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“So what’s really wrong?”
Becky looked up, and her eyes filled with fresh tears.
“I just saw Luke coming out of the grocery store. I wanted yogurt for lunch.”
Damn. “They don’t have yogurt in the cafeteria?”
“Not strawberry banana.”
“Did he say something?” Annie asked gently. Becky was the most loving person she’d ever known. Luke’s leaving town to join the army sixteen years before, walking out on Becky and their love affair so abruptly, without a backward glance, had nearly destroyed her friend. And just as abruptly, a month ago, he’d returned to town.
“No…” Becky’s voice trailed off. “I didn’t give him a chance.”
“Do you think he saw you?”
“He looked straight at me.” Becky’s lips trembled. “I can’t believe this, Annie,” she said with a deep shudder. “I got over Luke Chisum years ago. I want nothing to do with him. And still, seeing him out of the blue like that, I turn to mush.”
Annie wanted to believe that a girl could get over her first love. Even if he had been the knight-in-shining-armor kind.
“It’s just that, seeing him up close…”
Remembering her first sight of Blake, two years before, when he’d stepped off that plane, Annie felt her own throat tighten. “Aw, hon.” She hated seeing her friend hurt. “I’m sorry.”
Becky sniffled and blew her nose.
“It gets easier,” Annie murmured, though she wasn’t as certain of that this morning as she might have been the day before.
Becky nodded. “It has to, doesn’t it?”
Annie sure as hell hoped so.
“He’s got this tiny scar by his left eye….”
“From the helicopter crash?”
“I don’t know, but probably. It’s still a little pink, so it has to be fresh.” She paused, glanced out the windshield and then looked back at Annie, her eyes filled with tenderness—and pain. “I just can’t stop thinking about him over there in Iraq, about all the things we hear about that place. About the crash. What if he’d been taken hostage?”
Grabbing her friend’s hand, Annie gave it a squeeze. “Don’t let those demons get you, Bec,” she said. “You’ll drive yourself crazy.”
And Annie, more than most, knew the truth of this. “Cole says he’s fine,” she continued. “Still the same old joking-around Luke.”
“All that joking covers a lot.”
Annie didn’t doubt it. Luke Chisum had been home only a month and already he was taking his father to therapy, doing everything he could to make his mother’s life easier, doing his share at the family ranch—in spite of an older brother who treated him with open hostility every chance he got.
“Still, other than some color blindness due to damage to the optic nerve, he seems to have completely recovered.”
Becky tried to smile. And failed. “Do you know how long he was at Walter Reed?”
The amount of time he’d spent in the veterans’ hospital would give a medical professional like Becky a fairly good idea of the extent of Luke’s injuries.
“I don’t.” Annie hesitated, thought and then continued, “I know that he got a medical discharge, though. With his vision the way it is, he wouldn’t meet army regulations.”
“I wondered,” Becky said, and looked at Annie again. “He’s back for good, isn’t he?”
“Cole thinks so.”
“Think he’ll let me just go on not speaking to him for the rest of our lives?” Becky’s attempt at a smile was a bit more successful that time.
