A Promise of Forever (15 page)

“Mom, we’re just dating. No big deal.” But the words sounded hollow to Avi’s own ears.

Apparently, Beth heard it, too. Cradling her coffee in both hands, she studied Avi. “You know, you don’t have to retire from the Army. You’ve already given them a lot. They don’t have the right to expect anything more from you.”

All gave some,
the saying went,
and some gave all.
So many of Avi’s friends had given all. She was grateful to be alive, to be whole and healthy and able to carry on their fight. “Mom, it’s my job,” she said softly.

Beth’s fingers tightened, her lips thinning. “They’ve sent you into a war zone
five
times, Avery. You spent five years, three months, and seventeen days in places where people wanted to kill you. That’s enough.”

Wow.
Avi licked cinnamon and sugar from her fingertips, then wiped her hands on a napkin from the stack in the center of the table. She hadn’t counted it out herself. She’d just considered it
a hell of a long time
. Roughly sixty-three and a half months. Not easy for her, obviously not easy for her mom. All the packages Beth had sent her had been full of good stuff to eat, read, and make her laugh; all her e-mails and calls had been cheerful and chatty. Of course, Avi had known a mother’s worry for her child never ended, but Beth hadn’t let it show. Avi had thought she was being strong, like she’d always been. That she’d been around enough Army wives here in Tallgrass to absorb some of their acceptance. That she’d had faith.

Quietly, a bit of wonder in her voice, Avi said, “You’re afraid for me.”

With one manicured hand, Beth swiped at her eyes. “Why would I be afraid?” she chastised. “Just because I brought you into this world? Heavens, you’re fearless enough for both of us.”

Rising from her chair, Avi knelt and hugged her mother. “You’re the one who made me that way. You let me do practically everything I wanted.”

“That was on the outside.” Beth hugged her back. “Inside, I was screaming
No! Stop!
Just wait until you have kids of your own. You’ll see.”

Avi intended to raise little soldiers, sailors, or Marines of her own. She wouldn’t ask any of them to make a career of the military, but she thought everyone should serve at least one enlistment. They owed it to the country and to the people who’d served before them. She wasn’t about to tell her mom that, though. If Beth had worried about her, how much more would she worry about a grandchild? Even one who didn’t yet exist.

“What’s on the schedule today?” she asked after taking a long sip of coffee. “I know there’s the cookout at Patricia’s.”

“That starts at five. Us, a few neighbors, and most of her support group.”

Avi grinned. “The margarita girls.”

That brought her dad’s attention from the paper again. “You gotta admire a group so dedicated to a drink that they name themselves after it.”

“And no drink more deserving of the honor than the margarita.” Avi saluted her father with her coffee mug, and he did the same. They made her mother sigh.

“Before then,” Beth went on, “I’ve got to make a big bowl of pasta salad and a dish of sauerkraut salad.”

“Ooh, that wicked good recipe you got from Linda at work?” Forget gourmet restaurants. Avi was a firm believer that nobody, no matter how many prestigious schools they’d attended and chefs they’d studied under, cooked like the average, everyday home cook. Her mom’s, Patricia’s, and Lucy’s food could make her drool like an overeager puppy.

“I’m going to work,” Neil said as he laid the Kindle down, stood, and kissed first Beth, then Avi. “They’ve probably missed me.”

“They probably have,” Beth said drily. “Tell them I’m recuperating from our vacation but I’ll see them tomorrow. What are your plans, Avery?”

She watched until her dad had gone inside, whistling a low tune to himself. “Ben and I are having a picnic at the lake.” They had stayed there until well after midnight Saturday night, talking, making love, and just being silent together. There had been something purely magical about being naked and intimate outside, the night air cool on their skin, the lapping of the water against the shore soothing, the peacefulness of the dark sky, the twinkling stars, the birdsong. She’d recognized whippoorwills and bobwhites and owls, and had let the others just wash over her, a melodic chorus by voices unknown.

Her soul had reveled in it.

A little of that reveling was still going on inside her, she thought, smiling secretively.

“I can help you make the salads before we go,” she offered, but Beth brushed her off, making shooing motions with both hands.

“You’re on vacation, babe, and I haven’t set foot in a kitchen for more than a week except to bake those rolls. You go on, get your swimsuit on, and get going.”

Avi walked to the door before answering. “Actually, we were planning to skinny-dip and see if we could shock the fishes.”

“As long as the fish are the only ones you’re shocking. If you get arrested for outraging public decency, forget my number. And take some sunblock. You want to be able to sit for the rest of your trip.”

Avi was closing the door when Beth muttered to herself, “Thirty-year-old virgin. If only.”

Laughing, she headed upstairs to change.

A
full contingent of margarita girls was lined up for introductions when Avi and Ben arrived at the cookout. The cooking was being done on Patricia’s patio, with a yellow-and-white striped tent stretching across the grass from her backyard into Lucy’s. Tubs filled with ice, bottles of water and beer and cans of pop stood in each of the corners, and tables and chairs took up the rest of the space.

A few hours at the lake had made Avi tired, but just the sight of the crowd reenergized her. Lucy met them a few yards away, took Avi’s arm, and made the same shooing motion to Ben that Beth had done earlier. Avi was going to have to learn how to do that—not just the shooing but making the people she shooed obey.

“I tried to make them wear name tags that I could put just a few pertinent details on, but they voted me down,” Lucy said with a pout that was for show. “Meeting all of us at once is a little overwhelming.”

A petite redhead stepped forward and pulled a marker from Lucy’s hands. “You’re not writing our names on our foreheads, either.”

“As if I would even try,” Lucy huffed before giving Avi a
darn!
sort of look. Then, snatching the marker back, she scrawled
Lucy
on the red plastic cup she was drinking from before tossing the marker next to an ice tub, then began introductions.

There was Jessy the redhead, dating a cowboy near the grill and the one who rescued Patricia from Walmart after her notification call went south. Carly, a third-grade teacher recently wed to the soldier with the prosthetic leg. Therese, mother to three and soon to marry a medic from Fort Polk. Tall and elegant Marti, Lucy’s best friend in a sea of best friends.

Ilena was the mother of a precious infant who was every bit as strong and healthy as she was waifish and thin. Bennie was a nursing student who’d made Avi laugh with the first words from her mouth. There was Leah and Kylie and Tasha and the last one, rising from a chair with some difficulty. Lucy slipped her arm around the girl’s waist—out of affection or fear she would fall without support? Avi wondered—and smiled gently. “This is Fia. She’s our margarita baby.”

“I’m twenty-three,” Fia said, then smiled shakily at Avi. “I’m not that young.”

“Young is a good thing to be,” Patricia said, offering Fia support from the other side. “Don’t be too eager to get old like me.”

“Ha! I only hope to age the way you have. You’re strong and beautiful, Patricia.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Fia.” Avi took the hand Fia offered, careful to keep her grip gentle. The girl might be the youngest, but Avi would bet she was also the frailest. She had no excess body fat, strain had etched semi-permanent lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes, and her feet were turned inward as if holding her body in an upright position was too much for them. Avi’s heart went out to her, but she tried to keep it hidden.

They talked a few minutes before Lucy pulled Avi across the lawn to the grill. There she met the men: Dane, Keegan, Dalton, and—surprise—his twin brother, Dillon. “Hmm, God was having a good day when He created the two of them, wasn’t he?” Avi murmured to Lucy.

“Yumm,” Lucy agreed as Joe joined them. “You should see what He did with the Cadore family. Joe’s got three brothers and two sisters, and he’s the runt of the bunch. They are one fine-looking family.”

Avi looked to Joe expecting a complaint about the runt comment, but he shrugged. “Yeah, I’m the little one. Even my sister’s an inch taller.”

“But when you’re gorgeous, you don’t need anything more,” Avi said.

“Thank you.” Joe’s smile was dazzling, leaving her to wonder how Lucy stayed safe from its charm. If she was Lucy, seeing him every day, she would have such a crush.

Thinking how Joe seemed to gravitate to Lucy’s side, maybe he was the one with the crush.

From behind, she heard a barely audible growl an instant before Ben appeared beside her with a tall bottle of water, cap already untwisted. Teasingly she gave him a broad, innocent smile as she took the water. “All your friends seem really nice, Lucy.”

“They are. They’re the best.”

And they were all widows. They’d all lost the husbands they’d intended to spend the rest of their lives with. Avi let her gaze slide over them again: the laughter, the smiles, the voices raised in good fun. They were a testament to resiliency, to the ability of the human spirit to suffer unspeakably and yet heal itself.

Avi might have known their husbands, might have deployed alongside them, worked alongside them, stood at attention to pay her respects when they died. She said a fervent prayer that the spouses of the soldiers who’d died on her tours had found someone like the margarita girls to help them through. In that way, these women were the luckiest in the world. They had people who’d been there, done that, and understood every heartbreaking moment of it.

Ben’s mouth brushed her ear. “You okay?”

She blinked and realized her eyes had gotten damp. “I was just thinking…”

“How lucky they are?” He moved to block everyone else’s view of her so she could swipe away the moisture without anyone noticing.

“Does that sound weird?”

“No. Any loss has to be easier with someone who can relate. I feel a lot of sympathy for them, but I’ve never been married. I know what it’s like to lose a parent, but I can’t imagine what losing a husband or wife is like. And after a while, after the shock is over for everyone else, they go on with their lives, and the wives feel alone. The margarita girls, though…they’re not going anywhere. They’ll be there tomorrow and next year and five years from now.” He glanced at the women, then his gaze settled on Patricia. “Yeah,” he added softly. “They’re damn lucky.”

Calvin’s mother was fifty-one, his father fifty-four. They held jobs that required the daily use of computers. They had e-mail  accounts, and his mother shopped online. But when it came to communicating with their son, his mother relied on letters, and his father relied on his mother. The letters were on thick sheets of pretty stationery, the writing a graceful swooping cursive Elizabeth Sweet had learned in grade school. They were a holdover from a time long past, one he’d developed a fine appreciation for once he’d joined the Army. He had every letter she’d ever written him, going back to his first one in basic training. Only the addresses and the colors of the stationery had changed. Pink, green, blue, peach, lavender, and now pale yellow—all the colors of the rainbow, all covered with her pretty script, all filled with words of hope and encouragement and love.

The latest had arrived in Tuesday morning’s mail, bearing a stamp showing an American flag in the breeze. He’d put it in his desk drawer, then stuck it in his pocket. He knew its contents. There’d be an update on Gran, news on people he’d known in Tallgrass, maybe a few soft-hearted complaints about his dad, a comment on the weather—
Was it always so unbearable and we just didn’t realize it?
—and then the question. Always the question.

When are you coming home?

He had plenty of leave available, and she probably knew it. He had the money to travel, and she probably knew that, too. If he didn’t, she and his dad would buy him a ticket.
We just want to see you, Calvin. You know I need to see you with my own two eyes.

With the overbearing colonel he worked for gone to a meeting, Calvin refilled his coffee, grabbed a cookie the colonel’s wife had baked, then sat down and slid a pocketknife blade underneath the seal on the flap.

The yellow sheets reminded him of fresh-churned butter that his mom used to buy from an elderly rancher widow outside Tallgrass. She’d gotten milk and eggs from the old lady, too, and dewberries and blackberries and produce when the summer garden paid off. He’d never eaten as well since.

Dear Son.
If she’d ever opened with Dear Calvin or Hey, Calvin, he would know for sure the world had ended. Once, when he was thirteen, he’d asked her to stop calling him
son
around his friends. Expecting a protest, he’d been surprised when a smile spread from one ear to the other.
Why, sure,
she’d said.
What would you like me to call you instead? Honey? Babe? No, I’ve got it: sweet baby boy of mine.

Wisely, he’d never complained about what she called him again.

That day lived in such clarity in Calvin’s mind. The usual suspects: him, J’Myel, and Bennie. The grown-ups: Calvin’s parents, J’Myel’s mother, Calvin’s and Bennie’s grandmothers. He and J’Myel had posed for pictures, chests puffed out, hands on hips, and J’Myel had crowed,
We’re gonna save the universe!

Calvin’s dad had snickered.
God help us all.

God hadn’t helped J’Myel. He hadn’t helped Calvin.

What was the worst that could come of a visit home? His mom and dad would look at him and see how empty and broken he was. He might fool everyone in the Army, but nobody fooled Elizabeth and Justice. He might run into Bennie, who probably hated him even more than J’Myel had. Hell, J’Myel was buried at Fort Murphy National Cemetery, so Calvin would probably run into his ghost everywhere.

And what was the best that could happen? He would be
home
.

He couldn’t even begin to explain the incredible power of the place called home, if he could just hold himself together, if he could get there without breaking into too many shattered pieces to put back together again.
Home.
It meant so much: love. Safety. Security. Comfort. Peace.

But he couldn’t go there. Couldn’t survive the visit. Didn’t deserve to survive it. How many of his friends would never see home again—their parents, their girls, their families, their own sweet peaceful places? J’Myel had left as much in Tallgrass as Calvin had. He could never make his mom laugh one more time, could never give his wife one more sweet kiss, could never throw a line into their favorite fishing hole.

Why should Calvin get to?

Ben had to cancel his three o’clock procedure Tuesday afternoon, thanks to the patient’s mother, who fed her son a full lunch before bringing him to the hospital. The staff hadn’t had time to prep the next patient yet, so he was back at the clinic, hoping to catch up on some paperwork, when the cell phone beeped in his pocket. Pulling it out, he glanced at caller ID, then answered with an automatic smile. “Hi.”

“Hey, you,” Avi said. “I’m just pulling into the parking lot.”

She’d driven into Tulsa to make a delivery for the nursery.
Call me when you’re done,
Ben had told her,
and I’ll give you a key to the apartment.
Then he’d gone by a hardware store at lunch and had keys made for both the loft and the building doors. It would be the first time he’d ever given his keys to any woman besides his sisters.

“If you give me a minute, I’ll come down. I’ll meet you at the north entrance.” After her okay, he hung up, told his medical assistant he’d be back, and headed for the lobby. After the air-conditioned chill of the office, the heat outside felt good for about half a minute, then sweat started forming along his hairline.

The big pickup sat in a no-parking zone a few yards from the door. Avi rolled the window down as he approached, her face flushed, the strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail damp and frizzing. She was sweaty and pretty and made something catch deep in his gut. It was too much to put into words, too much to face in the bright light of the day, so he settled for a single word, filled with both awe and sadness.

Damn.

“I expected you a few hours ago,” he said, resting his arms on the door frame. Even through the sleeves of his white coat, he felt the sear of the hot metal.

She took a deep drink from a jumbo Sonic drink. “The customer I delivered to was seventy-six years old and determined to get the flowers in the ground before they wilted.”

“So you stayed and helped her plant them.”

“Actually, she sat in the shade under an oak and directed. I planted.”

“You insist on providing that kind of service, your mom and dad will be shipping you off to Georgia earlier than expected.”

“Hey, in exchange, I got a tour of a house in Maple Ridge and the best lemon tea ever. How’s work?”

“I’m actually on schedule. I have one more surgery, and it’s an easy one.” Reaching into his coat pocket, he found the new keys and held them out. When she took them, his fingers curved over hers. “Be thinking about where you want to go for dinner.”

“I’ll cook for you.” Her forehead wrinkled with exaggerated concern. “You do have dishes and pans, don’t you?”

“A full set of both, smartass.” Leaning through the open window, he kissed her, hesitated, feeling both the awe and the sadness again, then kissed her again. “I’ll see you later.”

“Every little bit of me,” she murmured with a sly grin. Giving him a wave, she rolled up the window and pulled away. He watched a moment before turning back to the building, only to find three familiar dark gazes fixed on him.
Busted
, he thought, donning a casual attitude. “What are you guys doing here?”