Page 23 of Believe in Me
I’ll be looking down and checking on you. I’ve loved you until my dying breath.
Love, Joe”
Trish felt the tears running down her face, but she couldn’t stop them. How had that man known her so well? How had she gotten so lucky to have found both Joe and Mike? She wasn’t sure how long she sat there crying before Mike came to the door.
“Hey babe?” Mike said as he walked in the room. “Taking a break?”
Trish looked up and within a second, he was wrapping his arms around her.
“Whose ass am I kicking? What’s wrong?” He picked her up and sat on the bed with her in his lap.
Trish shook her head and leaned against his shoulder. She held up the piece of paper that had just shattered her and closed her eyes. She couldn’t watch him read Joe’s words.
It didn’t take him long to read the letter. “I’m glad you had him, Trish. From what this says, he loved you beyond anything.”
“Promise me something?” she asked, quietly.
“You know I’ll do whatever you want,” he replied.
“Don’t leave a letter.”
“Huh?” He sounded puzzled.
“I know what’s in your heart and head. We’ve spent hours talking through the ‘what ifs’ and I know that you’ll have a legacy book. The heptad and spouses will be there for me if anything… so, I don’t need a letter. Just need you to come home in one piece alive. Okay?”
Chapter 16
Mike had been gone for four months and Trish was impressed with herself. She hadn’t had any meltdowns or buried herself under a blanket fort. She’d gone out and found a job at a local café, Latte Love, and was enjoying it. It was second nature to her after working with Jess so long. Her boss, Bonnie, was completely hands off so it was almost like the place was hers. Maybe she’d look into opening one herself one day.
“Hey Trish, can you put on the news? There’s supposed to be something about the hurricane in the Caribbean. Guess it’s looking like it might turn toward us,” one of the guys across the café called out. They were a good group of guys. Kevin had brought them to the café when she started and now, they were her regular crew. She knew their orders and preferences by heart — Sean liked his coffee sweet, Jason hated coffee but loved chai and Billy always wanted hot chocolate. Trish had told Mike about them the last email she sent him. She had a feeling that Kevin had them watching over her for him and the heptad. Yeah, Mike’s guys were taking care of her without hovering.
Reaching for the remote, she asked, “Preference for channel?”
“LTZ seems to have the best coverage. Their weather guy used to work with that storm chaser reporter.”
Shrugging, Trish put on the channel and then went back to her inventory. How they always ended up with more lids than cups she wasn’t sure, but it happened every week. Sixteen packets of napkins? Who ordered that many?
The emergency broadcast tone sounded from the TV but Trish ignored it. Anything she needed to know, one of the guys would tell her after the announcement.
“Trish? Did you just catch that?” Sean asked, drawing her attention. When she looked up there was a red banner going across the bottom of the TV.
BREAKING NEWS: Plane crashes into several planes on the ground on Incirlik prior to refueling mission; multiple causalities and unknown number of deaths
“Someone call Sergeant Nolan. Tell him to get here fast,” Billy said as Trish slid to the floor.
How could this happen to her twice?That was the last thought she remembered before everything went dark.
§ § §
The smell was what woke Mike. The acrid fragrance of skin melting to fabric was burning his nostrils. When he went to move his arm to cover his nose, he couldn’t move.
“Master Sergeant, you need to stop moving. If you move too much, you’re going to pull flesh from your forearm. Your uniform sleeve melted into your wrist and arm. We’ve got compresses on to stop the process and will get you medevac’d to Landstuhl as soon as possible. You might need a graft, you might not. That’s something to be decided above my pay grade,” a man next to Mike told him.
Opening his eyes, Mike looked around without moving his head. He was in the infirmary, strapped to a board and all he could see was the medic beside him, the ceiling, and blurs moving fast at the foot of his bed.
“My section? Where are they?” Mike asked. He was responsible for those soldiers and he needed to check on them.
“I’m not one-hundred percent sure, Master Sergeant. We’ve got a full house here and I don’t know who belongs to what unit,” he finished before reaching above Mike’s head for something.
