One September Morning (31 page)

Fort Lewis
Abby

A
bby flips over onto her right side, stuffs the pillow under her neck, and clamps her eyes closed. As if that’s going to work.

After a tense moment spent willing herself asleep, she sits up and turns on the light. Maybe it’s because she’s trying to sleep on the couch, having given her bed to Sofia and Suz. Maybe it’s because it’s her first Christmas in so many years without John. Maybe it’s the teardrops on John’s photo, a sad reminder of him even if it was a sheer coincidence.

Or maybe it’s Charles Jump.

After the weird occurrence with the drops of moisture on John’s picture, she didn’t share all the details with Suz. In truth, Jump didn’t want to leave tonight. He played the “I’m alone at Christmas” sympathy card. And much to her surprise, Abby was sorely tempted to let him stay. When he pressed close to kiss her cheek, she imagined him beside her in the sofabed, blankets between them, of course, but his long, warm body stretched out just inches away made her skin tingle with awareness. Just having a warm body beside her would have been reassuring.

But crazy. She’s not ready for a relationship, even if her body craves the physical reassurance. It’s wrong to lead Jump on, especially since he’s a genuinely nice guy, John’s friend. If she could just place him from Rutgers…She’d searched John’s letters and electronic journal entries for any mention of Charles Jump, but his name never came up. Which is weird. John had mentioned Emjay as a friend. He’d mentioned Noah a few times, and had talked about wanting to take “the kid” Spinelli under his wing. But nothing about Charles Jump.

Wouldn’t your best friend appear in your written thoughts?

She tosses the covers back and goes into the kitchen to make some herbal tea. While the water heats she pulls a blanket over her shoulders and paces from the kitchen to the tiny dining area. As she tries to connect John and Charles, something Jump said earlier tonight hits her.

You forget, I lost my best friend…

Not just a good friend, but a best friend? Something is off balance there. Abby is convinced she would have known about anyone John considered a best friend. There’d been a few at the funeral…Spike Montessa from Rutgers, Kevin “Killer” Kelly from the Seahawks. Good guys, close friends. Even though John wasn’t able to be with them often, he spoke of them, e-mailed them, made plans for reunion weekends.

As she dunks a chamomile tea bag, Abby lowers her head and presses on with the debate.

If she knew John’s friends, why didn’t she know anything about Charles Jump before now?

It appears that Jump’s attachment to John was somewhat one-sided. So…was Charles exaggerating the relationship, or did he have a distorted view of himself?

She thinks of the people who, over the years, wanted a piece of John’s glory. The fans, the groupies, the players, the media, the girls. Before she and John were married, the girls were a worry. Beautiful blondes with kick-ass bodies. Cheerleaders in short skirts and go-go boots prancing across the football field. “Boobs to beat the band,” John used to say. But he’d also called them eye candy. “They’re fine to look at,” he whispered, pressing his thumb into that sensitive spot at the nape of her neck. “But I’m in love with you.”

A small cry jumps from her throat, and she presses the blanket to her eyes to wipe the sudden tears. God, she misses him.

The tea warms her inside, and she falls asleep remembering John’s words.

But I’m in love with you.

Sometime during the night she rolls over into a warm nook in the bed. Awakening, she touches the sheet, her palm smoothing over the glow there. The clean smell of his shaving cream, clove and soap, makes her smile.

He’s back…his ghost is back. She doesn’t know why, but for now, this Christmas morning, she finds it reassuring. Abby plants her body in the warm groove of the mattress and slides into a deep, sound sleep.

Washington Flint

A
s he drives through a sheath of gray rain on I-5, Flint rehearses the speech for the eighth or ninth time. “The thing is, Abby, I’ve been crazy about you ever since college. And in all the years since, what people perceived as failure to commit was really just lack of satisfaction; I was holding out for a real connection with a woman. Something I had with you…”

The windshield wipers swipe the splatter clear for a second, changing his line of thought.

Or something you thought you had with Abby,
says the dark voice of his cynical self. What if she hadn’t felt that same spark back in college?

Attraction has got to be mutual to make it work, and he doesn’t know if Abby thinks of him as anything more than a friend.
Does she like me?
The question tugs at him like a band stretched tight in his gut, which makes it all seem totally adolescent.

It’s infantile relationship stuff, but he can’t seem to make it go away.

And so he’s driving to her place, straight from the airport, to straighten a few things out. The trial concluded in Atlanta this morning, and though he’ll return for the sentencing hearing in a few weeks, for now he’s done with the assignment. When the wheels of the plane ground into the runway, he felt nudged by relief. Christmas had been a bitch without her, despite the fact that his nieces and nephews in Chicago could be quite entertaining. His months in the desert had forced him to take a look at the things that last, the stones that remain after you sift everything through a sieve. In the shakedown of his life, Abby was essential.

He downshifts and takes the exit for Fort Lewis. In his beat-up leather laptop case is a marked-up copy of Abby’s account of what she believes happened to John Stanton in that dark Fallujah warehouse, and he figures it’s as good a reason as any to be driving down to Fort Lewis to see her.

The lights are burning gold inside her living room when he pulls up. Good, because he didn’t want to jinx things by calling ahead.

The wiper blades straddle the middle of the windshield when he kills the engine. He grabs his laptop, shoulders the door open, and steps into the rain. Abby answers the door with a pair of men’s khaki boxers in her hands.

“I thought you were in Atlanta!” Her face brightens at the sight of him, her hands working to fold the shorts.

“The trial is over. I just got back.” He ducks in out of the rain and finds a wadded lump of clothes on the sofa next to a stack of T-shirts and shorts. “Is this more of John’s stuff? Wow, I thought we took care of all that before Christmas.”

“We did. This is just…” She folds the boxers into a small square and adds them to a stack of clothes. “A favor for a friend. So…did you get my editorial piece?”

“That’s why I’m here.” He eases his computer case onto the dining room table beside a nest of bundled men’s socks. “I thought we could go over some changes and get it submitted before you begin your internship. When do you start at the hospital?”

“Next Monday, so I really want to get the editorial squared away.” As Abby talks, she pulls back her silky hair, twists it at the nape of her neck, and arranges the twist on one shoulder.

The gesture is so lovely he has to bite his bottom lip to keep from saying something poetically adoring. Christ, he’s such a sucker for her. He hands her a marked-up copy of the editorial.

“I was thinking you could start with something more immediate.” He moves behind her, looking over her shoulder as she reads. “An image, like the shot exploding in the darkness, and then go on from—”

Just then the bathroom door pops open, startling Flint. He turns on his heel just in time to see a cloud of steam emerge, along with a tall, angular man clad only in a yellow towel at his waist. Drops of moisture bead over his chest and along his muscular shoulders. His dog tags dangle at his throat, along with a gold heart-shaped medal.

Flint’s gaping mouth curls into a snarl.

“Hey,” the stranger says, “how’s it going?” He moves off down the hallway toward the bedroom.

Flint’s heart freezes in his chest. Abby is already seeing someone.

Doing his laundry. Shacking up. And here he’d been holding back, trying to give her time to heal…

Abby presses the edited papers to her chest, wincing. “Do you remember Charles Jump? He was in John’s platoon.”

Flint shakes his head. “Actually, I don’t. Or maybe I just don’t recognize him naked. Christ, Abby. You don’t waste any time.”

“It’s not how it looks! I know it’s weird, but he was really good friends with John.” She points to a framed photo on the wall. “He gave me this as a Christmas gift, and, well…” She lowers her voice. “I guess I felt a little guilty because I didn’t even realize that Jump and John were friends.”

In the photo, two men in desert khakis stand side-by-side, a helicopter perched on the sand behind them. John is grinning, his arm slung around the other man’s shoulders, hugging Dr. Charles Jump.

“Him? That’s the one they called Doc. Mr. Personality.” Flint scowls. Something about the photo is off, artless. “You know, one photo op does not make a friendship.”

“I know, but Charles went to Rutgers with John,” she says, worrying the corner of the papers. “They played football together for a while.”

“Not really a sufficient answer for why the man is in your bathroom, Abby. John had a lot of friends. I don’t see you doing their laundry.” Using his keys, he lifts one corner of a pair of black, low-rise briefs on the table.

Abby slaps his hand away. “The laundry is a favor, just a one-time thing,” she insists. “And he’s showering here because there’s no hot water in the BOQ, the bachelors quarters where he lives.”

“Ah! The old ‘no hot water’ ruse.” Flint forces himself to grin, as if it doesn’t matter one lick. As if his entire speech about reevaluating his life priorities and wanting Abby to be among them didn’t just go down the drain along with Doc’s shower suds.

“Anyway…” Abby smooths out the edited papers on the table. “I like the idea of a new opening. Actually, all your changes look good. If I incorporate this stuff, do you think it will be ready?”

“Yeah, sure.” He digs his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, struggling to shift his focus from the dick in the bathroom to Abby’s editorial. “I’ve already got a green light at my paper, and I’ve gotten a few nibbles from e-mail pitches. With a little polish it should fly.”

“That’s a relief.” She smooths the papers onto the table and turns to Flint. “You know, Jump has helped me profile the guys in the platoon.”

“Really? Maybe I should interview him. I have a talent for dragging out the truth. Journalism tricks.”

“It’s difficult for him to go there,” Abby says. “But he’s managed to sift through his memories to help me understand the dynamic of that platoon.”

“Really? Let me have it.”

“Well, in his capacity as a field psychiatrist, Dr. Jump observed that a few men had intense rivalries with John. He observed friction between John and Lieutenant Chenowith—the West Point grad. Chenowith seemed intimidated by John’s fame, and maybe a little jealous.”

“I get it,” he says, thinking of the way Chenowith ordered him off the forward base. Was it because he didn’t want Flint to sniff around and find incriminating evidence? “No love lost there.”

“Jump also said that Antoine Hilliard despised John.”

“Hilliard?” Flint scratches the stubble on his chin, two days’ growth. Flint hates shaving. He liked to think that the stubble made him look intellectual, but at Christmas his mother told him it was “downright seedy.” “I didn’t pick up on any friction there. But you know, Hilliard was killed by a bomb.”

“Yes, I heard that, so if he had something to do with John’s death, the trail ends there.” Abby rubs her hands together. “Jump also noted that John and Noah had an intense sibling rivalry, something I was aware of but never considered a factor in John’s death. I find it hard to believe that Noah would ever hurt his brother, let alone kill him, but Jump thinks it highly suspect that Noah fled after John died. He believes that Noah ran off to escape prosecution.”

“Oh, come on.” Flint smacks his forehead. A few weeks out of town and this nincompoop steps in and fills Abby’s head with asinine theories like this. “Noah isn’t the first war resister to go AWOL and flee to Canada. Granted, the guy had a total meltdown after his brother died, but can you blame him? And honestly, if my boss told me I had to go back to Iraq right now, I think I’d run off to Canada, too.”

“I understand that, Flint.” Abby pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands and folds her arms across her chest. “I want to believe in Noah, too, but often, in homicides, the killer is someone you know well.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Anger sluices through his veins, cold and steely. He rubs his cold hands together, not wanting to lash out at Abby, despite the fact that this conversation has gone from bizarre to ridiculous. “I’ve covered crime beats. I’ve quoted statistics.”

“Then you have to agree, Noah is a loaded suspect.”

He shakes his head. “Every soldier in goddamned Fallujah at that time is a goddamned suspect. Pardon my French.” He blows on his hands, and his breath forms a puff in the air. “It’s cold in here.”

“Freezing, again.” Abby rubs her hands over her arms as she marches to the thermostat on the wall in the hallway. “I don’t know what’s wrong with the furnace. Look, it’s set at sixty-eight, but it’s fifty-two degrees in here.”

“Fifty-two? Sounds like a thermostat problem.” He joins her at the wall, noticing that the thermostat hangs just a few inches from that photograph of John and Dr. Dickhead. “It wasn’t that cold when I came in a minute ago.”

Abby shakes her head. “This keeps happening when Charles is here. I wonder if he turns it down when I’m not looking.”

“Part Eskimo, is he?”

“I was thinking it’s a reaction to being so hot in Iraq. Overcompensating,” she says in a quiet voice so the idiot in the bedroom can’t hear. “You know, those hundred-and-thirty-degree days you have in the desert?”

“If that isn’t a load of psycho-crap.”

“Pardon your French.” She jiggles the thermostat and sighs. “I give up! Suz keeps saying that John’s ghost is turning the heat off.”

“His ghost?” He grins, watching as Abby crosses to the couch and bundles the fleece throw over her shoulders. Somehow the notion of John’s ghost, like Topper, messing with the furnace lightens things up and almost lets him forget about the jerk getting dressed in Abby’s bedroom. Almost. “You gotta love Suz. So is the ghost trying to save you money on heating bills, or just trying to piss you off?”

“Something tells me you’re not taking this seriously, but it’s odd. I’ve had a furnace specialist out here and he tells me it’s working fine, which it was while he was here.”

“Wait!” He blows on his hands for warmth. “Didn’t you say the temperature drops only when Jump is here? I’m thinking Suz is right. John’s ghost is trying to freeze the guy out.” He lets out a laugh, though it lacks heart.

But Abby is not amused. “Okay, that’s it.” She whirled around, blanket trailing her down the hall.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

“To confront Jump about changing the thermostat,” she calls over her shoulder.

He plants one hand on the wall and leans in over the small square box housing the brains of the heating system. Maybe it’s a faulty wire? He is jiggling the switch when something moves in his peripheral vision. A crashing bang follows.

He turns to see that one of Abby’s framed portraits has fallen off the wall—the picture of John and Jump.

“What kind of guy gives a girl a photo of himself with her dead husband as a Christmas gift?” he mutters under his breath as he bends down to pick up the photo. As he reaches for it he sees that it’s cracked, the glass splintered in small shards. Not only that, but the polished pewter frame is cold to the touch, as if it’s been in a freezer.

Upon holding it closer for examination, Flint sees the glass fog up before his eyes. Ice crystals blossom in separate patches then spread until the entire panel of glass is painted white with…frost?

And the frame is so cold, he worries that his fingers might adhere to its surface, frozen together. He releases it, letting it drop the last inch or so to the floor as he straightens.

“What are you doing?” Abby asks, coming up behind him. “Flint! Did you just toss my picture on the floor?”

“I didn’t break it. It fell off the wall, shattered. I just picked it up and…”

“I can’t believe you.” She kneels and picks it up. The moment she sees the smashed glass, her face crumples, her lips puckering in a pout that takes a good twenty years away. “You didn’t have to break it.”

“I didn’t! Abby…”

“You don’t have to like Jump,” she says in a quavering voice, “but please, have some respect for John’s memory.”

“Abby…” He gets accused of having no respect, but the guy getting dressed in Abby’s bedroom, wearing the clean clothes she laundered, is a good guy? Frustrated, Flint wheels away from her, not wanting to say anything that will further inflame the situation, knowing that nothing he says or does in this moment will be construed the right way.