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“That – and it’s not necessary to pry any further, because this is all kinda new, and when we know something?” Karen said candidly, looking at her family members. “You’ll know something… I promise.”
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Exit Screen - and power off,Emily thought sagely – realizing that the matter was officially off limits and done.
No problem. She wasn’t really looking much anyhow, and it was more that she was tired of everyone assuming that ‘Poor Emily can’t get a man of her own’every time she turned around.
Nodding, she smiled wanly, and listened to the conversation flow around her, but that little voice inside her head was whimpering in a dark corner, scared and alone, yet again.
She sighed and grabbed a tissue.
“Allergies,” she said easily to her brother, who was watching her curiously.
CHAPTER2
X-RAY
A few months later…
Ghazni, Afghanistan
“What are you frowning about?Did you get bad news?” John Masden asked Hot Cakes openly, smiling, as he sat down at one of the computer terminals to kill some time looking around on Amazon.
He was bored and looking for something to read, needed some more of that rope dental floss that he liked, and craving some jellybeans like a mad fiend.
There was nothing better when it was late, then to snack on a few handfuls of jellybeans while imagining you were in some other world that wasn’t filled with sand. His last book that he’d read had been set in a swamp-like environment that reminded him of those days long ago at home.
He came from a blip on the map on the outskirts of Slidell, Louisiana, where the people living there gave new meaning to the word ‘poor’. His mother raised him in a trailer built on top of a cinderblock garage that served to hide a dingy or skiff when they had one. They didn’t dare use it as an actual garage because of flooding or hurricanes.
He remembered as a boy that when the rains would come, the swamp waters would rise and come nearly halfway up the walls, leaving a silt line to mark the depth.
It was a different world out there.
He was practically raised in a flat-bottom skiff, caught crawdads for fun – and dinner – and knew how frustrating it was to have a snake fall out of a tree into your boat… and to keep it from tipping at the same time you were scrambling to get the fanged-demon out, before getting bit.
The moss that hung from the trees was Nature’s veil, the bald cypress trees were its gates, and the glow of a gator’s eyes in the darkness reflecting the moonlight was its sirens that beckoned you towards the unknown mysteries of the bayou.
This was a deadly, beautiful world none could appreciate but those that lived there. The brackish waters had a smell that he could still imagine when he closed his eyes and thought of home. That rich, peat, watery scent that was only made from centuries of death and decay giving rise to bogs, marshes, and wastelands that few understood.
He’d seen water moccasins, cottonmouths, gators galore, and even a bull shark… there was no way he would swim in the deep murky waters – but he sure loved them.
A perfect day growing up was one with clear skies, about seventy degrees, layin’ in a skiff with the sun on your face, in the middle of winter just when the cold-blooded critters started to slow down a bit… and he could listen to the world go by.
The faint drone of an airplane far overhead, bull frogs singing, the occasional splash of water from a creature leaping from a nearby bank, and the birds flapping into the air to get away from a predator…
Yeah, it would always be home, no matter what had once happened there.
John started slightly, lost in his thoughts, as he realized the other pilot, Hot Cakes, was talking to him.
“I had to tell my wife that I couldn’t come home until May… and then I only got a few days approved.”
“I had no idea you’d gotten married,” John admitted, smiling. “Congratulations, Hot Cakes.”
“Thanks,” Hot Cakes replied. “It’s not common knowledge and was kind of a spur of the moment thing while I was home, but we are very happy. I just hate that it’s going to be several months before I see her again.”
“I get it, but at least you are going home to see her, you know?”
