“But what did you want?”

“Peace of mind,” she said. “For both of us. I wanted to tell you what had happened in your old world, and I wanted to know that you were all right so we could both move on with peace of mind.” She sat up and turned around, kneeling between his long legs and sitting back on her heels, facing him. “Ian, why did you do it? Why did you stay here so long without getting in touch with anyone?”

“I told you, I was camping and—”

She shook her head. “There was more to it. I understand about how you stumbled on this place and ended up staying, but did something traumatic drive you away?”

He frowned slightly. “Do you think it had to be like that? Jack told me he came up here to get some space so he could think…”

“But he went into business. He has a lot of people in his life who depend on him. It doesn’t seem like the same kind of thing. Was it Shelly? Did that whole thing about the wedding—”

“Marcie,” he said, touching her cheek. “It was everything. Too much at once. It was Fallujah and Bobby. Then it was Shelly and my father…”

“Tell me about letting Shelly go,” she said.

He glanced away, then back. “Let me ask you something—did Shelly ever call you? Visit you and Bobby? Or were you the one to make contact with her?”

“I was looking for you…” she said.

Enough of an answer. “I had suggested to Shelly in letters, before the bomb in Fallujah, that she call you. You lived in the same town. Bobby was my friend,” he said.

“But, Ian—”

“I know. But what happened to me and Bobby was one of the biggest reasons I had to take a time-out to recover. Shelly knew what had happened. She knew Bobby was an invalid and you were taking care of him. She knew you’d been to Germany and D.C. and finally home—yet she never even wrote you a letter, never called you. A girl from your town, her fiancé’s best friend, my life in the balance getting him out…” He made a face. “Marcie, I didn’t know she was that kind of person. I thought she was more the kind of person who would—”

“Ian, once we were back in Chico, I didn’t contact her again either,” Marcie pointed out. “Not until I was looking for you.”

His expression changed. “Again?” he asked.

Caught. She looked down. “Before the bomb, I called her.” She looked up. “Because you and Bobby were good friends, I thought we could get together. She was very busy. She took my number and said if she ever had any free time, she’d get in touch.”

“And she never had any free time,” he said. “She never told me that, but somehow I knew.” He inhaled and let it out slowly. “You were busy taking care of Bobby, and Shelly had a wedding to plan. The difference in that scared me. It turns out Shelly had tunnel vision—she could only see one thing. I’m not sure I was even a part of what she saw.” He ran his finger along her cheek. “You aren’t kidding—I dodged a bullet there. I didn’t fully realize it, but I knew something wasn’t right.”

“Ah,” she said. “Ah. On top of everything else. And with your father? What did your father do?”

He looked away uncomfortably, but he knew he was going to be honest with her. “Nothing he hadn’t done my whole life.” He looked back. “My dad was always tough to please. He thought pushing me would make me a man, but I was never man enough. All I ever wanted from him was a word of praise, a proud smile.”

“What about your mother?”

He smiled tenderly. “God, she was incredible. She always loved him, no matter what. And I didn’t have to do anything to make her think I was a hero. If I fell flat on my face she’d just beam and say, ‘Did you see that great routine of Ian’s? What a genius!’ When I was in that musical, she thought I was the best thing to hit Chico, but my dad asked me if I was gay.” He chuckled. “My mom was the best-natured, kindest, most generous woman who ever lived. Always positive. And faithful?” He laughed, shaking his head. “My dad could be in one of his negative moods where nothing was right—the dinner sucked, the ball game wasn’t coming in clear on the TV, the battery on the car was giving out, he hated work, the neighbors were too loud…And my mom, instead of saying, ‘Why don’t you grow the fuck up, you old turd,’ she would just say, ‘John, I bet I have something that will turn your mood around—I made a German chocolate cake.’”

Marcie smiled. “She sounds wonderful.”

“She was. Wonderful. Even while she was fighting cancer, she was so strong, so awesome that I kept thinking it was going to be all right, that she’d make it. As for my dad, he was always impossible to please, impossible to impress. I really thought I’d grown through it, you know? I got to the point real early where I finally understood that that’s just the kind of guy he was. He never beat me, he hardly even yelled at me. He didn’t get drunk, break up the furniture, miss work or—”

“But what did he do, Ian?” she asked gently.

He blinked a couple of times. “Did you know I got medals for getting Bobby out of Fallujah?”

She nodded. “He got medals, too.”

“My old man was there when I was decorated. He stood nice and tall, polite, and told everyone he knew about the medals. But he never said jack to me. Then when I told him I was getting out of the Marine Corps, he told me I was a fuckup. That I didn’t know a good thing when I had it. And he said…” He paused for a second. “He said he’d never been so ashamed of me in his whole goddamn life and if I did that—got out—I wasn’t his son.”

Instead of crumbling into tears on his behalf, she leaned against him, stroked his cheek a little and smiled. “So—he was the same guy his whole stupid life.”

Ian felt a slight, melancholy smile tug at his lips. “The same guy. One miserable son of a bitch.”

“There’s really no excuse for a guy like that,” she said. “It doesn’t cost you anything to be nice.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Really. He ought to be ashamed. Everyone has the option to be civil. Decent. I knew when I met him he was mean and ornery.”

“Next you’re going to say I won’t be free of that till I forgive him,” Ian said. “They always say, not for the person who has been horrible, but for yourself.”

“Not bloody likely, coming from me,” she said. “Now if he asked for forgiveness…”

“Hah. Not in your wildest dreams,” he said.

“I wouldn’t expect so. I met him, remember. None of what you told me surprises me.”

“Marcie, I don’t hate him, I swear to God. But I can’t see why I’d want to say, ‘I’m perfectly okay with you being the coldest SOB I’ve ever known.’ And I’m sure not looking to be around that again. What’s the point?”

She leaned forward and laid her head against his shoulder. “Hmm. Why would you? It’s not likely he’d change. Ian, there’s nothing you can do to change him. Now I understand. Now it will be all right.”

“What is it you think you understand?”

She held him close. “You were battle scarred. You’d lost your best friend, even though he was still alive—technically—a complication that probably made things even worse for you. Your relationship floundered. That happens so often after a soldier gets out of a war zone—been happening since World War I and earlier, I’m sure. Too bad that happened, but I don’t think you could have helped it…. You had to have a little time…”

“I know I could’ve used some help, but if anyone had offered to help me, I’d have broken his jaw,” Ian said.

“I’m sure. You probably had a lot of rage stored up at that time. Well-deserved rage. The least a person can do is try to empathize. Be patient. Your loved ones—”

“It turned out I didn’t have loved ones,” he said in a quiet voice.

“Well,” she said, lifting her head and looking into those lovely brown eyes. “You do now. And thank you—I wanted to understand what happened. That’s all I wanted, and you didn’t have to tell me, but you did.”

He pushed some of that wild red hair over her ear. “You had some fantasy about what would happen when you found me, admit it.”

“I did.” She grinned. “I tried to keep it to myself, and it didn’t include fabulous sex. I fantasized that I’d find you, tell you some things that would ease your mind and then I’d take you home.”

“Home?”

“To Chico, or wherever home is to you,” Marcie said. “A lot of your old squad checked in on Bobby, asked if I knew where you were. You’re not as alone as you think. But you’d have to go to some trouble to find them now. You went missing too long. When people think you don’t want them, they let you be.”

“Not all of them.” He laughed.

“Well, I told you—I can match you for stubborn.”

“So, tell me about this forgiveness thing you don’t get,” he prodded.

“Oh, Ian—I’m in the same spot as you. If someone did something horrible to me and never apologized or asked for forgiveness, I wouldn’t break my neck trying to forgive them. Those insurgents in Fallujah? I’m not working on loving them like brothers. If that’s what I have to do to be an okay person, I’m going to remain the baddest little carrottop on the playground.”

“What about God?”

“God understands everything. And even He made a mistake or two. Look at the size of avocado seeds—way too big. And pomegranates? Too many seeds. What a waste of fruit!”

He laughed loudly. “So what do you do to come to a peaceful place about those horrible people?”

She lifted her head and looked into his eyes without mirth. Her green eyes were warm and soft. Her smile was gentle. “We accept them as they are. And if we can’t love them like brothers, maybe we can understand and let them be their own problems. Holy Christ, isn’t that enough of a challenge? Accept him as he is, Ian—a miserable old son of a bitch who was hardly happy a day in his life, and it really had nothing to do with you.”

Though he fought it, he felt his eyes glisten with tears. Long seconds passed in which she met that clouded gaze fearlessly—not afraid of his roar, his rage or his tears. “How does someone so young and bad and wild get wisdom?” he asked in a whisper.

“Wisdom? What I get is struggle. I haven’t had it as bad as you, as hard as most people. I just do my best, that’s all. But I want to tell you something. I didn’t love you with just my body, Ian. My heart got in there. I hope you know that.”

“I know that.” He touched her lips briefly. Then he asked, “So, what’s wrong with him? My father? You said he was sick.”

“Not critical—but his maladies will get him sooner than later. He’s being treated with chemo for prostate cancer, he has Parkinson’s, had a mild stroke and I believe some dementia is settling in. But, be warned—he could have years.” Then she grinned.

“You—are—amazing.”

“You could come home with me, Ian. For Christmas.”

He was quiet for a moment. “No. I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not? Will the good people from the towns around here be without firewood? Would the cabin get snowed in?”

He smiled at her. “Baby, I’m not going to kid you—you changed my life, and all in ten days, but not enough to clean me up and take me back to Chico. Listen to me,” he said gently. “This is nice, you and me. But I think it’s a tryst that might never be anything more. This thing that happened between us—it wasn’t supposed to.”