ALWAYS FAITHFUL (2 page)

“Father, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Wouldn’t it be better to have someone around who won’t remind her of Mike?”

The Chaplain shrugged off her concerns. “Right now, she doesn’t have anyone who knows the system as well as you do. We have personnel who could advise her—but they’re strangers, you were a friend of her husband’s. She might be able to confide and grieve with you, whereas that would likely prove harder with a stranger.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll do what I can.”

She received a look of relief from Mrs. Rouch, who had made a cup of coffee for Claire and was standing close enough to listen to their conversation. Claire sat on the couch, her gaze unfocused. She sipped her drink automatically, clearly lost in her own stunned memories.

“I think you can help more than you know,” the Chaplain said. “Remember, as someone much older than me said, ‘What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.’ You’ve been through a lot yourself. I’m sure you can lend some of your strength and support to Mrs. Monroe.”

Nic nodded silently.
Okay, but how do I help her with her pain when I don’t know how to deal with my own?

C
laire looked around the room and saw a few wives whispering and wiping their eyes. They looked at her with the same look she had given other wives who had lost their husbands; disbelief and relief mixed with a dose of pity. She saw Chaplain O’Rielly and Major Caldwell talking and she wondered if she would ever be able to look at that uniform the same way again. Mike looked so smart in his uniform. It transformed him the minute he put it on. He had a military bearing about him, a pride that she was sure only someone who wore the uniform understood. He had told her many times how proud he was to serve his country and he had died for that very honor.

Once the word got out, every wife in Mike’s unit stopped by to see if she could help in some way.

Claire felt a hand on her shoulder. “Claire, I am so sorry for your loss. Is there anything I can do to help? Maybe I can take Grace for a while?”

Turning into the touch Claire reached up and patted the hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Gail. There isn’t really anything I need right now.”

“Claire, you know we’re here for you,” said another wife wiping her eyes, “and you know that you can call one of us anytime of the day or night, honey.”

“Thanks, Shirley, I appreciate that. Really I do.”

Claire knew they meant well, but she couldn’t tell them how they could help even if she wanted to. The constant talking around her made her head buzz. She was in a fog that deepened the longer everyone stayed. She couldn’t focus. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t function with everyone around. After what seemed like hours, Claire finally found the strength to ask everyone to leave. She needed to be alone with her daughter. She wanted time to think about what had just happened and how she was going to explain to Grace that her daddy wasn’t coming home, ever.

“Thanks again everyone for the food and everything,” Claire said as she watched the wives leave.

“Let us know when the funeral is Claire,” someone in the group said.

“I will. Thank you again.” Closing the door, Claire leaned against it for support.

She thought about her daughter and started to cry again, not for herself but for Grace. She slid down the door and hugged her knees to her chest. Grace adored her dad and Mike adored her. She cried harder when she realized that Mike would never see Grace grow up to be a beautiful woman, walk her down the aisle for her wedding, or bounce his grandchildren on his knee. Regardless of the type of relationship she and Mike had, he was a devoted father. He doted on Grace and it was clear that she had him wrapped around her little finger. In fact, Claire would often raise her little pinky, wiggling it at Mike when he gave in to Grace during one of her tantrums. Laughing, Mike would always say, “Hey, she is the best thing I have ever done in my life, and I refuse to be the bad guy. Besides, that’s your job, right?” Although it would draw a mock grunt of disgust from his wife, she would always smile at how much he loved being a dad.

Claire walked to her daughter’s room and sat in the rocker Mike had bought her when she had Grace. She watched Grace sleep, and wondered how much a three-year-old little girl would understand what happened to her father. She thought about how different their life would be now that Mike was gone. Did he suffer? Did he know what was happening or did it happen so fast that he didn’t know what hit him?

She thought about Mike’s family. They were a tight-knit group, the kind of family Claire wished she had growing up. They were close and happy, always looking out for each other. Mike’s mom irritated Claire sometimes, but Claire understood that she only wanted the best for Mike. It was something she could relate to now as she looked at Grace, but as close as Mike and his family were, he had kept a secret from them. One, Claire would now have to keep no matter what happened. It was something she was glad she could do for Mike, especially now. The past didn’t matter as much as it had two days ago, and she had to look towards the future-one without Mike.

She thought about Mike, and guilt started to eat at Claire. Had she been a good wife? Had she made him happy, at least in the ways that mattered to Mike? She did all the “wifely” duties she thought she was supposed to. From the outside they were the ideal military family.

Grace started to stir and Claire was at her side immediately, picking her up and hugging her. Grace laid her head on her mother’s shoulder and Claire stroked her short, wispy hair. There was no denying Grace was Mike’s, she had his big blue eyes and his full lips.

“She’ll be a heart-breaker,” Mike often said when he looked at his daughter. He joked he would be the type of parent that would welcome his daughter’s boyfriends while he was cleaning his shotgun. “Just to start the relationship off right,” he would joke.

“Oh honey,” whispered Claire as she rocked her little girl. Claire looked into her daughter’s eyes and choked back a sob.

“It’s okay Mommy. I take care of you,” Grace said as she wiped a tear from her mom’s face. Claire cried harder as she realized she had to tell her daughter something even she couldn’t believe yet.
Damnit. How could Mike do this to us? Damn him, damn him, damn it all to hell. She sat back down in the rocker with her daughter held tightly against her.

###

Nic sat at her desk, her head in her hands, running her fingers through her hair as she wondered what she had gotten herself into. She was still struggling with her own scars from Iraq and now she had to deal with helping a family start the process of getting through their own ordeal. Claire Monroe had to process out of military housing in thirty days and then she would be with her own family and working through her issues with them. Thirty days wasn’t that long. Nic had been back almost three months, although sometimes it seemed like forever. Other times, it felt like only yesterday.

Months had passed since her medivac helicopter went down in Iraq. Her first few weeks were spent in the hospital as they repaired her destroyed body, then the next few weeks were spent in rehab as she learned to walk again. She had been told the burns and grafts would take time to heal, and the hospital staff had been adamant about maintaining a daily regiment of workouts. The works outs helped her body to heal, but not her mind. The sound of the crash then bodies and burning wreckage everywhere still haunted her. Everyday she thought about her friends who had died, and every day she wondered. ‘Why me? Why did I survive and not Jack, who had a wife and three kids? Or the navigator Craig who had just married his high school sweetheart?’ She thought about them, about their families and how they were coping with their loss. She thought about it all, everyday.

Nic was still seeing a doctor weekly for her injuries, and to top it all off they were still making her see a shrink. “Just to make sure everything is fine upstairs.” Bullshit. They wanted to make sure she wasn’t some loose cannon who would freak out at any minute and go shooting up the place. She had heard about the combat stress many of the soldiers were coming home with, and how some of the soldiers were killing their spouses and themselves because they couldn’t deal with life stateside. Well, that wasn’t her. She knew she had better coping skills than that. After the crap she’d dealt with in her childhood, she could handle anything. She had chosen the Marine Corps to prove to everyone she’d ever known that she could take anything that came her way.

Looking down at her watch and noting the time she got up, put her hair back in a bun, and hefted her workout bag onto her shoulder. A good hour on the weights, more than a few laps in the pool, and then the sauna. Her gym workouts not only kept her sane, but also the exertion helped relax her and gave her the time and space she needed to think things through. She would work out her emotions in private, without a shrink staring at her waiting for her to make some revelation she didn’t feel. When she was in Bethesda after the crash, she practically came unglued at first, because she wasn’t able to get up off the bed, let alone walk. It hadn’t taken her long after her surgeries to get to the point of being able to not only sit up, but also to get up and walk without help. She made it through, pushing the emotional pain out of her mind once again as she had done so many other times before.
You’re here, you survived and you have a future ahead of you, whether you like it or not.

“Hey handsome! Back so soon?”

“Hey Trevor. Talk like that might get ya a date. Just not with me,” she said, winking at the gym attendant.

“Yeah, you officers are all alike. No guts no glory,” Trevor said as he swiped her ID card.

“Yeah, well I don’t want to go to the brig for fraternizing, and trust me, I’m not your type. Now that blonde over there,” Nic said pointing to a woman running on the treadmill, “she looks like your type. Why don’t you give her a try?”

“Already did. She shot me down, too.” Trevor rested his head on his hands as he watched the woman running on the treadmill.

“Well don’t give up hope. I’m sure you’ll find someone in this shit hole. Chicks dig a guy in uniform.”

An hour later she was sweating so much that her T-shirt was sticking to her body like a second skin. She often lost track of time when she worked out, getting into a zone where she felt intensely alive, her heart pounding as she pushed herself. At times she worked to excess, to the point where she almost couldn’t get up because her muscles were so fatigued. She knew she could keep up with the best of the best on their P.T. tests, often lapping some of the younger males. At almost six feet, she was an imposing figure with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and well-defined arms and legs, but when she looked in the mirror, all she saw was that weak, wounded soldier at Bethesda. Maybe
that
was why she was still seeing the shrink.

Nic reached for the tingling scar on her back as she made her way to the locker room to finish her workout. It was itching from the sweat, and her soaked T-shirt rubbing against it was a constant reminder of everything she had lost in Iraq. She changed into her swimsuit and continued on to the pool to do her normal thirty laps. Nic rinsed out her swim goggles and couldn’t help but check out a woman sitting on the edge of the pool. She was talking to a slim, pale guy in a Speedo who was leaning over laughing.

Yuk dude, ditch the Speedo,
thought Nic as she watched the woman throw her head back as she laughed.
You could do so much better than Mr. Pasty.

Nic watched for a second too long and was caught looking. Smiling and arching an eyebrow, the woman stared back at Nic. Her eyes roamed up and down Nic’s body and then back to Nic’s eyes.

Did she just wink at me?
Nic watched the woman slide the tip of her index finger into her parted lips and bite it.

“Hey, earth to Theresa,” Mr. Pasty said, snapping his fingers in front of the woman’s face. “Hey, we need to get back to the office.”

Nic took the opportunity to don her goggles and plunge into the water. She started to stroke the warm water when she caught Theresa watching her as she walked along the side of the pool to the locker room, her ass firm under her black swimsuit. Pulling up Nic saw Theresa take one last look at her and wave. Nic politely waved back and smiled before returning to her laps. She grinned at the simple and unexpected flirtation before putting it out of her mind and ducking beneath the heavily chlorinated water. Each long stroke strained her already tired shoulders. Her arms shook with fatigue when she finally stopped. Pulling herself up on the side of the pool, she took a long deep breath. This was exactly what she had needed to get her mind off her last inform.

After showering, Nic walked to the mirror and wiped off the steam that had collected during her shower. She assessed her reflection before she brushed her hair. At least the accident hadn’t left any facial injuries, thanks to her flight helmet. Nevertheless, when she looked at her green eyes they looked different, almost as if someone else was looking back at her.

She finished drying off, applied the bandages to her scars and pulled the tight T-shirt over her broad shoulders. It hugged her body, accentuating her full breasts and hard abs. If there was one thing Nic liked, it was her body in tight clothes. She worked out hard and she wasn’t about to hide the results with baggy sweats or clothes. She pulled her low-slung jeans over her narrow hips, tucked her T-shirt in and slipped into her favorite boots. She packed her bag and slung it over her shoulder, feeling a sting
when it hit her back. It was getting better. It wasn’t as painful as it had been
in the beginning when she would sling her bag, slapping it against her back without thinking and causing excruciating pain. These were small victories on her way to a full recovery and a normal life.

She strode out of the gym and over to her Yamaha, her other stress reliever. She had ridden a motorcycle since she was a kid, but after her crash, she had to wait until the doctors okayed her to ride. If they found out she was riding without being cleared she could be court-martialed since she was
still
government property, as she was often reminded.

Nic had never resented that equation until Iraq. She had never questioned the debt she owed her country, she knew what she was signing on for when she joined the Marine Corps. She wanted a college education, discipline, respect and a chance to serve her country. She knew her family would never pay for her to go to college so she hit up her Uncle Sam, who was more than willing to help her out as long as she knew the rules.

Until now, her life seemed to make sense. But somewhere between the sickening sound of her helicopter exploding and those long days in her bed at Bethesda, she’d lost that certainty. Her bike rumbled just loud enough to make her heart vibrate and tickle her center as she eased the chrome horse out of the parking space to the exit. She loved the freedom the bike gave her. It was like nothing she ever felt in anything else she did, not flying a helicopter, driving a sports car or the high she got from pumping weights. The only thing that came close was the pre-orgasmic shudder she had when she made love to a woman.

Luckily, traffic was light and she wasn’t in a hurry to get home to an empty apartment or worse, another inform. Nic weaved in and out of the afternoon traffic letting her mind wander as she became one with the bike. She had often wished she had her bike in Iraq but realized that a woman on a motorcycle would have been unacceptable in a country that didn’t even let women drive. Besides, all that sand would have fouled up the injection system. She glided to a stop at the light, touching down one foot to the pavement. Looking to her left, she saw a convertible roll to a stop beside her. The driver was the petite blonde, Theresa, from the gym, who was waving and looking at Nic. The stereo was playing a loud rap beat that practically drowned out the rumble of the motorcycle. Glancing at the light and then back to the car, she grinned as Theresa blew her a kiss. Blushing, she turned back toward the light.
What the
—from the corner of her eye she saw the driver give Nic a wink and pucker her lips, simulating a kiss. Shaking her head, Nic chuckled but didn’t look over. The last thing she wanted now was an open flirtation on base that could get her a court-martial. The woman honked her horn and motioned for her to pull over. Shaking
her head in the negative, Nic just smiled and waited for the light to turn green. Just as it did the blonde hit the gas and sped ahead of her, cut into her lane, and slowed down, forcing Nic to slam on her brakes.

There were a lot of things Nic could tolerate but screwing with her while she was on her bike was not one of them. She drew alongside the convertible and pointed toward an empty parking lot. The young woman pulled over. Her smile was full of eager invitation as Nic approached. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Nic growled as she tore off her helmet. “You could have gotten me killed back there.”

“Oh, come on. Aren’t you being just a little overdramatic?” Hard nipples caught Nic’s attention first. The woman’s blouse was so shear Nic could see she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Her silver nipple rings contrast nicely against her dark areolas,
Nic thought as she stared at the woman’s chest. Nic found herself more than a little excited by the sight.