Page 12 of Hearts to Mend

She smells so good, just like I remember. My mind fills with memories of those long-ago summer nights, sneaking out of my window to be with her. Sighs and whispers between us, stolen moments of intimacy that were the foundation of our love life together. The memories hurt, and my desperate need to touch her stings me like venom from my fingertips straight to my heart.

But I can’t touch her. I don’t. And when she swings her car door open between us, I take a step back.

I’d hoped coming clean with her would open a dialogue, start a conversation, allow me the opportunity to apologize and make amends. But she’s giving me nothing. And why should she? I’m owed nothing. She didn’t even owe me the courtesy of listening, but she did. Who am I to expect anything more from her?

I stand there, resigning myself to this fate I set in motion on an awful night in Afghanistan. Back then, I’d made a choice. And choices have consequences. Watching her leave me is my consequence.

I squint into her headlights as they stretch across the yard when she backs down the drive, and it feels like the space I put between us all those years ago cracks wider, fissures spidering out to form a deep divide between us.

But she stops. Or rather, she slams on the brakes, puts the car in park, and kicks her door open, coming at me like a charging bull, all huffy and mad. “No, you don’t get to do that.”

I blink, confused. “Do what?”

“Look all sad and aggrieved with your soulful eyes and your hangdog expression like I’m the one who broke your heart.” Now this is the Dee I’ve known all my life, loved all my life. “You did this to me. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I know.”

“You don’t get any high ground here. That’s mine. You take the low road. You…you… Asshole!”

As much as I want her to get this out, to give me what she feels I deserve—and I do deserve every word of it and worse—she’s yelling very loudly, and that worries me for other reasons. I glance across the yard to my brother’s old house, the rental where Drew and Chloe are staying, where my son is enjoying an evening playing with their cats, and quietly beseech Dee, “Come back inside, please? I don’t want Matty to hear us fighting. He’s had enough of that.”

Dee’s face falls, a stricken look of guilt clouding her expression. She glances around at the night surrounding us and speaks in little more than a whisper when she says, “I don’t want to go back in there.” She looks past me toward Mom’s house. “It’s too much…history. Can we walk instead?”

“Of course.”

I’m surprised, honestly. I didn’t think she wanted to talk to me at all, but that’s Dee for you, always full of the best surprises. So I follow as she reaches into her car and shuts off the ignition before closing it up, and we meander down Mom’s driveway to Lazy River Road.

We head left, farther up the hill. It’s a stretch of road we’ve walked countless times together, arguably more haunted with memories of Dee and me than Mom’s house. All those times as kids racing each other to the creek and shooting cans off fence posts with my BB rifle. And then, those times as teens when we’d come out here for a moment alone in the darkness, fumbling toward a new kind of love under the boughs of Old Man Fogler’s live oak tree. This time, there will be no cover-of-darkness make-out sessions, no fumbling toward anything except maybe—hopefully—some version of restored friendship.

We walk slowly, side by side, Dee with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, me trying to stay loose, approachable, ready to listen to her side of this mess I made.

The moon hangs low in the sky, glistening off the shards of tall prairie grass flanking the asphalt road. Stars blanket the darkness, blinking and winking and falling all around us.

This view of the sky is second to none. Even in the darkness of an Afghan winter night, no vision of the universe there ever felt quite as glorious as this view of the cosmos from home. Still, I looked up, spotting familiar constellations, taking in the wonder of the universe. It made me feel connected to this place, even as I was set adrift by war.

Somewhere in the distance, a coyote cries out, and soon another responds, connecting in the dark. Dee’s steps falter. She always loved the call and response of the coyotes out here, listening closely to the notes of their howls like she was deciphering the lyrics of some song, a love ballad.

Now, their song sounds too sad, too lonely. And as we’re serenaded by this lost love ballad, Dee turns to me and asks, “Where is Mateo’s mom now?”

I close my eyes, not wanting to talk about Theresa. But this is the most important part of anything I tell Dee. She can’t forgive me until she can trust me, and she’ll never trust me if I don’t tell her everything. So I answer her on a gust of breath, like I have to force the word out of me. “Prison.”

Dee blinks one moment, and her eyes go wide the next. She wasn’t expecting that response, but who would? After my dad’s stroke and Dee’s mom’s overdose, my mom and her dad struggled as widowed parents, but they both managed to provide stable homes for us kids. Prison, let alone jail, was never a reality for us, and thank God for that.

Dee stares up at me, patiently waiting for more.

So I give it to her. “She was in my platoon. Injured in the same attack that killed my LT. I think I started to care for her and look out for her to make amends to John. I couldn’t save him, so I would save her… Though, in the end, I failed her too.”

Dee frowns at me and looks away, down at our feet planted a few paces apart on the blacktop, which is still warm from the day’s sun. I don’t know how much detail she expects from me, so I start talking, expecting she’ll cringe or blow her air horn when she wants me to stop.

“When she returned to duty, we got closer. Then…” Here we go. “One night, I was feeling lonely and sorry for myself, and…it happened.”

“It happened. What, like osmosis?”

Fair point. I need to own my mistakes if I ever want her to forgive me for them. “I got drunk. We had sex. I got her pregnant.”

“Why didn’t you use protection?”

“I did.” I cringe. I can’t believe I’m talking to the love of my life about whether I used a condom when I fucked another woman. “It broke.”

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