A Chance of a Lifetime, page 3
Lucy had loved him from the moment they’d met. He was her best guy friend. But lately…
Remembering Ben Noble, the gorgeous surgeon she’d crushed on over the summer, she sighed. When had she started falling for guys so far out of her league?
But she’d gotten Ben, the woman inside her whispered. He just hadn’t turned out to be what she needed. There had been plenty of affection and love, just no spark. She wanted a spark. Heavens, she wanted a whole wildfire.
Joe picked up a mini caramel-frosted cupcake and popped it in his mouth, closing his eyes for a moment. “Damn, Luce, that’s good.”
“Thank you. And thanks to you and your team for being my taste testers.”
“What happens if the weather cancels church or the reception?”
“I will put on my coat and boots and personally deliver them to every parishioner. As for the reception, neither rain nor sleet…”
Plastic crackled as he removed a glazed tart from one of the containers. “That’s the post office.”
“Well, it applies to the Army, too. Hospital staff has to be there, no matter what, to take care of the patients. I may have to walk all the way with the food on my back, but I’ll get it there.”
Behind her, Norton whined before trotting down the hall to the living room. Lucy watched him disappear around the corner, tail curled in the air, then turned back to Joe. “I believe the baby is calling your name.”
He popped the rest of the tart into his mouth, took a second for good measure, and squeezed past her. “I’m coming, buddy.”
She breathed in the scents of fabric softener, shampoo, and man—eau de Joe—and smiled as she flipped off the light. Lord, she missed man smells: shaving cream, cologne, sweat, funky running shoes, and even the engine oil that had migrated under Mike’s fingernails. Her house always smelled great, but these days it was distinctly feminine. She wanted the male fragrances back, both good and bad.
Just one of many things she wanted back.
When she returned to the living room, Joe and Norton were there. The man was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, swinging Norton’s leash to tempt him to follow, but the dog was hunkered at the front door, frantically sniffing the bottom of it, his head down, his butt wiggling in the air, and agitated whines coming from his mouth. “What’s up with him?” she asked. Norton rarely went out the front door, and he never got this anxious to potty. He was well known, in fact, for peeing in the middle of the kitchen floor whenever he felt like it.
“I don’t know.” Joe came closer, waving the leash. “C’mon, buddy, let’s go out.”
Norton didn’t even spare him a glance. With a shrug, Joe went to the door, grabbed the dog’s collar with one hand, flipped on the porch light, and opened the door. Norton’s feet scrabbled on the wood floor as he lunged toward the small stoop, putting so much power into it that Lucy would have been tumbling down the steps about now, but Joe managed to restrain him.
“Damn, Lucy, get a towel, will you?”
She hurried down the hall to the bathroom and grabbed a large towel. When she got back to the living room, the door still stood open, but Joe had hooked the leash onto Norton’s collar and pulled him to the couch. He traded the leash for the towel, and she braced her feet against the dog’s straining while Joe stepped outside.
Norton’s whimpers rose to a howl in the seconds Joe was out of sight. He stopped mid-erooo when Joe came back inside, holding the towel bunched in his hands. Sleet dotted his hair and shoulders, but he was grinning as he opened the towel to reveal the tiniest, scrawniest, wettest creature she’d ever seen, encrusted in ice and shivering violently. As she stared, the kitten lifted its little orange head, opened its little pink mouth, and pitifully meowed.
“Look, Luce, Norton found you a new baby,” Joe said, as if the thing she wanted most in life was another animal. “Good boy, Norton, good boy.”
* * *
Calvin dressed early Sunday morning and left his room to find a decent cup of coffee. What he got from the RN at the nursing station was a heavy mug, filled half with hot coffee, half hot milk, and smelling like his mom’s cinnamon cookies. My specialty, the nurse had said with a wink before tucking the Thermos back into a cabinet. Warming his fingers on the hot pottery, he returned to his room, breathing deeply of the aroma, and took a seat in the chair next to the large window. The coffee smelled so good that it seemed a shame to drink it, but once the steam dissipated to occasional wisps, he took a sip. Damn, it was as good as it smelled.
“Good morning.” A medic let himself into the room, carrying a tray. “Normally, our ambulatory patients eat in the dining hall down on the second floor, but you’re getting a special delivery. You want to move to the warmer side of the room for breakfast? Granted, I’m just guessing that this side is warmer based on the fact that at least there’s no ice formed on the walls over here.”
Calvin glanced at the window behind him, traces of frost etched on the inside of the glass. When he was a kid, in the few minutes before his mom rousted him from the bed on winter mornings, he’d drawn all kinds of scenes on his windows, using his fingernail to scrape off the frost. “No, thanks. I’ll be okay here.”
The medic set the tray on the bed table, wheeled it over, and adjusted it to the proper height. He lifted the lid. “Looks like you got the I’d-rather-have-MREs special. Lucky you.” He scanned the tray, then met Calvin’s gaze. “Can you think of anything I forgot besides the flavor?”
Calvin shook his head.
“Okay, then, I’ll be back in a while to pick up your tray. Enjoy your breakfast.”
Calvin took another sip of coffee while inventorying the tray. There were scrambled eggs, their color so pale that they must be egg substitute. The toast could have used another minute or two in the toaster, and the jelly was strawberry instead of his favorite, grape. A piece of gray sausage, probably substitute meat, and half an orange rounded the plate, while circling the plate was a single-serving box of cereal, a carton of low-fat milk, a four-ounce carton of grape juice—he’d rather have orange—and a cup of cold coffee. No sugar, no cream, and the little package of salt was fake.
If he were a few miles away at his parents’ house, his mom would be fixing sourdough pancakes, eggs over easy, fried potatoes, homemade sausage, biscuits, and thick cream gravy. But she would expect something in exchange for that breakfast: some hint, some reminder of the son who used to be. She would want conversation—deep and painful or lighthearted and fake—and he wasn’t yet up to either.
Picking up a plastic fork, he poked at the eggs, cutting them into chunks that held their shape. Not sure whether the movement of his mouth was a rueful smile or a grimace, he laid the fork down and picked up the cinnamon coffee again. He knew for sure it was a smile when he tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and savored every drop of it.
The air pressure changed as the door opened. He’d already learned that there was no such thing as privacy in a hospital, but he kept his eyes shut as footsteps approached, until the bed creaked.
“Coffee may be the drink of the gods, but it doesn’t count as breakfast.” It was Valentina, the nurse responsible for the cinnamon brew. She leaned against the foot of the bed, hands pushed into the pockets of the jacket that covered her scrub top.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Hm. I’ve never had that problem in my life. But you have to eat something. If you don’t, the dietitians find out, and they come and rag on me, and then I have to pull rank on you.”
“Which is hard since I outrank you.” Barely. She was a lieutenant, one paygrade below his own rank.
She smiled as she straightened. “You’re on my turf now, Captain. Those bars don’t mean a thing here.”
A few years ago he would have made some joking remark—would have checked to see if there was a wedding band on her left hand and then flirted with her whether there was or wasn’t. This morning, he couldn’t quite remember what that was like, joking and flirting with a pretty woman. There was a part of him, though, that damn wanted to.
“I understand that home is somewhere near here.” She gestured toward the tray, and he automatically picked up the fork.
“The northwest part of Tallgrass. Neighborhood called the Flats.” He lifted a chunk of egg to his mouth. He still wasn’t hungry, and it was as tasteless as he’d expected, but if he ever wanted to escape the close scrutiny brought on by his suicide attempt, Chaplain Reed back in Washington had told him, he had to try. He could never quit trying.
It sounded like a life sentence.
But better than a death sentence.
“The Flats?” the nurse echoed. “I’ve only been here at Fort Murphy a few months, but from what I’ve seen, the entire county is pretty much flat.”
“Aw, don’t say that. The elevation of West Main Street is a good fifty feet higher than East Main.” That was kind of joking, wasn’t it? She did laugh. “There’s plenty of hills outside of town. They just come on so gradually that you don’t really notice them.” Along with a lot of trees, wide-open spaces, and gullies cut deep by heavy rain and hard winds. Minus the trees, it didn’t sound so different from the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. “Where’d you come from?”
“Fort Stewart. Winn Army Community Hospital. Before that I was in school at UCSD. I grew up in Southern California.” She shivered, pulling her jacket tighter. “I joined the Army so I could experience life outside of San Diego County. I never stopped to think that might mean twenty degrees and ice in October.”
He had joined up for the same reason. He’d seen far more than he’d bargained for. “It’ll warm up again. We get occasional days in the seventies and eighties to get us through winter.”
“And frequent summer days of a hundred degrees plus all summer long to make you long for it again.”
He swallowed the last bite of eggs, cut the sausage patty in half, and ate one piece. It wasn’t as bland as the eggs, with at least a hint of sausage flavor. The orange was good—not much the hospital kitchen could do to a piece of fruit—and the toast was dry. When he finished, he looked at Valentina. “Satisfied?”
Her laughter as she pushed away from the bed was warm and cheery and reminded him of better times. “It takes more than a clean plate to satisfy me. Keep your cereal. Waste not, and all that.”
“Want not,” he finished the saying for her, even as he took the sealed plastic cup from the tray.
“Want the milk?”
“Who puts milk on cereal?” That was teasing, too. Twice in one conversation must be some kind of record for him.
“Yeah, I don’t, either.” She carried the tray from the room, calling from the door, “I’ll be back…”
He looked out the window and grimly murmured, “I’ll be here.”
Picking up the coffee again, he turned to stare outside. The sun reflected off the ice that coated everything, bright enough to blind even though it wasn’t far above the horizon yet. He remembered going out to play after a heavy snow or, yeah, even just sleet, bundled in layers, two of everything except shoes and gloves. He would stagger down the steps and into the sun, baseball cap under knit cap, brim pulled low to block the glare. Most times, by the time he’d made it to the street, J’Myel was sliding out to meet him. They’d made snowmen and snow caves, ambushed other neighborhood kids with well-aimed snowballs, and tried to leave no patch of white untouched before frozen feet or hunger drove them back inside.
Good times, J’Myel had always said when they reminisced about childhood stuff. He’d accompanied the words with an ear-to-ear grin.
Calvin’s chest grew tight, his next few breaths hard to pull out. His fingers gripped the coffee mug so tightly that the tips turned pale, and a strangled sound escaped his throat before he clamped down hard on it. He wanted some good times again, God help him, he did. Because he couldn’t go on like this forever.
* * *
In the twenty years Bennie had lived with Mama Maudene, she could count on one hand the number of times they’d missed church on Sunday morning that weren’t weather related: three trips back home to South Carolina to visit family and the two Sundays following J’Myel’s death. It averaged out to once every four years, not a bad record. She knew a few pastors who couldn’t claim such diligent attendance.
This cold bright morning, she dressed in fleece pants, an OU Sooners sweatshirt, and fuzzy house shoes over woolen socks. The shirt actually belonged to Mama, a gift from one of her numerous nieces, but being an unwavering OSU Cowboys fan, Mama had passed the shirt on to Bennie. Someone should get some use from it, she’d declared, but it wasn’t going to be her. Cold-natured Bennie couldn’t care less what logo was on the front as long as it kept her warm.
The instant she opened the bedroom door, she smelled coffee and cinnamon rolls. Good for her soul, not so much for her hips. “Morning, Mama,” she greeted when she shuffled into the kitchen. “Isn’t it beautiful outside?”
“It would be more beautiful if our yellow grass was showing.” Mama handed her a cup of coffee, fresh from the Keurig.
Bennie blew gently across the top of the mug. “Smells wonderful. What is it today?”
“A Salvadoran medium-roast with notes of almond, honeysuckle, and pipe tobacco.” Mama’s smile wreathed her face. “Listen to me. I’ve become a coffee connoisseur. Oh, and the packaging is ninety-seven percent recyclable. Saving the world one K-cup at a time.”
The aroma alone was enough to make Bennie happy she’d gotten out of bed. Settling at the table, she tested it with a tiny sip, and when it didn’t scald her tongue, she took a larger drink, then mmm-ed her appreciation. Since Mama had discovered Internet shopping, they hadn’t had a single cup of regular old supermarket coffee, and Bennie, for one, was grateful.
“I’m trying a new recipe today,” Mama said from the stove. “Hashbrown potatoes, onions, peppers, eggs, cheese, and chorizo. That’s Mexican sausage. While it finishes up in the oven, why don’t you see if the newspaper boy managed to get through this morning.”
Obediently, Bennie went to the front door, opening it to an ice-covered world. Though it was thirty degrees south of bearable, the air wasn’t as frigid as she’d expected. With any luck, most of this mess would be gone tomorrow and she’d never, ever see sleet again. She crossed two fingers on both hands and squeezed her eyes shut, making a wish of the thought, then bent to pick up the paper in its plastic sleeve.
The newspaper boy, a retired rural mail carrier, had indeed made it. He was as reliable as the sun coming up every morning. His secret, he claimed, was his seventies-era Volkswagen Beetle. Where other cars gave up, ol’ Bess just kept on chugging, and if she slid into a ditch or a fence post, well, what was another ding?
Bennie was about to close the storm door when she stopped, her gaze traveling across and down the street. The Sweet home was barely visible through the ice-laden tree branches, a tidy place set back from the road. Justice would have already gone to the small cabin on the other side, probably along with Calvin, to help Miss Emmeline make a safe crossing to their house, and they would be sitting down to breakfast about now. Bennie smiled at the thought of the spread Elizabeth would have cooked, all delicious and fattening and filled with love.
Had Calvin’s first night home been a good one? Had he felt warm and secure in his old room that had once been an attic? Had he stretched out in bed and thought, Thank God I’m home?
Probably. Had he thought about J’Myel? About the way things had ended between them? Had he regretted the way he’d treated Bennie, missing their wedding, not showing up for J’Myel’s funeral, never saying a word to her about the worst time in her life?
Her jaw tightened, tension twisting through her gut. Probably not. Her best friend forever hadn’t turned out to be such a great friend, and he’d sure never lasted close to forever.
“You’re letting the outside in,” Mama called from the kitchen doorway. “Get on in here, let’s say the blessing, and see how this new dish tastes.”
Forcing a calming breath, Bennie did as she said, stripping off the plastic sleeve and laying the paper next to Mama’s recliner on her way past. After discarding the dripping sleeve in the waste basket, she sat, bowed her head, and while Mama prayed, Bennie mouthed her own prayer that Calvin’s visit would be short, that she wouldn’t see him, that he would go away again and let her return to her hard-won life without him.
After taking a few bites of the casserole and praising the recipe as a keeper, she remarked casually—she hoped, “It would be nice for his folks if Calvin can stay through Thanksgiving.”
“Christmas would be even nicer, but I doubt the Army can afford to let him be gone that long. You know he’s the best, toughest, most gung-ho soldier in the history of armies anywhere. So says Emmeline.” Mama’s eyes gleamed. “It’s hard to believe. Him and J’Myel were two of the orneriest boys I ever saw. We never knew what the three of you would get into next. Though I gotta say, you never made me really whomp you.”
There had been no shortages of spankings and swattings from Mama, all of them well deserved, but her whompins were the stuff of legend. When they visited family, there was usually a cousin or uncle there who’d gotten whomped. All they would say was it scared the crooked straight out of ’em and was the closest a person could come to meeting Jesus while still breathing.
Mama’s smile was happy and sad, present and distant at the same time. “Them boys and you was like pieces of a braid. Take one out, and it all falls apart.”
“We surely did fall apart,” Bennie agreed, grimly wondering if the memories they had were enough to make up for the ones they’d never gotten to make. “I don’t suppose Miss Emmeline mentioned how long Calvin will be here.”
“Nope. You know Emmeline. All she said was he had arrived and Justice and Elizabeth were on their way to see him.”
