The Way Home (8 page)

One thing about this lake. The air temp could be ninety degrees, but the water never got much above sixty. Swimming in Kabby was not for the faint of heart. Once fully submerged and with her body acclimated to the cold, though, it felt like heaven.

She was floating on her back and concentrating on not letting the water get into her nose when she realized she had company.

“Holy iceberg.” Ty waded slowly toward her, shivering and briskly rubbing his arms. “Who added the ice cubes?”

She laughed and righted herself, treading water as he waded deeper. “Just do it,” she said. “Dunk. Much better to rip off a Band-Aid than pull it off slowly.”

He looked doubtful, then took a deep breath and did a shallow dive in her general direction. He surfaced on a gasp.

She laughed again. “Not like the Gulf water in Key West, huh?”

He whipped the hair away from his face and sank up to his chin. “No. Not like the Gulf. You do this often?” he asked around chattering teeth.

“Used to. When I was a kid, we used to sit in an old-fashioned Finnish sauna for an hour or so, then burst outside and jump off the dock. Talk about a shock to the system.”

And speaking of shocks to the system . . . the water was crystal-clear. She could see all the way to the bottom and every detail of the man standing in front of her. Which meant he could see every detail, too—and he was looking. Even though her black swimsuit was modestly cut, she felt self-conscious and exposed.

“I can see why you love it here.”

“Summers are great. Winters are gorgeous but brutal.”

“I remember winter.”

She smiled. “It’s not a climate for everyone.”

“I miss snow,” he said absently, and she could tell he was thinking of home again.

“Rock, paper, scissors, huh?” she asked, resigned and weary of stalling. She also wanted to know more about him suddenly, even though it meant she had to take a chance at giving up something of herself. She valued her privacy, but this wasn’t about privacy. This was about trust.

He grinned and held up a fist.

She did the same. “One, two, three.”

On three, she made a scissors. He made a rock.

“Rock breaks scissors,” he said unnecessarily, and she steeled herself for his question. “Would you tell me about J.R.? How you met? How long you were married? What kind of guy he was?”

“That sounds like four questions.”

“Only one, with some suggestions for fleshing things out.”

She felt cold suddenly and headed back toward shore. She didn’t have to look behind her to know he followed. Reaching into the cargo hold of his kayak, she tugged out another dry bag, unzipped it, and pulled out two towels.

She handed him one, wrapped the other one around her shoulders, and huddled beneath it as she sat down on the blanket.

“We were high school sweethearts,” she said, taking the ripped-Band-Aid approach herself and spitting it out. “J.R. was the guy, you know? Captain of the basketball and football teams, cross-country skier. If it was physical, J.R. was in the mix. And he mastered whatever he decided to do.”

“He sounds like quite a guy.”

She nodded and used the towel to wipe her damp hair back from her face. “He was. It was like he was driven, you know? He didn’t have the best home life. His mom left him and his dad and J.R.’s older brother, Brad, when J.R. was only five. His dad didn’t make a lot of money—he worked in the Falls at Boise—and unfortunately, he drank up a lot of his paychecks. He walked out of a bar one night, got behind the wheel, and ran off the road into a power-line pole. The boys have been on their own ever since.”

“That’s rough.”

“It was very rough. But Brad looked out for J.R. Taught him to hunt and fish and camp—in fact, Brad has his own fishing and hunting guide business here on Kab. You passed it on the road to Whispering Pines.”

“How did J.R. end up in Special Forces?”

“His football coach, Mr. Latimer, became sort of a father figure for J.R. He was an Army vet who fought with Special Forces during the Vietnam War. He was also a storyteller. J.R. was enthralled by him. Ended up enlisting right out of high school instead of taking a full-ride football scholarship.”

“Which broke your heart.”

She crossed her arms over her up-drawn knees and laid her cheek on her forearm, then watched water droplets trickle off his hair and run down the broad expanse of his shoulders as the sun beat down and warmed them. “Yeah. Pretty much. But we kept in touch. I went on to U of M and got my nursing degree. We planned a wedding around his leave and got married in August, before nine-eleven. He shipped out to Saudi right before the Iraq invasion, ended up with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.”

When he didn’t say anything, she looked back out over the lake.

“I thought maybe he wouldn’t reup after that. He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and in rehab for three months. Didn’t slow him down, though, and he’d found his niche. I tried to talk him out of it, but he applied for Airborne and then Ranger School—made both cuts with flying colors. I’d joined him at Bragg by then. Shortly after, he ended up back in Iraq.”

“Those had to have been difficult times.”

She ran the corner of the towel over her face. “Yeah. They were. But I was young and in love, and while I didn’t like his decisions, I supported them. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known being an Army wife would be tough, but I hadn’t been prepared for the loneliness and isolation. Or the fear. Always the fear that something would happen to him.”

She sifted a handful of sand through her fingers and watched it fall back to the beach.

“I didn’t even know he’d put in a request to apply for Special Forces. He’d been in training almost two years by the time I found out that he’d been fast-tracked through the system. He’d barely made it home from Iraq, and he was deployed to Afghanistan.”

And never came home.

“I don’t think anyone gives enough credence to how difficult it is for the wives and families,” Ty said quietly. “The long deployments. And with spec ops, never knowing where they are, how they are. Anyway, I know it was hard on my folks when Mike was deployed to parts unknown.”

“And you don’t think they worried about you?”

“Of course, they worried, but he was in combat. I was—”

“Flying through fire with a target on your back.”

He shrugged. “Like I said. Everyone had a job to do.”

And his career had been cut short so he couldn’t continue
to do his. She had questions. She held up a fist. He gave her a crooked grin and did the same. She made scissors again. He made paper.

“Scissors cuts paper. My turn.”

“OK, shoot.”

She wanted to know about his back, but she had a bigger curiosity. “Will you tell me about Maya?”

M
aya was one of those
people who kept showing up in my life, you know?” Ty rolled to his side, propping his upper body on an elbow. “I met her in college, and we dated but drifted apart. I ran into her again when I was stationed in San Diego. We saw each other on and off but nothing serious. Again, we drifted. Then that winter? About a month after I met you? She showed up in Key West on vacation with a girlfriend. Had no idea I was there. And it was, I don’t know. It was like we both stood back and took stock and realized we had so much in common—and then there was this fate thing, karma, kismet, whatever you want to call it, that kept putting us together.”

He stopped. Swiped a hand over his jaw. “I don’t want to minimize what she and I had, so please don’t take this wrong. But it was kind of a right place, right time situation. She’d recently gotten out of a bad relationship. And frankly, you were on my mind. But the logistics—as you said—they didn’t compute on paper. I was looking for a reason not to contact you. And there was Maya. My reason.”

Another deep breath.

“That sounded horrible. It sounded as though I used her as a stopgap, and that is totally not the case. I loved her. I realized I’d probably always loved her to some degree. And she felt the same. So we decided to give it a try. And it was great. She was so . . . vital. Beautiful, intelligent. One of the most positive people I’ve ever known.”

He missed her. He would probably always miss her, and thinking of her now made him realize how tragically unfair life was.

“What happened to her?”

“She had a brain bleed.”

“Oh, my God. An aneurism?”

“Yeah. It was a shock. To say the least. She was the picture of health. Active. Took care of herself.” He stopped, looked out over the water, still having trouble believing that a vital, beautiful woman had been there one day and was gone the next. “She woke up that morning with a headache. We’d only been together four months. She’d started a new job. I had a big charter that day. She told me to go. Assured me she would be fine. I got home that night and found her.”

“Oh, Ty. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry, too. She was an amazing woman. She died way too soon.” He met her eyes and saw a world of compassion there. “They both did.”

T
HE WIND HAD
picked up a bit and pushed against them all the way back to the resort, so it was close to eight that evening by the time they made their way back across the lake. Jess worried about Ty’s back, but she didn’t say anything, and he didn’t, either. She felt both relief and an encroaching sense of loss when they finally reached the resort. Despite what had been a
bit of a bloodletting for both of them when they’d opened up to each other about J.R. and Maya, she’d enjoyed the day. She’d enjoyed him.

Shelley greeted them with a smile and a wave when they beached the kayaks. “I’d started to think I might need to send out a search party.”

“She gave me a workout,” Ty said good-naturedly, as the bottom of his kayak skidded against the small, sandy beach. “Yet she tells me we only saw a small part of the lake.”

“Big lake,” Shelley agreed. “Where’d you go, Jess?”

Ty reached out and steadied her kayak when she stood. “Other side of Sugarbush—that little houseboat put in on the north shore.”

“Yikes. You did give him a workout. Figured as much. And to that end, I thought you might be hungry. Since you don’t seem inclined to use that nice new fishing pole you bought, Mr. Brown, I thought you should at least get a taste of what you’re missing. There’s a platter of walleye keeping warm in your oven and a salad in the fridge. Hope you don’t mind that I invaded your space.”

“Are you kidding me?” Despite the wobbly kayak, he made his dismount look easy, although Jess noticed, again, that he had a little difficulty straightening up. “That sounds great. Thanks. And it’s Ty.”

“OK. Ty. As long as we’re on a first-name basis, do me a favor. Don’t let Jess leave without eating. I know her. She’ll go back to that store, start working, and forget to fix any supper.”

“Consider her fed. I won’t let her out of my sight until she eats.”

After helping Jess unload their gear, he dragged his kayak out of the water and flipped it upside down on the grass, then went back after Jess’s.

“Why is everyone under the impression that I need a keeper?” Jess protested as she grabbed her dry bags.

“Not a keeper, sweetie.”

Jess didn’t miss the grin Shelley shared with Ty.

“Just a gentle reminder that you need to take better care of yourself.”

Jess made a harrumphing sound, but when she met Shelley on the grass, she gave her a one-armed hug. “OK,
Mom
.”