Authors: Connie Falconeri
“Sort of,” her mother answered. “But you were pretty vague. Just that you had seen
him and he’d been with some of his friends, and you hoped you didn’t bump into him
again.”
“Anyway. No. It wasn’t Zander.”
“Was it the man you were with at the Ritz this weekend?”
Maddie’s head whipped around to face her mother’s profile. They were driving right
on past the lane that led down to their house. “Did Lila Lodge call you? What a witch.”
“Why is she a witch? She said you looked gloriously happy and you were with some stunningly
handsome man.”
Oh, please don’t start with the gloriously this and the stunningly that, Maddie thought
miserably.
The silence filled the car. Maddie was reminded of one of those scenes in a movie
where a car flies off a bridge into a river and the water rises up around the trapped
passengers. The air pocket was becoming smaller and smaller as the water neared the
ceiling of the car’s interior.
“Breathe, Maddie.”
This was her mother. Her loving, caring, supportive mother. Why was Maddie trying
to drum up a bunch of hatred and resentment? She breathed, as she was told.
“That’s better.” Her mother never pretended to have any grand philosophical perceptions
about life. She was what was commonly known as a go-getter. Over the years, she had
become a fierce activist, raising awareness about domestic violence. Eventually—though
it had begun as charity work—she became the executive director of the largest advocacy
group in Massachusetts. She was no-nonsense. Raised in the corridors of privilege,
at the center of the northeast establishment, Laura Standish Post was practically
ascetic when it came to her own comfort. Wealth meant responsibility. Advantage meant
obligation. It didn’t mean fancy cars or marble countertops in the kitchen.
They drove around in silence for about fifteen minutes.
“You ready to face your bothers?”
Maddie smiled. Ever since she was a little girl and couldn’t say her
R
s, she had called her three older brothers her “bothers.” The term had entered the
family lexicon.
“Sure. Let’s go. I’ll dive in the pool and rinse off all this moping of mine.”
“Can’t be that bad if a dip in the pool will make you forget about him.”
Maddie tried to laugh. “Oh, it’s that bad, but at least I’ll be refreshed and miserable
instead of sweaty and miserable.”
Her mother took a quick look at Maddie. “Just get through this afternoon and then
we can spend the rest of the week reading and moping together. I cleared my schedule
so the two of us would be able to spend some time together before you head back to
school next week.” They had pulled in front of the house, and Laura turned off the
engine and faced Maddie. “Sound good?”
“That sounds perfect, Mom. Thanks.”
Maddie looked up at the eighteenth-century farmhouse that had been in her father’s
family since it was built. The gray clapboard could probably use a new coat of paint,
and it looked like one of the dogs had clawed her way through the screen door again.
The sounds of children’s laughter and splashing were coming from around the back.
Maddie’s oldest two brothers each had three young children, and the squeals of glee
as they played in the pool carried.
It had been wrong to make Hank feel like he wouldn’t have fit in here. To describe
all that WASP-y yellow-Lab and blue-guest room stuff, as if he wouldn’t have been
a part of all that in about three seconds. She’d apologize to him for that . . . if
she ever saw him again. She just couldn’t have borne the pain of seeing him woven
even deeper into the fabric of her life. This was
her
mother and
her
house and these were
her
nieces and nephews. Maddie needed to keep some things separate, or the whole world
would remind her of Hank.
Laura got out of the car. Maddie followed a few seconds later, pausing to pull her
duffle from the backseat. “I’ll go up and change then meet you outside, okay?”
“Sure. See you in a few minutes. Take your time.”
“Thanks for picking me up at the station, Mom.”
Her mother gave her a quick hug at the bottom of the stairs. “Of course. I’m so happy
to see you.” She touched Maddie’s cheek as if needing to feel that she was actually
real. “So happy.” But Laura Post’s face didn’t look happy. She looked like she wanted
to take all of her daughter’s heartache and carve it out of her with a sharp scalpel
and take it on herself.
“Thanks, Mom,” Maddie whispered, then turned quickly up the stairs to avoid a new
onslaught of the ever-present weeping.
When she climbed the second set of stairs and turned into her third-floor bedroom,
Maddie finally collapsed. She dropped the stupid duffle bag on the floor with a thud
and stared around at the slanted walls and pretty vintage floral wallpaper. The sheer
embroidered curtains reminded her of the ones in Janet’s living room in Maine. The
lace canopy that hung from the spindly posts of the Queen Anne bed looked unfamiliar.
She had slept under that delicate protection her entire life and now she barely recognized
it.
Maddie pulled open the second drawer of her dresser and grabbed a bathing suit. She
changed and pulled on an oversize T-shirt and flip-flops to walk down to the pool.
When she headed out of the back door and walked the short distance across the grass,
her brother Jimmy looked up to see her approach. He smiled and set one of his nephews
down from his lap, then stood and walked to meet her halfway.
He gave her a big hug, lifting her up off the ground and spinning her around once.
Jimmy had always been a bit of a jerk, so when he was warm and genuine like this,
it always threw Maddie off balance.
“What was that for?” she asked lightly.
“For a job well done. You really did it! Not a single cry for help. I underestimated
you.”
“Well. Thanks, I guess.” She smiled up at him, and he must have seen the storm just
below the surface of her eyes.
“We’ll talk later, okay? I owe you fifty large. Fair and square.”
Maddie’s gut lurched, and she stumbled where the grass ended and the slate perimeter
of the pool area began.
“Whoa!” Jimmy grabbed her. “Watch where you’re going, tiger. You didn’t think I’d
welsh on my part of the bargain, did you?”
“I guess I just sort of forgot about the money part of the bet.”
Jimmy’s eyes widened. “Forgot about fifty thousand dollars? Madison, you slay me!”
“Donate it to the VA hospital, Jimmy.”
“What?!” He stopped and looked down at her.
“You heard me. Donate it to the VA hospital in Augusta. Set up a visiting doctor’s
chair or something. Just do it. As you just pointed out, I won fair and square.”
He stared at Maddie for a few seconds, then gave a firm-lipped, single nod of respect.
“Done.”
“And no more calling me ‘Sis.’ ”
Jimmy smiled. “I’ll try.”
By that time, Maddie’s dad had gotten up and walked over to where the two of them
were standing. “Get over here!” He pulled her into a tight, brief hug. It was pretty
effusive by William Cabot Post standards.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, sweet pea.”
She smiled at the old nickname. He must have really missed her if he was slipping
into that.
“Aunt Maddie! Aunt Maddie!” Her two nieces, ages four and six, came running over.
“All the bothers and mothers are so boring,” Anabel, the wise six-year-old, informed
her, taking her aunt’s hand in hers. “They don’t want to swim with us anymore, and
we need you.” Maddie got tugged toward the pool.
“Okay! I’m in.” She pulled off her T-shirt, kicked off her sandals, and dove into
the pool with a grateful splash.
Hank had to pull off to the side of the road just after he crossed into Maine. It
was after two, and Maddie was probably safe at home by now. He should have insisted
he drive her there. He would have been able to see that she was safe and back where
she belonged.
Who was he kidding? It wasn’t for her safety; it was for his insanity. It would have
given him the chance to picture where she was, which he was feeling the need to do.
He couldn’t picture her anywhere now. He didn’t know if she lived in a brick house
or a clapboard, if it was down a long manicured driveway or a winding country lane
overgrown with oaks and white ash and wild rhododendron. What did her bedroom look
like? Was it pink and girly or modern and filled with rowing trophies?
He was finding it hard to breathe. His truck was on the shoulder, and the pounding
of other trucks passing by, close and fast, threw him into a horrible spin-cycle of
memories. He was back on the side of the road in Bahrain, having done his job, sitting
quietly at the wheel of an unmarked civilian SUV. He’d followed orders. He’d remained
completely undetected while he attached C-4 and high-velocity gelatin explosives to
the bottom of a known terrorist transport boat. Once they’d set their course and headed
out to sea, they would be unaware of any pending threat right up until the detonation
destroyed them all and sent their stray parts into the food chain of the sharks and
other beasts that would remove all evidence of their existence.
Hank sat on the side of that dusty highway in Bahrain for nearly an hour, trying to
calm down, trying to let the swish-and-thud of the passing speeding cars work as a
sort of meditation. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Only it didn’t work that way. Since then, the swish-and-thud had been a horrible reminder
that he had been an integral part of a killing machine. He had taken all of the obedience
and precision he had learned in the military and done what was expected of him. And
it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t a case of innocents dying. The men on that
ship had done abominable, hideous things. They had taken videos to make sure that
the world would know the extent of their cruelty. They wanted people to know. That
way, they could be the pirates that the modern age required. Ruthless. Insane. Inhuman.
Effective.
So it wasn’t guilt, exactly. Hank was an effective warrior. He had pride in that.
It was more the . . . detachment, the level of compartmentalization that was required
to do the necessary evil. It didn’t slough off like dead skin. It had become a hard,
real part of him. Not even a shell, because a shell would imply that he could maybe
outgrow it and move on. At that moment, on the side of the road in Maine, Hank realized
that he could separate himself from that hard protective covering. It was going to
hurt like hell, but he could do it.
A sharp tap on Hank’s car window penetrated his disoriented fog.
He looked up slowly. A Maine state trooper was standing, one hand on his gun, looking
down at Hank.
Hank rolled down his window and felt the force of hot air and dust against his face.
“You all right?” The officer’s reflective sunglasses caught the light and helped bring
Hank back to the present.
The adrenaline from reimagining himself back in the black water—attaching all that
plastique in the midst of all that watery silence and pitch darkness—was still pulsing
through him, and his tongue hinted at the rusty taste of it, but he nodded yes.
“Just a migraine,” Hank said. “I think I’m okay to drive now.” He looked at the clock
on his dashboard and had a hard time accounting for the fact that he’d been sitting
on the side of I-95 for over an hour.
“Where are you headed?” The officer looked more concerned than adversarial.
“Up to Blake.”
“May I see your license and registration, please?”
Hank leaned over to the glove compartment and pulled out his registration, then took
his driver’s license out of his wallet and handed both of them to the officer.
“Wait here, please.”
Hank let his forehead rest on the steering wheel and waited for the trooper to run
his information through the system. About ten minutes later, he was back standing
close to Hank’s truck. “Sorry to bother you, Major Gilbertson. Take as long as you
need until your headache passes, but you’d be much safer about a half-mile up the
road at the rest stop.”
“I’m fine now.” Hank took the items back from the trooper with a small smile. “Thanks
for checking on me.”
“Drive safely.” The trooper gave him a quick salute. Former military.
Hank nodded and rolled up the window. He took a deep breath, turned the radio to a
station that wouldn’t remind him of anything, and accelerated back onto the highway.
When he pulled into his driveway an hour later, his mother was sitting on her front
stoop talking to Sharon MacKenzie and her two daughters. He almost kept driving rather
than have to hear all that gaggling about Maddie and how-was-their-weekend-in-Boston?
He pulled up to the closed garage door, turned off the engine, then leaned over the
front seat to grab his luggage out of the back.
When he stepped out of the car, the two little girls waved, and Sharon held her hand
above her eyes to prevent the glare. “Hey, Hank.” She waved but didn’t make a move
to leave her conversation with Janet.
Janet just looked at him and smiled, sad and knowing as usual, then went back to talking
to Sharon.
“Hey, ladies.” He figured that included the girls and the women. He turned to walk
up to his apartment . . . which was going to feel like an empty reminder of everything
that he had just walked away from by not being able to make any sort of long-term
commitment to Maddie.
After he tossed his key in the dish and shut the door behind him, Hank looked up to
see a present on his countertop. He set down his luggage and walked slowly to the
kitchen area. Maddie had run back into his place Friday morning before they left for
Boston, claiming that she’d left her hairbrush in his bathroom. She’d come out empty-handed
and told him she must have already packed it.
He approached the gift like an undetonated bomb. It was wrapped in beautiful white
paper with a wide blue ribbon. It was a cube, about the size of half a brick.