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“Look, here’s another article from when the guys came home. It’s your grandpa, mine, and Jonah with their wives at the train station, plus what looks like the whole town turning out to greet them.” She holds the book up closer. “It’s hard to make out their faces, but by matching the names below the picture and counting heads...I think it’s this group right here.”
There are so many people in the faded sepia picture.
Their faces are small and grainy, and it’s hard to make out distinct features, other than the mile-wide grins everybody appears to be sporting.
“They look happy.” I hover my finger over two tiny silhouettes twined in each other’s arms. “That’s definitely my grandparents. My ma found a few more pics with them wearing the same outfits when I was cleaning this place out with Uncle Grady and shipping some stuff they’d left behind. I think they took more photos that day than they did for their own wedding.”
“Oh, my, I’m sure they did. It was a big deal to have your husband come home alive. So many folks weren’t that lucky...” She runs a sympathetic finger over the faces in the pictures. “Who met you when you got back?”
My throat turns into the Sonora Desert.
“Uh...I guess I never told anyone I was coming home. I just did. Marty might’ve picked me up from the base in Minot,” I admit, thinking how amazing it would have been to have her there.
Or how hellish.
How long could I have even talked to her like a human being with death haunting my brain and demons in my blood? Always thirsty for more, more of that medicine in the bottle, hissing in my head, promising they’d make me forget if I just kept them quenched—
I cough again, this time for real.
“Weston? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, fuck. Just swallowed my root beer wrong,” I grind out, thumping my chest for emphasis.
No, it wouldn’t have been good at all to have her around the day I came home.
I wouldn’t have had a prayer of hiding the smoldering wreck I’d become, or the lonely spiral into booze that started my first day home with a whiskey pint.
Shit, I’m barely hiding it now when I’m “healed” and sober...
“Uncle Grady took me in till we wrapped up the deal with my parents for the house and I started moving in,” I say.
She stares at me longer than I like, her soft lips twisted in a frown.
I offer her a stone-cold look like it’s nothing.
I don’t want the sympathy or the questions swirling in her eyes, but I can’t tear my gaze off them. Or off her lips, damn her.
She’s glancing at my mouth, too, and the air between us bristles, becoming more charged by the second.
I can’t kiss her, but fuck, I’ve never wanted to kiss a girl so badly in my life.
“I’m glad your uncle and Marty were there for you,” she says. “But why didn’t you tell anyone else?”
Why didn’t you write? I can hear the question she’s asking, but not asking in the back of my mind.
I glance away, feeling like I’ve just been dowsed with freezing water.
Moving into an empty house and living with bad memories alone was brutal.
Sure, I could’ve gone to my parents in Arizona to get my head straight, but they were both caught up in their new lives. I didn’t want to be a downer to them. To anyone.
“It wasn’t a big deal. My time serving was done and I had a lot to catch up on here, like getting my garage off the ground. I didn’t have one at first, just took odd jobs from whoever needed a quick fix or a tow. But soon I had folks beating down my door when word of mouth spread, and I realized I had just enough customers to pay the bills.” I’m rambling about my work, fighting like hell to change the subject. I take a swig off my soda, which suddenly tastes too much like battery acid. “You can take that book home if you want. Go through it at your leisure, make whatever copies, and enjoy.”
That wins me a smile, happy but tinged with sadness.
“I’d love to. Are you sure?”
“I wouldn’t dream of disappointing my favorite little book nerd,” I say, smirking.
