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“But O’Toole isn’t that dumb,” Rain said. “He knows he needs at least one adult in the house with all that’s going on in Burney. Plus, you’ll be the scapegoat for Bartlett. It’s a lose-lose scenario for you. Once that development is done, they’ll clean house. And you’ll be part of what’s tossed out. If Wilcox offered you a job here, she was doing you a favor. You need to think about it. Seriously. The longer you stay there in Burney, the deeper the shit is going to pile up around you. They’ll pin every messed up thing that happens on you.”
I didn’t respond right away because although her words were hard, she was right.
“True,” I finally admitted. “But turn it around. She offered me the job to get me out of the way. Which means something is amiss.”
“‘Amiss’?” Rain said. “What the fuck? Of course, something is off. You’re in over your head.” She pressed on. “Remembertheday?”
She didn’t need to specify which day.
“Like it was yesterday,” I said.
“You had a bad feeling while we were waiting for the choppers. You even went to your platoon leader about it. But we had orders. We were Rangers. We were going to fly into that valley no matter what. Especially not some platoon sergeant’s feelings.”
It had been the last day Rain had spent with us after two years of high-tempo deployments. She wasn’t technically a Ranger. She’d been a medic who’d been absorbed into our unit at first by circumstances, and her own volunteering, and then had stayed because of her skills at saving lives and she’d become one of us.Thatday had turned into her last day with us because we had barely cleared the LZ after getting off the choppers when we’d been hit. RPGs, heavy machine-gun fire, mortars, the whole deal. They’d been waiting for us. Her leg below the knee had been badly mangled, and with it, her life as it had been. She’d since rebuilt her new life with a lot of sweat and effort. She’d eventually had the limb amputated after numerous surgeries failed to either stop the pain or provide any functionality. I suddenly realized that it had been more than a rational physiological decision. It had been emotional, severing her ties to the past. Letting go of that wounded limb had helped her move on.
“What I’m saying, Vince, is you don’t have to get on this chopper. Get out of there. Come to Cincy.”
“I can’t.”
Surprisingly, she laughed. “You are one pig-headed son of a bitch. If you need help, I’m here for you.”
“Rangers lead the way,” I said.
“And sometimes the right way is a strategic withdrawal,” she responded which wasn’t one of her usual snarky replies.
“That’s a retreat,” I responded.
“It’s survival,” she argued. “Be careful, Vince. You’ve got a lot to live for now, don’t screw it up.”
I turned off the phone and looked out over Burney and for the first time in a while, thought about my life and my future, about what I was risking.
It was a little weird that I actually had something to risk. Someone to risk.
I got off the rail and went back to work. Thinking was too damn depressing.
CHAPTER 7
Idecided to blow off Anemone’s copy edits for the afternoon since I finally had some alone time in the Big Chef. Anemone had gone through the manuscript and made copious notes in red ink so that by the time I got them, it looked like a bloodbath. This morning I’d been distracted by Cash and his damn papers, and I wondered now if that wasn’t why I’d stayed to listen since leaving would put me back on the damn copy edits.
After I painted my new bedroom blue.
I was just finishing the first coat of Blue blue when Vince came home, earlier than usual. I’d lost track of time until I heard him call “Liz?” when he came into the original diner. I yelled, “Back here!” and he came to find me in the new part, looking exhausted and depressed. Bad day evidently.
“What the hell?” he said.
“What hell?” I turned to him, frowning. “What’s wrong?”
“Why is this blue?”
“Because all bedrooms should be blue.”
“I don’t want my bedroom blue,” he said, and I froze. He noticed and said, “Now what?”
“I want my bedroom blue,” I said, putting down the roller. “But of course, this isn’t my bedroom, it’s yours.”
He closed his eyes. “Don’t start. Not today.” Then he opened them and stared at me “Why were you with Cash at the factory?”
I was mad about the “my bedroom” bit because it was true that it wasn’t my bedroom. I should have asked before I painted it, not just assumed I could have what I wanted. But now this? The bedroom was his life, but who I spend my time with was mine. “How do you know I was at the factory?”
