While He Was Away (24 page)

But I cut her off. “Don’t say another word.”

For once, Linda doesn’t. Instead, she gets to her feet and stumbles from my room, exhausted.

•••

At work all the tables are full, even though it’s still only five o’clock, and hordes of people are lined up at the bar and at the door. Caitlin is in her element, taking names, raking in tips. Pretty soon I’ve kicked into gear too.

As I pocket a particularly juicy tip, it hits me. This isn’t just about getting through the summer anymore. I really am making money for college. And I kind of like the work.

By the end of the night, though, I’m wiped out.

Caitlin has already cleaned up and prepped her stations for tomorrow. Her family has plans tonight—some sibling’s birthday party—so she’s heading home. It sounds like Jules is busy too. Linda is in the kitchen with Isaac. I go over to Tom, who’s wiping down the bar.

“How was she when you left?” I ask.

Tom frowns. “She was still sleeping. I just hope she remembered to eat when she woke up.”

I think of Justine, her thin frame. Tom scrubs vigorously at a sticky spot. He scrubs and scrubs until I reach out and grab the rag, stopping its swift revolutions. Now he looks up.

“Go check on her.” I’m suddenly breathless with fear. “I can finish here. Remember, I’m good at cleaning too.” He starts to shake his head, and I blurt out, “And you’re good at taking care of her. So please go. For me.”

•••

I go slowly, finishing up for Tom. I do it right.

I’m taking off my apron when I see inside the pocket—my cell phone, flashing.

The call was from David. How could I have missed him? I sit down at the bar and listen to his message. It’s garbled and shaky. Sometimes his voice is so distorted that it doesn’t sound like him at all. He sounds like a machine. He sounds like an animal. He sounds really, really afraid.

I play the message again, making sure I heard right.

“Penna, pick up. Please pick—I gotta talk to someone. I gotta—Oh, I’m just gonna tell you. I was on the truck and saw—a wire. It was going through this lump by the road. I was thinking IED. The Buffalo moved in—stopped. That lump? Dead body. A person murdered—bound, gagged, blindfolded, wired to blow, dumped, facedown. A kid. A little kid. Where are you, Penna? Where
are
—”

Even the second time through, the loud static and whistling at the end of his call takes me so by surprise that I have to yank the phone from my ear.

“Penelope?”

I turn at the sound of Linda’s voice. She’s come up behind me. She’s watching me, worried. Isaac is just behind her, and he looks worried too.

“Mom?” I say. It’s the first time I’ve called her that in months. Now that I’ve started, I can’t seem to stop. “Mom?”

“Penelope? What’s wrong?” She puts her hand to her mouth. “Oh God.”

I shake my head. “He’s okay.” I can’t seem to stop shaking my head. “But could you take me home now? Please? I want to go home so bad.”

“Let’s go.” Without another word, Linda wraps her arms around me. It’s like she’s been waiting for this—waiting to be my mom again. In the VW, I babble something about David. I babble something about Justine. It’s not clear what I’m saying, even I know that. But Linda doesn’t ask for clarification. It’s like for once she knows that the last thing I need now is a question. I’ve got too many questions already.

Home again, she leads me from the car into the house. While she makes some chamomile tea, I text Ravi.

Heard from David? Anything at all? I’m scared.

If Ravi can admit he’s scared, I can too. I know he’s working. I probably won’t hear from him until tomorrow. That’s okay. No matter what David says, any news, any time is better than no news at all.

But Ravi does text me back. Right away.

On break. Haven’t heard from D. He wrote 1 email from Kuwait. That’s all. You ok?

A little scared. But ok.

I text this back. I
am
as okay as I can be, because now Linda is beside me, a steaming cup of tea in her hand. She slowly steers me toward my bedroom. She situates me under Plum Tumble. She hands me the cup of tea. I drink a few sips, then set the cup on my nightstand. I sink down into bed. Linda lies beside me.
She’s still here
, I think, finally drifting toward sleep. She came back with me. This is what families do. They come back.

Come back
, I think as I close my eyes.

Next morning I wake to my cell ringing. I can’t reach for it through my dream of tanks plowing toward children and David standing in the way.

Somehow the receiver gets thrust against my ear. I hear Tom’s voice.

“She’s asking to go for a ride. She wants to see some of the old places. You want to come?”

I blink.

There’s a murmur from beside me in the bed. I start, realizing Linda’s still lying there. She’s the one who put the receiver to my ear. Her eyes are closed. She’s fallen back asleep. Quickly, I slip my hand under my pillow and slide my list of reasons—Why I Fell in Love with David and Why It’s a Good Thing I Did—away from Linda. Funny, I haven’t thought about that list in days. Still, I don’t exactly want her finding it. I extricate the phone from between Linda’s fingers and turn away from her toward the window. “I’ll come.”

“Pick you up in half an hour,” Tom says and hangs up.

I study the familiar curve of Linda’s hip, the dip at her waist, the slope of her shoulder. I could be little again, seeking my mother after a restless night, pressing against her spine or spooning into her belly. Whenever Linda woke, she was always glad I was there. She’d hold me closer, tell me stories, listen to mine. It wasn’t so long ago that we did this. I’d forgotten. I’m glad I remembered.

I pull myself out of bed, check my cell. There’s another message from Ravi.

You want to talk?

I text Ravi back:

Soon.

•••

I sit between Tom and Justine. In comparison to Tom, Justine barely takes up any space. I’m trying not to think about David’s message last night. The panic in his voice, the things he said. I can hardly breathe, thinking about it. I’m so afraid.

Justine is staring out the window. “So much has changed. But then there are other things—oh my goodness, like that weather vane—that are exactly the same.”

I watch her watching Killdeer roll by and try to feel reassured.
She’s here now. I wanted this. I wanted her to come home. She did. David will too
. I tell myself this over and over again.

Tom ends up taking us out on the road that David and I always used to drive, looping through the outskirts of Killdeer and into the country. We’re approaching the bankrupt shopping mall when Justine rolls her window down all the way. She rests her arms on the frame like a little girl. Her gossamer-fine hair whips back in the wind, revealing her scalp. “I’m looking for something,” she says. “I’ll know it when I see it.” She grasps at the window frame until the pink beds of her fingernails turn white.

“Look!” Just past the mall’s parking lot, she points out at a big tree, shading the vacant JCPenney. “I climbed that.” She reaches across me and grabs Tom’s arm. “Oh, Owen. Do you remember?”

I look at Tom, who looks at Justine, who looks at Tom.

“What did I just say?” Justine asks.

“Never mind.” Tom tries to smile. “Tell us about the tree.”

Justine nods, relieved. “Pull over,” she says. “Please.”

So Tom turns into the empty parking lot and drives right up to the big old tree—the kind of blackjack oak I’d never seen before I moved here and David showed me.

Justine clasps her hands tightly to her chest. “I’m almost positive this is it.”

I lean forward to get a better view of the tree. The bark is rough and very dark, nearly black, cracked and broken into small pieces. It looks almost charred, like it’s been struck by lightning, but somehow it has managed to thrive.

“This was the tree between our farms. I’m almost sure of it. It’s where Owen and I first met, the day his family moved to Killdeer. We were just kids. We were playing right here, not even knowing each other was close by. It’s like yesterday. It’s clearer than yesterday!” She laughs.

“What happened then?” I want to hear everything. I want her yesterdays.

“That mean old bull from the ranch down the road got loose and charged us! We ran smack-dab into each other, stumbling for this very oak. We scrambled up it and tucked ourselves out of reach. The bull gored the trunk, but the oak held strong. Finally the bull wandered off to another part of the field, but it was most of the afternoon before someone came and herded him home, so we had plenty of time to get acquainted.”

Justine looks out at the oak as if it’s a long-lost relative. “When we finally climbed down, I showed Owen the little violets I loved best, nestled over there in the shady spot near the creek.” She smiles, remembering. “We picked violets from that very bed so that I could carry them on our wedding day. On our honeymoon we hung them from the Ford’s rearview mirror. By the time we came home from South Dakota, they were dried into a tight little fist of flowers.” Justine frowns. “I put that bouquet somewhere. I just know it.”

“Maybe in the cedar chest?” Tom asks.

And Justine says, “Oh, maybe that’s where it is. Let’s go look. Right now!”

But then she heaves open the truck’s door and steps carefully out into the parking lot. She goes over to the oak and touches the trunk. She shows Tom and me the ancient marks there, deep gouges in the cracked, black bark that very well could have been made by the horns of an angry bull.

•••

We drive back to Tom’s house, Justine remembering all the way. “Every fellow in the town was serving back then,” she recalls. “Felt it was his duty.”

Tom turns down the street to his house. He says, “I knew I had to serve too. No matter the consequences.”

David, I think. David.

I
was
on
the
truck, looking through my binoculars when I saw it. A wire. It was going through this lump by the road.

A
kid. A little kid.

What are the consequences of seeing something like that?

•••

Tom leads Justine and me out onto the back porch. The Gold Star banner is still draped over the porch railing. I study Justine’s thin, lined face. She’s looking weary now too.

Tom gestures to an old cedar chest, shoved off in a corner. “There she blows.”

“You can stay,” Justine says, as Tom turns to go.

He shakes his head and claps his hand to his gut. “We need to eat. At least, I do. How do BLTs sound?”

Without waiting for an answer, he heads off toward the kitchen.

For a moment Justine looks confused. She grasps the porch railing for support. “I have to sit down,” she says. I take her arm and lower her into the rocker. She relaxes there, resting her head on the wooden back. She closes her eyes then, and as soon as they’re closed, her mouth opens. She’s asleep.

I wait for a few moments. I shift my weight, but Justine doesn’t awaken. So finally I squat down beside the cedar chest. I lift the lid.

The smell of cedar wafts up. Then there’s another odor I don’t like nearly so much: mildew and mold. I sneeze once, twice, and open my eyes to Justine, who’s bending over, nearly tipping in the rocker, so that she can look inside too.

“Careful!” I catch hold of the rocking chair’s arm.

“Bring it all out,” she says. “Everything.

Here’s what’s inside:

1. A yellowed obituary, circa 1945, with a small photograph of a handsome, dark-haired young man.

2. A bundle of church programs tied together with a faded blue ribbon.

3. Two halves of a broken globe.

4. A dark blue silk dress—the same one with the pearly buttons, neat collar, and capped sleeves that she wears in the photograph beside my clock.

5. A cardboard tube filled with what look to be sketches.

6. A shoebox full of black-and-white photographs.

7. A U.S. flag, folded neatly into a tight, thick triangle.

8. A tarnished bugle.

9. A bunch of dried flowers, mostly disintegrated now—but still it’s clear they once were violets.

10. Another letter, this one tucked into an unaddressed envelope.

I start with the yellowed newspaper article. I read it out loud to Justine, who stares out into Tom’s backyard, listening.

“‘To our great sadness, yet another of our brave Killdeer boys made the ultimate sacrifice. Our beloved Owen Delmore was killed while deactivating a mine in the vicinity of Oppenheim, Germany. His young wife, Justine (née Blue), survives him.’”