Page 5 of A Moment Never Forgotten
Berit laughed out loud. “I know exactly what you saw in her…big boobs. And she was sweet. I hate to tell you this, but she lacked in the intelligence department. You would never have been happy with her in the long run.”
Mak leaned back in his chair. “I wasn’t happy with her in the short run. Betsi, on the other hand, was just a bat shit crazy bitch.”
“She’d been nice enough while visiting here for the weekend,” Berit pointed out.
“You just liked her because she knew how to use a knife and chopped up shit for the salad.” Then he added, “And she had manners.”
“True.” Berit had to admit the girl had her fooled the first day. “But Annie had manners, too. She never said much to me.”
“Because you scared the hell out of her,” he shot back. “She didn’t know how to handle a strong woman like you.”
“Betsi was able to carry on a conversation,” she pointed out. “She was far too interested in the price of everything for me. I wish you would have let me do a background check on her before inviting her into our home.”
“Yeah, as soon as we got back to Virginia Beach, she tried to take over my life.” He sipped his coffee and shook his head slowly side to side. “She dragged me to a jewelry store and showed me the diamond wedding set that she wanted. No fucking way I could’ve afforded that. The real kicker was when she told my roommates that they needed to move out because she was moving in. I certainly hadn’t invited her to move in. Then when I broke it off, the bitch had the audacity to call all my buddies for information about where I was and what I was doing. More likewhoI was doing. She showed up at our favorite bar, drunk off her ass, and made a terrible scene. Thank God I finally scraped her off.” He grinned. “Did I tell you that I heard she was married to some supply dweeb who had knocked her up?”
“I hope she found what she was looking for.” Berit reached over and patted her son’s hand. “I’m just glad it wasn’t you.”
“Mom, we had the safe sex talk over a decade ago.” He reached in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet then extracted a string of condoms. “See. I’m always prepared.”
Berit stared at the half dozen packets. “You need that many for a weekend at home?”
He folded them back up and stuffed them into his wallet. “Mom, I’m a healthy twenty-six-year-old, single man who just returned from defending the United States of America. I need a lot of stress relief.”
The reality of the day before suddenly hit her. He was there only because he’d accompanied his teammate's body back from overseas. Berit wasn’t even sure where they’d been. As a Navy SEAL, most of his missions were top-secret. Since she was no longer in counterterrorism, she didn’t have easy access to that information.
Reaching over, she touched his forearm. “I know this past week has been really tough. How are you doing?”
“I’m okay.” He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. When he opened them, he admitted, “Losing Ram was tough on all of us. I still have two men in the hospital in Germany. That’s what I’m doing awake. Just before you walked in, I finished talking with the doctors there. Neither is fit to travel back to the United States, yet. Maybe in the next two weeks.”
He glanced away before returning his gaze to hers. “Samson lost his leg. They’re going to operate on Prince again this afternoon their time. They removed his spleen and thought they had gotten all the debris but he’s still running a high fever and showing an infection. He’s not out of the woods yet.”
She hugged him. “Oh, Mak, I’m so sorry.” She had to fight the tears that wanted to break loose. She knew both of those young men. Two years ago, they had spent Christmas with her and Mak, right there in that house.
Samson was from Montana and the airport had been snowed in, so he couldn’t get home to see his parents before they shipped out right after the first of the year. Berit had hooked up her computer to the television so he could Skype Christmas day with his family.
Prince claimed he didn’t have any family, but she had secretly run a background check on him. In truth, his mother was an addict who hooked to pay for her drugs and his father was doing life in an Alabama prison. He’d been raised, on and off, by his maternal grandmother who had passed away while he was still in high school. As soon as he turned eighteen, he’d enlisted in the Navy and somehow managed to finish his last three months and graduate after he was released from the foster care system.
“I have some vacation time on the books. I can fly to Germany and be there with them.” It wasn’t an empty offer. She’d book a commercial flight, or hop on one of the hundreds of jets that flew all over the world that were secretly owned and operated by the CIA.
“Thanks, Mom, but they are so out of it they wouldn’t even know you were there.” He tightened his grip on her. “Maybe when they’re shipped to Walter Reed, you can go visit them once a week, or something.”
“I’ll do that.” Berit made a mental note to check on the progress of her boys, because that’s how she thought of them. She’d make a point to visit them as often as she could once they were stateside.
“You know that you can talk to me about anything,” she reminded her son. “You don’t have to bear the weight of what happened alone. It wasn’t your fault. Yeah, you had bad intel, provided by people who work for the same agency as I do. You grew up in the field and know what it’s like.”
He patted her back. “Mom, this isn’t your fault either. Some asshole bad guy changed his mind at the last minute and fucked us over. If I have anything to say about it, he’ll pay for his betrayal.”
She leaned back and looked at him. “You are the strongest man I’ve ever known.”
“I learned it from the strongest woman I’ve ever met.” He kissed her forehead. “We’ll get through this.”
“Yes, we will.” Berit stood, leaving her coffee cup on the table. They’d always had an unwritten rule; when she cooked, he cleaned up. “I need to get to work. Will you and your friends be around for supper?”
“I don’t know. I’ll text you later,” he said on a yawn. “I think I need a nap.”
Standing, he towered over her. “Love you, Mom.” He kissed her on top of her head then picked up the dishes.
“I love you, too.” She grabbed her purse and messenger bag and headed out to the garage. She was looking forward to spending more time with her son over the weekend. Had Mak and his friends not shown up, Berit probably would have hired the high school boy two doors down to help her retrieve all the Christmas decorations from the attic. She would have filled her weekend with Hallmark Christmas movies and decorating. No matter where they had been in the world, the first weekend in December her home was transformed into a Pinterest-worthy holiday spectacle.
