BoneMan's Daughters (11 page)

Her buoyant message—
call me back if you insist
—reminded him of just how independent Celine had become over the years. Which was fine, except that she’d become so because
she wasn’t able to depend on him.

Frantic now, Ryan stabbed in the home number again. Transposed the last two numbers. Swore and started over.

The day was hot and he was sweating, but neither accounted for the faint ring in his ears.

“Hello, Celine.”

She answered. For a moment Ryan was too overcome by thankfulness to respond.

“Hello?”

“Celine?”

“Is this Ryan?”

“Yes… yes, hello, Celine.” The phone trembled in his hand but it quickly stilled when he placed his elbow on the desk.
“It’s Ryan, honey.”

“I was on the other line when you called, sorry about that. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? What, a month now since your last
call?”

“A month?” Had it been so long? “Yes, well… that’s not good. I—”

“A lot’s happened in this last month,” she said. “Bethany got a cover from
Youth Nation
.”

“She did? A cover?”

“Please tell me you know what a cover is, Ryan.”

He shifted his back toward the rest of the room. He had no idea what she was talking about. An organization called
Youth Nation
had offered Bethany a position, perhaps, he really couldn’t guess.

“Celine—”

“She’s modeling, you remember that much?”

“Modeling? She… she’s going to be on the cover of a magazine?”

“
Youth Nation
, a clothing catalog for teenagers.”

“Wow. Wow.” He couldn’t think of what else to say to this news, so he said it again. “Wow.”

“You might want to call and tell her yourself.”

“I’ll call her right away. Maybe I can tell her. I mean, tell her…” Emotion flooded his chest, cutting him off. He leaned
his forehead on one hand and gripped the phone with the other, choked by his own remorse.

“On second thought, maybe it would be best if you didn’t.”

What? What was she saying? He refused to reason through any answers to the question.

“Celine.” Where did he begin? “Celine, honey, there’s something I have to tell you. Something happened to me this week.”

“Hold on.” The line clicked off for a few moments before she was back. “Sorry. Just Janie and her stupid cats’ shedding. Never
mind.”

“Who’s Janie?”

Celine didn’t respond right away.

There was something in that silence that spoke with greater volume than anything she’d yet said.
You don’t even know my friends
. But that’s why he was calling. He was going to make all of that good.

“Celine… I was taken by—”

“Why are we doing this, Ryan?” she asked in a lower voice.

“That’s what I’m trying to say. They… I was on a mission—”

“Please, Ryan. Be quiet for just a second. You’re rambling.”

What was she doing? Ryan’s face flushed with heat. What was she doing? He had to get to the point.

“I’m coming home, Celine.”

“I can’t do this any”—she stopped and then pushed for clarification—“what do you mean, ‘coming home’?”

“I mean I’m coming
home
. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. The convoy I was in was hit, and I was taken by some insurgents. It wasn’t very
… it was hard.”

“When?”

“A week ago.”

She hesitated.

“Sorry. You okay?”

“Yes. I am now.”

“They hurt you?”

“No.” He decided then that he would hold back any details that might make this rough on her. They needed a clean slate, not
emotional turmoil over the past.

“I’m fine. Scary there for a bit but it all panned out. It made me remember, you know.” When she didn’t respond, he added,
“Remember who I am.”

“Tough to be an American these days.”

“No, I mean who I am there. A husband. A father.”

She went silent.

“I know we haven’t been on the best terms, Celine, but I would like to change that.”

Still nothing from her. She wasn’t buying it.

“Celine, I’m coming home.”

“It’s too late,” she said.

“What do you mean, too late? It’s never too late.”

“When are you coming back?”

“They said three days. Maybe five days before I reach Austin.”

“You can’t do this,” she said softly. “Not now.” And he knew in that moment that she was in love with someone else. He knew
from her tone, from a long sordid history of affairs, it was his job to know and he did know. But he felt no anger toward
her. Only pity. For both of them.

“Celine, please, you don’t understand. I… things have changed.”

“Well, they’ve changed here too, Ryan,” she said with more strength now. She was realizing that his coming home would threaten
whatever life she’d built up around herself in Austin. “You can’t just waltz in here as if nothing’s changed.”

“You’re right, you’re so right. I…” He grasped for the words to tell her, but it was all bottled up by years of silence.
So he said the one thing most rehearsed since his debriefing yesterday.

“I love you, Celine.”

“No.” Her voice cut through his veins. “You just can’t come begging on your knees after all this time. And the truth is, Ryan,
I’m not sure I want us to be together any longer. I know that may sound cruel at a time like this, and I’m sorry for what
you’ve been through, but we have to face the truth about each other.”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

“And you don’t know what I’ve been through for all of these years. I don’t think you love me. In fact I’m sure of it. I don’t
even think you like me.”

“Celine, please, you can’t say that!” But she could.

“The fact is, you’ve never really wanted to be with me.”

And he knew that she was really saying she didn’t love him, that she didn’t want to be with him, but by putting it on his
shoulders she was absolving herself of any guilt in her admission.

Ryan sat back in his metal chair, gut punched. It was going all wrong. She didn’t understand. Once she understood, she would
change her mind. He’d brought this on himself, now he had to work his way through it. He couldn’t really blame her.

“I’m coming home, Celine. Please, I’ll be home in five days. We’ll talk then; I can explain everything. We’ll work this out,
okay?”

“You don’t understand, Ryan. I don’t want to work this out. Are you listening to me?”

“Bethany—”

“Don’t even talk about Bethany! You left her a long time ago.”

His world swam. She
couldn’t
understand.

“It’s over,” Celine said. “You have to understand that, Ryan. This time it’s finished. I want a divorce.”

He finally found his breath. “Please… please, Celine, you don’t understand.”

“I understand that I can be loved by someone who actually loves me with more than just a paycheck.”

Her words were like blades, and Ryan tried to accept the pain they brought him. He’d beat Kahlid, hadn’t he? He would beat
Celine.

He would win back her love.

He would win back Bethany’s love.

“Good-bye, Ryan.”

Thoughts of his daughter brought with them a searing pain that began to shut down his mind. The shakes were returning, and
that couldn’t be a good thing, not here in front of all these officers. He had to gain some control of himself.

He would win back Bethany’s love if it was the last thing he did.

It occurred to him that the phone was silent.

“Celine?”

But Celine had hung up.

PATTY RHODES STOOD taller than Bethany by several inches, all skin and bones and legs. Gangly, she called herself, and although
Bethany always shut up her rants of self-pity, she didn’t disagree. Not that Patty was ugly by a long shot. She was just developing.
Braces, long stringy brown hair, a few hard-fought pimples, no chest—what could she say? Not ugly at all, but not the girl
she wanted to be.

That would be Bethany, the girl with straight teeth, long flowing hair, and skin as clear as the day she turned six. Oddly
enough, Bethany didn’t really want to be Bethany.

They walked down Barton Creek Boulevard toward the Saint Michael’s campus around the next bend, Patty with a copy of
Youth Nation
stuck in her face.

“You’re going to fall over, reading that trash,” Bethany said.

Patty flipped a page. “You know, not all the girls in here look like they belong. Check her out.” She shoved the page at Bethany
just long enough for her to see a quite plain blonde dressed in a red T-shirt, but then the catalog was in front of Patty’s
face again. “I suppose so all of us lowlifes can identify and buy the clothes, huh?”

“Give me a break,” Bethany said. “It’s all stupid anyway.” She stuck out her hand, and Patty plopped the catalog into her
palm with a sigh.

“Yeah, well, anytime you want me to join you in stupid New York, just say the word. Stevie ask you out for homecoming yet?”

“Fat chance. I’m not going this year.”

“What? Don’t be an idiot.”

“Serious.”

Her friend frowned, no doubt burdened by the complications faced by any sixteen-year-old these days.

“You honestly don’t see it?” Bethany asked. “All this stupidness?”

“What stupidness? I don’t see what the big deal is, and you’re starting to annoy me with all your stupidness talk. Okay, you’re
freaking out with the realization that you’re going to be famous. You got guys hitting on you in the halls, you got freaking
New York calling you every day, you have a mother who gives a rip. Wow, so tough. Hard life there. So you’re freaking out
because it’s all so stupid. Well, forgive me for not getting it.”

The mother bit stuck in Bethany’s head. Patty’s father had left her and her sister when they were much younger and her mother
had gone off the deep end. She’d gotten all the money she needed, enough to send them to private school and live in the neighborhood,
but left alone, she’d drowned herself in alcohol.

“You’re right, I should be thankful. And I suppose I am. I mean, you see me turning the cover down? But like… it’s all
pretty shallow, you have to admit, Patty. I don’t know, it’s not like I need the money. I don’t want the attention.”

“The guys?”

She felt her face flush. “Okay, so I don’t mind that.”

“So quit fooling yourself. You’re just playing it to the hilt.”

“Please.”

“Okay, so Broadway Bethany would never do that, I get it. But you do like having all those boys watch you strut your stuff
across the campus headed to theology class, don’t you kid me, baby.”

Her mention of the class derailed Bethany’s train of thought. Theo class and
Youth Nation
had a lot in common, actually. Both sold fantasy based on something larger than life.

“Call me Sister Bethany,” she said.

“Even better. They could dress you up like a nun for the front-cover shoot.”

“Dreams of the afterlife, enter if you dare.” Bethany snapped her fingers and hit a few beats. The words from one of Brianna’s
singles rolled off her tongue. “Sister, sister, what you doing tonight?”

“Makin’ love and till the morning light,” Patty sang, joining her friend in a slinky but surprisingly supple move. “Bring
it on, baby!”

They laughed and turned into the back parking lot.

Bethany dropped the bomb then, while Patty was distracted by her own sexiness. “You really wanna go with?”

“To homecoming?”

“To New York.”

Patty gasped and pulled up hard. “You serious?”

“They said I could—”

But Patty didn’t need to hear more to know that Bethany was dead serious. She uttered a short shriek, then shoved her hand
over her mouth and glanced around to see if anyone had seen her in her moment of uncoolness.

“Sorry.” She promptly forgot her blown cover. “Serious.”

Bethany gave her a grin.

“When? This is so cool. You think they’ll let me, you know”—she batted her eyes—“show my stuff?”

“I doubt that’s what they had in mind.”

“But it’s me, right? You’re taking me.”

“You think I’d take”—she thought better of mentioning any names that might come back on her—“who else?”

“That’s freakin’ awesome, girl!”

“On one condition.”

“ ’Course.”

“You don’t tell anyone until we leave.”

“What? No basking in the glory?”

“And you quit all this stupidness about being famous. Just play cool.”

“Coolness. I swear.”

Bono began to sing “Beautiful Day” on her iPhone. Mother’s ringtone. Bethany tapped the screen and angled for the main entrance.

“Hello, Mother.”

“Hello, angel. You’re headed back from lunch?” Their rental house was close enough to the school for Bethany to sneak off
for lunch now and then, as Patty and she’d just done.

“He called?”

“No. But I talked to his base commander, and he’s in the country. I asked Burt to come over for dinner tonight. You okay with
that?”

Bethany had learned about Ryan’s call five days earlier and been confronted with the prospect of his immediate return. Something
about him having a change of heart, Mother had said. He needed a break from the war. He’d had a close call, that’s all she
knew. But she had to agree with Celine: too little too late.

Ryan represented everything that was wrong with life. It had come to Bethany in a moment of clarity as she showered the next
morning. Her father was a false hope.

He occupied the place of savior, but he’d failed miserably as savior and, although he wasn’t a terrible person, he wasn’t
what he stood for, not at all.

He wasn’t lover to Celine or father to her. As such he was a kind of enemy. Celine needed someone close to her during this
time, when she felt threatened by that enemy.

“Of course,” she said. “What time?”

“Six o’clock. You walking home tonight?”

“Why not; another five minutes of exercise never hurt.”

“I thought we’d make chili.”

“Sounds good. Don’t worry, Mom. He might be a deadbeat, but he won’t hurt us.”

“You don’t know that.”

“He’s not the kind.”