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“Are you going to introduce me to your father?” she asked sassily.
I had already told her about my mother’s death and how we had run away from my father when I was only four years old.
“No,” I said, “but that’s different. I haven’t spoken to him since I was four.”
“Trust me,” she said grimly, “there are times I wish I hadn’t spoken to my mother since I was four. I haven’t spoken to my father since he walked out on me and my mother when I was seven.”
I stared at her. “Really.”
“Yeah. I’ve never told you about my mother, have I?”
“No.”
“She worked as a waitress in the city where she was born – Pescara. It’s a beach town on the Adriatic. When she was 20, she was serving drinks to a handsome British guy, and he flirted with her until she agreed to go out dancing with him. They had a fling until he went back to London… and then she found out she was pregnant. She called him and told him, he flew her to London, they got married… and seven years later, he walked out on us to go live with another woman. Ever since then, my mother hates anybody with a penis, and I’m 100% sure that would include you. So, no – I don’t ever intend to introduce you to my mother. Not if I can help it.”
“But – ”
“Lars,” she said sternly. “Trust me on this one and drop it.”
So I dropped it.
Like everything else, I swept it under the rug.
There were a lot of things under that damn rug.
56
Gunnar left the military six months after we got back from Afghanistan.
He had finished the full amount of time he’d committed to when he’d joined Special Forces. Technically, he could still be called back into service at any point over the next decade – but that would only happen if Sweden went to war.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him.
“Go to Amsterdam and smoke a lot of pot.”
“You know what I mean. You wouldn’t become a mercenary, would you?”
“HELL no. If I wanted people to shoot at me, I’d just stay in Special Forces. I dunno… maybe I’ll figure out a way to combine hacking with my military clearance.”
Lots of guys who left Special Forces used their top-secret clearance to get jobs with military contractors. There was an invisible pipeline directly into defense companies throughout Scandinavia. If he could combine his security clearance with his talent for computer hacking, Gunnar could probably write his own ticket.
The only problem was that defense companies expected you to not smoke pot, which was a deal-breaker for Gunnar… but maybe he could figure something out.
“What about you, brother?” he asked. “How much longer you got on your bid?”
“A little more than two years.”
“Oof,” he said sympathetically. He knew just how serious it was between me and Rachel. “Can you wait that long, bro?”
“I have to,” I said quietly. “I have no other choice.”
57
Shortly after Gunnar got out, I went to London for another week with Rachel.
It was wonderful –
Although I still didn’t see her apartment.
