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“I don’t know,” he said softly. “There are times I thought it might have.”
“What in hell does that mean?”
“It means I needed time to think. Just think, you know? Me, myself and I.” Jake’s expression softened. “I’m sorry if I worried you guys. That was the last thing I intended.”
“And maybe you think it was okay, too, not telling us if you were alive.”
“I did tell you.” Jake finished his beer, put the bottle on the floor beside him. “I texted.”
“‘Do not worry about me,’“ Caleb growled.
“‘I am fine,’” Travis added. His mouth twisted. “Very illuminating.”
“It sounded like it was sent by a robot. Anybody ever tell you people speak in contractions?”
Jake raised one eyebrow. “So, I should have said, ‘Don’t worry about me? I’m fine,’ instead of what I did say?”
Caleb opened his mouth, then clamped it shut. Travis made a sound that was suspiciously like a snort of laughter and Caleb shot him a look.
Jake took pity on them both.
“I didn’t call or write because I wasn’t ready to call or write,” he said quietly.
“Even about buying this place?”
Jake shrugged. “I knew you’d hear about it.”
“And?”
“And, what?”
His brothers exchanged a look.
“Jake,” Travis said gently, “you can’t go on like this.”
“Hating the world, hating yourself.” Caleb shook his head. “And for no reason, man. No reason that’s valid.”
Jake nodded. “Well, the reason was valid. For me, anyway. What it might not have been was logical.”
“Exact—” Travis frowned. “What did you say?”
“I said …” Jake shook his head. “It’s complicated.”
His brothers looked bewildered. Jake couldn’t blame them. Until recently, he’d been bewildered, too, except that was too polite a way to describe it.
“Post-traumatic stress,” he said quietly. “It hit me, hard. Guilt over what I’d done and hadn’t done—”
“You did all you could.”
“I’m still working through that, Trav. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d threatened to beat the crap out of my commanding officer sooner—”
“What? You never told us—”
The General cleared his throat.
Until that moment, his sons had pretty much forgotten he was there. Now, he, too, rose from his seat.
“That was wrong, Jacob. Very wrong. It deserved court-martial.”
