“Absolutely.”
Her mother shook her head, as if shaking off the uncharacteristically reflective mood. Then she physically stiffened her spine. “I’ll finish cleaning up in here. You go on up to bed.”
It was more order than suggestion. Since there was no way her cleaning skills could ever live up to her mother’s operating room standards, regretting the loss of what might have been a longer moment of intimacy Kara went upstairs, stopping at her son’s room.
Moonlight slanted across a narrow mattress crowded with stuffed animals and action-hero figures. Trey had always flopped around like a fish in bed and had, as usual, kicked off his sheets, revealing Batman underpants. One slender arm was flung over his head and his hair—blond, like his father’s—gleamed like spun gold in the muted light.
Above the bed, posters of Spider-Man, Wolverine, and the Hulk shared wall space with a Marines recruiting poster; on the table beside the bed was a framed photo of Jared, looking for all the world like a Hollywood superhero himself, so incredibly handsome in his snazzy dress-blue uniform.
Kara pulled the bedding back over his body, and allowed herself the indulgence of brushing her fingers through his hair. He stirred, but didn’t wake.
She never went to bed without checking on him. After Jared’s death, she’d become obsessive, getting up in the middle of the night just to reassure herself that her son was still safe. Because she’d discovered that even giving your mind and heart and soul to someone wasn’t always enough to keep them alive.
She hadn’t been the only one whose life had been shattered that day. It had taken weeks for Trey not to believe that whenever she left him to go to work, she—like his father—would not return home. For the first few months, she’d left the house in street clothes, changing into her patrol uniform in the Oceanside police station locker room.
And then making things even worse was her being attacked and nearly killed. Which was when Kara had traded in her patrol car for a desk, hoping that it would ease her young son’s troubled mind.
They’d both come a long way, she considered as the eight-year-old mumbled and rolled over onto his stomach, hugging his plush English bulldog, Chesty—named for the Marines mascot—close.
Obviously their lives had been inexorably changed by that man who’d shot Jared, then his wife, before committing suicide by cop in an hours-long standoff. But they were managing better with each passing day. Possessing his father’s “never met a stranger” nature, Trey had slipped well into his new school and had even spent the night away on a sleepover last weekend. Which had been a major step for both of them.
Kara brushed her lips against the back of his head, then went across the hall to her own room. After washing her face and brushing her teeth in the adjoining bathroom, she pulled one of the faded gray T-shirts Jared had worn for PT over her head. She might be moving on, but this way of still sleeping with her husband continued to provide some measure of comfort.
It also focused her mind on dreaming about him. Which was proving more and more important as she found it increasingly difficult to picture him during the day.
The police counselor had told her that memories of Jared would begin to fade. It was only natural, an inevitable part of the healing process. At the time, she hadn’t believed the idea could be possible.
From the first time she’d met him, on the Shelter Bay Elementary School playground, his essence had infused into every cell in Kara’s body until, if asked, she’d never have been able to tell where she left off and he began.
Together they’d made thousands—no,
millions—
of memories together.
Memories that had provided such necessary comfort during all those lonely months—years—he’d been away on deployments.
So how could they be fading?
So much had already been stolen from her. Her husband, her son’s father, the life she and Jared had created together, not to mention the marriage she’d been convinced that, despite their troubles, they’d been destined to continue.
And she’d lost everything in a blink of an eye. Or more accurately, with the rapid-fire speed of a nine-millimeter bullet.
And now her memories were being taken away, too?
It wasn’t fair, dammit!
“Newsflash,” she muttered, as she climbed between the sheets that smelled of the lavender her mother always put in the rinse water. “Life doesn’t come with a money-back guarantee that it’s going to be fair.”
Lying in the same bed she’d slept in as a child, the bed she’d sneaked Jared into the night before he’d left for the Marines, the bed in which she’d conceived their son, Kara drifted into a fitful sleep.
But for the very first time since Jared’s murder, the man who visited her dreams was not her husband, but Shelter Bay’s very own bad boy turned all-American hero, sexy SEAL Sax Douchett.
5
They came to him in the dark of night, with mud-streaked faces and bullet-riddled, bloodied bodies. The first time Velcro had seen his ghosts, she’d gone nuts trying to decide whether to leap to her rescuer’s defense or cower beneath the bed. Despite her obvious adoration of her new owner, fear had won out, and Sax wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d run away, leaving behind a dog-shaped hole in his outside wall.
But as soon as she realized that he wasn’t unduly upset, like him she’d grown used to their visits. In fact, tonight her huge furry tail thumped a greeting on the hand-pegged floor.
“So that’s her?” Cody—Cowboy—Montgomery asked in his Western drawl. “The little gal your big brother’s best friend knocked up?”
“They were going to get married anyway.” Sax rued that day they’d all gotten drunk after surviving BUD/S, when he’d told them about the hometown girl who’d been out of his reach from the get-go. “Her getting pregnant right before Jared left for the Marines just upped the timetable.”
“But the jarhead husband isn’t in the picture anymore,” Jake the Snake—nicknamed for his ability to slither into the smallest of places—pointed out.
Did they know that because they’d somehow run into Jared Conway? Like maybe in some big barracks in the sky? Was heaven, or wherever they’d ended up, like earth, where there was a huge gulf between military and civilians?
Don’t go there. Since you don’t want to know anyway
.
Having Velcro dig up that bone, then suddenly having what the nuns would’ve called “impure thoughts” about Kara Conway had been enough surprises for one damn day.
“He’s not in the picture because some shit- for-brains wife beater killed him.” It frigging wasn’t fair. A guy getting through two tours in the sandbox damn well didn’t deserve to get blown away while standing on some front porch in what should’ve been a safe suburban neighborhood.
“Smart move, making the dinner invitation sound like it was about her kid,” Randy—who didn’t need a nickname, since his real one had fit him to a T, him being the player of the team—said.
“It
was
about her son,” Sax said. Randy’s face had been peppered down to bone from the Taliban bad guys shooting bullets into it after they’d killed him, but Sax had no trouble imagining the arched, argumentative black brow. “It was,” he insisted. Admittedly with a bit less conviction than he’d intended.
“Maybe you meant that in the beginning,” Cowboy allowed. “But by the time that sheriff sashayed back to her black-and-white, you weren’t thinking about tossing football passes to her boy.”
“More like passes to the boy’s mama. Your tongue was dragging so far on the porch floor I’m flat-out amazed you didn’t step on it,” Jake agreed with Cowboy.
“Better put in a good supply of latex helmets, Sax Man,” Randy advised, “because you are so going to get lucky.”
“Terrific. That’s all I need. Worrying about you characters slinking around my bedroom if things do get serious.”
Not that they were going to get serious. He wouldn’t let them.
“Who said anything about serious?” Randy challenged. “We’re just talking about getting your rocks off.”
“And we don’t slink,” Cowboy complained.
“No. You just show up. Without any damn warning.”
“Well, excuuuse me,” Jake shot back. “For your information, Sax Man, the afterlife doesn’t exactly give a guy superpowers. But maybe if we all put our minds together, we can come up with some way to call you up on your cell phone to let you know we’re on our way. Just in case you wanted to make us some milk and cookies.”
“Hell with milk. I’d kill for an ice-cold Bud,” Cowboy said, suggesting the afterlife also didn’t come with alcoholic beverages.
Which, if true, was really the pits.
“Maybe we could try something with nature. Like a rumbling thunder sound,” Cowboy continued thoughtfully, as if he were giving the idea serious consideration. “Trouble with that is, you’d probably get us confused with all the storms you get out here on this godforsaken coast.”
“I like the coast. The way you always said you liked your mountains,” Sax said. “Speaking of which, since you’re obviously no fan of the ocean, why don’t you consider going to haunt someone back home in Montana?”
“Wyoming,” the SEAL corrected, as he always did when Sax purposely got the name of his home state wrong. “And I can’t do that. At least, not yet. Not till we accomplish our mission.”
Sax still hadn’t decided whether he was glad to see the guys or not. He’d missed the missions, and shooting the bull with them, but every time they showed up, memories of that day they’d died, and he’d been wounded and captured, flashed through his mind as if they were playing on a big-screen high-def TV. And guilt slashed at him like a jagged-edged, rusty knife.
“A mission you still haven’t bothered to share with me.”
“Sorry, dude. It’s on a need-to-know basis,” Jake said.
“And I don’t need to know.”
“Got it in one.”
Christ, it was like playing
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
with these guys. Unfortunately, Sax didn’t have a phone-a-friend to help him with the answer. “I don’t suppose this alleged mission comes with a timetable?”
“That’s up to you,” Randy said obliquely. “Meanwhile, good luck with the cop chick.”
“And don’t worry,” Jake said. “We can, on occasion, be discreet. You want to do the horizontal get-down boogie with the hot widow, you’re not going to have an audience.”
“Unless you want one,” Randy suggested, the humorous leer in his voice making up for the one missing on his face. “Then we’ll bring along some popcorn and sit ourselves down in the front row.”
“If you jokers don’t mind, I’d like to get some sleep,” Sax said. “Because, in case you were too busy staring at Conway’s widow’s ass to pay attention, in just a few hours I’m going to have cops crawling all over this place.”
“Hey, man,” Cowboy said. “You only had to ask.”
And with that they were gone. Like morning mist over the beach.
Two hours later, the sky outside the window had gone from oh-dark-thirty black to the pearly pink of predawn.
Hell
.
His ability to sleep eroded by his night visitors, Sax lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling as Velcro’s soft snoring provided a rumbling accompaniment to the roar of the tide beating away at the basalt cliff, as it had for aeons.
And strangely, instead of reliving that deadly mission, as he’d always done in the past after the guys had come calling, he found himself wondering what, exactly, Sheriff Kara Conway had been wearing under that shit-ugly khaki uniform.
6
“Mom!” The sound of sneakers thudded on the stairs. “I can’t find my library book. And if I’m late, sour- faced Mrs. Bernard is going to freak. Again.”
“It’s not polite to speak insultingly of your teacher,” Faith said.
“She’s not my teacher. She’s the school librarian. And not even the
real
librarian, because she only started substituting when Mrs. Roberts, who was really cool, had to take time off to have her baby.
“Besides, it wasn’t an insult, Gram. It’s an adjective.” He’d been learning parts of speech. “She really does look like she sucks lemons all day. Doesn’t she, Mom?”
“What have we discussed about not judging a book by its cover?” Kara asked.
“She’s not a book.” With total disregard for both his body and his grandmother’s furniture, Trey Conway threw himself into the heavy scrolled iron chair.
“But the same holds true for people.” She placed a bowl of cinnamon-spiced oatmeal topped with granola and a sliced banana along with a glass of milk in front of her son. “That’s exactly how prejudices get started.”
“I know.” He blew out a long-suffering sigh, then frowned down at the breakfast. “Jimmy Brown’s mother gives him Froot Loops and Pop- Tarts for breakfast. And they have this entire great big, huge pantry where they keep all their snack foods.”
“Sounds as if Mrs. Brown needs a few lessons in nutrition,” Faith observed.
“Strawberry Pop- Tarts are the best. I had some the morning after our sleepover.”
“Maybe because it was a special occasion,” Kara suggested, attempting to placate her physician mother.
“Nah.” Despite claiming to prefer more sugary cereal, he dug into the oatmeal. Trey had been born with a huge appetite, causing Jared to claim he had a hollow leg. “Jimmy says he gets good stuff like that all the time.”
“Mrs. Brown’s family dentist must love her,” Faith murmured.
“Different families do things in different ways.” Kara poured coffee into a thermal cup to take with her out to the beach. Having spent a restless night chasing sleep, being troubled by those damn dreams of Sax, she was in desperate need of caffeine. “And in this family we believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“So when Jimmy stays over tonight, he’s gonna have to eat oatmeal?”
“I suppose we could fix something else. Like waffles or pancakes.”