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If Grace didn’t know it was her Levi, she wasn’t sure she’d recognize him. His hair stood straight up on end. His skin looked ashen, with dark circles beneath his eyes. He appeared both livid and humiliated. He wore only a pair of jeans, and she could see how his shoulders were pulled up so high with tautness, they practically crowded his ears.
On any other day, she might have made a joke to tease him into a better mood, but she knew instinctively Levi wouldn’t stand for it. Not now.
“Go!” Levi shouted, pointing toward the door. “Now!”
Grace stood her ground. “No.”
Stella raced out from the kitchen, her normally coiffed hair in wild disarray, eyes wide and full of fear.
“I said go, Grace. I don’t need you here. I don’t want you here.” Levi lifted a trembling hand and pointed toward the door again. “Haven’t you seen enough to know it’s time to walk away from this?”
She shook her head, unwilling to accept what he was saying. “You need help, Levi. I want to help you. We all do.”
He sneered. “I’ve had quite enough help. I don’t need more, and I don’t need you. I’m not one of your patients you can stick a bandage on and heal, Grace. I’m broken, really broken, and I refuse …” He stopped and slumped against the wall, as though all the fight flowed out of him. “Please just go, Grace. Please go. Go away and don’t come back. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
“It might be best if you left now,” Gary said softly.
Grace didn’t want to leave. Everything in her shouted at her to stay, to make Levi see they could get through this, through any challenge, if they faced it together.
But it seemed Levi preferred to face them alone.
Tears spilled from her eyes and rained down her cheeks as Grace turned and ran out to her car. Until Levi realized he needed help, there wasn’t anything she could do for him.
The truth of it broke her heart.
“Levi,wouldyouatleast stop long enough to listen?” Gary asked, rushing to keep up with Levi’s long, furious strides as he walked across the end of a beet field to make sure the irrigation water had made it from one end to the other.
“I don’t need to listen. You and Ma have done nothing but harp at me for weeks, Pop. I heard you the first fifty times.”
“Obviously, you didn’t!” Gary grabbed Levi’s shoulders, forcing him to stop and face him.
Levi had never considered hitting his father, but at that moment, his hand curled into a fist, and he thought about how satisfying it would feel to punch him in the nose.
“You are on the fast track to destruction, son, and your mother and I can’t watch you do this to yourself. You need help. Why won’t you just admit it, accept it, and do what you need to do to move on with your life?”
“Because!” Levi jerked away from his dad and took a few more angry steps before the insistent man stopped him again.
“Because why, Levi? Because isn’t a reason.”
“It’s enough of a reason. Please, Pop, just leave it be.”
Gary sighed. “No. We’ve let you wallow in your misery for three weeks, Levi. You aren’t sleeping. When you do, I know you’re having terrible dreams. You jump at every loud noise, and you nearly took a chunk out of Tucker’s hide yesterday when all he did was accidentally drop a bale of hay close to you. Worse than any of that, though, you’ve withdrawn from Grace, spurning her attempts to help you and pushing her out of your life. We all know how much you love her. She is the single best thing that has ever happened to you. One day you are going to wake up and regret losing her. Don’t let it happen, son. There’s still time to turn this thing around and get it headed in the right direction.”
“What direction is that, Pop? The crazy house? Isn’t that where they stick people like me who freak out at fireworks shows and have to be carried out of the crowd by strangers? How do you think I could possibly have a life with Grace when I’m terrified of what I might do to her in my sleep? What if we have kids, and I hurt one of them when I’m lost in one of my flashbacks? I couldn’t live with myself if I ever hurt her. It’s better to just let her go now, Pop. I can’t ruin her life. Not when she’s …” Levi heaved a soul-weary sigh. “Please, Pop, let it be.”
“No. Either you make an appointment to go speak to the doctor Grace recommended, or your mother and I will do it for you. You aren’t listening, Levi. Just because you’ve hit a rough patch doesn’t mean that’s the way things will always be. With the proper treatment, you can still live a full, happy life with the woman you love. You can deny it all you want, but you love Grace. You adore her. The happiest I’ve ever seen you—ever—is when you were with her. You need to be with Grace, and she needs to be with you. What will it take for you to see you don’t have to give up on your dreams or your happiness?”
“You aren’t going to change my mind, Pop. I’m broken beyond repair, and now that everyone knows it, I can’t stuff that back in the box where I was doing a pretty good job of keeping it.”
Levi started walking again. He’d only taken a few steps when his father jerked on his arm and spun him around. For the first time in his life, his father looked like he wanted to pummel some sense into him.
Caught off guard by the anger radiating from his father, Levi withdrew further into himself. The past three weeks had been the worst of his life. His mother hadn’t stopped crying since the night Grace and Cindy had brought him home in what his father referred to as his trauma trance.
Levi had awakened that morning to find his father sitting by his bed, appearing haggard and old. He’d sat up and looked around his boyhood bedroom with no recollection of how he’d gotten there. The last thing he’d remembered was laughing with Grace and Cindy as the fireworks show had begun.
After questioning his father several times, he’d finally gotten him to explain about the girls bringing him home after two strangers helped load him in the car.
Levi’s emotions had run the gamut from abject horror, because of what he might have done if Grace hadn’t quickly removed him from the situation triggering him to think he was back in Vietnam, to unmitigated mortification that she’d seen him in such a state. According to what his father had shared, Grace had treated him like a patient, checking his pulse, making him comfortable. Knowing that she’d done that had infuriated him beyond the point of reason. He had ranted and raved for an hour, not making any more sense to himself than he did to his two bewildered parents.
