“No, ma’am,” he answered swiftly to control the territory, save Grace.
She nodded as if he’d hit the right buzzer. “Yah, I didn’t think so. You stopping tonight?”
No law required him to answer. He wasn’t a ten-year-old helping his mother read signs. He was twenty-nine, an American citizen same as her, with a Purple Heart and a personal letter from the president of the United States in his suitcase, so no one could make him out to be a migrant, not anymore.
“Would you…” The lady fumbled with her cart, letting her gray hair shield her face. “Would you like to share Thanksgiving dinner with me and my husband? If you haven’t made other plans, that is?”
Her invitation stunned him with its generosity. Result, he felt like a total jerk.
“This year it’s only the two of us. My daughter and her family live in California and my son…” She made eye contact for an instant, her eyes shiny in the fluorescent light, before swiftly shifting her gaze to the yams.
Grace met his questioning glance and nodded in agreement without speaking.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to…” Her shoulders shook inside her quilted coat. “Didn’t mean to bother you.”
“Yes, please.” His voice was smooth and normal-sounding, although he supposed he should have said thank you instead of please.
“We’d love to join you,” Grace added and squeezed his arm while she took over details like address and time.
Someday people might stop surprising him, but it wouldn’t be this year.
Finding the Andersons’ addresswas easy where roads ran as straight north to south as a laser sight, so Cruz relaxed and anticipated turkey, football and pie while he watched the yellow lights of the house on the horizon grow.
A double line of trees stood sentry to the north. Underneath the snow cover, metal-prefab buildings huddled with a wooden barn and small concrete-block structures. Lights from the two-story house illuminated the plowed drive and scraped sidewalk, but they didn’t push the grim northern afternoon far. The scene should look like a postcard, but old snow skipped across the gravel, pushed by freezing wind, and made him shiver.
He’d decided to use his cane and wear khakis, a match for Grace’s black pants and silver pullover sweater. Like this, he could pass as a slow walker with a limp. The sidewalk was dry and easy for him, and at the end he lifted his eyes to count the porch steps.
The decoration beside the front door stopped his heart.
Why they’d been invited, and why, despite the lights and maintenance, the place whimpered of loneliness, suddenly became clear.
There was a gold star screwed to the siding.
He reached for Grace’s shoulder and jerked his head at the porch. “Star.”
Her inquiring smile meant she didn’t understand, so he pointed at it.
“Gold star. Mother.” He heard the quaver and fought for words to make her understand that these people weren’t run-of-the-mill lonely folks inviting strangers to their table. These parents had lost a son or daughter in war, probably somewhere he’d fought. A different day, a difference of inches, and this could have been his mother.
Grace was a civilian. She didn’t know what the gold star meant.
Mrs. Anderson opened the front door before he could connect with Grace, and inwardly he crumpled, although he made sure he stood as straight as a dress mess uniform crease. One hand for the rail, one for his cane, and he ascended the steps beside Grace. Each clunk on the wood sounded like the drum beat of a procession. If he wasn’t even able to warn her about their loss, there was nothing in the depths of his inarticulate misery to offer the Andersons.
Grace smiled and assured them they’d had no trouble finding the address, and agreed the weather was cold but dry was better than snow, as she shook hands with the stoop-shouldered man next to Mrs. Anderson, whose first name was Marlys.
“Your home smells wonderful,” Grace added as the older woman led her away.
Glen was the husband’s name. “They’ll be in that kitchen for the Lord’s own time, ya betcha,” he told Rey. “We can watch the game in here.”
Cruz froze in the doorway to the television room. On the mantel was a triangular frame filled with the folded flag, the boxed Purple Heart and a large portrait of a boy who could have been him ten years ago, when he’d barely needed to shave and still had a skinny Adam’s apple.
He used to be a man who called in airstrikes, took the shot, assaulted through the ambush, but he trembled before stepping into this room. Fear didn’t matter when he had to go read the boy’s name and unit and acknowledge this. Words weren’t at his command, but he could make these metal legs move with his cane and his will and take himself there.
Lance Corporal Matthew Anderson, United States Marine Corps, would never be more than twenty years old.
He propped his cane on his hip and looked at his shoes to be sure they were positioned correctly, not too far apart, before he rendered a salute.
Mr. Anderson stood by an indented easy chair, watching him. “Thank you.”
