I spent the last few weeks making a sign for her. It isn’t much and it’s definitely not the expensive pearls my mother insisted I buy for her, but I knew Lucy would much rather have a gift that came from the heart than anything I could buy.

“Oh, Fisher, it’s beautiful,” she tells me as she runs her hand over the oval sign.

I carved the words “The Fisher’s, EST. 2006” and beneath it, our lighthouse.

“I can’t wait to hang this up at the house. And I can’t wait to become Mrs. Fisher.”

Setting the sign down on the floor next to us, I pull her back into my arms.

“You make everything perfect, Lucy. You’re my light and my life and all I need is your love to guide me home, no matter where I go.”

Chapter 28

Fisher

Present Day

“Fisher, sit down before you pace a hole in the carpet.”

I stop walking and look over at Seth Michelson as he rocks back and forth in one of the chairs I made for his office during my stay here. In his mid-sixties with a full head of white hair, Seth is a Vietnam vet who’s spent his free time since retiring from a steel mill living in a suburb of Beaufort, South Carolina and volunteering at the local VA Hospital. I consider him a friend now, even though I hated him the first time I met him. He counsels vets at the rehab facility operated by the Veterans Affairs Medical Center where I spent the last year of my life. He’s not a certified therapist or anything, but he knows all about how hard it is to reacclimate to civilian life after being in a warzone. The VA tried pushing psychiatrists on me after Bobby dropped me off at the doors, his parting message a threat to kick my ass again if I didn’t get help and get my shit together. None of the white-coats they paraded into my room had ever been to war; they all just spouted facts and figures they’d read in books and urged me to lie down and discuss my feelings about my mother. After a few weeks of violent temper tantrums intensified by the effects of the alcohol detox, Seth walked in, took a seat on my bed and didn’t say a word. He sat there, lounging against my pillows until he got bored with the silence and pulled a book off of my nightstand and started reading it. It pissed me off so much that I started shouting at him. The shouting turned into another full-fledged hissy fit and I grabbed the book out of his hand and chucked it across the room. Still, he didn’t say a word. I kept screaming and he started examining his fingernails until my screams turned into muttered curses and then my muttered curses turned into talking. I talked and talked until my voice was hoarse and I exhausted myself, sliding down against the wall and crumpling to the floor. When I was finished, he got up from my bed, walked over to me, gave me a pat on the back and said, “I’ll be back tomorrow. We’ll go for a walk.”

After that afternoon, I saw Seth every day of my stay at the rehab facility. He told me about what he’d seen in Vietnam and how he coped once he got home to his wife and newborn baby girl, but mostly, he listened. If I was having a bad day and took it out on him, he’d call me on my shit and tell me to quit my bitching. If I was feeling sorry for myself, he’d tell me to stop being a pussy and think about all the good things I’d been blessed with in my life. Seth was my savior during the darkest time in my life, and with all the conflicting thoughts going on in my head over the last week, I knew it was time to take the ferry over to the mainland and see him. I spent the last hour going over the events that had taken place since the last time I spoke to him, the day I left the hospital a little over a month ago.

“So, you’re freaking out that you hurt Lucy and pushed her away, ruining all of your plans of getting close to her again. Is that the gist of it?” Seth asks.

“Obviously, I hurt her. I shoved her face-first against the side of a fucking building and bit her neck. I lost control, Seth. After spending an entire year learning how to control my anger, I fucking lost it when I saw her kissing that dickhead she’s dating,” I explain, starting to pace again.

“I’m assuming she screamed at you? Told you to stop, pushed you away, smacked you, punched you, cursed you?” Seth asks. I can hear the amusement in his voice because he knows damn well that didn’t happen or I would have included it in my explanation.

“It all happened so fast. She didn’t have time to fight me, but I know she wanted to,” I tell him lamely, without any real conviction in my voice.

Seth laughs. “Really? Are you a mind reader now?”

“Fuck you,” I growl. “I know Lucy and I know that’s not something she would have wanted from me. I turned into a fucking animal and I’m sure she hates me now, even more than she did before. She’s got Mr. Perfect who probably wears white gloves when he touches her so he won’t get her dirty and then she’s got me who roughs her up in an alley.”

Seth gets up from the rocking chair and walks over to stand in front of me. “You spent thirteen months away from her, so it’s possible you don’t know her as well as you thought you did. Things change, people change. You don’t think what happened to you after your deployments changed her, as well? Changed something inside of her and made her a little stronger, a little more confident and taught her how to adapt?”

It’s Seth’s turn to pace and I watch him, listening to him speak. “My Mary Beth, she was a mousy little thing when I left for ‘Nam. Never raised her voice, never argued… She was one of those wives who was seen and not heard, just like her mother taught her. She was the calm to my storm and it worked, until I came home a little different than how I left and I was angry all the time. She fed off of my anger and we had some knock-down, drag-out fights in the middle of the kitchen, complete with her tossing plates and glasses at my head while I ranted and raved and raged. The next day, I’d get down on my knees and practically sob about how sorry I was and she’d just laugh and wrap her arms around me. She’d say, ‘Seth, fighting with you is the most fun I’ve had in years. If you need to let out some of your anger, I have no problem with you letting it out with me. But if you ever lay a hand on me in something other than passion, I will grab the shotgun from the hall closet and shoot your sorry ass.’ ”