J-Hawk flicked the metal tab on the top of the can. “True. Look, you don’t know the whole story, no one does, but if it wasn’t for…”
I waited for him to finish his train of thought. When he didn’t, I prompted, “If it wasn’t for… what?”
“Never mind.”
“You wouldn’t have brought it up if you didn’t want to talk about it.”
He struggled.
I let him.
“I do want to talk about it, but swear this won’t go any further than us. Ever. No one can know.”
“Not Anna?”
“Especially not Anna.”
A feeling of trepidation crept in, but I ignored it and said, “Fine.”
“About the same time our unit got new orders, my wife found out I’d been involved with another woman.”
“How she’d find out?”
“At first I suspected Anna told her to force my hand into choosing between them.” He met my gaze. “But it didn’t matter after that, because once the wheels were set in motion, everything careened out of control.”
I stared at him, totally confused. “You wanna drop the clichés and get beyond the truth-is-out-there bullshit?”
“I see you still prefer taking the easiest shot,” he said wryly. “So yeah, it’s totally clichéd, the whole ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’ bit, but it’s the God’s honest truth. Melinda and I had one drunken weekend at a friend’s wedding when I was home on leave, and she ended up pregnant. We got married, because that’s what people in our neck of the woods do, right? I was headed overseas, so I understood why she wanted to stay in Minot by her family until after the baby was born. But when I returned from deployment twelve months later, she refused to move to where I was stationed. By then, she’d gotten knocked up again.”
“She’d gotten knocked up again?” I asked tightly. “All by her little herself?”
He scowled. “No. I’d gone twelve months without sex. And she was on me the instant we were alone. Took me three pregnancies before I realized she wasn’t a nympho and didn’t like sex as much as she liked having babies. So yeah, we have ‘deployment’ kids. Between kids two and three, I grew a set and demanded she get her ass to Fort Benning because I was sick of living like a single guy in the goddamn barracks.”
“So she moved to Georgia and made your life hell?”
“No. She threatened to kill herself if I forced her away from family. When I basically laughed and called her a drama queen, she attempted it.”
I shuddered. “Shit. Jason, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, welcome to my life. From there on out, any time I brought up our problems, she whipped out the suicide card, and I knew she’d play it.”
“What did you do?”
“What could I do? I focused on being a soldier. I kept my name on the top of the volunteer list for overseas instruction ops and deployment. I made a point of being on missions or training eleven months out of twelve. Combat? I understood. My passive-aggressive psychopathic wife? She freaked me the fuck out.”
“So you started screwing around?”
“Not at first, but when I realized even my own family believed Melinda’s lies? I said fuck it. What did I have to lose?”
“Anna knew you’d cheated on your wife before her?”
“Anna knew she wasn’t the first one, but she’s always been the only one who mattered.”
Pretty words. Didn’t excuse ugly behavior.
“Here’s the kicker. That night after you… the night in Bali changed me, Mercy. It finally hit me that life is too short not to be with who you want. For the first time I decided to be proactive in my personal life, rather than reactive.
“I was ready to give up everything, any chance of a relationship with my kids, just to get the hell out of the marriage. When Melinda confronted me, I admitted to the affair and told her I wanted a divorce.”
“I take it that didn’t go over very well?”
“Might say that. She took it a step further than threatening to kill herself.” He chugged his remaining beer. “She threatened to kill our children.”
My stomach churned the beer into foam, and it threatened to come back up. “Jesus.”
“And if I needed convincing she wasn’t bluffing? Melinda called me the next day when our three-year-old daughter fell down a flight of stairs and broke her arm. She said it was too bad Lindsey was so clumsy. She hoped next time our little girl wouldn’t fall on a kitchen knife or something horrible. I knew then she’d pushed Lindsey. Melinda has always had an… unnatural need for attention. She loved that I was constantly gone, because everyone in her circle of friends worried about how she was holding up. And if one of her children died… she could milk the sympathy and attention for years.” His voice dropped. “Christ. Even now, years later, I know it sounds far-fetched. It’s why I’ve never told anyone. Who would believe me?”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t make my damn mouth work. Because I did believe him. I’d met people like Melinda. Too many people. Any glimmer of sympathy I’d ever felt for Melinda Hawley over the years had vanished.
“That’s when I knew I could never be with Anna. That’s why I had to be so damn cruel when I broke it off with her.”
I’d walked into our tent to see Anna’s military issue 9 mm Beretta at the base of J-Hawk’s skull. Tears flowed down both their faces; hers were from pure rage. At the time I’d attributed his tears to fear. Now I suspected they’d been born of resignation. He’d expected Anna to kill him. Wanted it. I’d managed to get the gun before she pulled the trigger. Jason had run out without looking back; Anna dropped to a fetal position on the ground and stayed that way for twelve hours.
Now, I almost wished I still thought of him as an unfeeling asshole, rather than knowing what he’d gone through and what he’d given up. “Why’re you telling me this, J-Hawk?”
“Because it’s been weighing on me for years, and I wanted someone to know the truth before…”
“Before what?”
No response, then he chuckled. “It don’t matter. I’m getting sappy. I appreciate that you are good at keeping secrets, Gunny.”
I’d walked into this secret-keeping mission with my eyes wide open. Still, I didn’t understand why J-Hawk unburdened himself on me. Unless… He’d always been an excellent tactician. Would this “big reveal” lead to another strategic maneuver? Involving changing my mind about Titan Oil’s plans?
J-Hawk passed out the last two beers. We drank, stared at the stars, swinging our legs off the tailgate. “Thanks for not judging me too harshly.”
“I’m the last person to pass judgment on anyone.”
He snorted. “Always do the right thing, never deviate from the truth, Sergeant Major Gunderson? Right.”
If he only knew how far I’d fallen from the ideals beat into my head by Dad and Uncle Sam. “Yeah, I’m a regular poster girl for guts and glory.”
From the moment J-Hawk appeared in the area, I’d been suspicious of his motives. Here was my chance, in the spirit of “sharing,” to find out if he considered me an easy mark as well as a supreme secret keeper. “Did you ask for this Titan Oil assignment? Or is it just coincidence you’re here?”
“Not a coincidence. I switched out sections with another guy when I saw the list of landowners and your last name.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to set the record straight with you about Anna. About my fucked-up life.” He nudged me with his shoulder. “And, South Dakota, I wanted to rib you personally about how significantly you’d downplayed the size of your ranch.”
I shrugged.
“Seventy-five thousand acres ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at.”
“We’re at eighty-five thousand now. I bought the adjoining ranch a few months ago.” Without an heir, Iris Newsome’s death left the Newsome estate in limbo. The state’s attorney had to dredge through legal documents dating back to Merle Newsome’s will. The will contained a stipulation that the entire property had to be offered to Gunderson descendants first, for fair market value, before it went on sale to the general market. Jake and I debated on whether we could afford it. But ultimately we knew we couldn’t afford not to snap it up. We struggled to make the down payment, and I didn’t feel a damn bit guilty about buying it.