But if the war had taught him anything, it was that time was so very precious.
He was going to figure this out.
Because if he lost her and Natalie, he’d have truly lost everything.
W
hy are you being so quiet, peanut?”
Patrick glanced in the rearview mirror at Natalie. Her little brown head was bowed, and she was scribbling on a piece of paper.
There was no kicking the seat, no whining about having to pee five minutes after leaving the gas station.
There was just silence.
And silence plus kids always equaled trouble.
He’d learned that the hard way when Sam had first deployed, too. He’d thought he’d have a nice Sunday afternoon watching football while Natalie played in her room. He’d dozed off, only to wake up in a panic when he realized he hadn’t heard a peep from her in who knew how long.
She’d been painting the bathroom floor. With nail polish. Which had been much harder to get off porcelain tile than he’d been prepared for. He’d also learned the difference that day between acetone and non-acetone nail polish remover. And hadn’t that been a fun conversation to have in the middle of Wal-Mart with a little old lady who looked ready to call Child Protective Services because Natalie was out in public in pajamas, a bath robe, and bunny slippers. At three in the afternoon.
He smiled at the memory.
“Nat?”
She looked up. “Nothing, Daddy. Just writing a letter to Santa.”
He glanced over at Sam, who shrugged and remained quiet.
“What are you going to ask him for?”
She looked up at him, and he saw her mother looking back at him from those somber blue eyes. “I can’t tell you that. It’s a secret.”
“Baby, it’s a secret when you blow out your birthday candles and make a wish. It’s not a secret to tell us what you’re going to ask Santa for.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Not telling.”
He saw Sam’s lips curl in a faint smile before turning his attention back to the logging truck in front of him.
That kiss stood between them like a live thing, demanding attention and unwilling to be ignored.
And yet, Sam was doing her best to pretend nothing had happened. That he hadn’t seen the spark in her eyes when he’d stepped away. That she wasn’t gone forever.
But she was still there. Hiding. Deep in the shadows.
All he had to do was figure out a way to draw her out, back into the light.
He sighed quietly and focused on the road. A better man might have let her go. Might have cut his losses with a woman who was, even after nine years together, still skittish. Still didn’t trust that he wouldn’t cut and run.
That he was not her father or the man who’d left her high and dry.
“How was your flight up?” he asked, trying to fill the silence.
“Fine.”
“Well, let’s not waste too much air on conversation, now shall we?”
She shot him a bland look. “I’d rather not do this with little ears in the car, if it’s all the same to you.”
A tiny voice chirped up from the back seat. “Are you two getting divorced?”
Patrick glanced over at Sam, who looked just this side of horrified.
“No, honey, we’re not getting divorced,” Sam said quietly. “Why do you know what divorce even is?”
“My friend Elsa’s parents are getting divorced. She said her mommy called her daddy a two-timing pig. What’s a two-timing pig?”
Patrick rubbed his hand over his mouth to keep from smiling. Sam was less than impressed.
“It means that her parents aren’t going to live together anymore,” Sam said gently.
Patrick glanced at Natalie. She tapped the pencil against her cheek. “So if you and me move to Maine and Daddy stays in Texas, how is that not divorce?”
Patrick felt slightly ill. He sighed quietly. “It means Elsa’s parents aren’t going to be married anymore. Your mommy and I aren’t married, so we can’t get divorced.”
And holy hell, he did not want to do this right now. Talk about making it difficult to pay attention to the truck in front of him.
“Why aren’t you married?”
“It’s a long story, honey,” Sam said. “It hasn’t mattered before.”
Except that it damn sure mattered now.
Patrick tried not to be bitter.
Patrick cleared his throat. “Why don’t you work on your letter to Santa some more?” he said, hoping, praying that she would drop it and knowing that she probably wouldn’t. She was usually incessant with questions.
So the silence that came out of the back seat ended up being quite a surprise. After a while he looked back in the rearview to see she was still busy writing.
“What the heck could an eight-year-old be writing that takes so long?” he asked Sam beneath his breath.
“She’s always had an active imagination.”
There was nothing more to say, because Sam was right. The things that needed to be said couldn’t be said in front of Natalie.
Instead, there was only silence as the drive continued.
***
Sam took a deep breath as they stepped out of the cold and into the cavernous mall entrance.
It hadn’t changed much since she’d worked there as a teen. She’d been so excited when she’d gotten a job at Chess King. It had been so cool to have a job in the mall.
The Chess King was gone now, replaced by some place that sold purses and Maine kitsch. She wasn’t sure who at the mall would buy the refrigerator magnets or bumper stickers. Probably for folks who lived out of state now or had friends who visited.
She’d braced for the overwhelming sense of the familiar.
She did not count on the anxiety that slithered around her chest, squeezing like a wet wool blanket.
She looked back for Natalie. “Nat, honey, hold my hand.”
Patrick looked over at her, a question in his eyes.
“I don’t want her to wander off,” Sam said.
The fear was relentless, a pressure on the back of her neck that made her want to keep turning around. She rubbed Natalie’s hand, trying to focus on anything other than the sensation of being unable to breathe.
Patrick’s hand on her shoulder startled her. Her breath lodged in her throat.
“Sam.” His voice was gentle, his touch strong. “We can go,” he said quietly. “We don’t have to do this right now.”
She blinked rapidly. There was no judgment in his voice, no condemnation.
Simply understanding.
She smiled sadly. “We just drove an hour.”
“Are you okay?”
“I have to be, don’t I?”
He slipped his hand over her neck, cradling her. “Not all the time. No.”
She bit her bottom lip and looked away. Wishing she could explain the pressing fear on her heart. Wishing she could make the insurgent trepidation go away and leave her alone.
Wishing she could have a normal day at the mall with her daughter to go see Santa. But she couldn’t. Because she had decided that going to war was going to be a day at the damned beach. She hadn’t counted on the fear of getting blown up in a convoy grafting itself violently onto the fear of losing her daughter in a mall. They were not even remotely related and yet she knew that one had led to the other. There was simply no other source.
She’d done this before—gone to the mall and gone shopping like a normal person. Before the deployment. Before she’d spent days on the roads with her battalion commander.
She’d been fine before the war.
Now? Now she was just this side of a paranoid basket case. And wasn’t that a fun way to spend the day?
She was
not
going to ruin her daughter’s trip to see Santa.
She sucked in a deep breath. “Thank you for saying that, Patrick,” she said softly.
She met his gaze then. Saw the worry and the concern.
But it was the hurt that struck at her. The hurt that lashed out and resurrected the guilt she’d been trying to ignore. Because leaving him had not been an easy choice.
It had simply felt like the only choice. Cut him free from the dead weight. Let him be with someone else. Someone not broken by the war. Someone who could admit there was something broken and get help and get better. Not her, who was terrified of those three little words.
A full-blown person rather than a shadow.
Maybe someday, she’d finally feel normal again. Maybe then, she could start unpacking everything that had happened. But for right now, she needed to lock things down. Needed to keep the box sealed tight.
Because the darkness within was just itching to get out.
And she was not prepared to deal with that emotional tidal wave.
Better to walk away. To leave sleeping things where they lay.
“Mommy, let’s gooo.”
She let herself be tugged away. Felt his hand slip from her neck and the cool kiss of air where the heat from his touch had been.
He stayed with her, though. He walked by her side, keeping an eye on her, she knew.
He was good like that.
The war hadn’t broken him like it had broken her. She wondered why. What was it about her that hadn’t been able to handle the boring days, the long hours, the relentless stress? He’d lost friends. Good friends. He’d deployed three times to her one tour.
Why was he okay and she wasn’t?
They found their place in line. Sam tried not to scan the crowds. Tried to enjoy listening to Natalie chatter on about Santa and Rudolph and the elves.
Instead, all she could focus on was Patrick standing behind her. Warm and solid and silent. Not trying to argue with her. Not shaming her or demanding what the hell was wrong with her that she couldn’t relax.
It should be easy, to turn to him. To say
something is wrong. I want to get help. But I
’
m afraid.
But it wasn’t easy. Even with him there, solid and steady behind her. Guarding her back.
Just like always.
W
ho knew seeing Santa was that exhausting?” Sam murmured. “She’s out cold.”
Patrick glanced in the rearview, confirming Sam’s assessment that Natalie was indeed asleep in the back seat, laid out across the bench seat, the seatbelt tucked around her chest and hips. He glanced over at Sam, trying to gauge how she was coping with everything. He’d seen her skittishness at the mall, remembered it well. The panicked feeling of too many people, of no easy access to cover. It wasn’t a rational fear but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.
It had taken him a long time to put those instinctive reactions behind him and even then, they were still there, a latent energy that sometimes snuck up on him.
“She’s not the only one who needs a nap,” Patrick said quietly.
“You didn’t sleep when you left earlier?”
“No. Dropped off my stuff, got some coffee, and met you at the house.” He was more relaxed than he’d been earlier. Less tense once they’d left the mall.
He’d watched her trying so hard to be normal. Trying so hard to pretend that she was just another parent at the holidays, trying to squeeze in a visit with Santa in the chaos of last minute shopping.
But she wasn’t a normal parent. She was a mother who’d deployed to Iraq.
It had dawned on him when they’d first stepped into the mall and he’d seen the fear etched into the lines around her mouth, the panic in her eyes.
This was more than having a hard time adjusting to being home. There was a very real thing going on with her, and he figured out in that moment that she was trying to ignore all of it.
She was trying to do what so many soldiers did: stuff down the uncomfortable and unsettling thoughts and emotions. Lock them away and pretend that nothing about the war was out of the ordinary.
Pretend that deployment was just another day at the office, except that the office was now half a world away. Ignore the fact that sometimes, you needed help in coming home.
When you were deployed, there were no trips home to reset the mind. To release the tension and the stress until the next day.
No, whether you were out walking the streets or working at a desk, the stress was constant. The fear of a mortar didn’t only haunt the infantrymen or the maneuver forces. Patrick knew that all too well.
And until she dealt with everything that’d happened to her downrange, she would never come home. Not fully. He wondered if she’d even considered seeing Doc back at the unit. Doc could point her in the right direction. Keep things quiet for her.
“There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts off Broadway on the way home,” she suggested.
“That is a brilliant idea.”
They drove in silence for a little bit before they stopped to order coffee, being careful not to wake Natalie. She’d normally sleep through a train wreck, but that didn’t mean he wanted to test that theory.
There was so much he couldn’t say with Natalie in the car. But there were other things he could.
“When I came home from that first tour, I hated leaving the house.” He kept his voice neutral, his words soft. Not some big revelation of a tragic homecoming. Just a statement of what had been. “I couldn’t stand going to the grocery store and listening to people complain about the lines or about Wal-Mart being out of their favorite toilet paper.”
She cracked the barest smile. “I was so happy when we got to the FOB that we had a real toilet. And showers. We were always out of toilet paper, though. I carried a roll in one of my cargo pockets.”
“I can see where that would be a problem.” This was such a simple conversation. Like they were talking about the weather instead of latrine conditions in a war zone. “You know, if I ever deploy again, I’m going to take pictures of all the Porta-Potty graffiti. Maybe write a book about it.”
“Valuable history, huh?” she said dryly.
“Some of it was pretty good. ’Course, I can’t imagine hanging out in a Porta-Potty long enough to draw some of it.”
She snorted softly. “That’s some dedication right there.”