Forever Mine: Callaghan Brothers, Book 9 (6 page)

“Some crossword puzzles,” he replied. “And my reading glasses. Apparently I’m going to be on my arse for a while.”

Rebecca smiled and told him she’d get right on it, then they, too, took their leave. They were followed by Ian and Lexi, Sean and Nicki, Shane and Lacie, and finally, Kieran and Faith. Each of his sons was so different, but he was proud of every one of them. They had all been fortunate in finding their wives, though Jack wouldn’t have been surprised if Kathleen had been nudging things along. He had no doubt she was up in Heaven, looking down on all of them even now, watching over them.

Michael and Maggie were the last to visit. “Aidan sends his best,” Maggie told him. “He wanted to come, but they’ll only allow immediate family in to see you.”

Aidan was not his son by blood, but he had become an integral part of the Callaghan family. Rebecca’s brother and best friend and business partner of Ian’s wife, Lexi, Aidan Harrison was a good man. “Thank him for me, lass.”

“I will. Are they treating you okay?” she asked, fluffing his pillow, then readjusting the covers around his feet. What was it with women and their incessant need to fluff and tuck?

“Aye, lass, they’re treating me fine.”

“Are you warm enough? Do you want another blanket? How about some ice chips?”

Maggie refused to look into his eyes, he noticed. Jack turned to Michael, who gave him a knowing look. It was then that realization dawned. Maggie was barely holding it together. She had an irrational fear of hospitals, and for her to be here at all was a testament to how much she cared for him.

“Maggie, I’m sorry, lass,” he said softly.

Her hands paused, her eyes fixed on the edge of the hospital bed. “You lied,” she sniffed. “You said it was indigestion.”

“Aye. But you understand, lass.” If anyone could, it was Maggie. There had been a few instances where she’d ignored the warning signs and put her own health at risk, whether out of fear or denial or laundry list of other excuses.

“Aye,” she agreed, finally meeting his gaze. “But I have Michael now. He looks out for me.”

That he did. Maggie was a proud, stubborn woman, but she was no match for the unwavering, quiet tenacity of her husband. Jack also knew that Maggie had just appointed herself his personal overseer. He would have chuckled if it didn’t hurt so much.

“He can look out for both of us,” Jack said.

“Get some rest, Dad.”

“I will.”

“Take care.”

––––––––

J
anuary 1975

Pine Ridge

“Take care.”

Jack jumped down from the truck at the edge of the driveway and waved off his ride. He didn’t know the driver, but the man was a local and had kindly offered him a ride when he’d come across Jack walking along the road, duffel slung over his back. The nearest bus station was five miles from his parents’ house, but five miles was nothing to feet that had covered a hundred, maybe a thousand times more over the last six and half years.

He’d heard the stories of men coming home from the war in other places, being greeted by protestors and signs vilifying their service. Thankfully, that wasn’t what he’d come home to. Granted, his return had been unannounced and low-key, but Pine Ridge was blissfully behind the times in terms of social “consciousness raising” awareness and moral outrage over American involvement in Vietnam.

Thank God. It had been hard enough as it was. If he’d stepped off the plane to a crowd of screaming, taunting protesters after what he’d endured, well... he didn’t know what he would have done. What he did know was, all he wanted was peace. Peace and the promise of waking up without facing another day of Hell.

Cold, white crystals drifted down and landed on his arms, his face.
Snow.
How long had it been since he’d seen real snow? How many times had he dreamed of it while he was away in the humid, tropical climate of Southeast Asia? It blanketed the lawn, frosted the trees and bushes; made the place look like a picture postcard.

He looked up to the sky, drawing in a full, bracing breath. Probably the first full breath he’d taken in years. The heavy, gun-metal gray clouds hanging low in the sky told him there would likely be more to come before long.

For one brief moment, he had the urge to fling himself down on the ground and roll around it in like he did when he was a kid. Him and Fitz and Brian, they used to
live
for days like this. They’d hover around the radio with fingers crossed, holding their breath until they heard the words:  “Pine Ridge School District, closed.” They’d whoop and holler and minutes later, would meet each other outside, playfully arguing over who was going to ride the Flexible Flyer sled first. It would escalate to a snowball fight, and before long, they’d have built snow forts with three-foot walls...

Jack shook his head at the memory, both fond and bittersweet. Those days, like those carefree, innocent boys, were long gone.

Instead, Jack reached down and scooped some of the heavy wet stuff into his hand. So white. So cold. So familiar, yet not.

He stood there for a while, taking it all in. After all of these years, he was finally home.

Two and a half years, that’s how long it had been since he’d last been here. Since he’d seen his mother. Since he’d held Kathleen. It had been all he could think about, but now that he was here, he couldn’t seem to make his feet move forward.

He hadn’t planned on it taking this long, but life had tossed a few wrenches into the works. Within a month of returning to active duty, he and his unit had been ambushed and captured. For more than two years, he had been MIA, a POW, a “guest” of the enemy.

Did Kathleen and his mother even know that he was alive? Or had they believed the worst? Now that the war was officially over, did they continue to hold out any hope? Or had they moved on?

He knew what he wanted to believe, but the truth was, he wasn’t sure he believed in anything anymore.

It was why he hadn’t written, why he hadn’t called. Because if they had given up, if they had moved on, he hadn’t been ready to hear it. He still wasn’t ready, but after a couple of months in a hospital, it was time.

Jack forced one foot in front of the other, pushing himself forward. It was slow going, but he refused to use the cane they’d given him. Reuniting with his croie would be done on his own two feet, solely under his own power. The broken bones had healed, the open sores now closed over, but some pain lingered. It would take a while, but he would recover fully, the doctors had said. The scars, both mental and physical, would always remain.

He half expected the door to fly open any second, for Kathleen to widen those pretty green eyes in surprise and then launch herself at him, the way she used to. At least, that’s what he’d imagined happening thousands of times. Those mental images of returning to her, of keeping his promise, had sustained him through the worst of the worst.

But the door didn’t open, the curtains didn’t move. No one came running out of the house in joyous tears.

He reached the front door, unaccosted, unheralded, and unnoticed. He refused to acknowledge the heavy weight trying to press down upon him. Should he fish the key out of the mailbox and let himself in? Or would it be better to ring the doorbell? This was his home, yet he hadn’t lived here in so long. Walking in unannounced felt wrong, especially when he wasn’t expected.

He opted to ring the doorbell. He heard the muffled chimes echo inside, but nothing else. No approaching steps, no calling out of a sing-song “Coming!” to greet him.

He waited quietly for a minute or so, then pressed the glowing white button again.

Maybe they weren’t home, he reasoned. Maybe they’d gone shopping, or were visiting Kathleen’s family. He stepped back and looked again, noting that despite the dark, gray skies, no lights were on inside the house. Walking around to the back, he peered into the detached garage, spotting his father’s Ford Galaxie 500, half covered by a cloth tarp.

Should he come back later, he wondered, knocking at the back door before coming around to the front again? No, it was too cold, and despite the ride, his leg was aching. He would go inside to wait, but would leave his duffel just inside the door to announce his presence so they wouldn’t think someone had broken in.

He reached into the mailbox hung beside the door and felt around for the key his mother always left there, but found nothing. He checked under the mat and the top of the doorframe, but those, too, were keyless. He was wondering exactly what he was going to do next when he heard his name called.

“Jack?”

Jack turned around to find Mrs. Fitzsimmons staring at him as if he was a ghost.

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered. She looked so much older than he remembered. Her auburn hair was now a silvery grey, her cornflower blue eyes dim, her face etched with the lines of a mother who had lost her only son. “I can’t seem to find the key. Do you know when my mother and Kathleen will be back?”

Her eyes widened; she pulled the heavy, hand-knit shawl tighter around her shoulders. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

She stared at him, and that’s when he saw the pity in her eyes. “You’d best come with me, Jack.”

She turned and started walking carefully across the snow-covered ground to her house next door. Dread pooled in his stomach, and he suddenly knew without a doubt that he didn’t want to hear whatever it was Mrs. Fitzsimmons had to say.

“I’d really just like to go inside for a while, Mrs. Fitzsimmons, but I can’t find the key.”

“I have a key,” she confirmed without turning around. “But you’d best hear what I have to tell you first.”

With no other choice, Jack pulled his coat tighter around him and trekked over the snow-covered ground toward his boyhood friend’s home.

S
eptember 2015

Pine Ridge

“Well?” Shane asked, following Michael into the small office he kept at the hospital. The others had gone back to their families, but would be returning in shifts to ensure that someone was at the hospital around the clock. Michael’s office was more comfortable than the waiting room, and had the benefits of a comfortable couch, its own full bathroom, and privacy.

“Well what?”

“Is he really going to be all right?”

Michael rubbed the back of his neck, willing away the tension. It had been a hell of a long day and it wasn’t over yet.

He knew what Shane wanted him to say, but he couldn’t give his brother the guarantee that everything was going to be okay. Their father had come through the surgery all right, and was responding well to treatment, but they were far from out of the woods yet. The usual vague platitudes weren’t going to cut it, either. Shane had the uncanny ability to sense bullshit a mile away.

“The man just had a triple bypass. He’s doing the best he can under the circumstances.”

Shane digested those words, and as expected, called him out. “And what are you
not
saying, Mick?”

Michael closed the door, then dropped down behind the desk into the leather chair. “Sit,” he commanded.

Shane did. Unlike some of the others, Shane was fairly reasonable. Kane, Jake or Sean would have stubbornly crossed their arms and refused on principle alone, demanding he just lay it on the line.

Michael pulled open a drawer and extracted two glasses and a bottle of the Bushmills Single Malt he kept there, then poured them each a shot.

“That bad?” Shane asked, accepting the glass.

“It could be better.”

“I thought you just said the surgery went well.”

“It did. But there’s a lot more damage than we thought.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning... we dodged the bullet this time, but the gun’s still cocked and loaded.”

Shane swirled the whiskey in his glass, then tossed it back. Once again, Michael silently appreciated his ability to process bad news with thought and reason rather than brute force. “Does Dad know?”

“I don’t know. Jimmy Yim stepped up today and did us a favor, but he’s not familiar with Dad’s history beyond what I was able to tell him and what he was able to glean for himself.”

“But you think there’s more to it than that.”

Michael stared at his glass, his brow furrowed. When he spoke again, it was with carefully considered words. “I think it’s improbable that, given the damage we found, Dad wasn’t aware there was a problem.”

“So what are you saying? That Dad knew and didn’t do anything about it?”

“I’m not saying anything at this point,” Michael clarified. “But, if it was me...”

Whatever Michael was going to say was pre-empted by his vibrating pager. He checked the number, spewing a few choice swear words while shooting to his feet. “It’s Dad,” he said, running out of the room, Shane right on his heels. They ran to the stairwell and took the steps two and three at a time up the three flights to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit.

The nurse on duty caught them right outside the unit, shoving a gown and mask into Michael’s hands. “His pressure bottomed out. Rhythm’s erratic. Pulse is practically non-existent.”

“Jimmy?”

“On his way.”

“Mick...” Shane’s eyes mirrored the same dread he felt. And once again, Michael couldn’t tell him what he wanted most to hear.

“I know.”

––––––––

F
ifteen minutes later, Michael breathed a sigh of relief. Another bullet dodged. His father’s heart was beating steadily again and his vitals had evened out. Once again, the waiting room was filled.

Michael held up his hand when they all jumped to their feet. “He’s stable.”

“What the fuck, Mick?” Jake asked, looking as weary as the rest of them. “I thought we had this.” Thankfully, they were the only ones in the room.

“We’re adjusting the meds. It takes a while to regulate the anti-clogging agents, get them just right. Too much and he bleeds out at the insertion points, too little and he strokes out.”

“But he’s out of the woods, right?” Kieran prompted.

“For now. How did you all get here so fast?” Michael asked, removing his cap and sinking into one of the well-worn chairs.