Page 88 of The Crush
I was up too late waiting. Gun in my hands and men behind me listening for my word. I’d been searching for so long, wanting to find the ones to blame, wanting to figure outwhy. Why some stupid kid had to pick that road and that night. Why the closer I got to keeping my promise, the further away I felt from the person to whom I made it.
I ran for the building, chest heaving beneath my vest, and I paused outside the door while I waited for the signal. The day Ishowed up at Quantico they told me I seemed like a sweet kid, told me to turn around and go home, told me the job would eat me alive. The gunfire started before I was ready, the shout ringing out—
Go now.
Seventy
Daniel
Wednesday, November 2, 1994
“Daniel.”
The voice behind me is one I’ve known my whole life. Doesn’t mean I greet it as a friend.
I turn, watching as Isabel’s father makes his way down the front porch steps that don’t even dare creak. “I’d like a word.”
“I’ll bet,” I mutter under my breath, moving toward my driver’s side door as he comes closer. “Maybe another time. I should be getting back.”
The headlights from my truck illuminate him as he passes in front of them, still in his jeans and a white button-up creased by the day’s activity. “Will only take a moment.”
I need to go. I know I need to, even if it’s tempting to tell him exactly what I think of a man who valued his daughter’s obedience more than he did her presence. But I know it would only make things worse, and I’ve already put Isabel through enough.
“Another time,” I tell him again, offering a curt nod. My hand is already on the door handle when he responds.
“You are going to ruin her life.”
I pause, looking back at him where he stands a few paces away, hands in his pockets and oddly calm compared to how he’d been at church. “I’m not the one keeping her from her family,” I remind him. “I’m not the one who told her she had to choose.”
“She leftmeno choice,” he defends. “As her father, my job is to look out for her best interests.”
“Right. And you really think if I step aside you’ll get her back? You haven’t spoken to her inweeks.”
“Because Irefuseto support this,” he returns, disdainfully waving a hand in my direction. “Everyone else may be willing to pretend her being with you isn’t a mistake, but I’m not. I’ve seen firsthand the kind of damage you’ll do.”
The accusation claws at me even as I push it away. “I would never hurt Isabel.”
He starts to pace around me in a wide half-circle. “Did you know my father served in World War II?” he asks, as casually as if asking me if I think it will rain today. “Believe your mother’s father did too?”
The closer he gets the more I’m fighting a feeling of being trapped, pinned down. Possible escape routes racing through my mind while I simultaneously stumble through trying to understand why I’m now being asked about two men I have never met. “What does this have to do with—”
“My father never really made it out of the trenches,” he explains matter-of-factly. As if this is something Ishouldalready know. “Never really made it back home.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” There’s a growing pit in my stomach, an anxious acceleration to my pulse. “I’m afraid I still don’t follow.”
“He used to spendhourspraying for forgiveness. Used to make my mother and I pray, too,” he continues, frowning, lines so deep in his face that they look permanently carved. “When the drought came he believed it was a curse,penancefor our sins in the war.”
“Seems an odd choice to punish Texas for a World War.”
“I always thought so, too.”
There’s a pause between us, and I use it as an opening to reach behind me, the familiarity of cool metal brushing my fingertips as I find my door handle again. “I should go.”
“You were a good kid.” His head tilts in something like sympathy. “It’s not that I can’t appreciate what you did. I understandwhyyou did it.”
It’s getting harder to breathe, to keep my heart from racing.I just want it to stop. I just want it to stop. I just want to go home.
He steps closer. “But you’re right. Texas wasn’t really cursed. My father was. And so my mother and I were. So much so that it would have been better for us if he never came back at all.”
