Page 17 of Silver-Tongued Devil
“For Pete’s sake.” Dakota would have sworn she knew guys, but they could still baffle and exasperate her like nothing else. “Justwaita second.”
“Nothing to wait for. I’m fine.” Evan climbed out of the van and slammed the door, then came around to her side for Gracie.
He was fine? Swearing in front of his daughterandslamming the door? Yeah, right.
Itwasa long time ago. They’d both looked so sad, though. She’d seen it in Beth, and she’d felt it in Evan. Well, she’d felt his mad. But “mad” was just a guy’s version of “sad.”
She gave it up and went to the rear of the van to get her bike. Her own love life wasn’t setting any heat records, after all. She sure wasn’t qualified to judge anybody else’s.
She rolled her bike into the backyard and put it away. Bella tore out to meet her, which meant Russ was home from his fishing trip. Good. She’d started to wonder about him when he hadn’t showed up by the time she’d left for the lake. She didn’t even know who he’d gone with.
Gracie was starting to fuss a little in Evan’s arms. “She needs her bottle,” he said. “But I’ll give her a quick bath first, if that’s OK, get the sand off.”
“Sure,” Dakota said absently, going up the stairs to the back door. Now that she was here, her glass was pulling at her again. She’d hang the storage unit with Evan, and then she’d get back to her piece, and by the end of tomorrow, if she had another day like today, she’d be done with everything but the soldering.
She was opening the door from the back-porch laundry area on the thought, going on through into the kitchen, and hearing the voices. Russ’s. And somebody else’s. Somebody saying something, low and slow, in a voice like warm molasses.
No. Not possible.
She was hustling now, around the corner and to her workroom.Herspace. Where Bella was sitting on one side of the gate with her tongue out, and Russell was inside, showing off the finished pieces in the corner.
Showing her best pieces, herprivatepieces. To Blake Orbison.
“Sorry I can’t offer you a beer,” Russell told Blake when they got inside the little house, which was neater and cleaner than Blake had imagined it would be.
“No problem,” Blake said, accepting the glass of iced tea. “This is the taste of home to a Southern boy.” He leaned against the kitchen counter to watch as Russell put cedar planks into a roasting pan to soak and begun to cut the fish into fillets. The cleanliness would be the stepdaughter, probably. Russell didn’t seem like the homemaker type. Grilling the fish didn’t count. Every guy could barbecue.
Blake didn’t think much of adults who lived at home, even if they traded off doing the housework in exchange. Arrested development was what it always looked like to him.
Right. So he’d judged. He wouldn’t be sharing his opinion with Russell. And sure, somebody could say that when you left college for the NFL, you weren’t exactly in a normal young-adult situation, and you didn’t have room to judge. He knew that no matter how much he loved his parents, he wouldn’t have moved back in with them. He’d have slept in his car before he’d done that. He’d wanted to be on his own—he’dlongedto be on his own—and he didn’t get why anybody else wouldn’t. Especially a guy. Maybe women were different, although his older sister hadn’t moved back home, either.
He sipped at his iced tea and looked around. There was a stained-glass piece hanging in the window that he liked a lot better than his trout. Three scarlet flowers—poppies, he thought—in extreme close-up, glowing vibrant in the light, as cheerful as sunshine. That one wouldn’t even have been a sacrifice to buy. He’d have to ask Russell where he’d gotten it. It was a surprise, though. Russell didn’t seem like a man who’d be interested in art. Must be the stepdaughter’s.
There was something else on the wall opposite, though, above the table—a couple framed photos that took his mind off the poppies. A man in a desert camo uniform and boots, crouching in the sand beside a vehicle and holding a map, with two other guys crouching beside him as he pointed something out to them. Another strangely compelling shot of the same guy lying on his bunk in a sand-colored T-shirt and camo pants, one hand behind his head, looking at the camera without a smile.
It was a serious face, an intense face, fined down and tanned desert-brown, intelligence showing in the bright blue eyes. A lean guy bulked up by the uniform, a wide receiver type made of muscle and sinew, all fast-twitch muscle fiber and quick reflexes.
Russell finished with the fish and made his halting way over to the table with his own iced tea. “My boy,” he said, seeing the direction of Blake’s gaze. “Riley.”
“Looks like he’d earned some stripes.” Blake indicated the map photo with his glass.
“Sergeant,” Russell said, all his pride there to hear in that one word.
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-three when he died. Nineteen when he joined up. Those two pictures… his commander sent me those with the letter. That one with the map? That was his last day, right before they went out. He won a Silver Star that day. They sent me that, too. Not much of a trade for my son.”
A Silver Star. That was for bravery. Blake looked again at the picture of the guy on the bunk, at the intensity in that steadfast gaze. He looked a lot older than twenty-three. “What happened?” he asked, because he got the feeling Russell wanted to tell him. Because he knew, like you did when your mother was a minister, that the dead didn’t seem quite so gone if you could talk about them. And because Russell was that thing he admired most. Mentally strong, with the guts to look your life in the face and the kind of courage that came the toughest, the kind you had to summon afresh every day to take what you had to take without whining. The kind Blake was still working on acquiring. He’d thought he had it, before. Easy to think so when you were on top of the world.
Russell said, “Have a seat,” and, when Blake did, got himself into his chair, which wasn’t easy. He looked down at his glass, rattled the ice, and said, “His squad was on patrol, came under attack. Machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades. He told his gunner to fire, cover them, and then he left the lead vehicle along with his squad leader to take care of it. They crossed over a berm and into the trenches the bastards had dug, took ’em on with grenades and assault rifles. The squad leader made it, and so did the rest of them. Riley didn’t. But that was my son. If it had to be done, he was on it. He’d never have asked anybody to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself. He took that attitude into the Army with him. Got him killed.”
“But he saved his squad,” Blake said. “He died a hero.”
People had calledhima hero. They’d talked about mental toughness, about playing when you hurt, about staying strong when you were down on the scoreboard, about holding onto your belief and doing it for the guys around you. Blake knew better, though. That wasn’t a hero. That was just a guy doing his job. The heroes… they didn’t get paid millions of dollars. They ran into buildings everybody else was running out of. They ran toward the gunfire. They risked a whole lot more than a game, or a paycheck, or even a knee. They risked it all, because it needed to be done and they could do it.
Russell said, “You think that makes it worth it? That he was a hero? It doesn’t. But would I rather have had a different kind of boy, if it had meant he’d have come home? I’ve asked myself that, and damned if I know the answer. I know I had a son I was proud of. I had no part in the man he was, but I was sure as hell proud.”
“You had to have had something to do with the man he was,” Blake objected. “I know my dad does.” Why was he thinking about his parents so much today? Being with Russell, he guessed, although there couldn’t have been two men more superficially unlike than the crusty, battered man opposite him and Blake’s courtly Virginia-gentleman professor father.
