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Chapter 1
Harper was cominghome today after a month-long deployment. Butterflies filled Lydia’s stomach, and her nerves were on edge. She didn’t know whether to be elated or concerned. She wondered how her reaction would stand up to the Lydia he used to know when he came home from overseas as part of SEAL Team 3. Her memory of their relationship was still mired in distant fog. The picture wasn’t getting any clearer, either.
Lydia had worked with Harper for several weeks after her original return to the house where they’d lived in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California. This was all designed to prepare her for his next deployment. She needed to be fully self-sufficient while he was away. For the first time, he had taken on a mission and left her in charge, alone, other than the short trips to Washington, D.C. This one would be longer and could take him out of the country.
Other times, if he had to stay in D.C. for more than an overnight, he had a member of his team stay back with her. Sally, their neighbor down the driveway, had also become a “new to Lydia” trusted friend. Harper told her stories about how she and Sally were close before her unfortunate attempted murder.
Armed with Harper’s patient guidance and training, Lydia now felt comfortable being out in public and driving herself back-and-forth to the store, most of the time with Venom in tow. She relied on the handsome Doberman, who seemed to up his level of concern whenever the two of them were alone, as if he knew the circumstances of her past. She did remember more about him than she did Harper, which had been a sore subject with Harper, although he tried not to show it. It had, unfortunately, been their last conversation before he flew down to Coronado to leave with the rest of his team.
“Venom, you stay here and watch the car for Mama, okay?” She rolled down the windows and calculated she wouldn’t have to leave the car AC running. There was enough room for him to jump out, if he needed to. It would be their mistake if anyone tried to put their arm inside the car to try to steal it. She could feel the dog’s eyes on her back. It was reassuring.
She brought Venom with her on her shopping sprees, mostly because Harper insisted the dog would be alert to things Lydia was not yet aware of.
Lydia liked to shop in a high-end grocery store that carried organic foods and meats, but Harper complained bitterly about the prices. Still, figuring it was part of her healing process, she took to getting healthy, clean food items and considered it an investment in their future.
She’d tried, but even the organic foods and clean living didn’t do anything to bring back those lost memories. There were little glimpses of it here and there, flashes of memories, mostly surrounding Venom or their flower garden. But the full weight and depth of their relationship was still lost to her.
Today, Harper was returning, and it was her custom to make him a fresh pie and get him one of his favorite cuts of meat, a two-inch thick ribeye steak. She didn’t try to compete with him on the barbecue, that was all Harper territory, but she could find the nicest, most marbled and well-aged piece of meat they had. The butcher knew exactly what she wanted and frequently held things aside for her when he expected her. After picking up the meat, she glanced at the dairy section and then down into the condiments, picking up green olives that she just could not get enough off, imported from Spain. Harper had said she hadn’t appeared to like them before. Now, she had to have a handful just about every day.
She grabbed some half-and-half for their coffee and some fresh pomegranate seeds, tangelos, and bananas. Harper was threatening to plant bananas in their backyard, but it wasn’t quite warm enough. Over the summer, they planned to try growing them anyway.
Since he loved her brand of cornbread, something she learned in Italy where she added creamed corn, pimento, and hot peppers to the batter, she picked up four boxes of inexpensive pre-prepared mix. It was their favorite form of dessert.
Each time she went out, especially when she had Venom, she learned more and more about the community, the people she used to know and hang with, even getting reacquainted with Sally. The older and very fit woman had been a great help at first in coaching her to understand all the stages of grief Harper had gone through when he’d been told she had been killed. Sally had been there right at his side, his quirky grandmotherly-like neighbor who wouldn’t give him quarter, arguing with him any chance she could. It was her form of tough love, never bestowed on Lydia, but thrown at Harper all the time.
While she wandered down the fruit section, choosing the greenest bananas she could find, she noticed a couple pushing a cart with a child seat strapped to the top where a toddler would sit. But upon careful study, as they were facing the opposite direction, she didn’t think the swaddling appeared like a real child was inside. The size and shape looked all wrong, for some reason.
She even considered perhaps they had a small puppy in the padded seat.
It continued to bother her. She observed them at a distance while shopping, hoping to string out her spree long enough so she could follow them in the checkout line or perhaps find them leaving the store to be able to take a picture of their car license plate. Harper was big on getting license plates so that he could run them by his buddies in D.C.
The clerk at the bakery department offered her a fresh piece of rye bread with sesame seeds and onion chips all over the crust. It was Harper’s favorite, although Lydia wasn’t very fond of onions or garlic. She took a bite and wrinkled her nose but nodded.
“I’ll take two. I think he’ll love that.”
“You better get some more butter. He’s gonna want to have a gob of butter on every slice. He tells me he spreads it like peanut butter,” the baker said.
“Yes, I know, but he’s changing some of his diet. He won’t always be a man of action, and those years are bound to catch up to him eventually. I don’t want my guy to look pregnant.”
He laughed. “Not Harper. Never Harper. Maybe you, my dear—I mean getting pregnant—but Harper will be working out into his eighties, I’m sure. It’s a religion with him. His body’s a temple and all that. Besides, he has to work out to burn all the calories he eats.”
“I think he’s got a little tad bit of a belly on him. He tries to hide it.” She laughed. “You know that in five years he’ll be fifty.” She was only repeating what she’d been told. She honestly didn’t remember how old he was. It dampened her mood a bit.
To cheer her up, the baker added, “Well, guys don’t count after forty. They can’t wait to be old enough to drink, take a girl out, go to bars, and drive a racy car. Then after they get old enough, they can’t wait to go back to being a kid again. I think the older these guys come home, the more likely they are to just revert back to their high school or college days. My brother was a SEAL, graduated in the class five years after Harper. He was a big help too.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Yup.”
“Does he live here in Sonoma County?” she asked him.
“Ma’am, he didn’t make it home. Afghanistan. No place to die.”
Lydia was glad Harper wasn’t doing the Middle East tours any longer, not that what he did wasn’t dangerous. “I’m so sorry.” She began to tear up.
“He loved every minute of it. Harder on us than it was on him. He didn’t suffer. But I remember when he came back after his first deployment. They get serious while they first start out on the teams, but by the time they’re done and they’ve put in their ten or twenty years, they’re downright high school football players. All of Derrick’s buddies have stayed close with the family. We’re grateful we have them.”
The baker had spoken to her earlier about how long Harper had shopped with him, when he used to head the bakery department at a big box store. She was so sorry she didn’t remember him at all from before.
