Instead his brain kept repeating, Please say it before I leave. Don’t let me go off to war without knowing you love me. Don’t let me die without hearing it.
Eight
Tara’s mouth dropped open as four Civil War re-enactors rode past on big, black horses.
“Those animals are huge! How do they control ’em? What if they decide to run off?”
Grady squinted at her over the blond head of his girlfriend, Laurel Hayes, whose back was pressed against his chest in an effort to mitigate the biting November chill. “Ain’t you ever seen a horse before? I thought you were from the country.”
“I’m from a trailer park in the country,” she corrected. “Big difference.”
“Those are the draught horses Woody Matthews breeds out on his farm. They are bigger than most,” Laurel clarified, making Tara doubly glad Chance had organized for her to meet up with them to watch the Veterans’ Day Parade along Meridian’s Main Street. At first she was so intimidated by Laurel’s fancy, rich-person way of speaking that she could barely get a word out, but it didn’t take long for her to realize that this upper-class doctor was as kind and gracious as anyone she’d met.
“When’s your husband making his big appearance?” Grady asked.
Tara shrugged. “They asked a handful of troops to march with the elementary schools. I don’t know why they picked him. He insists it’s because he’s so good-looking, but I told ’em they probably want a medic on hand in case one of the kids falls and splits their chin open.”
“Maybe they’re hoping his outstanding navigational skills will come in handy if they lose the route,” Laurel speculated playfully.
Grady shook his head. “Shouldn’t let that man near children. Bad influence.”
“Don’t worry, I took his flask off him before he left the house.” A ragtag group of schoolchildren appeared at the end of the street and Tara’s heart leapt at the familiar figure towering over them. “There he is!”
She started waving long before he could possibly see her, the mere sight of him flooding her with brimming affection. These last ten days with him had been the happiest of her life. They laughed together, ate together, made love until they were exhausted every night. She’d never felt so cherished and accepted, and now that she’d traded her harebrained attempts to be some outdated version of a cookie-cutter army wife for lunchtime bartending shifts at a popular high-end restaurant, she finally felt like she was living her own new life instead of just hanging onto his. She loved seeing him off in the morning, loved spending the afternoons serving vodka martinis to Meridian’s business elite, loved meeting him back at the house for a kiss on the doorstep.
She loved him.
She just couldn’t seem to tell him.
She tried. She tried almost every day, in fact. She beamed at him over breakfast, the words swelling through her chest, into her throat and materializing on her tongue, but as soon as he raised a brow and asked what she wanted to say they were gone, retreating back down her gullet, burying themselves deep in her heart.
She tried to toss them out casually, in the middle of two other sentences about the odd noise the refrigerator was making, hoping but failing to catch herself by surprise. She tried to say them so quietly her fearful mouth wouldn’t notice, then so loudly it couldn’t stop them, but it didn’t work.
She tried hardest to say them at night, when Chance was buried deep inside her, their passion stripping away everything that lay between them. Those were the times he looked at her with such trembling vulnerability, such earnest hopefulness that she knew he wanted nothing more than to hear her say she loved him.
She couldn’t do it.
But I will, she resolved, waving harder as Chance approached. I’ll tell him tonight. I have to—it’s my last chance.
Flanked by children holding either end of a banner announcing that Oliver Brown Elementary School thanked veterans for their service, Chance looked like a wholesome, all-American hero in his ACUs and beret. The soldiers marching with the other two elementary schools were black and female, respectively, and she understood why they’d asked Chance to join the parade. With that big smile and those perfect features, he was every publicist’s dream.
Her smile broadened as she thought about the hot, nasty things he whispered in her ear when they made love. If they only knew.
“Change step, march, McKinley!” Grady hollered, drawing Chance’s attention. He glanced their way with a grin and a wave, and winked at Tara as he filed past with thirty-odd schoolchildren trailing behind him.
Grady turned to her once he was out of earshot. “When does he leave?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
The convivial atmosphere popped like a balloon. All three of them stood in silence for several minutes, watching the parade but not seeing it.
“Laurel’s heading off on a medical aid mission to Sierra Leone for six weeks after Christmas,” Grady said finally. “We can have ourselves a little lonely hearts’ club, you and I. Sit on the tailgate, drink beer and miss our other halves.”
“I might just take you up on that.” Representatives from Meridian’s VFW marched past them wearing an array of medals earned over seventy years of American war. The oldest veteran was pushed in a wheelchair. The youngest wasn’t quite her age.
“Do you miss it?” she asked Grady.
“I don’t know. I never heard the call of duty quite as loudly as McKinley does.” His eyes were glassy and distant, and she wondered what he was reliving. “Yeah, I do miss it sometimes. I miss the energy, the excitement. Mostly I miss my friends. Our brotherhood, born in battle. Anyway.” He smiled bashfully, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “That story’s ended for me. Time to write a new one.”
“Trey tuned up the Challenger so you shouldn’t have any trouble with it. The battery’s relatively new, there’s plenty of tread on the tires, and I’ve got an automatic payment schedule set up for the insurance. If anything goes wrong, call Trey. He knows that car almost as well as I do.”
Chance paused in his pacing across the living room floor to consult his handwritten checklist. “Next, documents. Everything’s in the big red binder on the shelf. Lease for the house, bank accounts, car title, marriage license, and I wrote my social security number on a Post-it in the inside cover in case you need it at a moment’s notice.”
He drew a line through that item on the paper, then hesitated before moving. Tara drew her knees up to her chest on the couch, dread filling her chest. She couldn’t imagine what else was coming.
“There’s something else in the binder that I haven’t shown you yet. It’s a power of attorney form, naming you as my agent. I got it notarized yesterday, so it’s all official.”
“What does being your agent mean?”
“You can access my bank accounts, write checks with my name, do pretty much anything on my behalf.” He shifted his weight. “And if anything happens to me, it gives you the power to make decisions about my care. So if I were to—”
“Stop. I get it.” She waved him on, reeling from words so powerful they didn’t need to be said. Like traumatic brain injury. Or coma. Or do-not-resuscitate.
For a second he looked stung, but he continued so quickly she didn’t have a chance to analyze why. “We’ve been over all the household stuff. We changed a fuse, we talked about the septic tank, we replaced that light bulb in the bathroom. I know Fort Preston has some kind of handyman service for deployed soldiers’ spouses, I think it’s three free hours, so you can save up the tasks you need doing—gutters, painting, whatever—and get them to come around and do it. And if anything goes seriously wrong, call Grady. He’s the most useful son of a bitch I’ve ever met.”
He crossed off two more lines on the paper and looked up. “That’s the end of my list. Did I forget anything?”
“I have no idea,” she replied honestly. “But if you’re done being serious, I did get you a little something.”
