.o0o.

 

Brandon played a three of diamonds and watched as her brow furrowed with concern. She’s competitive, he thought and smiled to himself. They’d been playing rummy for an hour now and it was nip and tuck the whole way as to who was going to win.

She discarded her card then looked up. “I saw a college chemistry book in the book case, yours?” she asked.

His hand froze on the way to retrieve a card. So now it begins. He’d been waiting for the questions. Knew they had to come somehow.

He’d thought about whether he’d answer or not. How much of his story he should tell. A part of him wanted to talk, wanted to unload. It was as if he needed to expel a poison from his soul. Another part yelled at him to shut up. There was nothing to be gained by sharing information. You ended up giving other people ammunition. 

“Yes,” he answered hesitantly.

“How’d it end up here?” she asked nonchalantly, never taking her eyes away from her cards.

Sighing to himself he leaned back and looked at the woman. Every part of his gut told him he could trust her. At least with some of it. That she could shoulder the truth and not falter.

“It was in my backpack the day I left school.”

Now it was her turn to raise an eyebrow. Obviously the answer had been insufficient. “What? You just walked away with a Chemistry book in your backpack?”

“Yep, pretty much.”

Meagan played another card and rearranged the ones in her hand as she thought about what he’d said. “Where’d you go to school?”

He hesitated a moment, letting out a breath he said, “Harvard.” Then picked up another card.

“What? You walked away from Harvard. Who does that? Did you get kicked out or something?”

“No, nothing like that,” he said chuckling to himself. It would have been easier if he’d been kicked out.

“The summer between my sophomore and junior year I did an internship at a Wall Street Investment bank. My father set it up. Remember, I told you my Great Grandfather built this place. He made his money as a Seattle Banker during the Klondike Gold rush days. It’s sort of the family business. Banking that is.”

She stopped playing and stared at him with big eyes waiting for the rest. Obviously trying to imagine him dressed in a suit sitting behind a desk.

Shrugging his shoulders he continued. “Anyway, that internship showed me how much I did not want to be a banker, even a rich Wall Street type banker. Those guys would risk other people’s money, millions, then bitch and complain about how stupid everyone was for not doing what they were doing. It was all about who could stab the most in the back without getting caught.”

He stopped for a moment to study his cards but his mind kept drifting back to that summer and how much things had changed.

“When I went back to school,” he continued, “things didn’t fit. Everyone was scrambling to get to the top. I couldn’t figure out why. What was up there other than the knowledge that you were at the top. It didn’t mean anything, not really.”

She quickly played another card then looked at him expectantly. Obviously she was going to need more.

“So you came back here, with a Chemistry book in your backpack. Have you been here the whole time?”

For some reason her question made him think that she knew he hadn’t been here that long. Had he told her it was nine months?

“No, I came back here to think and ended up joining the Army.”

“Wow, that’s quite some shift.”

“No, not really,” he said. “They’re both meritocracies designed to get people to do their best. The difference is that Harvard, the business school at least, is designed to turn out people with the tools to get rich usually at the expense of others. The Army is just more honest about it. It turns out people with the tools to kill people.”

“That a cold assessment,” She said.

“Yeah maybe,” he answered with a slight blush. “That’s sort of what I figured going in anyway. I came to realize it wasn’t about that at all,” he said with a smile as he drew a card he needed.

When he didn’t elaborate immediately she said, “Go on, what was it all about?”

He looked up from his cards. “It was about your buddies, your squad. Keeping them alive. Accomplishing the mission. About doing something bigger than yourself.”

He froze mid-play, his hand half way to the discards as he looked off into the distance. The memories flooded into his mind, taking him back.

Faces, blood, and laughs. The time Jackson lost his boots or when Jones farted so loud even the Afghanis laughed.

He remembered the feeling of love and pride he had felt when they landed in country and how much he’d looked forward to being tested.

How he’d worried and fretted so much until First Sargent Turner had subtly hinted he needed to back off or he was going to have a minor mutiny on his hands.

All of it rushed back, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

“That’s enough about me. What about you?” He said, using a sledge hammer to change the subject. There was only so much he could talk about. At least at first.

 

.o0o.

 

Meagan looked out the window while Brandon shuffled the cards. They’d passed the afternoon playing Gin and talking.

The snow continued to pile up. Frustrating her to the very core. Would she be trapped here all winter? Of course not, she reminded herself, don’t be ridiculous. The thought however sent a chill up her spine.

No one would miss her. It’d be five days at least before anyone started looking for her. Even then, it wouldn’t do any good. There wasn’t a clue where she’d gone. Why hadn’t she told somebody? A mistake she would never make again, that was for sure.

Brandon had taken a break to start a venison pot roast along with vegetables. The savory aroma of roasting meat had quickly filled the cabin, making her stomach rumble in anticipation.

They spent the afternoon talking, playing cards and occasionally stepping out on the porch to watch Jake run through the snow. The entire afternoon had been nice, peaceful with a subtle undercurrent of sexual tension. Meagan smiled to herself. Not how she had planned to spend today.