A second or two later, the screams turned to shrieks of agony, shock, and slaughter. The shrieks got quieter and quieter as the slashing sounds got louder and louder. Eric was started to cry out with pleasure and Jason cried out in horror.
And Nancy Ringman lay dead.
Chapter 330
Smiley Faces
Grant and the Team were in Mark’s truck, driving to Yakima. He was in the back cab with Pow, as usual. Pow was checking his kit to make sure he had everything. He looked stunned. He had everything all right; he had something he forgot he had.
He looked sheepishly at Grant and said, “Oh, dude, I totally forgot I had this,” as he handed Grant the letter from Lisa.
Grant looked at it in disbelief. “How long?” he started to ask.
“Like, two weeks,” Pow said. “Oh, I’m super sorry, bro. Super sorry. Things got crazy. That Tillimook at the rest stop, going on R&R, all the stuff that’s going on. I put in it my kit so I wouldn’t lose it, then I forgot. I’m sorry, Grant.”
“No, it’s not your fault,” Grant said, politely. Because it really was his fault that Grant had lived two weeks or so without knowing what Lisa really thought.
“If it’s bad news,” Grant said to Pow, “then thanks for two weeks of me not worrying.”
“But if it’s good news?” Pow asked.
“Then I hate you,” Grant said with a slight smile. He had far more important things on his mind now than being mad at Pow. The future of his marriage was in that envelope. He could see it going either way.
Grant carefully opened Lisa’s letter. It was written in her familiar handwriting, her crappy chicken scratch doctor handwriting that no one but Grant, and a handful of pharmacists, could read.
This was the divorce letter, Grant kept thinking. He didn’t want to read it, but he also could barely wait to learn what it contained. He had to know where he stood. He had been getting hit on by many attractive women—there were an abundance of widows and broken marriages from the war—and wondered if it was time to start saying yes to inquiries.
“I don’t hate you anymore,” Lisa wrote. “I’m still pissed. But I don’t hate you.” Grant felt his heart warm up. He felt a surge of joy and relief. He felt a comfort, like things were going to be okay.
The letter went on to describe the hug that he never gave her when he left Olympia. The hug that, if he would have given her, would have gotten her to come out with him instead of having the Team bring her out. “I need you back. As pissed as I am at you.” She drew a frowny face, which made Grant laugh. Grant had always said how much he hated smiley faces and frowny faces in emails. Lisa would draw them on little notes to him just to watch him freak out. It was all in good fun. Seeing that frowny face on the letter was hysterical. It meant they were back to normal, or at least, headed in that direction. Then her letter said, “This letter is my hug” and she drew a smiley face. That smiley face was the most important thing Grant had ever seen. A tear rolled down his check.
Lisa gave Grant an update on the kids. Manda and Jordan were engaged to be married in a year. She wondered if Grant would be back by then for the wedding. She said Manda was having fewer nightmares after shooting Greene, but she still had difficulties. Their bubbly red headed teenage daughter wasn’t as bubbly any more. She worked hard feeding people and taking care of kids for the community. Her carefree teen years had been taken from her. “She still wants a real prom,” Lisa wrote. “Can you pull some strings?” she asked.
Grant had an idea about that. It would blow Manda’s mind. Grant would talk to Ben about that.
“You better be nice to me the rest of our lives,” Lisa wrote. With another one of those damned smiley faces. Grant laughed and laughed and laughed. Pow, Scotty, and Bobby looked at him like he was on drugs or had finally gone insane. Grant laughed until his sides hurt. It was a huge release. He had bottled all his emotions for months. Grant knew what to do.
“Hey, Scotty,” he said, “can you get on the radio and have some EPU agents go to Pierce Point and pick up my wife and kids and bring them to my quarters in Olympia?”
Scotty just smiled. He knew that this must mean Grant’s family was back together. “Roger that, Commissioner,” he said with great relief and joy.
Grant could hardly concentrate on the work he had to do in Yakima. He gave some speeches about reconciliation, met with the regional ReconComm staff, and talked to local troops and dignitaries. He loved doing this, especially talking to the troops, but his mind was focused on the reunion with his family. Finally. The reunion.
They spent two days in Yakima, two really long days. As they left, Scotty told Grant that his family would be at the Olympia guesthouse where Grant was staying. Grant was silent for the entire ride back to Olympia, which took a full day. He was just thinking about his family. All they’d done. All they’d gone through. All the emotions about being reunited at Pierce Point right after the Collapse, and then all the emotions about having to leave to go to war. All the worrying Grant had done during the war.
Scotty gave him an update, saying that Grant’s family had arrived in Olympia at Grant’s guesthouse. Grant could hardly wait. He just about drew his pistol on a checkpoint guard on I-5 at the southern entrance to Olympia. He wanted to be home so badly.
Bobby didn’t even have to ask Grant if they would go directly to Grant’s guesthouse. He just drove there. As they pulled up to the guesthouse, there was a military Humvee and three pick-ups of contractor-looking guys. Security for the family of the chair of the ReconComm was a high priority. In fact, a few days after the fall of Olympia, Ben sent a small detachment of State Guard to Pierce Point to guard Grant’s family. That was one of the things that led Lisa to write her letter. If Grant didn’t care about them and was only thinking about himself, she thought, he wouldn’t have sent a military unit to guard them.
When Mark’s truck pulled into the driveway of the guesthouse, Grant had his door open before they came to a complete stop. He jumped out and ran into the house. If this was a Lima ambush, he had just fallen for it, he thought.
Luckily, the guard at the front door knew from Scotty’s radio dispatch a few minutes earlier that Grant would be coming soon. The guard stepped aside, saluted and said, “Welcome home, sir.”
That sounded so sweet to Grant. “Welcome home.”
Home.
Lisa and the kids were there in the entryway jumping up and down. The kids seemed so old now. Not that they had aged in the past five weeks since Grant saw them last, just that in his mind they were still little kids. Over the past five weeks, he had seen them in his mind as the little kids he had remembered. Now, in the entryway of the guesthouse, he was seeing them as the teenagers they really were.
And Lisa. She looked beautiful. Magnificent, in fact. Smiling. That big “not that I’m wrong, but glad to see you” smile. And sexy. Grant had gone quite a while without any. It was hard to think about that when you’re fighting a war and you’re trying to prevent the state from sliding into decades of revenge killings and misery. It took something huge like that to crowd out Grant’s usual thoughts about his gorgeous wife.
Grant hugged Lisa and the kids so hard they thought he would squish them. Joyous wasn’t a strong enough word to describe how Grant and the kids felt, yet Lisa was a little bit distant. She was happy and smiling and hugged Grant, but he could tell that things were not like they had been before the war. She was holding back her full joy at seeing him and being reunited.
Lisa’s faith in Grant had been broken. He had left her. Twice. She was proud of him and knew with her head why he had done it. But in her heart, she felt like he had left her. Twice. She couldn’t help thinking that Grant was okay with the prospect of never fully reconciling with her, that he was happy to go off and fight a war and meet some other woman if Lisa hadn’t let him come back. She wondered if he had been faithful while he was in Olympia and all those crowds told him how great he was.