Page 36 of Reeves

Reeves

The First Line:The mourners who walk directly behind the casket. They do not speak. They let the music do what words cannot.

I wakein one abrupt shift from sleep to awareness. No gradual drift. Just on and off like a light switch.

The ceiling comes into focus above me. It's unfamiliar for a split second, and then I realize it's my bedroom in my dad's house.

I lie still. The sheets are too soft, the mattress too giving. The silence is too complete without the hum of generators and black hawks, or the distant sounds of others moving through camp.

But my mind isn't quiet.

I can't get the image of Charli standing in her driveway last night out of my mind. Grocery bags in her arms, the porch light catching in her hair, turning the brown strands gold at the edges. Her eyes looked at me like I was a stranger who once knew all her secrets.

I sit up, the sheets pooling at my waist.

A flash of memory cuts through of the boy on the bike with training wheels, his small hands gripping the handlebars.

I swing my legs over the side of the bed. My shoulder protests immediately, a hot lance of pain shooting down my arm. The muscles seize, locked in a familiar vise grip I've been ignoring since Ramadi.

"Fuck," I mutter, reaching for the orange prescription bottle on the nightstand.

I shake out three tablets and throw them back without water. They scrape down my throat dryly, but it's nothing new. Just another routine.

Standing, I roll my shoulder in slow circles. The meds will take twenty minutes to start working. The doctors call it "degenerative damage to the rotator cuff with nerve involvement." I call it the price of doing business.

Just a sore muscle, I tell myself.

I head for the shower, cranking the water as hot as it will go with my left hand. Steam fills the bathroom as I step under the spray. The water hits my skin, and I brace my good arm against the tile.

Charli built a life without me. And there's a child who looks about five years old riding bikes in front of her house.

Five years.

The math isn't complicated.

The kitchen isempty when I step in. It's quiet in that heavy way old houses get when they're holding their breath. The coffee maker sits ready, programmed by Ms. Landry for me. I revel in the small mercies.

I pour the black liquid into a mug with mechanical precision. I don't use cream or sugar. The routine is a comfort I don't needto think about. One less decision in a morning already crowded with thoughts I can't shake.

The first sip scalds my tongue, but I barely register it. The pain in my shoulder has dulled to a steady throb, familiar background noise I've gotten used to ignoring.

I sit at the kitchen table, staring at the steam rising from the mug. Sunlight cuts through the windows in sharp angles across the floor. Everything is too still.

The letter.

It sits upstairs, folded carefully in my duffel. Six years old, but still crisp, like a time capsule I never bothered to open until yesterday.

"Shit."

I push back from the table and head upstairs. My footsteps echo through the large house. No one else is here, which suits me fine. The fewer people asking questions, the better.

The letter is exactly where I left it. I unfold it carefully, smoothing the creases with my thumb. The paper is more delicate now, important in a way it didn't seem when I first found it.

Charli's handwriting fills the page. It's neat, controlled, just like her.

I'm pregnant. I know you don't want this life. I'm not asking you to change your mind.

The words hammer at me differently now, with the image of that kid on Magnolia Lane fresh in my head. Dark hair, the way he glanced back over his shoulder while riding that bike.