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“You were close with your dad?” I asked, feeling a small twinge of longing as I always did when someone had a kind, loving relationship with a paternal figure, never having known my own father. Which was likely why I clung so hard to the memory of my grandfather.
“When I was young, yeah. The older I got, the further we drifted apart. I loved him, sure, but I think I feared him more. He was the kind of person who demanded respect, who wanted near perfectionism, who didn’t have any soft in him at all.”
“But you followed in his footsteps?” I asked, brows knitting. Usually, if you didn’t get on with a parent, you tried to rebel from all the things they held dear, not do exactly what they did.
“I wanted to get out of the house. And at eighteen with no money, there weren’t a lot of ways to do that. So I enlisted. But I pissed off my old man by becoming a SEAL, not going into the Army like him. There was a sense of satisfaction in that,” he added, lips quirked up in a bit of spiteful pride.
“Did you like being a SEAL?”
“I liked it at first. The training, the challenge, the brotherhood. It wasn’t until I was called in to join special forces that things went a little downhill for me.”
“You can’t talk about it,” I assumed.
“Most of it, no.”
“But it was bad?”
“According to official records – that are heavily redacted, mind you – they say that what we did was good, was in the service of freedom and justice.”
“But?”
“But it was bad. No one should be turned into the monsters we were turned into. No one should have to carry with them the shit we have to shoulder for the rest of our lives. So a lot of us don’t.”
“Don’t what?” I asked, my heart hurting for him, for those like him. I couldn’t fathom that burden, having those lives on your conscience. I once hit a squirrel who ran out right in front of my car – death wish in hand – and had cried for hours, had it be the last thought I had every night for months, despite it being an accident, and ‘just a squirrel.’
“Don’t live with it. As a choice.”
“You… you considered not living with it too, right?” I asked, remembering what he had said the night he had found me with the knife.
“Yeah. Though, I think a big part of it was a medication mishap. But yeah, thought about it. It was right after that when I chose to come in here. Not like this, not at first. I was just trying to slip away in a different way.”
“Was there no one left to, you know, miss you?”
“Some of my old buddies from the service. That was what finally brought someone in here years back. Quin had set up his office up in Navesink Bank. He assembled a crew. And he remembered me, wanted me. So he sent Gunner out here.”
“What does Gunner do?”
“Tracks people. Or helps them disappear. Like an unofficial Witness Protection. He tracked me down. Which couldn’t have been easy. Back in those days, I had my hiking pack, and that was it. But he found me. Made me the offer. Told me if I took the job, I had to have walls.”
“So you built walls.”
“I built walls. Learned how to set up the composting bathroom, the gray water solution, the well, the solar. Know it doesn’t look like much now even, but back then it was even more bare.”
“I think it is amazing now,” I told him, hearing a bit of dreaminess in my tone.
“Yeah?” he asked, gaze holding mine, eyes looking thoughtful.
“You live in the woods with a composting toilet, water that takes an hour to warm up, and electric that is sketchy some days. And yet it’s the most comfy house I’ve ever been in. I could live here forever,” I told him, then realized how crazy that sounded, clingy, presumptuous. “I mean, I ah, don’t expect to be here for…”
“You can stay as long as you want,” he cut me off, then stood abruptly, taking his dish to the sink.
He was just like that.
It had been off-putting at first, made me feel like I was saying or doing the wrong things.
But now, I was used to it. It was just his way. There was no reason to second-guess myself. He didn’t subscribe to common ideas of manners and traditions.
The reason that was an unexpected blessing came to me on one day when I hadn’t been able to sleep, when Gadget had been restless, making me worry he was taking a sudden turn for the worse even though he had been nothing but healthy and happy, and Ranger had gotten up in a decent mood, but mine was in the gutter, and when he’d tried to engage me, and I had grumbled at him and stormed outside to be alone, he hadn’t been bothered. He’d simply given Gadget his morning bottle, made the coffee, left enough for me, and went about his day. Un-offended.
