Don't Go (43 page)
Mike had hit him where it hurt the most.
In his wallet.
Chapter Eighty-two
It wasn’t until almost dark that Mike and Chatty got a chance to talk alone, sitting in chairs on the elevated deck, while the party went on below. Mike held Emily as she snored softly on his shoulder, her body warm and slightly sweaty. She smelled of hot dogs and mosquito repellent, which was somehow sweeter than perfume.
Chatty sipped his beer, smiling. “So you didn’t hit Haggerty?”
“No, because I’m a father now. Also I only have one hand and I need it.”
Chatty laughed. “Now you’re thinking, Scholl’s. Besides, the mom network will get on his ass, and Lyon will cut him loose.”
“I know, and he’s not the guy I thought he was, anymore.” Mike was trying to make peace with it, but it would take a long time. “My hitting days are over. I still can’t believe you got away with clocking Davy.”
“Of course. If he brought me up on charges, he knew I’d tell what he said about the investigation. He wasn’t about to open that can of worms.” Chatty snorted. “On a lighter note, I like Stephanie. She’s great.”
“So’s Sherry.” Mike scanned the party for them, but it was too dark to see. The only light came from yellow paper lanterns strung between the tall oak trees, which made shifting shadows of the partiers. Barbeque smoke hung in the air, an aromatic haze.
“Did you notice that they hit it off immediately?”
“Yes, because they’re two of a kind.”
“Run for cover.” Chatty chuckled, and so did Mike.
“Your daughters are beauties. So grown up.”
“Thanks. I’m not ready for Lena to get a learner’s permit. I don’t want her out of my sight, meeting guys like me.” Chatty gestured at Emily. “Meanwhile, my girls love the baby, but I don’t know if they understood she’s real. They carted her around like their old American Girl dolls.”
Mike smiled. “Those big dolls? I saw those, online. They’re not cheap.”
“No, and you gotta buy the clothes, the books, the DVDs, then take the trip to the store in the city. It’s a pilgrimage.” Chatty snorted. “I sat next to McKenna on the train.”
“Who’s McKenna?”
“A doll. I sat with a doll in the club car on an Acela. Think about that. Consider the visual.”
“Manly.” Mike chuckled. “I have a kitten, did I tell you? Also manly.”
“Ha! This is a very manly conversation.” Chatty rubbed his chest in his white polo shirt, a bright patch in the darkness. “Only real men can have conversations like this. Men from war.”
“Hoo-ah!” Mike said, and they both laughed.
“They’re closing bases and Landstuhl, too, did you hear?”
“I heard, because the war’s over.”
“Right, that’s why they’re building a hospital at Ramstein.”
“One-stop shopping.” Mike kept his hand on Emily’s back, without really knowing why. “Sew ’em up and put ’em on a plane.”
“They’re shutting down the 556th, too.” Chatty sighed, heavily. “Man, I still can’t deal with it. I replay it over and over, but it always turns out the same.”
Mike knew he was talking about Phat Phil, Oldstein, Jacobs, and Tipton. “Me, too.”
“I think about them, all the time. I think about them
all
. They’re always in the back of my mind.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” Mike thought about them, and everything else. The blood, the wounds, the soldiers, The Kid With The Dragon Tattoo, The Virgin.
“To them.” Chatty raised his bottle in tribute, and Mike felt his throat catch.
“Hear, hear.”
Chatty set his bottle down on his leg. “I don’t sleep well, or not much, really. That’s the main thing that drives me crazy, the not-sleeping.”
“You gotta see somebody about that. I do.”
“That’s what Sherry says.”
“She’s right. Listen to her. Don’t avoid it.”
“I know, I’m not myself. On the Fourth of July, we went to the fireworks and I started shaking.” Chatty shuddered. “I had to come home.”
“I hear that. We went to a chick flick last week, and I cried like a baby.”
Chatty shook it off. “Too bad Segundo’s mom got sick. He really wanted to stick around and see you.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Great. I love having him, he runs my office like he ran us. He’s gonna marry his girl, but he’s still a tub. I told him, how you gonna fit in your dress?”
Mike smiled. “Hold on. I have a birthday present for you.”
“Scholl’s, the invite said ‘no presents.’”
“That doesn’t apply to me.” Mike dug in his pocket, pulled out the heart milagro, and gave it to Chatty. “Happy Birthday, Batman.”
“Ha!” Chatty held it up, where it glinted in the light from the kitchen. “Thanks, man!”
“Tell Segundo. Now you’ll have all the good luck that it brought me.”
“We
are
lucky, man.”
“We sure as hell are.”
Mike grinned, but it was too dark to see Chatty’s smile. The sky had deepened to a soft black, with just a few stars. “Hey, look up. Same sky, different stars.”
Chatty looked up. “I should get my goggles.”
Mike thought back to the night they sat outside their tent, when he first came back after Chloe’s death. “Remember that night?”
“Yeah.”
Mike didn’t have to explain which night. “Is it crazy to say I’m glad we were there?”
“No, I’m glad we were, too,” Chatty answered, after a moment. “Now why is that, I wonder? How can that be? War is
not
a good thing.”
“No, it isn’t.” Mike had thought about the subject many a night, when he was having sleep problems of his own. “Here’s what I think. If I hadn’t gone over there, I wouldn’t be the father I am. I wouldn’t be the man I am. War changes everything, and everybody. It changed me, and the sacrifice changed me. I’ve decided to live my life in a way that honors that sacrifice, and all the sacrifices.”
Chatty looked over. “For real, Scholl’s?”
“For real, Chatty.”
“That’s deep. I’ll have to mull that over, my friend. I’ll have to cogitate on that.”
“Be my guest.”
Chatty snorted. “Did you get smarter while I was away?”
“No,” Mike answered. “You got dumber.”
And they both laughed until they cried.
These two heroes, who were finally home.
Acknowledgments
Now to the thank-yous, where I get to thank all of those experts and kind souls who helped me with
Don’t Go,
and make clear that any and all mistakes herein are mine.
First thanks go to my medical experts, Vladimir Berkovich, M.D., Lt. Colonel USAR, a decorated veteran who served in the Army Medical Corps in Afghanistan and Iraq. He took his valuable time to answer all of my questions and read the manuscript, making a number of corrections and suggestions. I could not be more grateful to him for his kindness, expertise, and guidance—and more important, for his service to all of us, and his sacrifices in harm’s way.
I also want to thank Dr. Marc Baer, D.P.M., who also took the time to read pages of this manuscript as well, and who is a wonderful and caring podiatrist. Thanks to my pal Missy Dubroff, for reading the manuscript and making comments.
I’m a bookaholic, and I want to acknowledge the books that I read on the subject of medical care in combat, which informed the background of
Don’t Go
. Primary were some extraordinary textbooks: LTC Brett Owens and LTC Philip Belmont Jr.’s
Combat Orthopedic Surgery: Lessons Learned in Iraq and Afghanistan
(Slackbooks, 2011); Bella May’s
Amputations and Prosthetics
(Davis, 2002); G. Murdoch and A. Bennett-Wilson’s
Amputation: Surgical Practice and Patient Management
(Butterworth-Heineman, 1996); LTC Shawn Christian Nessen, Dave Edmond Lounsbury, and Stephen Hetz’s
War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq: A Series of Cases, 2003-2007
(Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 2008).
I also read some great nonfiction, many, but not all, by returning vets. I would recommend: Milo Afong’s
Hogs in the Shadows
(Berkley, 2007); David Bellavia’s
House to House
(Free Press, 2007); Peter Bergen’s
The Longest War
(Free Press, 2011); Donovan Campbell’s
Joker One
(Random House, 2010); Sarah Chayes’s
The Punishment of Virtue
(Penguin, 2006); James Fallows’s
Blind Into Baghdad
(Random House, 2006); Dexter Filkins’s
The Forever War
(Random House, 2008); David Finkel’s
The Good Soldiers
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009); Matt Gallagher’s
Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War
(Perseus, 2010); Dr. Ronald Glasser’s
Broken Bodies, Shattered Minds: A Medical Odyssey from Vietnam to Afghanistan
(History, 2010); Dr. Dave Hnida’s
Paradise General: Riding the Surge at a Combat Hospital in Iraq
(Simon & Shuster, 2010); Cdr. Richard Jadick’s
On Call in Hell: A Doctor’s Iraq War Story
(NAL, 2007); Sebastian Junger’s
War
(Grand Central, 2010); Robert Kaplan’s
Imperial Grunts
(Random House, 2005); Jon Krakauer’s
Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
(Doubleday, 2009); Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson’s
Lone Survivor
(Little Brown, 2007); Karl Marlantes’s
What It Is Like to Go to War
(Atlantic Monthly, 2011); Thomas Middleton’s
Saber’s Edge: A Combat Medic in Ramadi, Iraq
(University Press of New England, 2009); Patrick Thibeault’s
My Journey as a Combat Medic
(IBJ, 2011); Benjamin Tupper’s
Greetings From Afghanistan, Send More Ammo
(NAL, 2010); Howard Wasdin and Stephen Templin’s
Seal Team Six
(St. Martin’s Press, 2011); Bing West’s
No True Glory
(Bantam, 2005). I also enjoyed a novel on the subject,
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
by Ben Fountain (HarperCollins, 2012).
I’m a former lawyer, but family law wasn’t my field. One of the country’s best family lawyers, Margaret Klaw, Esq., of Berner Klaw and Watson, P.C. in Philadelphia, who also writes for
The Huffington Post
, helped me so much in making sure I got the legal details correct in this thorny issue of family law, which, unfortunately, comes up frequently with returning vets.
Another lawyerly thank-you to a brilliant and dedicated public servant, Nicholas Casenta, Esq., Chief Deputy District Attorney of the Chester County District Attorney’s Office, who has helped me with every book so far, including this one. We’re lucky to have you, Nick!
Thanks to my old friend Virginia Ayres, for her in-the-clutch help. Thanks to Tom Melvin, genius accountant, who helped me with the financial details herein, as usual. Thanks to Lauren Bowser of O’Brien’s Funeral Home, for her expertise and sensitivity.
I want to take a special moment to thank my editor, Jennifer Enderlin, who has encouraged me to stretch with each novel. And big thanks to the brilliant, fun gang at St. Martin’s Press, starting with the terrific John Sargent, Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, Matt Baldacci, Jeanne-Marie Hudson, Brian Heller, Jeff Capshew, Nancy Trypuc, Kim Ludlam, John Murphy, John Karle, Sara Goodman, and all the wonderful sales reps. Big thanks to Michael Storrings, for an astounding cover design. Also hugs and kisses to Mary Beth Roche, Laura Wilson, and the great people in audiobooks. I love and appreciate all of you.
Thanks and big love to my incredible agent and friend Molly Friedrich, who has guided me for so long now, and to the amazing Lucy Carson and Molly Schulman.
Thanks and another big hug to my dedicated and wonderful assistant and best friend, Laura Leonard. She’s invaluable in every way, and has been for more than twenty years. Thanks, too, to my girl pack of Nan Daley, Rachel Kull, Paula Menghetti, Franca Palumbo, and Sandy Steingard.
Thank you very much to my amazing and brilliant daughter Francesca, a wonderful writer in her own right, for her love, support, and great humor.
And to my family, for everything.
Also by Lisa Scottoline
Fiction
Come Home
Save Me
Think Twice
Look Again
Lady Killer
Daddy’s Girl
Dirty Blonde
Devil’s Corner
Killer Smile
Dead Ringer
Courting Trouble
The Vendetta Defense
Moment of Truth
Mistaken Identity
Rough Justice
Legal Tender
Running from the Law
Final Appeal
Everywhere That Mary Went
Nonfiction (with Francesca Serritella)
Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim
Best Friends, Occasional Enemies
My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space
Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog
About the Author
LISA SCOTTOLINE is a
New York Times
bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of twenty novels. She has 30 million copies of her books in print in the United States, and she has been published in thirty-five countries. She has served as the president of Mystery Writers of America, and her thrillers have been optioned for television and film. She also writes a weekly humor column with her daughter, Francesca Serritella, for
The Philadelphia Inquirer,
and those critically acclaimed stories have been adapted into a series of memoirs, the first of which is entitled
Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog
. She lives in the Philadelphia area with an array of disobedient pets. Visit
www.scottoline.com
or follow Lisa on Facebook or Twitter.