It Had To Be You (9 page)

Soon, he heard behind him, “Colonel?” An
address rarely directed at him these days. He turned and found Len
Allen with Brody.

“
This guy said you told him he could
contact you anytime,” his colleague stated. When Beck didn’t
respond, because he was surprised, Brody asked, “This cool,
Beck?”

“
Sure.”

Brody left them alone. Beck stood. “Hi,
Len.”

“
Hope this is okay.” The man waved a
hand around. His eyes were more bloodshot than white, and when Beck
took a step closer, he inhaled that stale scent of beer and
cigarettes.

“
Rough night?”

“‘
Fraid so. ‘S why I came.”

“
Let’s sit outside.” Where they’d have
privacy and he could be upwind of the guy.

They left by way of the back door and walked
into the crisp, clean, fresh outdoors. Still able to recall the
heavy parched air in Afghanistan, Beck always appreciated the
weather in New York State. “Sit.”

They took places at a picnic table, on
opposite sides, facing each other. In the clear light of day, Allen
looked even worse. The dark circles under his eyes and the lines
around his mouth made him seem old and worn. “Talk to me,
soldier.”

“
I…” The guy scanned the area and shook
his head. “I had Josh yesterday.”

I know.
Beck had been trying not to
think about this man’s wife. “How’d it go?”

“
Good. For a while.”

“
Did you drink after he
left?”

“
No, while he was there. I passed out
on the bed upstairs. I told the kid I had to lay down and never
made it back.” Even the tone of his voice was disgusted. Beck
sensed this man did not like what he’d turned into. A spurt of
anger for all vets who went to war and came back half the men they
had been shot through him.

Bracing his arms on the table, he captured
Allen’s gaze. “You need help, Staff Sergeant.”

“
I tried to come to the Trauma
Survivor’s Group.” Now his tone was whiny, which didn’t bode
well.

“
Harrison told you that wasn’t
possible. He wanted to meet with you privately. Did you call
him?”

Len shook his head.

“
Not good. It’s almost impossible to
manage this thing alone.”

Frowning, Allen’s eyes narrowed. “You
had
to go to the group. I heard that.”

“
I got help before I became a
firefighter, too. Look, Len, you can learn to live with the
condition. You can have a good life if you take the proper steps to
set it up right.” The statement made Beck a hypocrite—his life
wasn’t good—but he believed it was possible.

“
Lela’s divorcing me.”

“
She has a right, if you were anything
like I was. My wife divorced me.” Though he hadn’t objected. He’d
been afraid of what he’d do to her and Tommy.

“
No!” The guy pounded his fist on the
table. “I won’t accept her leaving me.”

Beck realized the flare of temper he’d just
seen was what had caused Lela to demand supervised visits. That and
his drinking. Smart woman.

Since he sensed this conversation was going
nowhere, Beck fished his cell phone out of his pocket. “Why don’t
you call Harrison now? Set up an appointment.”

“
I dunno his number.”

Beck clicked into his address book, pulled up
the psychologist’s number and held out the cell. “There, take the
phone and press send.”

Allen stared at the instrument as if it was a
snake ready to strike. “No.” He stood, said, “Sorry to bother you,”
and walked out of the back area to the parking lot.

Beck watched him leave. This was not good.
Sure, a lot of soldiers took a long time to get help. But Len
Allen’s decision affected Lela and her son’s lives, so Beck didn’t
feel comfortable giving the guy space. He also had a deep concern
for his fellow soldier who was on the skids big-time.

The door to the firehouse opened and Gabe
Malvaso sauntered out. They were all a little sore from the
warehouse cave-in and had taken yesterday off, but mostly they were
good to go.

Gabe socked him in the arm. “How’s my
hero?”

“
Hardly. And I been meaning to tell
you, you should lose a few pounds. You were damned hard to drag
out.”

Gabe gave a hearty laugh. “Okay, I’ll back
off. Rachel probably won’t, though. She thinks you walk on water
now.”

“
Hence the goodies I get every
day!”

“
She bakes. Especially now that she’s
off the line.” He rolled his eyes. “She’s got three more months to
go, so we’ll both keep gaining weight, I guess.”

“
She’s a real sweetheart,
Gabe.”

“
And she adores you. She’s trying to
say thank-you with the goodies.” Taking a seat on the tabletop,
Gabe asked, “Who was the guy?”

“
An ex-soldier. I met him at the Trauma
Survivor’s Group. He’s in rough shape.”

Gabe stared after where Allen had gone, too.
“Hell of a thing. Like you guys didn’t do enough over there. You
have to come back and deal with this crap.”

“
You guys sacrificed as much during
9/11.” A pause. “Anyway, we can manage it sometimes.”

“
And I hate that just as much. My
cousin has his under control too until something goes awry with his
wife. I imagine you have some triggers.”

“
Nothing I can really
pinpoint.”

Again Gabe watched Beck with warm acceptance
in his eyes. “If you ever need to talk, wake me.”

Beck pretended interest in the tulips lining
the fence. “Huh?”

“
I hear you get up at night. I know it
doesn’t happen regularly anymore, but if you ever want company,
wake me. It’ll give me a way to not be so freakin’ indebted to
you.”

He thought about joking but didn’t. “I might
do that. Thanks, Gabe.”

“
You’re welcome.” Gabe checked his
watch. “Now come inside. We need to train on the thermal imager. It
has some new gizmos I didn’t know about when we took it into the
warehouse fire.”

“
Gotcha.” Beck stood and thought once
again about Len Allen. Poor Lela. She didn’t deserve
this.

o0o

“
Nick, could you get that box of
syringes off the top shelf for me?”

Lela always did this. Acted as if he could do
what any other man could. Sometimes he liked it. Today her optimism
left a sour taste in his mouth. Still, he didn’t sass her. With a
pole off to the side, he was able to slide the box to the shelf’s
edge, tug the cardboard down and catch it. But he lost his balance,
stumbled backward and fell. His head hit the floor hard and
syringes scattered every which way.

“
Oh, dear, Nick!” She flew to him.
Kneeling down, she searched his face. “Where does it
hurt?”

“
Hit my head. It’s so hard, I didn’t
even feel it.” Which wasn’t true. An ache radiated from the back of
his skull, but he hated to admit his weaknesses.

She slung an arm under his and helped him
sit. She got up, put on gloves and examined the back of his skull.
He flinched. “A goose egg. The skin isn’t broken, but we should put
ice on it.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. Professional.

“
How come you never get upset here when
something like this happens? Alotta people walk on eggshells around
wounded veterans. Especially me, with the hoof-and-mouth
thing.”

“
Very funny.” She stood and offered him
a hand.

“
No thanks. There’s a trick to this.
Get me a chair, will you?”

As she watched him brace his arms on the
chair and drag himself to a standing position, she answered his
question. “I was over there, Nick, remember? I’ve seen worse than a
fall.”

“
I guess.” When he got to his feet, she
bent back over to pick up the syringes, which were each wrapped
tight in paper. He couldn’t help her because his minor fall had
exhausted him. Another thing he hated.

Just as Lela stood, Julie, the woman who ran
the center, appeared at the doorway. Her bright red hair framed a
face that was smiling. “Hey, there, buddy. You got a visitor.”

Nick stilled. “Who?”

“
That pretty little wife of yours. She
wants to take you out to a romantic lunch.”

Romance wasn’t part of his life now and never
would be. He didn’t even think about it anymore and wished Amy
didn’t keep reminding him. “Tell her I’m doing chores.”

“
I did. She said she’d wait for you in
the courtyard.”

“
I don’t wanna see her.”

“
Nick…” Lela began, but Julie cut her
off.

“
Your choice,” the director told Nick,
“but then you have to have a one-on-one with Ken.” The staff
psychologist.

Anger built inside Nick. But he had to make a
choice. Through gritted teeth, he said, “All right. Tell her I’ll
come down in ten minutes.”

“
Thataboy.”

When Julie left, he faced Lela. “I don’t want
to see her.”

Pulling up a stool, she sat down and faced
him squarely. “I was very hurt when Len came back and didn’t want
to be with me. I’d waited so long for him, and it cut to the quick
that he didn’t want to spend time with me after we were apart for
years.”

“
No shit?”

“
No shit. Being ostracized from your
suffering spouse is hard on us.”

“
So you think I should go out with
her?”

Often Lela stayed neutral. “My opinion, as a
spouse. Yeah, go somewhere and talk to her honestly about what
you’re feeling.”

Ten minutes later, he limped into the
courtyard and found Amy sitting at a table near the garden. God she
was small. Delicate. His hands fisted. Breakable.

“
Hi.”

When she turned, the expression on her
heart-shaped face was so full of joy it took his breath away. She
never got that repulsed look on her face that other people did.
“Hi.” She tucked her blond hair behind her ear. “I’m so glad you
wanted to see me.”

He dropped down adjacent to her. “The nurse
here is the wife of one of us, you know, who has it. She said she
hated when her husband cut her out of stuff.”

Amy straightened her shoulders and said
simply, “I do, too.” Her blue eyes mirrored her hurt.

He swallowed hard. A part of him wanted to
fling himself into her arms and forget the world. But a larger part
wouldn’t let him. “I’ll remember that, Ames.”

The corners of her mouth turned up at the
nickname only he called her. Actually, it was a pet name, murmured
in intimate times.

“
So, will you go out to lunch with
me?”

God, please let me do this. Please.

But then she moved, and her sleeve pulled up.
He saw the remains of a yellowish-purple bruise he’d given her in
the throes of a flashback the last time they were alone. “No, I
can’t do that.”

Swallowing hard, she looked away. God, the
last thing he wanted was to hurt her. He needed to do something to
show her how sorry he was. Slowly, he leaned in close, reached out
and took her hand.

That was the best he could do today.

o0o

Beck climbed out of his SUV and had reached
the back of the vehicle when a car pulled up next to his. Lela’s.
Well, this was good. He knew he’d see her tonight at the Trauma
Survivor’s Group, but now he could give her the information he had
about her husband before they went into the Academy. She exited
smiling and rounded the trunk of her Civic to bestow her own brand
of sunshine on him. For a moment, he let himself bask in the sight
of her—pretty yellow blouse, tan jeans, her hair pulled up in some
kind of knot with some curly tendrils escaping, accenting every
feature of her face. Gold earrings dangled from her lobes.

“
Hi, Beck,” she said
sweetly.

“
Hi.”

She eyed him critically. “You seem to be
fine. No aftereffects of the ceiling incident?”

“
None. Got checked out,
too.”

“
Yeah, I heard.”

He leaned back on the car and arched a
brow.

“
The nurses were talking about how you
didn’t complain a bit. All the other guys went after their
sympathy.”

“
Yeah?” He wondered what her reaction
was to the comments. Forgoing that line of thinking, he said, “I,
um, came a little early, hoping you would, too.”

Now fear shadowed those brown eyes. It killed
him. She was waiting to be ambushed by life.

He rushed on to say, “Len stopped by the
firehouse to talk to me.”

“
Oh, that’s good isn’t it? I was hoping
he’d finally talk to someone.”

“
Yeah, and I’ll spend whatever time
with him he wants, but Lela, I can’t do anything much but listen
and encourage him to get help.”

She studied him. “And he refuses, right?”

Beck nodded. “I even punched in Harrison’s
number on the phone and handed it to him. He walked away.”

“
I’m sorry. More than I can
say.”

She looked so sad, Beck’s heart went out to
her.

“
Do you know he drank when he was with
Josh the other night?”

“
Yes, Len’s dad and I promised we’d be
honest about what happened in these visits. At least Len went
upstairs to drink.”

Beck couldn’t help it. He reached out to take
her hand. She let him. Clasped it as she stared into his face.

Something over her shoulder distracted him. A
woman and her boy had exited the Fire Academy and started toward
the parking lot. They were Afghan, both dressed in drab
clothing.