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The house had been empty for over a month now, ever since Tammy Hughes had moved across town. Though Tammy had never come out and said so, Chrissie suspected her young neighbor had moved in with the skinny private who had been a frequent visitor to the little brick house in the months preceding Tammy’s departure.
Chrissie collected her mail from the box at the end of the drive, then unlocked her front door and went inside, stopping to kick off her shoes in the entryway. Her cats, Rudy and Sapphire, greeted her with pitiful yowls, tails twitching.
“Yes, I know, you’re so mistreated,” Chrissie said, bending to pet them, her mind still on the house next door. She hadn’t thought of Tammy in a while. After Tammy’s husband had shipped out to Iraq, Chrissie had tried to befriend the young woman, who had seemed so lost and alone. Despite the fact that she had a child—a little boy called T.J.—Tammy had seemed like a child herself. She thought nothing of wearing her pajamas and eating only cereal and ice cream for days at a time, letting T.J. do the same. When her Honda broke down, rather than have it fixed, she left it sitting at the curb and began driving the red truck her husband had left behind. When the city had finally towed the car—after leaving numerous citations, which Tammy ignored—she had been unconcerned. “I was tired of it anyway,” she’d said.
Chrissie had gone out with Tammy a few times, giving in to the younger woman’s argument that they deserved to have a little fun. They had spent one memorable evening at a bar frequented by soldiers from nearby Fort Carson. While Chrissie politely fended off the overtures of earnest young men who reminded her of Matt, Tammy drank and danced and flirted and drank some more. Chrissie had ended up pouring her into a taxi and taking her home, and got stuck with the bill for both the taxi and the babysitter.
Soon after that, the private showed up. Tammy would call Chrissie sometimes and ask her to babysit. “I have a class at the community college and my regular girl canceled,” she’d pleaded.
Chrissie suspected the only thing Tammy was studying was the private, but she’d agreed to babysit, if only for the chance to spend an evening with T.J.
The dark-haired toddler with the chocolate-brown eyes could melt Chrissie with a single gap-toothed smile. A happy child who loved to cuddle, T.J. had won Chrissie’s heart the first time they’d met, when he’d taken her hand and earnestly introduced her to a purple stuffed bear. “This is Mr. Pringles,” he’d said. “My daddy gave him to me.”
Chrissie had never met T.J.’s father. Captain Hughes. Tammy never talked about him, except once, when Chrissie had tried to broach the subject of Tammy’s frequent nights out on the town. “I’m too lonely at the house all by myself,” she said, flipping her long brown hair over her shoulder, her mouth shaped into a pretty pout. “If my husband expects me to sit there all by myself until he comes home, he’s crazy.”
You won’t know lonely until they tell you your husband is never coming home again, Chrissie thought, but she said nothing. After that, she stopped trying to give advice to Tammy. But she would babysit whenever she was asked, and spend hours rocking with T.J., reading to him and singing him songs. In those few hours, at least, she was able to fill the hole inside her where a husband and child belonged.
She carried the mail into the kitchen, the cats following, weaving figure eights around her feet. She put the kettle on for a pot of tea, and opened a can of seafood delight for the kitties. From her kitchen window she could see the kitchen in Tammy’s house. The light was on, but the room was empty. Had Tammy split with her private and decided to come home?
Or had Captain Hughes returned to his empty house?
Her throat tightened at the thought. Had Tammy’s husband been part of the unit that had arrived home today? How must it have been for him, standing in the crowd of joyous families, with no one to welcome him home?
The thought of that man—any man—sitting alone in that empty house after a year away brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them back and did the only thing she could think of to do. She took a bottle of wine from the rack on the counter, and assembled a plate of sandwich fixings from the refrigerator. Then she put on her coat and started next door.
She made it as far as her front porch before she turned around and went back into the house, to comb her hair and touch up her makeup. Not because she wanted to impress him, but because a man who had been away fighting deserved to look at a woman who had gone to a little trouble for his sake.
She hurried across the strip of snow-covered grass between the two houses, cold wind nipping at her ankles and tugging at her coat. She stepped carefully up the icy walk, juggling the wine bottle and the plate of food, and knocked on the front door.
She waited, the cold burning her cheeks, then knocked again, harder this time. In a few seconds, she heard heavy footsteps and the sound of a lock being turned. Then the porch light came on, and the door opened.
Her first impression of him was of strength and height—muscles straining the shoulders of his dress uniform, his head bent to look at her. He had dark hair cut close at the sides, and dark eyes that fixed on her. “Yes?” he asked, his voice gruff.
She cleared her throat, trying to find her voice. “I—I saw the light and…and wanted to welcome you home.” The words sounded stilted to her ears. Would he think she was merely nosy?
He continued to stare at her, looking her up and down as if she were an escaped lunatic. Or a ghost. She could feel his gaze on her, burning her.
She held up the bottle of wine. “I thought you might like something to eat, or drink.”
He stepped back and opened the door wider. “Come in.”
She hesitated, then decided she’d look even more foolish standing on the porch in the cold. She stepped over the threshold and he shut the door behind her. “Let me take those,” he said, relieving her of her burdens.
“I’m Christine Evans,” she said. “I live next door.” She followed him into the kitchen and watched as he found two glasses and a corkscrew.
“Ray Hughes,” he said.
“It’s good to meet you.” She’d seen a picture of him once before, one Tammy had carried in her wallet. The picture had not done him justice. It hadn’t given a true idea of the way he filled a room with his presence.
He handed her a glass of wine. “Why don’t you take off your coat,” he said.
“It’s a little chilly in here.” The house was like ice.
“Sorry. I hadn’t noticed.” He walked into the other room. She followed and saw him turn up the thermostat. The heat kicked on, with the burnt-dust smell of a furnace that hadn’t been used in weeks.
There was no furniture in the room except a coffee table and a recliner. Chrissie stared at the chair, frowning. Tammy must have taken the other furniture when she left. Why? Hadn’t she realized how cruel she was being?
But no, Tammy was not one to think of the impact of her actions.
Ray sipped the wine and studied her. “How long have you lived next door?” he asked.
“Three years,” she said. Since six months after Matt had died.
“Then you must have known my wife.”
“Yes, I knew Tammy.” She sipped the wine and avoided looking at him. Yet she couldn’t keep her gaze averted long. There was something so compelling about his face, something that drew her to study the firm line of his jaw and the jut of his nose.
At the mention of Tammy’s name, his face took on a closed-off look. “Did you say your name was Christine? So people call you Chrissie?”
“Some people.” She hugged one arm across her chest. Tammy had called her that.
“You were Tammy’s friend,” he said.
She nodded. She had tried to be Tammy’s friend, but her brand of friendship was not what the young woman had wanted.
He drained the wineglass, then rolled the stem back and forth in his fingers. “She wrote me about you.”
“She did?” The words—and the chill in his voice—startled her. “What did she say?”
“She said the two of you went out together. That you were single and a lot of fun.” His voice was clipped, louder than it had been.
“We went out a couple of times.” Despite the heater, the air in the house was colder than ever. Chrissie forced herself to stand still, to not act afraid.
Ray glared at her, a white line of muscle standing out along his jaw. “Instead of staying home with our son the way she should have, she was out running around with you. You probably introduced her to the guy she ran off with.”
“No. I had nothing to do with that.” She shook her head.
He hurled the glass against the wall. It shattered. She jumped, her heart racing, and set her own glass on the counter. Her hands were shaking so badly, she had to clench them into fists to keep them still.
“Get out,” he said. “I don’t need you screwing up my life any more than you already have.”
She opened her mouth to argue, to explain she had nothing to do with Tammy’s defection. But one look in his eyes told her he was in no mood to listen. She pulled her coat more tightly around her and walked past him to the door.
Once outside, she broke into a run. Only when she was safely in her own house, the door locked and bolted behind her, did she realize tears were streaming down her cheeks.
She walked to the sink and filled a glass with water, then took a long drink, waiting for her pounding heart to slow. She tried to tell herself Ray’s outburst didn’t mean anything. Of course he was upset; he needed someone to blame and she was handy.
But his words still stung. She’d wanted this man, more than any she’d met in a long time, to like her. She’d felt the pull of attraction to him the moment he opened the door and stood, towering over her yet still vulnerable. The feeling had scared her, but she’d been determined not to run from it. Not this time. After three years, she was ready to move past the hurt. To allow herself to fall in love again. The idea was as thrilling as it was frightening.
And for a few minutes there, she’d held out hope that Ray Hughes would be the one. The man who would help her move past the fear and hurt into something wonderful.
A man who hated her now, before he even knew her. On the scale of things, most would say it was a minor loss, but it hurt all the same. She looked out the kitchen window, toward his now darkened house. Was he sitting there in the dark, brooding? Did he regret anything he’d said?
Was there any way for the two of them to reach across the misconceptions and try again?
CHAPTER TWO
RAY TOOK A LONG SWIG of coffee and stared out the windshield of the rental car, fighting the fatigue that dragged at him. He was still on Baghdad time, where it was 2:00 a.m. At 4:00 p.m. in Lincoln, southwest of Omaha, the sun sat low in a gunmetal sky. He had the heater in the car turned up full blast but he could still feel the cold radiating through the windshield glass.
He’d rented the car this morning at the Colorado Springs airport and set out for Omaha. While he’d waited for his turn at the counter, he’d thumbed through the phone book and found a furniture store and asked them to deliver a sofa, a television and a king-size bed.
“Don’t you want to come down and pick something out?” the woman on the phone had asked, incredulous.
“No. I want a brown leather sofa, a big-screen TV, and I don’t care what the bed looks like as long as the mattress is good and not too soft.” He’d given them his credit card information, told them where to find the house key, and they’d promised to deliver everything that afternoon.
Later, he’d find a car lot and buy a new truck. The fact that before shipping out he had paid off the one Tammy had stolen galled him. He’d been looking forward to having no vehicle payments.
That didn’t matter now. What mattered was that he was going to get his son, and he’d bring him home to a house that didn’t look like thieves had swept through it.
He gripped the steering wheel at the top and slid his hands down to rest at nine and three o’clock. Going to his parents’ place always tied his stomach in knots, but never more than now. Would T.J. remember him? Would he cry for his mother?
Ray didn’t want to think about Tammy, but every time he’d closed his eyes last night, she’d been there. He’d slept—or tried to sleep—in the recliner, a blanket he’d found in the closet thrown over him. But memories of his marriage played in his head like movie trailers highlighting all the best and worst scenes.
They’d met at a bar. Did single people meet anywhere else these days? The bars around Fort Carson were packed every night with men and women eyeing each other across the pool tables and dance floor.
She had been bent over a pool table when he’d walked in with a group of friends. Her dark brown hair fell like a silk shawl over her shoulders, past her waist. She’d worn a short skirt that showed off her legs, and black leather boots that ended just above her ankles. She’d glanced back and caught him staring and smiled at him, and he’d felt as if she’d landed a hook in his heart and tugged.
She’d hooked him all right. And reeled him in. He’d gone willingly, and when he’d gotten the Dear John letter he’d felt the hook rip right out. The news had hit him as hard as an enemy bullet.
She’d said she was lonely. She was tired of waiting. She was young and deserved to be out having fun. Only later had he heard from a buddy still stationed in the Springs that she’d moved in with another man.
Another soldier.
She wouldn’t have done it by herself. She’d have been fine if she’d stayed home.
At first he’d been happy she’d made a new friend. Her e-mails had been full of talk of Chrissie. Me and Chrissie went out last night to a club near the base. Me and Chrissie had a girls’night out. Me and Chrissie had a lot of fun.
But Chrissie was single and Tammy was not. Seeing her friend flirt and go out with guys probably made Tammy want those things, too. She wouldn’t have left him otherwise.
He leaned forward and snapped off the heater, warmed by a renewed surge of anger. Chrissie had fooled him at first, too. Last night, when he’d opened the door and seen her standing there, a bottle of wine in one hand, a plate of food in the other, a cloud of red curls framing her face, he’d thought for a moment he was hallucinating.
That she had reached out to him that way had touched him so much he could hardly speak. Watching her, feeling the wine slide down his throat and warm his stomach, he’d allowed himself a small flare of hope. Maybe his life wasn’t completely in the toilet.
And then he’d realized who he was talking to and that little flame was doused.
He shifted in his seat and forced his mind away from last night, to the future. He was going to see his son again. He didn’t know anything about raising a kid, but he’d figure it out. They’d do all right together. Just the two of them.
AS SOON AS the office mail was delivered and parceled out, Rita retreated to the shelf in the corner she used for charting and opened the envelope addressed to her in familiar handwriting. Paul sent his letters to her here so she’d get them earlier in the day. He started that after she told him how antsy she got when she was expecting to hear from him—how she couldn’t concentrate on her work, wondering if there was a letter waiting at home for her.
He’d told her his friends gave him a hard time about the letters. Why didn’t he just e-mail like everyone else? But he said he thought better with a piece of paper in front of him and a pen in his hand. Even as a boy, he’d kept a journal, and his grandmother had predicted he would be a great writer. For now, his letters home were his best work.
She unfolded the two sheets of paper and smoothed them out. Paul had beautiful handwriting. His third-grade teacher was also his aunt, Wilma Blue Legs, and she had made the children practice their cursive letters in an old copperplate style no one cared much about anymore.
Rita knew because she’d been in Wilma’s class, a year behind Paul. Even then she had admired the slim boy who sometimes made faces at her in the lunch room.
We have a new medic here who is from Boston. A real city boy. He found out I was Indian and he was like a little kid following me around, asking all these questions. You know the ones, all about what was life like on the reservation and all that. I told him life on the rez wasn’t that different from life in Baghdad, except that here it’s a lot hotter and they don’t have as many tourists.
She smiled. That was Paul. He always tried to put something amusing or lighthearted in his letters. He never talked about the dangerous stuff, except in offhand ways.
You might have seen something on the news about a bombing near the base. It was a bad scene but we are all okay.
By we he meant his unit. His buddies. The Special Forces group who lived and worked together. His tribe he called them sometimes. He’d moved into Special Forces after Chrissie’s husband, Matt, was killed. Paul said losing one of his buddies made him want to do something to have a bigger impact on the war. He’d thought Special Forces was the answer. She was proud of him and scared for him all at the same time, but mostly tried to keep the fear to herself, though she knew he sensed it.
I was sitting outside the barracks, watching the sunset just now. The sunsets can be pretty spectacular here. I think it’s all the dust in the air that reflects all the colors. I wish you could have seen it. It reminded me of when we used to sit behind by Mom and Dad’s house and watch the sun go down. I’m looking forward to doing that again with you soon. You know I love you. You’re what keeps me going.
She folded the letter and held it to her chest, imagining she was holding him instead.
Chrissie passed and saw her smiling. “A letter from Paul?” she asked.
Rita laughed. “How did you know?”
“Insurance explanations of benefits don’t make you smile that way.”
Rita shook her head and tucked the letter into the pocket of her smock.
“How’s he doing?” Chrissie asked.
“He sounds good. Of course, he wouldn’t tell me anything else. He doesn’t want me to worry. It’s the whole stoic-warrior thing.” She waved her hand. Truth be told, a sensitive, new age guy who bared all his emotions would have freaked her out. She’d been raised by people who had suffered hardship for generations. Lakota didn’t emote—they endured.
She checked her watch; she didn’t have another cleaning for twenty minutes. Her supplies were in order, so she had time to visit. She followed Chrissie up front, where she was pulling double duty as receptionist in Allison’s absence. The little blonde had the rest of the week off to welcome her husband home.
“That was fun last night,” Rita said. The movie had been silly, but silly was exactly what she needed. Seeing Allison so excited about Dan’s return had brought home how many months it would be before she could expect to see Paul again.
“Yeah, it was.” Chrissie glanced at her, a pensive look in her eyes. “Something strange happened after I got home, though.”
“Oh? What was that?” Rita pulled up a chair and sat.
Chrissie leaned forward and slid shut the frosted glass partition that separated the reception desk from the waiting room. “You remember Tammy Hughes?” she asked. “The neighbor girl I used to babysit for sometimes?”
“The one who was cheating on her husband.” Rita frowned. As far as she was concerned, there was a special place in hell for a woman who’d run around on a man while he was halfway around the world fighting in a war.
“Yeah.” Chrissie sighed. “Her husband came home last night.”
“He came home from Iraq?” Rita clarified.
Chrissie nodded. “I saw the light on next door and all I could think of was him sitting over there by himself. To be gone so long and then to come home to…to no one.”
Rita nodded. The idea lay heavy in her stomach like a wad of uncooked dough. Paul’s first homecoming, there’d been a couple of guys in his unit who didn’t have anyone waiting for them at the welcome ceremony. They’d kept it together and acted all happy anyway, but everyone else tried not to look at them too hard. It hurt too much to think about that kind of loneliness.
