The Light of Hidden Flowers (32 page)

Near midnight, after Reina and I and all the girls in the dorm had eaten a feast from a restaurant in town, played hours of cards, we retired to our bedroom, a newly constructed room where the live-in headmistress and a few teachers would sleep. The room smelled of fresh-cut pine. Reina and I flopped onto the new bunk beds, exhausted from the day. After a few big breaths, Reina pulled herself up, walked to the desk under the window. Kate had been working at that desk, doing her homework and other projects for the orphanage and school.

Reina rubbed her finger along the touch pad on Kate’s laptop, stared at it for a minute.

“Snooping around?” I said, yawning, a little surprised that Reina would be looking at Kate’s laptop.

“I was actually just checking to see if our new electricity was working,” she said.

“Is it?”

“Yeah . . .” Reina said, distracted, clearly reading something on the awakened computer’s monitor.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

“I didn’t
mean
to read anything,” she said. “But I just happened to see Kate’s writing.”

I stood and joined Reina at the laptop. I recognized the document on the screen as Kate’s monomyth—the hero’s journey she was writing for English. She had it dissected into steps: the call to adventure, refusing the call, answering the call, supernatural aid, crossing the threshold, entering the belly of the whale. She was currently writing about one of the trials her hero encounters: temptation. Her protagonist, Prosperina, had left the village and gone into town with a girlfriend. The girlfriend tempts Prosperina with an ancient herb. She tells her it’s harmless, but wonderful, like standing in the middle of a diamond shattered into a million pieces. Prosperina hesitates, but the girlfriend persists, until finally she submits and smokes the magic herb.

My heart gonging feverishly, I looked at Reina and found her biting her lip. In the margin of the story in a comment box was Kate’s note to herself. “Aneeta’s house, record feelings, details.”

“They’re going to do drugs!” I shouted.

“Well, now . . .” Reina said, with maddening calm.

“Reina! We’ve got to get to her. What if she’s already done it? What if they were ‘bad’ drugs? What if she’s sick . . . or worse? Oh my God, Reina. We’ve got to get there.”

“Okay, okay, let’s think. Let’s calm down and think. On one hand, this is just a story—”

“Reina!”

She jumped. “All right! You’re right—it does seem to be pretty fact-based. I’ll call Salim and see if he can come get us.” She pulled out her phone.

At the same time, I texted Kate. No response.

“Salim’s not answering. It’s going straight to voice mail,” Reina said.

I shoved my feet into sneakers and found a flashlight in the storeroom. “Forget it, I’m walking,” I said. “More like running.”

Reina pulled on her sneakers, too.

When we got outside, we were met with a darkness I could never have imagined. As if blackout curtains covered the sky, as if a black Sharpie underscoring my grievous error in judgment had been swiped across the heavens. I should have never let Kate go. I had lost her. I had failed. I wished the night sky would swallow me whole.

We were out in the middle of nowhere with not a house light or streetlamp or car passing by. Just inches outside our flashlight’s anemic beam, we literally could not see our hands in front of our faces.

When at last our eyes had adjusted slightly, we could just make out the road. After Reina walked directly into a fence, I stepped clumsily into a hole and twisted my ankle.

“How are we going to walk a mile like this?” Reina asked.

“We’re not,” I said, reaching for her hand.

“We can’t see a damn thing.”

“Kate!” I hollered, though she was nowhere around. “Kate!”

Then I fell to my knees and heaved a tidal wave cry because there was a chance I had made a mistake that couldn’t be fixed. There was a chance that I had ruined a life—more, lives. “Kate,” I cried. “I’m sorry, please. Give me another chance.”

Just then my phone issued a beep, alerting me of a text message. Maybe it was Kate. Please, let it be Kate.

It was Lucy.

Hi Missy, Just checking in. Haven’t heard from you or Kate yet tonight. Have her text, okay?

I covered my face and cried. In my stupidity, in my childish, lethal naïveté, I had assumed that I would always be saved from whatever trouble I happened to fall into—by Dad, by a safety net, by my risk-averse behavior. But what I’d fallen into now, I couldn’t see to the bottom of.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

JOE

Tuesday again. Up on the fourth floor of the veterans’ hospital, I found my group of guys. Five minutes in, I could already tell that Tony was in a mood.

“F— this, f— that. Food sucks, pain never ceases, f—ing headaches getting worse.”

I let him bitch for about five minutes without correcting any of his language, without pointing out the bright side to still having one leg and two arms and a more-than-well-functioning mouth.

Andy, though, was in a good mood. He told the group that he had been reading a lot of books about “crossing over” and how thin the line was between life and death. “I think I have a better sense of life because I was so close to death,” he explained, his eyes dreamy.

“That’s one of the freebies of war,” I said. “How close you come to death gives you a hell of a perspective on life.”

“That’s it,” Andy said.

“It’s not just war,” I said. “I once was on an airplane, sitting next to this brilliant pediatric oncologist. Kids died around him every day, yet he had this look to him—this understanding that put him at peace. ‘How do you do it?’ I asked him. You know what he said? He said that spending time with someone who is so close to leaving this world almost makes you feel the next world.”

“Bunch of shit,” Tony grunted. “Dead’s dead. Worms in your head, dead.”

“What do you say, Carlos?” I asked.

Carlos hung his head low. “I’d deny this if any of you jerks repeated it,” he said. “But when I was lying there—blown to bits—all I felt was anger. I was angry I was being cheated out of the rest of my life. I’d never get married, hold a kid, drink another beer. It was this anger that saved me, though. I channeled it into my will to live, to see another sunrise. I was angry but calm, like I knew if I stayed mad enough, I’d survive.”

“Same for me,” Andy said. “I felt the same way.” He looked right at Tony, raised an eyebrow. “Bro, you can’t tell me that after what we’ve been through, you don’t feel that there is more than meets the eye. Life as we know it—this mortal, amputee-learning-to-walk-and-live-again life—is just part of it. I feel it, I really do.”

Tony opened his mouth to spew some more garbage but stopped, hung his head. “Whatever,” he said. “I guess.”

I looked at the guys—one at a time. “I’m not saying that any of this was set in the stars, anything preordained or such. I’m just saying that we set out on a path, made choices based on what we were good at, what our interests were—for us, we became soldiers, sailors, airmen, or marines. But at some point that path ends and another path is placed before us. It could seem random, but to me, if you give it enough thought, doesn’t it seem like all the paths know each other, like they knew all along they’d intersect?”

“That’s it,” Andy said. “That’s how I look at it, that everything that has happened did so for a reason, and as screwy as it sounds, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

I left the meeting feeling incredibly hopeful, as if my group had made some sort of emotional progress. I drove to Holy Angels to pick up Olivia and Jake. Olivia started chatting before she was even buckled up. “Daddy, Daddy, guess what? There’s going to be a talent show . . . and I can sing in it, or say a poem, or even do comedy . . . wouldn’t that be hilarious?”

I just stared out the windshield and grinned because things were looking up. My two youngest kids were happy as could be, Kate was in India with Missy opening a school for girls and feeling good about the work she was doing, my group of wounded warriors was talking philosophy and theology and finding meaning in their situations. It had been a long time since I felt so optimistic about everything. Just like when I was eighteen. I loved that feeling.

When we got home, I found Lucy’s car in the driveway. She wasn’t scheduled to pick up the kids until Thursday night, so I wasn’t sure why she was at the house unless she needed to pick up or drop something off. She had already moved everything she wanted from the house to her new condo, so I couldn’t imagine what she would need. When we opened the front door, a delicious aroma wafted toward us.

Lucy stepped out from the kitchen and held her arms open for the kids, who ran to her.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

An apron covered her T-shirt and jeans. “Oh, nothing! Just thought I’d cook you dinner so you’d have it for later,” she said, stepping back into the kitchen and scooping up a pile of cut carrots to add to the salad bowl. “Chicken cutlets with mushrooms in a white wine reduction.”

If the kids were in a good mood before, they were over the moon now. Mom’s home! They chattered excitedly all the way up to their rooms.

“You’re fixing us dinner?” I clarified, going to the stove to take in the chicken and mushrooms simmering in a creamy sauce. Lucy could cook, but Lucy didn’t
like
to cook. Tacos from a kit or pasta with jarred sauce was much more her speed.

“You object?”

“Not really,” I said, stabbing a mushroom, placing it into my mouth. “I’m just a little surprised.”

“Once it cools, I’ll put it in the fridge,” she said. “You can heat it up later.”

“If it makes it to the fridge,” I said, spearing a piece of chicken.

“I haven’t heard from Katherine today, have you?”

“No, but that’s not unusual, right? We don’t hear from her every day.”

“Most days,” Lucy said. “You think she’s all right?”

“Of course I think she’s all right,” I said, still examining Lucy closely; the dissonance of her wearing an apron and cooking a dinner that required wine and deglazing was like trying to make sense of a kangaroo in our yard.

“You trust Melissa,” she said. “I know that. And so do I.” Lucy bit into a baby carrot. “She’s great, Melissa. Right, she’s great?”

“Agreed,” I said. “She’s pretty great.”

I looked at Lucy and she looked at me. Our eyes locked. What the hell was she up to?

I changed the subject. “How’s work?” I sat on the sofa and removed my prosthetic, leaned it against the wall, hung the silicone sleeve that protected my skin over it.

Lucy shrugged her shoulders. “It’s good, busy.” She went to the refrigerator and cracked open an ice-cold beer for me. “I’m a little tired of all the travel.” She poured herself a glass of white wine.

Lucy came and sat down next to me. Close to me. Too close. For some reason, I was self-conscious about my stump. It had been a long time since Lucy and I had sat on the sofa together. A long time since she had seen my half leg. “What’s going on, Lucy?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sliding in even closer, curling her legs under herself like a cat. “I guess I just miss being here. With you, with the kids.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, attempting to scoot closer to the edge, to make at least an inch of space between us.

“Seeing you and Missy—how she looks at you, how you look at her. Kind of makes me
jealous
. Kind of makes me wish things were different.”

I stood up, hopped a foot over, fell into the chair. “I thought
all this
is what you were sick of.”

“I think I made a mistake,” she said, standing, coming to the arm of my chair, leaning into me.

“Lucy,” I said, getting up, hopping toward the table, holding on to the wall, wishing I hadn’t removed my prosthetic. “You left us. We’ve been legally separated for over a year. We signed divorce papers.”

“We could reverse it,” she said, walking toward me. I was pretty much helpless, leaning there. With her hands against the wall on both sides of my face, she leaned in and kissed me. I felt her lips before I turned, ducked under her arm, sprung to the chair. Reached for the silicone sleeve, my damn prosthetic, snapped it into place. “Goddamn, Lucy, what’s gotten into you?”

“I want you,” she said. “That’s all. I just want to be with you.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Or am I just looking good from a distance? Because nothing’s changed, Lucy. I’m still wounded, still have PTSD. I’m still a marine, still the guy who deployed when you wanted me to stay. What’s changed?”

“Nothing’s changed,” she admitted. “It’s just hard seeing you with someone else, okay?”

“That ‘someone else’ is taking care of our daughter at the moment. Don’t you think this is a bit inappropriate, given that?”

Lucy’s face turned to stone. “Perhaps,” she said. “But let’s be real, it’s Game Over for me. You know Missy and Kate are bonding. You know Missy is a better mother than me.”

With that, Lucy grabbed her purse and walked toward the door.

“Are you going to say goodbye to Olivia and Jake?” I asked, pointing upstairs.

“Tell them I got called back to work,” she said. “They’ll understand that. Work comes first. You taught them that, right Joe?”