“She’s gone, Dave,” I said.
He looked up at me, his green eyes startling against his taut brown skin. I took it as a sign of his utter distress that he wasn’t even surprised to see me. “Son of a bitch! She was our fucking medic!” He wasn’t mad they’d lost their doc. Just that she could’ve maybe saved any of the rest of them if they’d suffered the same injuries. I crouched beside him. The gunfire had almost ceased. The sound of approaching helicopters signaled imminent rescue. In a few minutes they’d land, Dave’s unit would clear out, and life would move on. For now we sat beside Susan’s body, mourning her, yeah, but grieving for the rest of our dead as well. We’d racked up way too many in our lives. Mom and Granny May. Matt and Jesse. The Helsingers.
“Did I tell you I was one of the casualties at the Helsinger massacre?” I asked him. “Aidyn Strait broke my neck.”
“Yeah.”
“I did?”
“Yeah. When I called.”
“When was that?”
“The day Dad told me you were in the hospital.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember that.”
“You were pretty far out of it. They had you on about as much morphine as you could handle.”
Huh. I wonder what else happened then that I’ve forgotten. Must remember to ask someone I trust. Definitely not Albert.“So you know about Raoul?”
“We’ve met,” he said dryly. He pulled Susan’s jacket closed. Smoothed her hair. “About a month after I joined up I was shot and killed during a live-fire training session,” he told me quietly enough that his men couldn’t hear. “As they tried to resuscitate me, I went to some sort of middle place, though it sure looked like a hotel room outside of Vegas to me.”
Damn. Though he knelt right beside me, my heart still squeezed at the thought of my brother. Dead. No matter how temporary, that state still messed with my mind when it came to family. I realized I’d always expected to go first. Before him. Long before Evie. Even before Albert. And I suppose I had. I’d just returned unexpectedly.
“So Raoul gave you a choice?” I asked, trying to clarify Dave’s experience in my boggled brain.
“Yeah.”
“And you chose to come back. To fight.”
“I’m here.”
“I . . .” Geez this was hard to say. “I’ve been having some problems sleeping. Actually, sleeping’s okay. It’s what I do while I’m asleep that’s not so cool.”
“Like?”
“Jumping out of second-story windows.”
His eyes shot to mine. He looked me over hard this time and, by the way his brows dropped, didn’t appreciate what he saw. He shook his head. “We are damaged goods, Jazzy.”
“I can’t go on like this much longer. But coming here, seeing you lose Susan, at least I’ve figured out my main problem.”
He waited.
I shrugged miserably. “I believe after Matt died, he talked to Raoul just like you and I did. Only he decided not to come back. He didn’t love me enough to stay. Subconsciously I’ve known this for a while and, well, it’s killing me.”
I felt this horrendous wave of grief and anger claw its way up from a pit of agony I hadn’t even acknowledged, like a rich snob who walks past the same starving homeless dude every day, clicking her high heels on the dirty sidewalk in time to the music in her head. I began to sob, my non-stomach feeling as if it had just been kicked with a steel-toed boot. For a while I couldn’t speak. I just stood and cried, while Dave looked on helplessly.
“He stayed while he was alive, Jasmine. You gotta give him that. Even the Bible doesn’t require relationships to last after death. If you’re going to be pissed, aim it at the son of a bitch who murdered him.”
“But Matt’s there and I’m here. What does that say about what we had?” More sobbing. I was like the ghost in the Hogwarts bathroom. Sad, pathetic girl.
“He loved you. You know that. I know that. He just needed to move on.”
“What about whatI needed?”
He shook his head. “I don’t guess you and I were meant for marriage and kids and cable TV. That’s more Evie’s thing.”
“Of course not. But—”
“Jasmine. Honest to God, you could have gone anywhere to cry. Why did you come here?”
That dried me up, as I was sure it was meant to. “You’re the only one I know who’s survived this kind of loss. I thought I could learn from you. You know, before I sleep again.”
Dave regarded me thoughtfully. “You’re a survivor too, Jaz. You just have to accept it.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
Like hair waxing, the best way to reenter one’s physical form is quickly and without warning. I greeted myself with a full-body cramp that yanked me to my feet and extracted such a shout I’m sure the Mexicans thought Texas had finally gone and seceded from the Union.
“Jasmine!” Vayl had both arms out, as if he expected me to collapse at any moment.
“I’m okay,” I gasped, leaning over for a second until I was sure I wouldn’t be leaving supper all over the grass.
“You should sit down,” Vayl suggested, pulling my chair right up behind me so all I needed to do was bend my knees. It suddenly seemed like a fine idea. Vayl sat in front of me so our legs were nearly touching.
An eerie calm settled over me. I wasn’t sure what it meant. I might be perched in the eye of a gigantic storm, in which case Vayl should probably run. Or it could be that the waters around me had utterly stilled because no energy existed anywhere in me to move them.
“Did you find what you needed with David?” Vayl asked.
“Kind of. It’s—the dreams—they’re about Matt.”
Vayl’s hands convulsed around his cane, which he’d laid across his lap. It bugged me that he hadn’t cleaned it off yet, that little bits of goo still hung on to tiger heads and backs and tails here and there and dirt soiled the tip. My hands itched to grab it from him and scrub it shiny. “What about Matt?”
“He died.”
It was such an obvious, simple thing to say, I was kind of surprised Vayl didn’t smack my forehead with the palm of his hand. Instead he said carefully, “Matt died terribly.”
“He wasn’t supposed to,” I added.
“No.”
“I thought I’d gotten over it.”
Vayl leaned forward, rolling his cane back so he could rest elbows on his thighs. He clasped his long fingers together. “That would signify an end. You meant to marry the man. You felt a love for him that should have lasted a lifetime. That feeling will not necessarily change just because he is gone. I still love my sons as much today as I did the day they were born. Perhaps the best either of us can hope for is not to get over our pain, but to move past it.”
Yeah,move , I’d figured out that word was key early on.
When I’d lost Matt and my crew, my life as I knew it ended. And time stood still. But I’d discovered ways to force the minute hand to tick the seconds off. The trick, I’d thought, was to keep moving. And yet the nightmares had still caught up to me. Had done everything but slam my head into a brick wall.
In the end, simply moving isn’t enough. Not when all you’re doing is circling the source of your grief. The thing is, when you let that go, what’s left to hold on to?
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
Occasionally just before waking I realize exactly how I look, and I’m generally glad nobody can see me. This morning I knew my mouth gaped like an empty mailbox. Drool dripped down the side of my chin. I’d just finished a prodigious snore and a green cloud of halitosis orbited my head.
I snapped my mouth shut, rubbed my chin on my sleeve, wincing as I opened a barely healed cut on my arm, and opened my eyes. Cassandra was frying bacon, drat her, which explained the drool. Bergman tinkered with both computers on the table. Cole sat with his legs up on Mary-Kate, his eyes drifting from Cassandra to me, apparently deeply entertained by having Jekyll and Hyde in the same general vicinity.