handling it.”
Rather than irritate his friend further, Eli merely nodded. But whether Micah wanted to admit it or not, he needed help. And if he wouldn’t get it on his own, then Eli had every intention of making him by other means. One word to the right person would set the ball in motion.
Finally, he nodded. “Yeah. Fine.” He arched a brow, pretending as if the exchange never happened. “You want to go get something to eat? I’m about to head over to the mess hall.”
Micah shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
Eli heaved a silent sigh, then stood. He’d reached the door when Micah’s voice stopped him.
“Eli?”
He turned expectantly.
Micah opened his mouth, then closed it. He seemed to be struggling with what he wanted to say, a myriad of expressions flashing rapid-fire over his tortured face. Finally, he muttered, “You’re a good friend.”
Eli swallowed, gave him an up nod. “So are you, man.” Then he slowly walked away.
He’d made it to the front of the barracks before he heard the gunshot. And he knew before he’d frantically retraced his steps back to the room what he’d find.
Oh, Jesus. He dropped to his knees and gathered up his friend. Sightless eyes, so much blood, rosary still in his hand. “Micah! Dammit to hell,” Eli sobbed, rocking him back and forth, his voice broken. “Oh, Micah, what have you done? What have you done?”
1
Eight months later...
CAPTAIN ELI WESTON glanced at the invitation again, grimaced then tossed it back into the passenger seat of his rented truck as the city limits sign loomed into view. His belly clenched with dread, and tension inexplicably tightened his fingers on the steering wheel.
He so didn’t want to do this.
In fact, Eli could confidently say that if he could choose any place on earth he wanted to be right now, Willow Haven, Kentucky, would undoubtedly occupy the dead-last position on his list.
Not because it wasn’t a perfectly lovely little town, the quintessential Southern burg with lots of antebellum homes, majestic oak trees and a festival for every food group. Not because he could think of a million other things he’d rather do on his much-needed, too-short leave. He’d seen enough war—enough of the ravages of it, more specifically. Not even because he’d be working on the memorial for his late, beloved friend, Micah Holland.
It was the damned lying he most dreaded.
He’d been doing it for the past eight months, insisting to every superior officer who’d interrogated him about Micah’s death that his friend had been cleaning his weapon when it misfired, that he’d actually witnessed the accident.
Accident, of course, being the key word.
Lies, all lies. And they knew it, too. But they couldn’t prove it, so his “eye-witness” account stood.
And it was because of that account that his friend’s parents had been able to confidently bury their beloved oldest son in hallowed ground, believing his death was an unhappy circumstance, not a deliberate act by his own hand. Having lost his own father to suicide, Eli was well-acquainted with that particular brand of grief and had decided within seconds of Micah’s death to spare the Hollands that aspect of the misery, to do everything he possibly could to preserve his friend’s memory and military legacy. Micah had been one of his best friends and a damned fine soldier. He’d been like a brother. Eli swallowed, his throat suddenly tight, an inexplicable anger welling inside of him.
It was the least he could do, really.
Well, that and sling a hammer, he thought, glancing once more at the invitation in the passenger seat. Honestly, had Sally, Micah’s mother, not called and pressed him into coming to help build the Micah Holland Memorial in the heart of the town square, Eli wouldn’t have come. He’d have simply begged out of the event or made up an excuse as to why he wouldn’t be available—being deployed, in that sense, had its advantages.
But when Sally had told him that they’d simply plan the event around his leave, his schedule, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to get out of it. And considering how good the Hollands had been to him—they’d practically taken him in as one of their own as soon as he’d graduated—he could hardly refuse. Eli’s own family tree had withered and died with the death of his father, so being brought into the Holland fold had filled a void he’d scarcely realized was there.
Sally was the quintessential Southern mom. Her love language was food and nothing made her happier than a full table and full bellies. There was always a cake on the covered stand, cookies of some sort in the jar and cold iced tea in the pitcher. His lips quirked. And the emergency casserole in the freezer, of course, should she need to quickly provide a meal, either for her family or for someone else’s.
Carl Holland was a farmer with a degree in Agriculture from Auburn University—and had two Toomer’s Oaks grown from seedlings standing in the front yard. He had a deep affection for things grown in the soil. He was wise and patient, slow to anger and quick to laugh. Big and burly, with skin darkened from years spent in the sun and hands that were callused and scarred, Sally called him her Gentle Giant, GG for short, a sweet term of endearment that never failed to make Eli smile. He did now, remembering, and the action felt strange, almost foreign.
Probably because there hadn’t been much to smile about in recent months.
Truthfully, though he’d never considered a career outside the military, he had to admit he’d been growing increasingly dissatisfied since Micah’s death. He couldn’t seem to shake the sense that his feet weren’t so much on the right path as stuck to one instead. Bound by the very rules and regulations he used to appreciate, relish even. Micah had often joked that while he’d never met a rule he didn’t break, Eli had never met one he didn’t like.
Too true, he knew.
But rules established order and the absence of order was chaos. And Eli hated chaos. That word virtually described every foster home he’d lived in after the death of his father and the mental decline of his mother. The sweet, smiling woman he remembered from his early childhood had disintegrated into a vacant-eyed stranger who had to be reminded to eat, to bathe, and had to be told that she even had a son who needed to do those things, as well.
“Fragile,” they’d called her, when she’d been taken to the psych ward at their local hospital in Twisted Pines, Georgia.
“Irrevocably broken,” he’d later realize.
He drummed his thumb against the steering wheel, biting the inside of his cheek as the familiar sense of regret trickled through him. He’d need to go and see her before he reported back to base, Eli thought with a stoic twinge of dread. Not that she’d know him, not that she’d care. But he would do it, anyway, because it was the right thing to do, because she was the only family he had.
Furthermore, though he often spoke to her doctors and care team at the assisted living facility she called home—the one he paid for—a personal visit would remind them all that he was more than just the person writing the check. He was her son and, though he barely knew her, he loved her all the same.
Not
