Page 54 of Prime Time

“Why do you ask that now?”

She could feel his shrug. “I don’t know. I guess because he was always worried about what people would think of him, how the history books would read.”

“He was a great man, Lyon. The more I read about him, the more I admire him as a soldier. But I don’t think that’s what I’ll remember about him. I’ll always think of him as kind old gentleman who loved his son, who yearned for the wife long gone, who respected other people, who valued his privacy. Am I right?”

“More than you know.” He disengaged himself to scoot up until his back was resting against the headboard. Indifferent to his nakedness, he raised one knee as he pulled her up with him and cradled her against his side.

“Les was right, you know,” he said quietly.

She lifted her head to look into his solemn face. “About what, Lyon?” She didn’t want to know, but she had to ask because he wanted to tell her.

“About there being a definite reason why my father went into seclusion, about there being a secret behind General Michael Ratliff’s withdrawal from both the Army and society.”

She lay still, barely breathing.

“He came home a hero, you see, but he didn’t feel like one. Have you ever heard of the battle along the banks of the Aisne?”

“Yes. It was a major Allied victory in your father’s sector. Thousands of the enemy were killed.”

“Thousands of American soldiers, too.”

“Regrettably that’s the price of victory.”

“In my father’s eyes it was too high a price to pay.”

“What do you mean?”

Lyon sighed and shifted his weight. “He made a costly error in judgment and sent an entire regiment into a virtual slaughterhouse. It happens frequently. Officers risk their troops’ lives for the sake of a promotion. Not my father. He valued the life of every man under his command, from his officers to the humblest fresh recruit. When he realized what had happened, he was devastated. He couldn’t ever forget that his error had cost the lives of so many men, created so many widows and orphans …” his voice trailed off.

“But, Lyon, measured against his valor, one mistake is forgiveable.”

“To us, yes. Not to him. He was sickened that the battle was hailed as one of the turning points of the war. He was decorated for it. It was considered a great victory, but it defeated him as a soldier, as a man.

“When he came home and was hailed a hero, he couldn’t stand the conflict within himself. He didn’t feel like a hero. He felt like a traitor.”

“That can’t be!”

“Not a traitor to his country, but to the men who had trusted his judgment and leadership. It was a conflict he never could reconcile, so he retired from the Army and came here and shut out the world and all reminders of the lie he was living.”

They were quiet for a moment before she said, “No one would have thrown stones at him, Lyon. He was a respected man, a hero, a leader at a time in history when America needed heroes and leaders. It was a battleground that spread out for miles. Amidst all the chaos he may have thought he made a mistake when actually he didn’t”

“I know that, Andy, and you know that, but since the time I was old enough to understand his reclusiveness, I was never able to convince him of it,” he said sadly. “He died still regretting that one day in his life as though he had lived no other. It didn’t matter what the public would have thought if they had known. He judged himself more severely than anyone else could have.”

“How tragic for him. He was such a lovely man, Lyon. Such a lovely man.”

“He thought highly of you, too,” he said on a lighter note and combed through her hair.

She tilted her head back to look at him. “He did?”

“Yes, he told me you had a very nice figure.”

“Like father, like son.”

“And,” he continued, ignoring her barb, “he told me the day he died that if I was so big a damn fool to let you leave, then I deserved to lose you.”

“To which you said …?”

“It doesn’t bear repeating. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t in an amenable mood.”

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