wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tight for a moment. “Just hurry up and get this over with. Erin’s going to drive me nuts.”
Marcie narrowed her eyes at Erin. “Go easy on him,” she said. “This was my idea. I’ll be back before you know it.”
And then she got in the car, leaving them standing on the curb in front of the house as she pulled away. She made it all the way to the highway before she felt her eyes sting with tears. She knew she was worrying her siblings, but she had no choice.
Marcie’s husband, Bobby, had died almost a year ago, just before Christmas, at the age of twenty-six. That came after more than three years in hospitals and then in a nursing home—hopelessly disabled and brain damaged, with injuries incurred as a marine serving in Iraq. Ian Buchanan was his sergeant and best friend, a marine Bobby said would do twenty. But Ian exited the Marine Corps shortly after Bobby was wounded and had been out of touch ever since.
Since she knew that Bobby would never recover, since she had grieved his loss for a long time before he actually died, Marcie would have expected to feel a sense of relief in his passing—at least for him. She thought she’d be more than ready to step into a new life, one that had been put on hold for years. At the tender age of twenty-seven, already a widow, there was still plenty of time for things like education, dating, travel—so many possibilities. But it had been just shy of a year, and she was stuck. Unable to move forward. Wondering, always wondering, why the man Bobby had loved like a brother had dropped out of sight and had never called or written. He’d estranged himself from his marine brothers and his father. Estranged himself from her, his best friend’s wife.
So there were these baseball cards. If she stretched her imagination to the limit she couldn’t come up with anything her lawyer sister would find more ridiculous than wanting to be sure Ian had Bobby’s baseball cards. But since she’d met Bobby at the age of fourteen, she knew how obsessed he was with his collection. There wasn’t a player or stat he didn’t have memorized. It turned out that Ian was also a baseball nut and had his own collection; she knew from Bobby’s letters that they had talked about trading.
In the deserts and towns of Iraq, while they hunted insurgents and worried about suicide bombers and sniper fire, Bobby and Ian had talked about trading baseball cards. It was surreal.
Then there was this letter that Bobby wrote to her from Iraq before he was wounded. It was all about Ian and how proud it would make him to be like Ian. He was a marine’s marine—the guy who got into the mess with his men, led them with strength and courage, never let them down, hung with them through everything—whether they were up to their necks in a fight or crying over a dear-John letter. He was a funny guy, who made them all laugh, but he was a tough sergeant who also made them work hard, learn and follow every rule to the letter so they’d be safe. It was in that letter that Bobby had told her he hoped she’d support him if he decided to make it a career. Like Ian Buchanan had. If he could be half the man Ian was, he’d be damn proud; all the men saw him as a hero, someone on his way to being a legend. Marcie wasn’t sure she could part with the letter, even though it was all about Ian. But he should know. Ian should know how Bobby felt about him.
In the year since Bobby had moved into a quiet and peaceful death, she had passed his birthday, their anniversary, every holiday, and still, it was as though there was this unfinished business. There was a big piece missing; something yet to be resolved.
Ian had saved Bobby’s life. He didn’t make it out whole, but still—Ian had braved death to carry Bobby to safety. And then he’d disappeared. It was like a hangnail; she couldn’t leave it alone. Couldn’t let it go.
Marcie didn’t have much money; she’d had the same secretarial job for five years—a good job with good people, but with pay that couldn’t support a family. She was lucky her boss gave her as much time as she wanted right after Bobby was wounded, because she’d traveled first to Germany, then to D.C. to be near him, and the expenses had been enormous, far more than his paycheck could bear. As a third-year enlisted marine, he’d earned less than fifteen hundred dollars a month. She’d pushed the credit cards to the max and took out loans, despite the willingness of Erin and Bobby’s family to help her. In the end, his military life insurance hadn’t gone too far to pay those bills, and the widow’s death benefit wasn’t much either.
The miracle was getting him home to Chico, which was probably entirely due to Erin’s bulldogging. Many families of military men who were 100 percent disabled and in long-term care actually relocated to be near the patient, because the government wouldn’t or couldn’t send the patient home to them. But Erin managed to get them into CHAMPUS, a private nursing home in Chico paid for by the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services. Most soldiers were not so fortunate. It was a complicated and strained system, now heavy with casualties. Erin had taken care of everything—using her exquisite lawyer’s brain to get the best benefits and stipend possible from the Corps. Erin hadn’t wanted Marcie to be stressed by benefit or money worries on top of everything else. Erin had done it all, even paid all the household bills. In addition to all that, she was somehow managing the cost of Drew’s medical college.
So, for this excursion, she couldn’t take a dime from her sister. Erin had already given so much. Drew did have some pocket change, but being a poor medical student, he didn’t have much. It would have been far more practical to wait till spring—until she’d had a chance to put aside a little more—to head into the small towns and mountains of Northern California looking for Ian Buchanan, but there was something about the anniversary of Bobby’s death and Christmas approaching that filled her with a fierce longing to get the matter settled once and for all. Wouldn’t it be nice, she kept thinking, if the questions could be answered and the contact renewed before the holidays?
Marcie meant to find him. To give peace to the ghosts. And then they could all get on with their lives ….
One
Marcie Sullivan drove into the small town, her sixth small mountain town of the day, and found herself face-to-face with a Christmas-tree trimming. The assembled staff didn’t look big enough for the job—the tree was enormous.
She pulled up beside a large cabin with a wide porch, parked her Volkswagen and got out. There were three women at work on a Christmas fir that stood about thirty feet. One was about Marcie’s age, with soft brown hair and she held an open box, perhaps containing ornaments. One woman was old, with springy white hair and black-framed glasses, who pointed upward, as if someone had put her in charge, and the third was a beautiful blonde at the top of a tall, A-frame ladder.
The tree stood between the cabin and an old boarded-up church with two tall steeples and one stained-glass window still intact—a church that must have once been a beautiful structure.
While Marcie watched the trimming, a man came out onto the cabin’s porch, stopped, looked up and cursed, then took long strides to the base of the ladder. “Don’t move. Don’t breathe,” he said in a low, commanding voice. He took the rungs every other one, climbing quickly until he reached the blonde. Then he slipped an arm around her, somewhere above what Marcie realized must be a little pregnant bulge and beneath her breasts and said, “Down. Slowly.”
“Jack!” she scolded. “Leave me alone!”
“If I have to, I’ll carry you down. Back down the ladder, slowly. Now.”
“Oh for God’s—”
“Now,” he said evenly, fiercely.
She began to descend, one rung at a time between his big, sturdy feet, while he held her safe against him. When they got to the bottom,
