Page 52 of Better Late Than Never

“Well,” I said. “Give me the dates you guys want to travel, and I can book your tickets. Or book them yourselves and let me know how much to send you.”

“Okay, will do. Where do we fly in, anyway? Like Madrid or something?”

“You can, but then it’s a four-hour train ride. Alternatively, there’s Jerez de la Frontera, which is close to me.”

He blinked. “Hairy what now?”

I laughed. “Jerez de la Frontera. I’ll text it to you so you can see how it’s spelled.”

“Thanks. And that’s close by?”

“About a half hour, forty-five minutes away. It’s about an hour flight from Madrid, or you can take the train from Madrid.”

Landon pursed his lips. “I’ll talk to Quinn and Savannah. See what they want to do.”

“No hurry. It’s a nice train ride, but it’s also a short flight. So… six of this, half dozen of the other. And remember, this isn’t the Norfolk airport,” I told him. “Madrid ishuge, and you do not want to have to sprint through it because half of your forty-minute layover got chewed up by customs.”

He made a face. “But I hate sitting around in airports.”

“Your call, kid.” I shrugged. “Sit around and be bored, or try to Usain Bolt across one of those terminals.”

Landon scowled. “Okay, okay. We’ll book a long layover.”

We talked for a while longer, and then he had to get ready for work, so we ended the call.

I set my phone face down on the table beside my beer bottle. I let the quiet settle over me like the chill after the sun had set, taking the summer heat with it.

We hadn’t talked about anything earthshattering. It was mostly about travel and their upcoming visit, as well as the classes he’d be taking soon; exactly the kind of conversation we’d have had over the kitchen table or in the living room.

It left me unsettled, though. As if weshould’vebeen talking about bigger and more important things, not just having a normal everyday chat. It felt anticlimactic, leaving me happy that I’d spoken with my son but still feeling like“that’s it?”

I knew that feeling well from deployments and combat tours. And I also knew their mother had asked them to be upbeat whenever they talked to me. Don’t tell me about bad things, whether they were struggling in school or a good friend had moved away. Don’t burden Dad with things that’ll make him worry.

Some of the biggest fights I’d ever had with Aimee had been about that. She insisted she was trying not to add to my stress while I was deployed. I insisted that I wanted to know how my family was really doing, and once I’d found out she was hiding things—and asking the boys to hide things—I worried even more.

Now, every time I talked to the boys and everything was fine, I was afraid there was more going on.

On top of that, there was that same familiar feeling that when the call ended, he was gone. A world away from me in his mother’s apartment while I drank my beer in the muggy silence.

When I’d been in warzones or on ships, their absence had been painful but as close to normal as anything ever was in those places. Here, in a rental house that was big enough for my whole family, I felt like he or his brother should come wandering outside at any moment, swim trunks on and drinks in hand. Like I should’ve been just waiting for them to come trooping down the back porch stairs so we could all cool off in the pool before grilling burgers or steaks.

That wasn’t going to happen, though. Even if I still lived in the States, the boys were adults now. They had lives that didn’t involve me or their mom on a daily basis. All those years kids spent at home? All the family time and soccer games and dinners at the kitchen table? They were over, and I’d missed a lot of them because of my career.

Now I was missing even more. And I wouldn’t even be spending the years after the kids moved out making up for lost time with their mom, because…

Well, because that was gone too.

I sat back against the deck chair and closed my eyes.

I missed my kids. I missed having a partner.

I missed…

Fuck.

I missed not being alone.

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