“Mornin’, son.” Ben walked into the kitchen and pulled a mug from the cabinet. “Sleep well?” He lifted one eyebrow and smiled.

Bowie hardly slept at all. It had been that way for weeks. He couldn’t get enough of Katie. They spent every moment they could together. They worked next door to each other. They dined together each night and loved on each other every chance they got. When she slept, he watched over her and worried.

This was why he’d promised himself he’d never fall in love again. Love did crazy shit to the brain, not to mention the heart.

“Me? What about you?” He reached past his father for a cup and tried to beat him to the coffee pot, but Ben was too quick. He’d already popped in his K-cup and pressed the start button. “You just getting home?” His father hadn’t been spending much time at home, which left the house for Bowie to use as he pleased.

“It’s not like I can bring her here. First off, you and Katie seem to have the nocturnal lease on the place. Second, I don’t think I could do that to your mom. This was her house.”

Bowie understood that sentiment. Although he’d become comfortable with the bakery, he couldn’t bring himself to go upstairs to the place that was intended to be his and Brandy’s starter home. To make love to Katie in the apartment would seem disrespectful to Brandy’s memory. He knew he was being ridiculous considering it had only been a drawing on paper when she died.

Bowie picked up his dad’s steaming hot mug of coffee and replaced it with his empty cup. “Do you think you’ll ever get over the loss?” He leaned against the harvest gold counter and waited while the machine spit and sputtered out a cup of perfection.

“Get over it?” His dad shook his head. “Nope. How could you?” He walked to the table and took a seat. Reaching into the fruit bowl, he grabbed a banana and peeled it open. “The best you can hope for is to live with it.”

Bowie joined his father at the table. He turned his chair toward the window and watched the rising sun reflect off the lake. The water was still and reflected the orange glow of the sun like a mirror, making the water look like fire. Only the ripples of feeding fish disrupted the glasslike surface.

“Is that fair to others?”

Ben took a bite of his banana and chewed. A thoughtful expression of calm crossed his face. “Life isn’t fair, son.” He pulled the peel down and took another bite. As he chewed the fruit, it appeared he chewed on his thoughts, too. “Was it fair you got shot? Was it fair life took away your mother and your fiancée on the same day? That your father turned into a drunk? You can’t worry about fair as far as life goes.”

Bowie pulled in a deep breath and exhaled. “I know life isn’t fair, but I want to be. Am I being fair to Katie?”

Ben chuckled. “Katie seems pleased with the arrangement.”

In the distance, Bowie watched a rowboat cut through the water, leaving a wake behind. That’s what he felt like. Katie had cut through the calm he faked. Everything inside him felt unsettled and turbulent in a good way. She made him want more than mere existence. He wanted her.

“When I’m with her, I’m so happy, Dad. She’s amazing. We have so much fun together. It’s all so easy and so hard at the same time.” He leaned back in the chair and kicked up his feet on the empty chair beside him.

“You deserve happiness, Bowie. You’re too young to be alone. Hell, I’m too young to be alone.”

“Being alone is safe.”

His dad shook his head. “That’s what I thought, too, but it’s not safe. Being alone is simply lonely.”

Bowie looked out on the lake and spoke in a whisper. “It’s in the quiet moments when I struggle. I watch her sleep, and my gut twists because I’m afraid to lose her, too. Letting her in was dangerous.”

Ben sat his cup down and reached out to Bowie. He laid a solid hand on his shoulder and kept it there. “How many purple hearts do you have?”

“Three.”

“You didn’t get those because you were afraid. You got them because despite the danger you faced, you dove in head first.” Ben squeezed Bowie’s shoulder before he dropped his arm. “How many bullets did you take?”

He knew where his father was going with his line of questioning. He’d taken seven bullets, but not one hurt as much as the hole shot through his heart when Brandy died. “I don’t know if I could handle another hit like that, Dad.”

Ben sighed. “I get it. I’ve lived your pain. I tried to drown mine in alcohol. You tried to erase yours with adrenaline. How’d that work out for you? My solution got me a pickled liver and a bad reputation. What’d yours get you?”

“A few medals and a lot of scars.”

“All I’m saying is, you're not the kind of man who hides. That was me. I hid behind a bottle. You ran into the thick of things and made a difference.”

“I’m no hero.” Bowie shook his head so hard, his brain ached. “Initially, I ran into the melee hoping I’d be able to join Brandy. After a while, I ran in because I wanted no one to feel the profound loss I felt at losing someone.”

“How many lives did you save?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s hard to say.” Bowie lost count of the men he’d carried on his back. The flow of blood he’d staunched with as little as a shoelace. The hands he held while a medevac swooped in for rescue. The faces blurred together. The names sounded the same. Saving his men wasn’t an option. It was what he did.

“Son, you’re a hero.”

“No, I’m just a man.” He finished his coffee and looked down at the grounds in the bottom of his cup. He was as significant and insignificant as one of the little brown specs. It took every single one working together to make a decent cup of coffee. One ground made nothing. He thought of that commercial that said, “An army of one.” Everything good in his life came in multiples. There was no army if there was only one. That thought was the moment of clarity he’d needed.

“Do you love her?”

“I’m not sure I’m there yet. All I know is, she makes it easier to breathe. It's so confusing. How did you let go of Mom?”

Ben placed both hands flat on the table and leaned forward. “I’ll never let her go. She’s a piece of me. I’ve tucked her safely into a corner of my heart, where she’ll live forever.”

“My heart is crowded with two women battling for space.”

A crease etched into Ben’s forehead. “There’s no battle, son. Brandy has a place in your memory and your heart, but she’s no longer in your life. How lucky are you to find two women worthy of your love? When it comes to life and death, choose life, Bowie. Katie is alive. Be alive with her. There is something magical about her. She’s an angel who came here to remind us how to live.” Ben stood and left his son to consider his words.

Bowie sat alone at the kitchen table. His dad was right. Bowie had lived for so long in the past, it had eaten into his future. He had denied himself everything, but he wouldn’t deny himself Katie and what they could have. There was still time for them.

He’d spent years trying to hold on to a piece of Brandy, but he had to let her go. Tonight after work, he’d visit the cemetery and say goodbye to his first love so he could make room for his second.

It wouldn’t be easy. He hadn’t been to the gravesite since the day they buried her. He still had nightmares of the crash and how the icy water seeped into the car while he tried to open the doors. His dreams were always silent, except for the gurgle of water exchanging places with oxygen in the car. He broke the window and tore his cheek, trying to get them out. On the icy shore, he covered them with his bloodied body, hoping to warm the death from their skin.

His mom had been gone since impact, but Brandy somehow hung on to life by the thread of a brain stem. She lingered in the hospital for three days, all but dead without the help of modern medicine. He never understood why Bea waited so long to let her go when the doctors said there was no hope. It was as if she expected resurrection on the third day, and when it didn’t come, she pulled the plug.

He shook the macabre memory from his mind. That was the past. He looked at the sun dancing across the lake, at the birds swooping down to feast on a floating bug. The wildflowers were in full bloom. Today was the first day of the rest of his life.

* * *

Except for a few stolen kisses at the back door, Bowie didn’t see much of Katie that day. She’d been busy baking cookies for a church group that was using the old campgrounds for a daytime youth retreat. Heart-shaped cookies covered every surface in the bakery. It was fitting because Katie had such a big heart. She never failed to offer a kind word, a warm smile, or a hug to whoever needed one.

He told her of his plans to stop by the cemetery to say his goodbyes. She looked both relieved and concerned. Before he left, she held him for a long time. In her embrace was where he found hope and courage.

When he arrived at the cemetery, he visited his mother first. On top of her headstone were trinkets his dad or Cannon had left behind. There was an arrowhead, a carved wooden angel, and a roll of cherry Life Savers. Mom used to say they were almost as good as a kiss.

He kneeled before the headstone and plucked at the weeds growing around his mom’s favorite yellow flowers. He felt like an awful son for staying away so long. He told her about everything that had happened since she went away. Although there was no answer, he imagined her soft voice telling him it was okay.

Bowie moved several rows to where Bill, Bea, and Brandy were buried. Sprouts of green grass filled in the area around the new headstone. Three cement hearts sat intertwined. An inscription that read Gone but not forgotten, was etched in black in the stone. He dropped to his knees and leaned his forehead against the cold granite marker.

“Where do I begin?” He took in several deep breaths to clear his mind. “I think I loved you the day I met you. The day Bill and Bea adopted you. You were six, and you had me tied around your little finger. Who knew I’d be so easy to catch? Then again, I was only eight. We had a comfortable kind of love, the kind you get from knowing someone forever. It was everything until you were gone.”

He leaned back and rubbed his thumb over her name. Although it was hard to see her name etched in death for all time and eternity, his insides didn’t twist and turn with sorrow and anger or loss. He looked at the stone and remembered her with love and friendship.

“I’ve met someone. I think I love her, but she deserves all of me, not the shrapnel left of my broken heart. Katie brings light to my life. A smile to my face. Hope to my heart. She makes me feel whole. When you died, so did I. When I met her, I was reborn. I’m here to tell you I will always love you, but I have to let you go.”