deposited them in the gravel parking lot of the Tallgrass Animal Shelter.

Three women were waiting outside for them: two tall, cool blondes and one short little redhead. Calvin's gaze skimmed across them before going to the dogs lined up along the fence, some barking, some watching in suspicious silence. A few were so greedy for attention that it seemed they might piss themselves if they didn't get it right away, while a few others looked as if they'd rather starve than take food from a friendly hand.

He understood the theory behind animal therapy. Caring for someone or something more helpless, more dependent on others, was supposed to help rebuild trust—both theirs and the dogs'. It was supposed to get them out of the dark places in their minds, to remind them that there was innocence and good in the world, that they could make a difference in someone else's life, that they had value.

It was a hell of a burden to put on a bunch of unwanted, malnourished, mistreated, and rehabilitating animals.

One of the blondes started the conversation. “Hi, guys, I'm Meredith. I'm the part-time vet here and full-time owner with my partner, Angela, and this is Jessy, who helps us keep things relatively under control. Rae”—she gestured toward Captain Kim—“offered us some warm bodies to help out here, and believe me, we're
always
grateful for warm bodies. There's never any shortage of unwanted dogs, and we're perpetually understaffed, underfunded, and overworked, so we're incredibly grateful for you.”