Chapter Thirteen
CHRISTMAS DAY dawned cold and crisp. Jed watched the sunrise down by the water, with Flo by his side. It was the first time Max had entrusted her into his care overnight, though part of him suspected it was the other way around. She hadn’t left him since Max had departed for the Cooper house the night before. Even a tentative three-mile run around the lake hadn’t put her off.
Jed sat back on the frosted wooden jetty and tilted his face to the sky. His body was sore from his first cautious solo run outside, and he needed to get inside and warm before he seized up, but for a moment, he allowed himself to indulge in the exercise-induced endorphins. He’d missed them. It had been far too long.
His mind wandered to Max. Jed let it happen willingly. Though he found comfort in his newfound solitude, the cabin was lonely without Max—without his incessant fidgeting, clutter and awful punk music. Jed hated the Clash—a British SAS crew he’d once shared a hangar with had played London Calling all day every day for a month—but he got a kick out of watching Max dance around his workshop. It seemed to fit with his soft London accent, the accent that sent shivers down Jed’s spine. In moments like those, it was all too easy to forget the instinct he had that something wasn’t right.
Jed shivered now at the thought of it. He’d put the mysterious passport to the back of his mind, and he was determined for it to stay there. His gut, albeit faulty, told him Max was good to the bone, and that was enough for him. It had to be. There could be nothing else.
Beside him, Flo cocked her head to one side and whined. She’d had enough and wanted to go inside. Jed did as he was told and drifted back to the cabin.
His cell phone rang as he was dressing after his shower. He picked it up, surprised to see Max’s name flash on the screen. Max had never called him before. “Hello?”
“Merry Christmas. Haven’t starved to death without me, have you?”
“Very funny,” Jed said dryly. Max had left the fridge stocked with enough food for a week, rather than the twelve hours he’d left Jed alone for. He seemed to have forgotten Jed was perfectly capable of cooking for himself. “Me and Flo had a pasta party last night, if you must know.”
“A party, eh? I should leave you unsupervised more often, bring out your wild side.” There was a beat of silence, an inscrutable pause that stretched a touch too long and reminded Jed of the sadness in Max’s eyes when he’d told him he couldn’t sleep over at the Cooper house on Christmas Eve without killing his brother.
“No killing at Christmas, Jed,” Max had said. “Stay home with Flo. I’ll tell the kids you’re helping Santa.”
“Uh, anyway,” Max went on. “I need you to do me a favor. In my room, I left Tess’s presents in the box under the bed. Can you bring them for me?”
Jed agreed, but Max’s thanks were drowned out by the squeals of two excited children who were bound to have been awake almost as early as Jed and Flo. Jed bade him good-bye, dropped his phone on the bed, and ventured into Max’s room to search out the forgotten gifts.
He found them easily enough. Carla had helpfully supplied Jed with gift-wrapped presents, but Max had insisted on wrapping all his gifts in newspaper and string. At first there seemed to be no rhyme or reason, but it didn’t take long to spot that he’d saved the appropriate newspaper for each recipient’s birthday and searched out a pleasant page of news. The arts pages for Kim, the sport supplement for Nick. In Tess’s case, he’d found a story about a giant blueberry pie.
See? Good to the bone….
Later that day, Jed found himself resorting to an old habit of hiding out in the den of the Cooper house. Though Kim called it the family room, he’d figured long ago it was the best place to catch some much needed peace and quiet.
He sank down on the couch and put his head in his hands. For once, he didn’t feel sick and nauseated. He wasn’t even that tired. Instead, he was freaking the fuck out. Gifts and their resulting mess and noise, piles of food, the constant stream of neighborhood visitors…. Jed couldn’t keep up. Even the kids and their fiddly new toys grated on his stretched nerves.
A dry, ironic chuckle escaped him. Last year, he’d spent Christmas in Mosul, guarding the small Christian population of the city while they celebrated behind closed doors. A truck bomb had exploded just meters away from his patrol post and he hadn’t broken a sweat. Now? Now the tinny chattering noise of Tess’s new computer game set his teeth on edge.
The door to the den opened. Jed glanced up, expecting to see Max or Tess looking for him, or maybe Belle, or even Kim. The last face he expected to see was Nick’s. They’d hardly spoken since the chaos of Thanksgiving.
Nick stepped further into the room, proffering a plate. “I, uh, brought you some food.”
Startled, Jed took the plate. He set it on the coffee table, eying it warily. It was piled high with all sorts of crap he couldn’t eat, and he considered ignoring it, but then reached absently for one of Max’s stuffin’ muffins. Sometimes the homemade cornbread was the only thing he could stomach.
Nick hovered by the arm of the couch. “Are you okay?”
Jed sighed. Were they really going to play that game? “Yeah, man. Just tired.”
“Holidays not your thing?”
“They don’t seem to be yours either.”
Jed swallowed the last of the muffin. The sensation of food in his stomach felt good, like it would probably stay there. He leaned forward and inspected the rest of the plate, drawn to the foods he knew Max had cooked and pushing all the meat aside.
“Don’t tell me that kid has turned you into a hippy freak too.”
“Freak?” Jed’s tone was sharp enough to cut glass. Nick’s awkward geniality was one thing, and Jed could excuse him putting his foot in his mouth, but Max was off limits.
For a moment, Nick met his stare head-on, then he squirmed and shifted uncomfortably. “Uh, so how are you finding it up there? Tess said Max gave you the room with the view. I know you like the water.”
“It’s pretty cool. I like the quiet.” Jed got up, his appetite gone, and stretched his leg. His run had gone well, but his muscles were beginning to stiffen. He ran his gaze along the mantelpiece, taking in the plethora of family photographs. Most were of the kids, either with their arms around each other, with Kim, or with Max. There was only one of Nick, and it was clearly more than a few years old.
Nick appeared behind him, startling him for the second time. Jed had neither noticed himself drifting closer to the photographs nor Nick getting up. Nick reached around him and fumbled with a small frame hidden behind the rest. “Here.” He handed it to Jed. “Remember this? I didn’t until Kim dug it out of Dad’s old shit.”
Jed stared at the grainy image, taken almost twenty years ago to the day, and swallowed hard. He hadn’t seen his mother’s face in years. Even his memories of her were clouded by her long, slow death. Sometimes, the wizened, headscarfed creature dying in a hospital bed was all he could recall, a far cry from the statuesque blonde clutching her boys close in the photograph. “It looks like someone else.”
Nick reclaimed the frame and shoved it back in its place. “I know. Kim makes me keep it out, but I fucking hate that picture.”
The words, though flat and emotionless caught Jed by surprise, but Tess charged into the room before he could even consider a response.
Jed caught her before she could run right into him—he’d learned his lesson—and swung her up to sit on his good hip. “Hey, bug. Whatcha doing?”
“Looking for you, silly.” Tess didn’t spare a glance for her father. “I need your help. Mom doesn’t know how to play my new game, and Uncle Max says it makes his eyes go googly. Come see, come see.”
It was the out Jed needed. He set Tess on the floor and let her lead him from the room without looking back.
“FANCY A swim?”
Jed glanced behind him, grinning as Max dropped down beside him on the jetty. They’d been home from an exhausting day at the Cooper house for an hour or so, but Jed had yet to go inside. He’d retreated to the water’s edge as soon as he’d pulled the truck to a stop, craving some peace and solitude.
Max had let him be for a while, but it seemed his time was up. Not that Jed minded. Max was probably the only thing that could make the pristine quiet of the lake better. “It’s a little cold, even for me.”
“Oh yeah?” Max nudged him with his shoulder. In stark comparison to his own brittle fatigue, Max seemed pleasantly buzzed, like he’d had a few beers. Perhaps he had. “You’re probably right. I’ve never tried it in winter.”
“Do you swim here in the summer?”
Max’s grin faded. “Not anymore.”
“Something happen?”
“Not the way you’re thinking. Flo doesn’t like it. I have to tie her up to stop her following me, and last year she got so mad she pulled the fence down.”
Jed could believe that. The collie was endearingly protective of Max, her instincts razor sharp. If she didn’t want Max to swim in the lake, he was inclined to believe she had a good reason. “Maybe she doesn’t want you to swim on your own.”
“Maybe. We can test your theory out this summer, if you’re still here.”
Max said the last part quietly and averted his gaze. Jed wanted to promise he’d be there to see the summer with him. After all, where else was he gonna go? But he didn’t, and the moment passed.
Max threw a stick into the water. Jed watched, amused, as Flo charged after it and repeated the trick over and over. After a little while he chanced a glance at Max.
Max caught him and grinned. “Okay?”
Jed nodded. The heat of Max’s body a few inches away was enough to keep the chill of the evening air from seeping into his bones. And there was something exhilarating about knowing the lingering ache in his muscles was there of his own volition. It was familiar, like an old friend, and he felt content. “I never gave you your present.”
Max snorted in a way that told Jed he was definitely slightly drunk. “You got me a present? Or did Carla get me the same preppy button-down shirt you gave Nick?”
“Is that what I got him?” Jed had lost track of the perfectly wrapped gifts Carla had presented him with a few days before.
“Yep. No offense, but if that’s what you got me, you might as well return it and save your money.”
Jed maneuvered himself to a standing position, pleasantly surprised at his steady sense of equilibrium. “Dude, I didn’t buy you a shirt. In fact, I didn’t buy you anything. Come on, I’ll show you.”
He held out his hand to pull Max up from the jetty. Max hesitated a moment before he ignored it and sprung to his feet. Jed rolled his eyes. “You think I can’t take your weight?”
“No, I just don’t need you to, at least, not today. I let you carry me in from the workshop, didn’t I?”
He had a point. Jed let it go and led him away from the water to the back of the cabin where Max grew his vegetables. It took him a moment to search out the brightly painted plant pot. He’d asked Belle to hide it—a task she’d taken very seriously.
Max eyed the young sapling with interest. “You got me a plant?”
“Not any plant. It’s an apple tree, or at least it will be in about a hundred years.”
“You grew it for me?”
Jed grinned. “Eventually. I wasn’t sure it was going to work at first. It only sprouted a week ago. Belle painted the pot for me.”
“Huh,” Max said thoughtfully. “I wondered what you two were doing out here. She’s the best partner in crime, isn’t she? She never breathes a word.” He turned the pot around in his hands, admiring the tiny sapling from every angle. “Green apples, right?”
Jed didn’t bother to answer. His aversion to red fruit amused Max to no end. He saw no need to encourage it.
Max set the pot back in its sheltered place behind the dilapidated greenhouse. “Thank you. I love it. Are you ready for your present?”
“Not another scarf is it?” Over the last few days, Jed had somehow managed to accumulate a collection of knitted scarves he’d never, ever, wear.
Max chuckled. “Not quite. Come inside.”
Jed followed Max into the cabin, watching curiously as he retrieved a small, plain black box from a drawer in his nightstand before beckoning him into Jed’s room. Jed unzipped his hooded sweatshirt and tossed it onto his bed. Max held out the box to him. Jed took it, cocking his head at the intriguing rattle.
“Sorry, I forgot to wrap it, and I don’t know when your birthday is to save the right newspaper. Open it.”
“July 6.” Jed said the words with a slightly bitter taste in his mouth—he’d turned thirty-two a few days after he’d learned the news that a simple stomach virus had left him a write-off—but was quickly distracted by the bright green pins he found in the tiny black box.
“I want to see where you’ve been,” Max said by way of explanation. He gestured to the huge map of the world on Jed’s bedroom wall.
Jed raised an eyebrow. “How’s that a present for me?”
Max shrugged. “My mum always used to say you couldn’t see where you were going until you’d come to terms with where you’d been.”
Jed fought the urge to roll his eyes, to say something flippant and throw the pins into a drawer, never to be seen again. He wasn’t sure he could even remember every place he’d ever been. On some operations, he could be in and out of a country in a matter of hours.
“Come on,” Max needled him gently. “I bet you’ve been all over the world. Wouldn’t you like to see it in black and, er, green?”
Against his better judgment, Jed retrieved a pin from the box. “Do I have to do it in order?”
Max stepped forward and pried the pin from his fingers. He stuck it in the northwest sector of Oregon. “That’s where you came from, and where you are now. You can go forwards or backwards, it’s up to you.”
Considering he’d end up in the same place either way, Jed figured it didn’t much matter, but he humored Max and decided to tempt fate by tracing his journey from where it had begun, from paratrooper-training school in Georgia all the way to the Iraq desert.
It took Jed a while to cover the map with pins, even though there were some places he had to leave out, places no civilian could ever know the American military had been. When he was done, he stood back and stared, a strange sense of wonder creeping over him. He really had been to every corner of the globe. Shame he didn’t have much to show for it but violence, pain, and heartache.
Oh yeah? What about jump school in Guam? Or jungle training in the Philippines? It wasn’t all bad.
It was true. The Army had given Jed the best years of his life, but at the same time, the past two had been among the worst. He’d contracted a chronic, incurable illness, suffered a life-changing injury, and watched a crew of men he considered his family get blown to bits. Did he want to be reminded of that every time he looked at his bedroom wall? He wasn’t entirely sure.
Distracted, he stretched up and stuck a final pin he’d forgotten in the northernmost corner of Alaska. He wavered as he righted his balance, his injured leg finally protesting the rigors of the day.
Max caught him, clamping his arms around him from behind. “Whoa, easy.”
Jed leaned back, drawn into the warmth of Max’s strong chest, and found Max’s face a hairsbreadth away. Max smiled, his eyes gleaming in the dimly lit room. His lips parted and he took a breath, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he took Jed’s chin in his hand and kissed him… kissed him until Jed was so dizzy he could hardly hold himself up.