Nobody's Hero (30 page)

“And you’ve been alone how long?”

“He wasn’t in as good physical shape as you
are; lots of health problems and he drank too much. Even so, we had
twenty-three years together. I wouldn’t change that for anything.
Except for the drinking. Joni was so happy you weren’t a
drinker.”

Marge had no idea that it had been Joni who’d
gotten him to give up drinking, before she’d brought him home to
meet her folks. He’d have followed in his old man’s footsteps, if
not for Joni. The backs of his eyes burned.

“But you and Joni had twenty years with each
other. Lots of couples aren’t blessed with that. Would you still
have married her if you knew it would only be for twenty
years?”

He cleared the frog from his throat. “Hell,
yeah.”

“Well, you’ll only be seventy in twenty more
years. Spring chicken.” She smiled.

“Yes, ma’am, but I’m still old enough to be
her father.”

“But you
aren’t
her father. And from
the way your eyes light up when you think about her, I’d say you
don’t picture yourself as her daddy, either.”

Hell, no
. But thoughts of what Karla’s
daddy would think when he found out Adam had slept with his
daughter made his gut twist. When he’d talked with Carl and Jenny a
few months back, after Karla had shown up at the club, he’d
promised to take good care of her. Instead…

Marge leaned toward him, her eyes bright with
unshed tears. She touched his hand again and said in a raspy
whisper, “Adam, Joni would want you to have someone to love, and
for you to have someone to love you as much as she did. Trust me on
this. But if you don’t believe me, look in that box she left for
you.”

The box. Every year for the past five years,
she’d tried to get him to open it, or at least take it home with
him. Every year, he’d left it untouched in the back of the closet
in the room where Joni had died. Adam had avoided the room and that
box every year he’d come up here since his retirement from the
Corps. He knew Joni had wanted him to have whatever was in there,
but he’d been reluctant to take possession of it, afraid of what
might lie inside.

“I think it’s time, Adam. You need to take it
home with you this time.”

Adam looked into Marge’s eyes, the eyes that
reminded him so much of Joni’s. But he didn’t feel his heart
squeeze tight or his lungs constrict the way they usually did. He
just saw Marge, Joni’s mom.

He nodded.

“Yeah. It’s time.”

Adam walked into the room and avoided looking
at the queen-sized bed where he’d spent Joni’s last agonizing
weeks. But the images bombarded him just the same. Skin on bones.
She’d lost so much weight between the spring, when he’d been home
on medical leave after the ambush in Afghanistan, to when he’d been
called home by Marge finally, at Joni’s request. Joni hadn’t wanted
to take him away from something as important as Enduring Freedom
and the men and women who needed him to just sit helplessly by her
side and watch her die. She was both a hero and a casualty of the
war that no one would ever recognize or honor except Adam and
Marge.

When he’d come into the room that first day
back, Joni hadn’t been able to speak, but had patted the mattress
beside her. He’d come into the room and wrapped her in his arms,
holding her while she sobbed. Clearly, she’d needed him. He’d have
been here sooner, if only he’d known. So fucking helpless.

Shit, helpless didn’t begin to describe what
he felt. He’d wished he could battle every cancer cell that had
invaded her body and crush it between his fingers. Would he have
been able to make a difference if he’d been here? Probably not, if
the Mayo doctors couldn’t find a cure for her. Where else could he
have taken her? She’d held on longer than the doctors had
predicted. Marge was probably right—she was waiting to hear the
words from him that would release her to the next life. But saying
them had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. As if he were
saying he didn’t want her beside him any longer.

Then, on the 6th of November, he just
couldn’t stand to watch her suffer any longer. He’d have liked to
have held her close and kissed her one last time on their twentieth
anniversary, only two days later, but her breathing had become so
labored and the look of terror in her eyes scared him to death. At
his request, the hospice nurse had increased the amount of morphine
to the full dosage allowed. A few hours later, she’d surrendered to
him one last time, dying in his arms.

Adam felt a hand brushing his back and
jumped. “I know it’s hard, hon,” Marge said. “I just want to thank
you for making Joni so happy, right to the end.”

He tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t
clear the lump in his throat. Then he fought to get the words out
anyway. “She deserved better than me.”

“Bullshit.”

Adam had never heard Marge cuss before. He
turned toward her and she pierced him with her big brown Joni
eyes.

“Adam Montague, I don’t know who messed with
your head when you were young. I know, I know,” she said, waving
her hand as if to brush away his familiar rote protests. “You don’t
want to talk about that time in your life. But you had better hear
this. You were a good husband, a good provider, and, from what Joni
hinted at, everything she ever wanted in a man between the
sheets.”

If Adam could blush, he would have. Talking
about kinky sex with Joni in front of her mother was just wrong on
too many levels.

“You need to accept that you’re a good man,
Adam, and move on.” She reached up and stroked his face, her thumb
brushing across his cheekbone. “Everyone else can see that. Why
can’t you?”

Not knowing what to say, resigned to leave
her with her glorified view of him, he bent down and kissed her
cheek. “Thanks, Mom. I’ll try.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist and
held him. The image of his own mother flashed across his mind.
Hugging him, just before she shoved him into the closet and locked
the door. He grew tense and reached to remove Marge’s hands from
around his waist.

“Okay, okay. I’ll let you go.” Marge must
have thought he was uncomfortable being hugged by her. Fine,
because he needed to open this god-damned closet door, retrieve the
box Joni had left him, and get the hell out of this room before the
walls closed in on him.

When he stood frozen to the spot, Marge
opened the closet doors and he stood staring inside the darkness
for a moment, afraid to go inside. Adam Montague, afraid of the
dark—or dark, closed-in spaces to be more exact. What would his
subordinates say if they could see their big, tough, former master
sergeant now?

Marge rescued him from further embarrassment
by walking into the closet—twice the size of the one he’d been
locked in as a kid—and dragging the box out from the corner. Seeing
how heavy it was, he had to chuck his fear, take a deep breath, and
face his fear by at least meeting her halfway. He pulled the box
the rest of the way out. What the fuck did Joni have packed away in
here, anyway, and how was he going to get it home on the plane?

Bending down, he heaved it into his arms,
curious now as to what she’d wanted to salvage and make him keep of
their years together. Carrying the box to the guest room across the
hall where he always slept when he visited Marge, he set it on the
cedar chest at the foot of the bed and stared at it for an
indeterminate amount of time.

“I’m going to leave you alone now, hon,”
Marge said. “Just take your time. I don’t know what all she put in
there in the first few months. She started on it while still at
Camp Pendleton. But she asked me to add a couple things right at
the end. They’re right on top. You may want to ship the other…items
home before you leave, but you’ll figure out the thing she wanted
you to have the most of all. She worked on it tirelessly, until she
was just too incapacitated to continue. That was when she told me
it was time to let you know about her condition.”

Adam tamped down the anger he felt that Joni
hadn’t called him home sooner. What was the last thing Joni had
wanted him to have? He heard the soft click of the door as Marge
left, then stared at the box again. What he wouldn’t give for a
bottle of scotch. Well, he sure as hell wasn’t going to find
that
in there. He hadn’t touched the stuff since his binge
in that motel, Magnum by his side, during those two weeks after her
death. He’d chosen life over death.

He slit the packing tape, yellowed with age
and drew a deep breath, hoping to quell a tremor in his hands as he
reached to open the flaps of the box. Sitting on top of what looked
like her favorite pair of leather floggers—
shit, Joni, why
didn’t you throw the toys away before you moved back here with your
mom?
—he saw five mini-cassette tapes and a recorder to play
them in. The implications of what might be on those tapes scared
the hell out of him. He wasn’t ready to hear Joni’s voice again,
even though he’d begun conjuring it up in his mind latterly. What
would she want to say, knowing her time on earth was almost over.
He picked up the recorder. Acid from its batteries had spilled onto
one of the floggers.

Without a doubt, Marge had seen their sex
toys when she’d placed the tapes inside. Did she know they’d been
used to turn her daughter’s skin red and send her into subspace?
Hell, no
. He hoped not, anyway. He didn’t want to think that
she would know anything about that, but he sure as hell knew he’d
have a hard time looking her in the eye at the breakfast table
tomorrow. Now he understood her hesitation when she spoke about the
other “items” in the box.

He stroked the soft leather of the floggers,
Joni’s favorite impact-play implements. She must have kept them
with her until just before he’d returned from Kandahar, before
boxing it up for him to find after she was gone. Curious, he wanted
to see what else she’d wanted him to have.

Just under the flogger was her private
leather studded collar with D-rings, as well as her public collar,
a silver and turquoise necklace he’d bought her on their second
honeymoon in Cabo San Lucas, about the time they’d agreed to enter
into a Master/slave arrangement, at Joni's request. Lying beside
them were what looked like every card and letter he’d sent her from
the places he’d been stationed, all wrapped up in a pale blue
ribbon. Beneath those, he found an old dog-eared paperback copy of
“Screw the Thorns, Send me the Thorns.” He smiled. The how-to
classic on BDSM had been his bible as he’d tried to figure out what
to do in the damned M/s arrangement with Joni, although he learned
a lot about other general lifestyle matters, too, that helped him
be a better Dom.

Next he found her favorite nativity scene,
the one depicting Native Americans as the Holy Family. The pieces
were in bubble wrap, tucked inside the crèche. She’d also saved the
angel she placed on the top of their Christmas tree every year,
with the flowing champagne-colored dress and its feathered wings
encased in protective gauze. Images of him with his hands spanning
Joni’s waist as she stood on the step ladder and placed the angel
at the top of the tree caused a painful stab to his chest. He could
almost feel her tiny waist in her hands as he held the angel by its
skirt. That was the extent of his helping her decorate the tree.
He’d never been into all the hoopla about any of the holidays, not
since he was a very young kid.

“I’m sorry I didn’t keep up your Christmas
traditions, Joni. The holidays hurt even more without you.”

He couldn’t picture himself ever decorating a
tree, but he made a silent promise to Joni that he would get these
decorations out and place them in his office after Thanksgiving
from now on, to honor her love of Christmas.

He put the frame in the pile of things he’d
take back with him on the plane.

He pulled out a bottle of the oak-scented
body wash and shampoo she always bought him. The lid was loose. The
image of her opening the bottle and smelling the soapy liquid made
the backs of his eyes sting. God, if she’d wanted to smell him,
have him near her, why the fuck hadn’t she called him home sooner?
He’d have retired from the Corps earlier, if they couldn’t give him
an extended hardship leave.

Adam returned the bottle to the box. Marge
had been sending him a year’s supply of the stuff every Christmas
for years. Good thing, because no way in hell was he going into a
girly store at the mall to buy it. But using it reminded him of
Joni, so he appreciated having it.

At the bottom of the box, providing the
ballast that made it so heavy, were rocks and seashells Joni had
picked up wherever they went. Once, she’d made him drive ten miles
out of their way so she could get rocks from a beach she’d loved as
a kid. Maybe he’d keep a few.

“Sorry, Joni. I had enough rocks in my head
to last a lifetime.”

Still have, jarhead.

Next was a copy of Seamus Heaney’s bog poems.
He’d been fascinated with Irish history, probably because of part
of his heritage. Adam had read many kinds of poetry to Joni. If any
of the men and women in his units had discovered that he’d read
love poems and other types of poetry to his wife, he’d never live
it down. He wasn’t sure Heaney was a favorite of Joni’s, but it was
nice that she’d made she the book stayed with him.

On the side of the box was something wrapped
in brown paper. He pulled it out and opened it, finding a frame
with a poem in it. A picture of a lighthouse printed on the
background paper and the words of “If You Forget Me,” by Pablo
Neruda. Adam wasn’t familiar with the poet and sat down on the rack
to read the words. By the fifth stanza, the words had begun to swim
before his eyes.

He was catapulted back to that cold
Thanksgiving morning on the shore of Lake Michigan just a couple
weeks after he’d buried Joni. Memories had flooded back to them of
their honeymoon and other times together.