The McClane Apocalypse Book Three (60 page)

Today the younger kids are watching the new
peeps out in the barn where they will be kept away from the adult
chickens until they are able to better fend for themselves, and the
teens are out on a patrol ride which Reagan doesn't envy because it
looks cold enough to snow.

"Whatcha' doing, sis?" Hannah asks from
behind her.

As usual, she is startled by her sneaky
sister. Reagan is holding Jacob on her hip, staring out the kitchen
window and wondering why John and Kelly are getting into the
pick-up truck and leaving. The truck has a load of firewood in the
back which is strange.

"Where are Kelly and John going?" she asks
because John has been withdrawn and strange with her the last week
or so and won't even have sex.

He is moody and distant, and Reagan wonders
if he just doesn't have the winter blues. But she figures Hannah
would probably know where her husband is going because she seems to
never be out of his sight for long. They are everything one would
expect from a couple of honeymooners and it gets old. They kissed,
laughed, hugged, and kissed more. Kelly had moved into Hannah's
bedroom suite with the attached bath which allowed the kids to have
the basement rooms to themselves. Sam has even moved into Kelly's
old room, leaving the younger kids to themselves again. But she is
still more than helpful with them and doesn't seem to mind when
they tag along everywhere she goes. Being around them probably
reminds Sam of her own deceased siblings and perhaps helps to fill
a small part of the gap in her broken heart.

"Oh, I think they were going to the Reynolds
to help them with some things and then on to the Johnson farm,"
Hannah says and places her hand on Reagan's arm.

"Why do they need to go to the Johnson's?
It's abandoned," Reagan asks as her sister feels along the counter
top.

"I'm not sure. Kelly said that John wanted
to go," Hannah tells her.

Hannie returns to the island where she is
dicing chunks of beef for a stew they'll enjoy for dinner later.
Reagan joins her there and sets Jacob on his butt on the long
island. He immediately grabs for everything, so Reagan hands him a
wooden spoon that he happily bangs on the counter top. Then she
picks up a knife and starts dicing vegetables for her sister.
Strange how she should be using scalpels doing surgery on a patient
at Nashville General and here she is cutting up vegetables at the
farm and hanging out in the kitchen with her sister. She'd
initially been devastated not being able to live out her dream of
being a surgeon and then taking over her grandfather's practice,
but she has finally resigned herself that it just wasn't in the
cards for her. There will be times, though, that she'll put her
medical experience to use and eventually perhaps things will go
back to normal. And if not she can always teach the kids about
medicine so that they can at least keep each other healthy.

"So, how do you like being Mrs. Hulk?" she
asks her sister teasingly.

"Oh, it's wonderful, Reagan. He's wonderful,
too. And it's nice not to have to hide our feelings for each other
and be able to kiss him whenever I want," Hannah says so
cheerily.

"Hm," Reagan says noncommittally.

"He's so tender and loving. You'd never know
Kelly was capable of being like that, but when we're together he's
so different," Hannah drones gaily.

Her lovable sister goes on for a while about
how great it is to be married and how much she loves Kelly and the
kids and mostly just life itself. Reagan is genuinely happy for
Hannah and glad that Kelly will always be around to take care of
her sister, but it doesn't change how she feels about marriage and
monogamy and tying oneself to another forever.

They simply work on preparing the evening
meal for over an hour of uninterrupted talk without the noisy kids
in the house or the intrusion of a million things like visitors,
bandits, farming, fortification and everything else that usually
goes on. It reminds Reagan of the old times with her sister, which
is nostalgic and comforting.

"How are things going with John?" Hannah
suddenly asks out of the blue, not missing a beat as usual.

Reagan doesn't like the direction of this
conversation. They had been discussing Sam's drawings which are
fantastic and beautiful.

"What do you mean? Things aren't going
anywhere. I'm sure he's fine…"

"Reagan," Hannah says as if she is talking
to Ari or Justin. "You can be honest with me. If you want to play
it like that with everyone else, then that's fine with me, but you
know that I know you better than anyone else, dear."

"What? There's nothing going on. He's just…
my roommate," she lies and hopes Hannah will just drop it, which of
course she doesn't. Reagan goes to the fridge and pours a full
bottle of goat's milk for Jacob that she'll take upstairs with her
for his nap in a few minutes.

"I don't think John sees you as just his
roommate, Reagan. And you're raising Jacob together. Perhaps you
two should marry, too, especially since you have Jacob to consider
now. That could be confusing for him someday," her sister says.

Hannah scrapes the vegetables into a
simmering pot on the stove. Next, she uncaps and pours in a quart
of canned tomatoes to join the vegetables and beef tips.

"We're not raising Jacob together, like a
couple together. We're just his… guardians."

"He calls John "daddy," Reagan. And he'll
soon be calling you his mommy so you need to consider this.
Besides, John loves you. It's plain as day how he feels about you.
I think the question is, do you even know how you feel about him?"
Hannah asks with her damned irritating intuition.

"I… I need to put Jacob down for his nap,
Hannah. We can talk later," Reagan tells her and flees from the
room with the baby before Hannah can nail her down to a time or
stop her from leaving.

Once she's in her bedroom, Reagan rocks
Jacob while he drinks his bottle and stares up at her with his big,
trusting eyes. The sounds he makes around the bottle's nipple like
tiny coos and gurgles are so adorable that she can't help but smile
down at him. After he's out, she puts him down for a nap in his
crib at the back of her closet because he's overdue and can get
cranky if he gets put down too late in the day. He immediately
rolls to his side, snuggles his blanket, sticks the thumb in the
mouth and closes his eyes again. Her closet actually makes the
perfect baby room because it's the quietest place in the house and
is always a tad on the dark side, having no windows. Sue always
says what an easy baby Jacob is, but Reagan has no experience with
the day to day care of an infant and he seems difficult and needy
to her. John is much better with him, more patient, affectionate
and doesn't seem to care that he wants twenty-four hour a day
attention.

She closes the closet door and plans to stay
in the attic to study until it is time for chores. When she goes
back into her room, though, Em and Arianna are waiting for her
there.

"What's up, monkeys?" she asks
playfully.

"Will you sing us a song, Aunt Reagan?" Ari
begs with her pleading, soulful eyes that nobody can resist.
"Please, please, please?"

"Uh… sure. Why not?" Reagan says and
retrieves her guitar from the corner. It's so much easier to just
agree to the song than to argue with the kids.

They all three plop down on Reagan's bed
which is made sharply enough to put the best five star hotel to
shame. John makes both of their beds every morning, though she told
him how pointless this task was since they were just going to mess
them up again the next night. The only time she ever made her bed
was when Grams had forced her to. He'd only laughed at her and said
that some habits from the military were hard to break.

"Watcha' guys want to hear?" Reagan asks as
she tunes her beat up, old guitar.

"Sing a song by Tina B. Sing it, sing it!"
Ari's begs.

"Tina B? Your mom lets you listen to that
crap?" Reagan asks with distaste. Apparently she needs to have a
talk with Sue. Tina B was the latest pop tart teen singer who
barely clothed herself on stage and only made so many number one
hits because she freely made use of auto-correction dubbing
equipment in the recording studios. Of course, she likely lived in
California as did most of the celebrities in the U.S., so she is
probably dead.

"Yeah, Tina B!" Ari yells with delight.

"Why don't I sing a song from another female
singer, ok? She was one of the first female rock stars and was
really cool. She could actually sing, and she kept her clothes on,"
Reagan mumbles the last sentence under her breath.

She strums a few chords and starts singing.
The song is more up-tempo than she is singing and playing it, but
sometimes she likes to break down music to its bare bones and slow
the pace. When she finishes, Em claps and Ari complains.

"That wasn't Tina B! That sucked!" the
ruffian declares.

Reagan laughs loudly, heartily at her
niece's childlike honesty.

"Oh, Ari. Don't ever change, kid," she says
approvingly, though she knows her parents would have a fit for her
talking like that.

"I liked it. That was really pretty, Miss
Reagan," Em praises openly.

"Thanks, Em. Guess the critic here wasn't a
fan," she says with another laugh pointed toward Ari, who
scowls.

"Let's go play in the barn, Em," Ari
says.

Reagan can tell that Em would rather not,
but she follows her annoying shadow anyways.

"Oh, hi, Uncle John!" Ari says.

Reagan's eyes dart to the door. He ruffles
the hair on top of Ari's head as he comes into the room. When the
girls are gone, John crosses the room to her.

"That was amazing, Reagan. I didn't know you
could sing like that. That song sounded familiar, but I don't think
I know it," he praises.

Reagan would like to die on the spot of
mortification. She sure as hell wouldn't have sung for the girls if
she'd known he was hanging in the stairwell listening. She's
positive that she's blushing ten shades of pink.

"Oh, um… it was a Pat Benatar song called
"Promises in the Dark." She was a big singer in the 1980's. I was
gonna sing her other song, "Hell is for Children" but I didn't
think it would be good if Ari went around here mimicking the
lyrics. Well, at least not around Grams," she explains as she sets
her guitar aside. John chuckles.

"It sounded great," he says.

This only further embarrasses the crap out
of her, so she tucks her guitar away in the corner again.

"You're a good singer, boss. You should sing
when we have music nights."

"No way," she tells him bluntly, and he
laughs softly, knowingly.

"Sometimes I feel like I don't know you at
all," John says.

Reagan crosses the room to her desk where
she won't have to look at him.

He says, "You're like a flower."

This draws her attention, and she laughs
bawdily.

"Yeah, right. Me a flower?" she jests. He
comes up behind her and presses a kiss to the top of her head,
something that would've freaked her out so many short months
ago.

"Yeah, like a flower. Every petal I peel
back reveals more and more of you that I didn't know about. You're
like this strange anomaly, a real mystery," he says.

He praises with way too much admiration that
makes Reagan squirm uncomfortably.

"Whatever you say," Reagan returns with
disbelief. John kneels beside her on one knee.

"And it all just makes me love you more,
Reagan," he remarks softly.

"I need to do some research work on
something, John," she lies to him so unconvincingly and when she
looks directly at him finally meeting his gaze, Reagan sees his
scowl. He nods reluctantly and rises again.

"Ok, I'm going to hit the shower," he
says.

John leaves her sitting there without so
much as a kiss good-bye which he always gives her.

Men! They are so damn confusing! She decides
to check on Jacob and goes into the darkened closet space where she
finds him fast asleep. As she's leaving the closet again, her foot
hooks on the strap to John's bag, causing her to trip.

"Damn it!" she whispers and stoops to unhook
her snared foot from the satchel but notices that some of the
contents have strewn about on the floor.

Reagan kneels to gather the items to put
back into his bag which are mostly more demo making equipment, his
military headset, spare socks and a small white pouch that jingles
when she picks it up. Thinking its contents are simply more things
to make demos, Reagan opens the drawstring and empties the bag onto
the carpet. What she sees is not at all what she had expected to
see. Before her are John's service medals and a green beret. There
seems to be quite a few medals. She's not entirely sure what
they're all for, but one of them is a Silver Cross. When she flips
it over, she finds an inscription: "For Gallantry in Action." There
are also three Purple Hearts and she knows that those are for being
wounded in battle. There are other medals and ribbons with which
she's unfamiliar. And at the bottom of the pile is a gold,
star-shaped medal hanging from a blue ribbon. Inscribed on the
front is: "VALOR" and on the back: "The Congress To John James
Harrison." Reagan knows that this is a Medal of Honor, the highest
medal that the United Sates government ever issued to a serviceman
because her father was an officer, and she'd overheard many
conversations about such medals and how rare it was for a soldier
to receive one. Her father always wanted his medals displayed in
glass cases for all to see. He'd never been awarded anything even
close to this level of merit. John's medals are stored away in a
duffle bag, tossed to the back of a closet. She seriously doubts
that he'd even want everyone to know about them. He doesn't seem to
want recognition for the heroic acts he's done while living on her
farm, being in the Army, protecting her in the city. None of
it.