"Wes—"
"It was them...it was them."
Wes spoke softly—more to himself than to Charlie—but Charlie heard him just the same.
"What are you talking about? Who is 'them'?"
Wes looked up at the sky to the thick and billowing pillar of smoke.
"The enemy followed me home."
Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he went down with a thud.
Charlie panicked. Had Wes been injured and they'd missed the wound? Was he dying now, before their eyes, and it was all going to be too late?
"Medic! Medic! Get me a medic!" he shouted, then stepped aside as a pair of medics did a quick once-over before lifting Wes onto a gurney and rolling him toward an ambulance.
Charlie followed, running by Wes's side as they carried him away.
"Hang in there, buddy," he said. "We're gonna get you some help."
But it was too late to help Wesley Holden. For all intents and purposes, he was already gone.
Six weeks later
Every time Charlie Frame walked into the psych ward at
The last six weeks had been chaotic. The media had had a field day with the commissary bombing. The civilian contractor who'd unknowingly hired a terrorist had been dragged over the coals by both the media and the military. He had responded by blaming the military for missing the fact that the man's identification papers were faked. The entire investigation had been a disaster without resolution. The hard truth was that a foreign terrorist had infiltrated an American army base and dealt a killing blow. The fact that he'd been killed before he detonated his suicide bomb was thanks to a man whose mind was now in a state of limbo. Not even the base doctors could promise that Wes Holden would recover. In fact, the more time that passed, the less optimistic they became.
Now, after talking to Wes's doctor a few minutes earlier, Charlie's hopes were dimmer than before. When he reached Wes's room, he hesitated. This was his third visit this week, and probably his last. He was shipping out in two days and had no idea when he would be back. It would be good to know that his friend was on the road to recovery before he left.
"God, please let this be okay," he said softly, then entered the room.
Wes was sitting in a chair with his back to the door. Charlie took a deep breath and then made himself smile as he moved closer.
"Hey, Wes, it's me, Charlie. How you doin', buddy?"
He pulled up another chair and sat down beside the window, then stared straight into Wes Holden's face. At that point, Charlie's last hopes died.
Without speaking, he scooted his chair forward even more and put his hand on Wes's forearm. The sunlight coming through the window made Wes's blue eyes appear transparent. The bone structure of his face was highlighted by a marked weight loss, and his lips were slightly parted, as if he was on the brink of speaking, although Charlie knew that was misleading. He hadn't heard a word out of Wes's mouth since his claim that the enemy had followed him home.
He gave Wes's arm a brief squeeze, then turned his chair so that he was sharing Wes's view. He sat quietly, believing that in some part of Wes Holden's mind, he had to know that Charlie was there. They'd lost so many good people as a result of the bombing. He didn't want to lose his best friend, as well.
Time passed. The sun had already begun its fall toward the western horizon when Charlie got up and moved his chair between Wes's gaze and the window. He watched for a few moments, hoping for a reaction, but got nothing. Still, for his own peace of mind, he had to say what he'd come to say.
"Wes...they tell me that you're in what amounts to a catatonic state. They're starting to hint that you might never recover, and you know what I think? I think that's bullshit. You're not lost, man, you're just sad, and God knows you have the right."
Charlie gritted his teeth, then moved his chair a bit closer.
"I need to tell you that in a couple of days I'm shipping out. I don't know how long I'll be gone, but I don't want you to think I'm abandoning you. So here's the deal. You deserve this state of grace. While I'm gone, I want you to grieve and hide from reality and whatever the hell else you feel the need to do, but when I get back, you better be standing on the tarmac to welcome me home."
Charlie took a deep breath and shoved the heels of his hands against his eyes to keep from crying, then stood abruptly.
"Goddamn it, Wesley, don't stay gone too long." He walked out without looking back, crossed the parking lot and got into his car without remembering that part of Wes's view was of this very same lot. He didn't think to look, and even if he had, he would have been too far away to see the tears on Wes Holden's face.
Three
Blue Creek,
Ally Monroe was staring out the kitchen window with her hands in slowly cooling dishwater. Although she was looking toward the family garden, she wasn't really seeing it. Her gaze was caught in the sunlight reflecting off the standing water in the concrete birdbath. Wish dreaming, as her mother used to call it. Longing for something different was pushing at her soul, but she'd long ago accepted that the only way she was going to find it was through her imagination.
She had been born in this house twenty-eight years ago last March, and had never been out of the state of West Virginia Despite being born with a crippled foot that left her with a limp, she was the baby of the family and had been her mother's pride and joy. Still, her life hadn't seemed all that stifling until a month after her sixteenth birthday, when her mother had died. Within days of her mother's passing, it became apparent that her father, Gideon Monroe, expected her to step into the breach left by his wife's death. Without any thought for his daughter's grief or plans for the future, he left her responsible for every household task her mother had been doing. At that point, whatever dreams Ally might have had for herself died, too.
With each passing year, burden after burden was added to her life until, twelve years later, she was still living at home, keeping house, doing laundry, and cooking for her father and two older brothers, Danny and Porter. Once in a while, she felt as if they were all caught in some time warp. Nothing changed in this house except the ages of its residents.
But there were times, like now, when she let herself wish dream, when she imagined a tall stranger walking right out of those woods at the back of the house. He wouldn't know her name, but there would be this instant magical connection between them, and then he would take her in his arms and spirit her away.
Water dripped from the faucet, landed in the dishwater with a plop and broke into her muse. She blinked, then looked back at the birdbath, trying to reconnect. It was no use. The sunlight had moved, taking the magic with it.
Frowning, she looked down at the dishes yet to be washed, then turned away in quick frustration. Without giving herself time to think about what her father would say about her leaving a task undone, she yanked off her apron, tossed it on the dining table and walked out of the house.
Her foot was dragging slightly as she came off the porch and walked onto the grass, but she was used to the gait, and compensated perfectly by swinging her hip just a bit more to pull the leg along.
Her father's old hound, Buddy, raised his head as she passed on her way to a bench beneath the trees, then, when it became apparent that she hadn't brought a bone for him to chew, calmly resumed his afternoon nap.
Ally plopped down in the glider, then pulled her hair over her shoulder, taking care not to sit on the honey-colored braid. She brushed a gnat from the front of her T-shirt, adjusted her blue jeans, then swung her legs up into the seat. Using the padded armrest for a pillow, she looked up briefly into the overhead branches, then closed her eyes.
A passing breeze lifted the loose baby hairs away from her forehead as it pushed at the fabric of her shirt. She had no idea how seductive she appeared, nor would she have tried to foster the image. All she wanted was a place to dream. And so she lay, sheltered beneath the spreading branches of an ancient oak, and wondered how she could have been so gutless as to let her life get this off track.
Single men in Blue Creek gave her a wide berth, though not because they thought she was ugly. She looked okay, and she knew it. But none of them wanted to take a chance on having a child with a cripple. What if she passed on the birth defect to her children? They didn't want sons or daughters with crooked feet and dragging steps. Life was hard enough on the mountain without adding a physical handicap to the mix.
Frustrated with herself for dwelling on something she couldn't change, she pushed off with her toe and set the glider in motion. For a few solitary moments, she could almost believe she was being rocked in her mother's arms.
Gideon Monroe's left hip was paining something fierce as he turned up his driveway. When he accidentally bounced through the dried ruts in the road, he groaned. He hated getting old. He'd been lonely for years, ever since his Dolly had passed, but he'd still had his health. Yet for the past five or six years, it seemed as if he'd been going downhill. There had been that prostate cancer scare, which had turned out to be false; then arthritis had set into his joints from all the heavy lifting at the logging mill where he'd worked all his adult life.
He would be sixty-five his next birthday. That was too close to seventy. He could file for social security. It didn't seem possible. Where had his life gone—and how could it have gone so fast? Danny and Porter would be okay when he was gone, but he worried about Ally. He knew what was said about her on the mountain, and unless he did something about it, she would be alone for the rest of her life.
Then, today, it had seemed an answer to a prayer when Freddie Joe Detweiller had approached him at the cafe and asked his permission to call on Ally. Gideon had alternated between uncertainty and relief. He knew Detweiller was desperate, which meant he was more willing to overlook Ally's handicap. Detweiller's wife had been dead almost a year, and he was trying to raise their three kids on his own. Still, he wasn't sure that what he'd done was right.
He continued up the driveway, parked, then sat for a minute before getting out, trying to figure out what would be the best way to introduce the subject of Freddie Joe to Ally without making it sound like an insult. He couldn't help but feel that if he pushed this relationship, he would be selling his daughter short. She deserved more than becoming a convenience in some man's bed, as well as an unpaid babysitter to his motherless children. But he felt the burden of his duty, as well as the uncertainty of how many years he had left. The least he could do was give them a chance. Who knew? Maybe they would hit it off. Stranger things had happened.
Having settled the uncertainty in his mind, he got out of the truck and headed into the house. But when he called out her name, she didn't answer. Frowning, he moved through the rooms, searching for her whereabouts. When he got to the kitchen and saw the stack of dirty dishes yet to be washed, he couldn't believe it. This wasn't like Ally.
He started to call her again when he glanced out the window and saw her lying in the glider as if she didn't have a care in the world.
Surprise mingled with the guilt he'd been feeling. He stared at the dirty dishes, then back out at the sleeping woman, and it all came out in anger. She couldn't be like this. Her crippled foot was already enough to put off most men. She couldn't appear lazy, as well.
He hit the screen door with the flat of his hand, then stomped out into the yard in anger.
"Girl! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Startled by the rude awakening, Ally woke with a start. Instead of landing on her feet, she fell out of the glider, catching herself on her hands and knees.
"Ow," she muttered; then she looked at her father in disbelief. "You yelled at me."
Ashamed that he'd inadvertently caused Ally pain, he reached down and pulled her to her feet.
"Get on in the house and put some medicine on them scratches," he muttered. "Don't want to go and get them infected."
Ally wasn't in the habit of being yelled at and told him so.
"You shouted at me, Daddy. I want to know why." Unwilling to apologize, Gideon continued to push when he should have pulled back.
"What's a man to think, coming home and finding the woman of the house outside sleeping when there's work to be done?"