The Way Home (14 page)

“Since you’ve been off the opium.”

“Yes. And it seems to happen when we talk. That day in the kitchen. Now. Conversation seems to trigger these . . . memories. Keep talking to me.” He worked to contain his excitement. This felt like a breakthrough. If he could remember things about Afghanistan, maybe he could remember something about who he was.

“You are right,” she said, and he could hear a barely contained excitement in her voice, too. “The American and Coalition forces defeated the Taliban in 2001. Radical sharia law was thrown out. Girls returned to school. Women went to work. At least, in some provinces.”

“But not in Kandahar?”

“No. Not in Kandahar.”

“No wonder you prefer Kabul.”

“What I prefer are basic human rights. The Taliban have
been ousted from political power, but they still rule by terror here in Kandahar Province. Women here are expected to follow sharia law. We have no rights. We are chattel. Only because of my father, only because he is a
malik
, was he able to send me to Kabul, where I went to school.”

“To become a teacher.”

“Yes. And to become active in the Afghan women’s movement. Because of us, there are women in parliament now. Some of us even drive.”

Her statement triggered another memory. “You were driving when you found me.”

“Yes.” Pride filled her tone. He understood why. She was a trailblazer.

“Isn’t it dangerous for you to drive in this part of Afghanistan?”

“Because of the heavy Taliban presence, yes. But I studied hard to pass the test and earn the right to drive as any man does.”

“That doesn’t explain why you risked driving through Taliban territory.”

“My father called me home. I drove during daylight hours to avoid the night patrols.”

She was not only beautiful, she was also smart and brave, and she honored her father. Here a daughter obeyed her father with no questions asked.

“Your father is ill, isn’t he?”

She drew a long breath. “He is old. And yes, he is not as well as he once was.”

He had noticed that the old man barely picked at his food. And then there was the excessive sleeping. “He should see a doctor.”

“He refuses. He is a stubborn man, my father. Like you, I
believe, are a stubborn man.” She stood then and held out her hand. “Do not tell me no again. We must go inside. And you will accept my help.” Sheer determination filled her eyes.

“And if I say no?” Because she looked so stern, he couldn’t resist baiting her.

“Then you will be responsible for me not getting any sleep this night.”

She’d known exactly how to get to him. “That’s not playing fair.”

“What about life is fair?”

Didn’t he know it? And yet this exchange made him smile.

He took her hand and slowly rose to a sitting position. Standing had gotten easier, but he always had to take extreme care with sudden movements, or he’d land on his ass, sweating like a marathon runner in the last mile, swallowing back his dinner, and hanging on to the world while it spun out of control.

“Wait until you are steady,” she said when he finally had his feet beneath him.

They stood side-by-side in the moonlight, his weight on his good leg, his world fairly level. It struck him then that for a woman of such strength, she was neither tall nor heavily built.

“How tall are you?”

She told him in Pashto.

That calculated in English to five feet four inches, which made him around five-foot-eight or -nine since the top of her head was level with his nose.

“Ready?” she asked uncertainly.

Ten feet separated them from the edge of the flat roof. “I can do this.”

Only the first step out of the gate proved he couldn’t. His
bad leg promptly cramped, and he started to go down. Rabia moved in fast. She tucked herself under his shoulder and wrapped an arm around his waist, steadying him.

“That went well,” he gritted out as he rode through the burning ache in his shin.

“I suspect your leg was once broken and did not heal well,” she said, as he leaned on her for support.

“Bastards wouldn’t set it. They just dumped me in that hole and—”

He stopped, felt his gut tighten, as a wrenching memory of a hole in sand-colored soil crystallized through a murky fog.

Four feet deep, four feet wide, six feet long.

Covered with a crude lattice hatch of rough wood that only opened once a day when they threw starvation rations of food and water at him. If he was quick enough, he tossed out the contents of his waste bucket.

Snow and ice covered him.

Rain washed in.

Sun burned and baked.

He carved lines into the dirt wall with his knuckle to mark the time that crawled like the snakes that sometimes slithered into the hole with him.

Two hundred fifty-five lines that he counted over and over again so he wouldn’t ever forget, wouldn’t ever forgive.

A cold fear gripped him. A cold sweat enveloped him.

Two hundred fifty-five lines? Two hundred fifty-five
days
?

It couldn’t be. He wasn’t thinking straight. And yet he knew the number was significant.

“
Askar
?” Rabia. Her voice sounded far away and full of concern.

“My God.” He dropped to his knees, dragging her down
with him. Horrible, excruciating memories shot across his mind’s eye like tracer rounds in a sky lit up with RPGs.

Two hundred fifty-five lines.

Not twenty-three lines in a cave.

Not another twenty-eight days in Rabia’s father’s home.

Somewhere, somehow, had he really survived two hundred fifty-five days in a hole in the ground where he’d been caged like an animal?

No.
He wouldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be true.

He wouldn’t
let
it be true. He
couldn’t
let it be true, because that meant he hadn’t merely survived a month or two before Rabia found him. It meant he’d been lost for nearly a year.

Or was it even more than a year?

“My God, my God.” He started shaking uncontrollably.

How much of his life had he lost? And how many
more
lines had he made in other holes that he didn’t remember?

Northern Minnesota, August

I
f you don’t come back
and finish this, I might have to hunt you
down and hurt you.

Jess still didn’t know if she should be mortified or proud that she’d issued Ty that ultimatum three weeks ago. Either way, she’d said it. And she’d meant it. Now, twenty-one long days later, she was going to have to make good on her words. Good sense or bad, she could hardly wait.

“What are you looking for?” Kayla asked as Jess rummaged around behind the counter for Bear’s leash.

“Before it gets any darker, I want to take Bear for a quick W-A-L-K.” Since the Lab understood the word
walk
and went wild with excitement when she said it, Jess spelled it out for Kayla.

“How will you ever be able to tear your eyes away from the clock for that long?” Kayla teased.

“You’re a laugh a minute, you know that?”

“I do, yes.” Kayla counted back change to a customer.

Kayla was right, Jess thought as she got sidetracked by another last-minute sale and stopped to scoop up two ice cream cones and ring up a bag of marshmallows and a bottle of peppermint schnapps. She’d been watching the clock for the better part of an hour, like a teenager waiting for her prom date. The fact that it was almost nine
P.M.
, closing time, was secondary. Ty’s plane had been due to land in International Falls at eight, and she expected him to show up anytime now.

She shouldn’t have missed him this much. She shouldn’t have gone to bed every night and awakened every morning thinking about him. She should have been more mature. And sane. Apparently, however, she wasn’t either. And the deal was, she no longer cared.

Ty Brown made her feel alive and desirable and special. So after the first few days of being mortified by the way she’d all but melted in his arms, she’d decided not to fight it. She’d decided to enjoy it—whatever
it
was. She was way too wary to call it anything more than chemistry and infatuation, regardless of what it felt like. She only knew that every time her phone rang or her text alert sounded, her heart went a little haywire. He’d called every day. Sometimes twice a day. He sent her silly e-mails and sexy text messages.

More than once in the past three weeks, Kayla had caught her grinning at her phone and called her on it.

“Commando Cutie’s getting frisky, is he?”

“Don’t you have shelves to stock?” was her standard reply, even though Jess knew she wasn’t fooling Kayla.

“When’s he coming back?” was Kayla’s stock retort.

“Who said anything about him coming back?”

“You know, you can go to hell for lying.”

“Oh, for the days when the younguns respected their elders.”

And so it went. But tonight was the night. Ty was coming back, and she felt like one electric, twitchy nerve because of it.

She’d finally found Bear’s leash when the hose at the gas pump dinged, alerting her that she had yet another customer outside.

“You act like you’re looking for someone.” Kayla again. Too astute.

“I’m ready for the day to be over is all,” Jess lied. What she was ready for was for the night to begin.

That was the other decision she’d made. She was an adult. With needs . . . needs that she’d stored in dry dock too long. Everything would change between her and Ty tonight. It was going to get physical . . . and she could hardly draw a deep breath thinking about it.

Hearing him talk about Maya that day on the lake, about how he’d loved her, how he would always love her, had somehow made her accept that she could do that, too. She could always love J.R. But it was OK for her to open up to her own feelings now. It made it all right. Ty was moving on with his life. It was time she moved on, too, regardless of what happened between them in the long term, because the long term was something she wasn’t looking for—not with Ty.

She knew where that path led. What she was looking for was a fling with a nice guy, a gorgeous guy, and she wasn’t going to sabotage her chances by overthinking things like repercussions and expectations and guilt. She’d lived in the past for too long. The time had come to live in the moment.

“You know,” Kayla said, as she stepped over Bear to get out from behind the cash register, “I’m not stupid, and I’m not blind. Something’s up. The makeup looks good, by the way. Hair, too.”

Nothing got past that girl. If Kayla suspected that some of the packages she’d brought home from Duluth last week were filled with loot from Victoria’s Secret, she’d never hear the end of it. Jess had made the two-and-a-half-hour trip on the pretense of checking out a craft show. Since one section of her store was devoted to touristy-type knickknacks, she was always looking to replenish her inventory with something unique. And since her underwear drawer was just that, a utilitarian underwear drawer, she’d been in dire need of a little silk and lace.

“I like seeing you this happy,” Kayla announced, looking smug.

Kayla’s statement gave her pause. “Have I really been such a sad sack?”

“No,” Kayla assured her quickly. “You weren’t ever a sad sack. But you weren’t ever . . . what’s the word? This
bubbly
before.”

“Bubbly? Oh, please, God, save me.”

Kayla laughed. “What? It looks good on you.”

If her personality change was that obvious, then Kayla couldn’t have been the only one who noticed. And Jess knew it for a fact.

“Something’s amiss. Do you have a secret lover, my little lotus blossom?” Boots teased her every day.

“All right. I confess,” she’d finally told him this morning. “You found me out. I’m having a torrid affair with the bait man.”

Boots slapped a spread palm to his chest, faking a heart attack. “Cooter? You’d choose him over me? Me who buys your coffee and sings your praises daily? That man smells like a fish and looks like a bear. Besides, he’s a grampa.”

“So are you, you old flirt.”

She knew others were also speculating. And she knew her
brother-in-law was not happy. Brad had made that clear the morning Ty had flown back to Florida.

“Your life. Your business,” he’d said when he stopped by on the pretense of filling his travel coffee mug, his tone implying that he very much thought it was his business, too. “But you need to remember that you’re a target, Jess.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know about your date with the pilot. And I know you spent a day with him on the lake.”

Even knowing this was coming, she hadn’t been prepared for the flat-out hostility in Brad’s eyes. Or for her own anger as she suddenly realized that Brad’s attitude had been part of the reason she hadn’t been able to move on. “Look, Brad—”

He’d cut her off with a dark look. “You’re a target,” he reminded her. “A widow with an income. Men will take advantage.”