Page 16 of Hold on Tight

Her computer pinged its acceptance of new mail. From [email protected].

Jackson Taylor.

No wonder it had been impossible to track him down. It hadn’t occurred to her that Jake was a nickname for something other than Jacob.

I’m sending you some references, the first email said.Watch your in-box.

Her heart gave a little squeeze. He was wooing her. On Sam’s behalf, admittedly, but—he was pursuing them. Her and Sam.

She did a web search on “Jackson Taylor,” and there he was. An article in theTacoma News Tribune. Jackson Taylor was an Army Ranger—God, that would have been a helpful piece of info, too. How had she conceived a child with someone she knew so little about?

According to the article she was reading, his leg had been mangled by an IED. The article was full of praise from his teammates and superiors:Impeccable judgment. Strong, agile, a leader. Loyal, brave, kind, cool under pressure. Great guy. The best. Working his butt off to walk again.

Not a grumpy asshole. At least he hadn’t been, back on the ground in Afghanistan, where, apparently, he’d saved a badly injured teammate’s life by carrying him to safety and medical care under a rain of PK fire, whateverthatwas. It sounded horrifying. And a lot harder than keeping even a challenging seven-year-old safe for nine hours.

Her email pinged again. The attachment turned out to be a partial scan of some kind of hospital admission notes. The email’s subject line was:Officially: A sane asshole.

She laughed aloud in the silent room.

Clean, neatly dressed … no visible psycho-motor agitation … no obvious evidence of PTSD … psych consult not warranted at this time.

The third email was a video. Subject:Not always this grumpy.

Jake, leg still intact, playing soccer with several other men—teammates, she guessed, from the fact that their bodies echoed Jake’s ridiculously ripped physique—and a horde of kids, ages toddler to teen. He was grinning, joking with the kids, passing them the ball. Punching a shoulder here and there, shouting instructions. Gently. He looked amazing. Strong and virile, and those white teeth in that brilliant grin of his did something all wrong, and all right, to her. Had he smiled at her once yesterday? She didn’t think so.

At a picnic table in the background, women—wives and girlfriends?—laid out food.

With a pang of loss, it occurred to her that in a different life, she might have been there.

The fourth email. Subject:For what it’s worth, my mom likes me.

A forwarded email from his mom.Hey, hon. Hope you got the care package. As you asked, no nuts in the cookies. Stay alive. That’smyrequest.

Her eyes filled with tears. There was no explicit apology here, no acknowledgment that he’d rejected or hurt her, but still, there was something so tender and vulnerable about this gesture. It said, without words, that he’d been thinking of them since he’d seen them yesterday. That her dilemma was on his mind. That he respected her fears, wanted to help, understood what she needed.

That he wanted to know Sam badly enough that he’d be willing to expose himself for a chance.

That he understood what it meant to have, and be, a mother.

A fifth email dropped into her in-box above the others.

I can babysit Monday if you still need me.

Chapter 5

Sunday morning, Jake took the 29 bus from Belltown, his downtown Seattle neighborhood, to Mira’s house in Ballard.

Her reply text had said,Thanks for the emails. Do you want to come meet Sam tomorrow? I can’t just leave my kid alone with you because he happens to share your DNA and your mom loves you. I think there are some serial killers whose mothers staunchly defend them.

He hadn’t been able to argue with that. He could only be glad the recipient of his DNA was being cared for by a woman with a good head on her shoulders.

Still, riding the bus to the address she’d given him was an ordeal of step-climbing and enduring the stares of fellow riders. Weeks ago, he’d made the stubborn decision that he wouldn’t try to hide the fact that he was an amputee. He never wore pants to cover his prosthesis if the weather called for shorts, and he almost never wore his dress leg. None of that molded flesh-like silicone for him, thank you very much. He thought it looked more eerie than his mechanical leg, because for a moment your eye would be fooled before it realized no one’s skin was that peach-colored, that smooth, or that flaccid.

The trade-off for not hiding his prosthesis was curiosity and pity and, occasionally, unwanted conversation with someone who was bold enough to ask what had happened or who had an uncle or a brother with an amputation. He didn’t mind that latter category so much, because those people mostly understood—that his life wasn’t over but profoundly altered, that a prosthesis wasn’t a smooth path back to normalcy but more like a rickety rope bridge.

That was what he was supposed to be doing now on his Temporary Disability Retirement, getting back to normal. If he did a good job of it, he could head back to a job in the army, where he belonged.

Or where he’d once belonged. Now he didn’t know.

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