Page 117 of Walking Wounded

Will was dimly aware of the rest of the guys surrounding them. Someone’s hand landed on his shoulder.

“Aw, Will,” somebody said.

Finn’s face was slack, almost peaceful, his lips red with blood. When Will reached to cup his face, the handsome sharp line of his jaw, bristly with stubble, he smeared his skin with more blood, crimson thumbprints where his pulse ought to be.

He knew what had happened; there was no form of denial so great it could make him delusional. But he didn’twantto know it. He wanted this to be a sleeping nightmare, and not a waking one.

“Will, you’re bleeding, where are you hit?” That was Murray.

Will didn’t care. He couldn’t feel it. The pain was localized, concentrated in his chest. He bent his head down and pressed his forehead to Finn’s, unable to breathe, to speak, to move. He kissed the bridge of his nose and he just sat there, full of love and anguish, frozen in place, holding the person he cared about most in the world.

///

When they reached the coast that day, Finn Murdoch was among the dead. And Will Maddox was among the Walking Wounded.

January 1952

It was weeks before he could bring himself to see Leena. He limped up to her mother’s front door, hat in his hands, and rang the bell.

Leena herself answered the door, her dress black and conservative; a mourning dress. “Will,” she said, quietly, tiredly, like she’d been expecting him. “Come on in.”

There was a fire going in the living room, and on the mantle a large framed photo of Finn in his Marine uniform. Will couldn’t look at it. He turned his head sharply away and took the chair Leena indicated. She settled in the one beside it and reached for her mug of tea.

“Would you like something to drink?”

He shook his head. “No, thank you.” His voice didn’t sound the same as before, he knew that. That uncertain, boyish tremble that belied his nerves was gone; he was flat and toneless now. “I won’t bother you long. I came to bring you something.”

His heart seized when he reached in his pocket and withdrew Finn’s dog tags. He’d tried to give them to Julia Murdoch, but she’d insisted they should go to Leena. Will passed his thumb across the raised letters and numbers now, aching inside. He offered them to Leena in his outstretched palm. “He would have wanted you to have these.”

Leena stared at the tags a long moment, breathing through her pretty red lips. Red, like Finn’s had been at the end. Lipstick the color of blood.

Finally, she said, “No.” She reached out and closed Will’s fingers around the tags, wrapped her small hand around the outside of his. “No,” she repeated, meeting his eyes with nothing short of bravery. Her throat moved as she swallowed. In a small voice, she said, “You should keep them. I think you always did love him more than I did.”

His stomach lurched. “No, Leena–”

She smiled. “It’s okay. I always knew. You keep them, Will. You were there with him, at the end…” She trailed off, blinking.

Will bowed his head and kissed the back of her hand, finding afterward that he didn’t have the strength to sit up again.

Leena ran her nails through his hair, over his scalp. “I’m so sorry, Will,” she murmured. “He loved you, too.”

~*~

Present Day

“And so the two of you got married,” Luke says, and doesn’t try to pretend he isn’t wiping at his eyes with his sleeve.

Will stares into the fire, and with his profile backlit, it’s easy to imagine the young, lost, grieving man who’d turned up on Leena’s doorstep. “I did love her. I do,” he says. “Probably because she always understood about Finn.”

Luke nods.

“She was a wonderful wife. A wonderful mother.”

“I wish I could have met her,” Luke says, and means it.

A smile touches Will’s mouth. “Sandy reminds me a lot of her.”

“I kinda figured that.”

---