Bonds Of The Heart Read online

  A loud growl from her stomach had her checking the clock. Four hours had passed without her realizing. She dialed Maggie’s office to drag her to lunch. She grabbed her purse from her bottom desk drawer just as Maggie walked through the door.

  “I thought you’d never call. I was starting to waste away.”

  “You? Waste away? To what? Thin air? It’s only just a few minutes after noon.” Erica knew Maggie’s vigorous exercise routine personally after Maggie tried to get Erica involved one Saturday afternoon. She was a couch potato for the rest of the week with sore muscles she never knew she had.

  “Well…” Maggie stares down Erica as the phone rings. “No don’t answer it! I’m so hungry I could eat the whole buffet.” Maggie tried to place her hand over the phone as its ring echoed throughout Erika’s office.

  Erika checked the caller ID. “It’s my mom. As soon as I’m off we’ll leave. Sit, it won’t take more than a minute. Promise.”

  “Fine,” Maggie pouted and slumped into the chair, “but if I disappear before your eyes it will be your fault.”

  Erika laughed and picked up the phone. “Hi, mom!”

  “Erika?”

  “Mom? What’s wrong?” Erika grasped the side of her desk to keep her legs from giving out at the tone of her mother’s voice. Her mother’s voice shook. Erika’s knuckles whitened around the receiver. Maggie immediately sat up at hearing the panic in Erika’s voice.

  “I…You need to come home dear. There’s been an accident.”

  “Are you okay? It’s that damn car isn’t it? I told you get a new one.” Oh God, she hoped that was the problem her mother was calling about and not…

  “No Erika.” Her mother let out a sob. Erika crumbled to floor. “It’s your father. He’s not coming home.”

  “Daddy! No!” Erika cried, fierce sobs, that shook her entire body. She dropped to the floor pulling her knees to her chest. Tears streamed down her face, as Maggie reached her side cradling Erika in her arms. “Not daddy! Please, God, no! No, no, no!”

  Three

  ***

  “Another one, Joe.”

  “All right, Blake, but last one. Closing up soon and you’ve been here too long, knocking back a few too many. You need me to call you a ride?”

  “I’m walking.” Blake grumbled to the empty beer bottle in front of him.

  It had been two weeks since the funeral. Two weeks since laying his brother in the ground. Two damn painful weeks of memories flooding his mind. Memories of years spent muddin’ in the backwoods fields, fishing along the river, sneaking beer out back of Old Man McGee’s barber shop. There should have been more memories made. There should have been more time.

  Blake sat on the old barstool at Joe’s Tavern. The aged hardwood stool under him could cut off the circulation to most men with the hours and nights he’d spent there over the past two weeks, but the beer and whiskey helped numb his body along with his feelings.

  Somewhere inside, he knew he needed to sober up. There were new responsibilities to deal with along with his old ones. He pulled his cell phone from his back pocket and through blurry vision located his boss’s office number. He clicked one button and waited for the voicemail to pick up. It was close to two in the morning, he was drunk as a skunk and still feeling the pain but that didn’t matter. Blake nearly smiled as the voicemail picked up. If you could call a smirk a smile.

  “Bern-ie…It’s Blake…Hamilton.” He slurred. “I quit. I thought you should know.” And with one click he shut his cell and placed it on the bar.

  Blake picked up his last shot of whiskey and downed the warm amber liquid without so much as a wince. It no longer burned the back of his throat. He chased it with a few gulps of the last beer Joe had placed in front of him. Rubbing his forehead with one hand, he tried to rub away the pain of losing his brother. But it never worked. No matter how much he drank, no matter how much he drowned himself, there was no escaping the pain.

  “Blake.”

  Blake didn’t even bother to turn at the sound of the voice calling him. He didn’t want to leave just yet.

  “Blake,” the voice was gentler, “Let’s go home.”

  “Not yet.”

  The woman moved to him with a sigh. She placed one hand on the bar and one on his shoulder. “I know it hurts, honey. We’re all hurting.”

  Blake grumbled to fight off the emotions as best he could. He was never a guy to cry, but damn it he wanted to. Sometimes, alone on the couch in the living room, he did when he knew everyone else was asleep.

  “Come on, Blake. Let’s get you home.”

  Blake turned to the woman at his side. She was pale, her once-bright hazel eyes puffy and her cheeks tearstained. Her normally tidy shoulder-length hair was pulled back loosely with a clip from which wisps fell out unmanaged. The past few weeks had aged her beyond her fifty years. Blake knew they had aged him as well.

  Blake nodded and slowly unfolded himself from the bar stool. He swayed, holding onto the bar to steady himself.

  “Joe, could you help me?”

  “Sure, Mrs. Hamilton.”

  “Where’s Robbie, mom?”

  “He’s home sleeping.”

  “Good. Good.” He mumbled.

  Joe rounded the bar and draped Blake’s arm around his shoulder. He didn’t speak as he supported Blake’s weight and steadied him on the walk to his mother’s car. Outside, the cool air hit him head-on. A cool, early spring night like this one where he and Jared had gotten drunk together for the first time. They had spent all night laughing over stupid crap he couldn’t remember. Then they had spent the entire next day hung-over. But this hangover wouldn’t be with his brother. It would be just him, on the couch in his brother’s house.

  “Thank you Joe,” he heard his mother say.

  “No problem. If you need anything, you let Missy know and we’ll be there to help.”

  Blake closed his eyes and fought the urge to pass out. His mother wouldn’t be able to carry him into the house. And he didn’t want to wake up Robbie. Once home, he’d take out another beer and deal with more of the pain then. Alone.

  His mom didn’t speak on the car ride home. She never did. For the past two weeks, he’d spent each night at the bar. And almost every night, she or his father would come drag his ass home.

  “Blackie’s has to re-open,” his mother said flatly. Blake simply grunted.

  “You need to decide what you’re going to do.”

  “I already know. I quit my job.”

  There was a small gasp followed by a sigh before his mom answered. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “No. But it’s what I have to do.”

  “Blake…”

  “Not now.”

  Another sigh came from his mother. “Okay, Blake. Tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow was another day. Maybe then he’d be able to fit together some of these puzzle pieces that made up his new life. Who was he kidding? Things were never going to be as easy as that. And tomorrow wasn’t going to change anything.

  ***

  “Why did he have to go and re-enlist? He should have been retired. He promised. He broke his promise to us, mom. I don’t understand how you can just sit there and be okay with all of this. If he loved us he would have stayed. If he loved us he wouldn’t have gone off to some dangerous shit hole of a place and get himself killed!” Erika didn’t even bother to fight the tears streaming down her face. She'd been pacing in the living room for the past three hours.

  The anger was right. The anger was good. The anger was everything she needed right now. She blamed her dad for getting killed. She blamed her mother for letting him re-enlist. She couldn’t understand how her mother could be so calm through the funeral and after. Erika could hear fierce sobs at night through the thin walls, but her mother never got angry for her husband dying. She never once blamed the career her husband had chosen. And Erika couldn’t understand one damn bit of it.

  “Why? Why aren’t you angry with him? Why aren’t
you mad at them for taking him away from us?”

  “Because that’s not what your father would want. Because they didn’t take him away from us and you know that. Because this was who your father was.”

  “Does he get a say now? He’s dead! He left us to go fight in some damn war knowing he’d be taken away from us!”

  “Your father loved his job and he knew that each and every time he was deployed there was the risk of us losing him. But he fought for what was right. He did what he believed in. And I believed in him. I knew from the moment we met that this was important to him. I accepted it then and I accept it now. I wish you would accept it, Erika. It would help you not to feel so angry with him.”

  “He loved the damn corps more than he loved us.”

  “You know that’s not true.” Her mother’s head snapped up to meet Erika’s gaze. For a moment Erika was happy to hear the anger in her mother’s voice. But as her mother sighed, she knew it wouldn’t last. “Your father loved us with all his heart. He fought for this country because he knew it was his duty to do so. He believed in what he fought for. The freedoms we have are because of the men and women like him who risk their lives for us. That never meant he didn’t love us.”

  Erika crumpled into the sofa next to her mother. After all the pacing she did, she knew her exhaustion wasn’t from walking back and forth but from the emotions inside of her. She wiped the tears from her face and closed her eyes.

  “It’s not fair,” She said.

  Her mother reached her arm around Erika’s shoulders and pulled her close. Erika went willingly. “I know, baby girl. It’s not fair. It will never be fair. But we will get through this. Together.”

  Erika rested her head on her mother’s shoulders. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to get through this. She was so angry with her father and the job he had chosen. Why couldn’t he be a normal dad and have an office job? Why couldn’t he do normal things like fix cars or mow the lawn? If he wanted to fight for what was right he could have been a cop and been local. At least then some terrorist wouldn’t have killed her daddy.

  No one could possibly know how she felt. Her mother sure didn’t. Her mother’s pain wasn’t as strong as hers. No one she knew suffered as much as she did so no one would know what she was going through. She’d just have to deal with it herself.

  Four

  ***

  “Oh, Daddy.”

  Erika picked up the old photograph and ran her hand across the faces that peered back at her. Her father, proud in his dress blues, stood towering over her mother in her brilliant white, lace tiered wedding dress. The trees were lush and green behind them. The sun twinkled in their eyes and in their smiles.

  There was no trace of the swing set her dad put together when she was three. No tire swing hanging from the large oak that stood behind them. Just her parents on their wedding day in the backyard of the first house she had lived in.

  There was a brief ceremony at the courthouse a year prior to the photo being taken, right before his first deployment. Her father had promised her mother, when he returned, to give her the wedding she dreamed of. Because her mother was desperately in love with her father, she had decided on a small backyard wedding with just friends and family. She didn’t need anything more than that.

  Now, years and too many deployments to count later, Erika sat in the dusty, musty attic sifting through her father’s old items. There were boxes among boxes of trophies, medals, souvenirs, and other trinkets that he would bring back from the locations where he was stationed. Old tattered sweatshirts and t-shirts with the USMC logo, worn from years of hard labor around the house, lay folded in boxes.

  Erika pulled a box toward her side and ran a hand over the tan uniform shirt adorned with medals. Just a year ago, Sergeant Major Henry ‘Hank’ Gibbons, was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon for bravery under enemy fire. The award ceremony took place at Quantico the week before he left for Afghanistan. Erika had called that morning to wish her father congratulations. She had gotten up early just to make the phone call between time zone differences. It was the last time she spoke with him.

  “Erika?”

  She felt the fabric under her fingers one last time before she sealed the box with packing tape. “Yeah, mom. I’m up here.”

  Brianne Gibbons climbed the creaky old ladder and peeked her head into the attic. “Erika, it’s been three months. You can’t beat yourself up anymore. He did what he loved.”

  “I know, mom. I just wish he didn’t love it so much.” She'd whispered the last few words.

  “Why don’t you come downstairs and help me in the kitchen? I’ll fix you some tea.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Without a glance back to her mom, Erika lay the photo of her parents in another box full of old photo albums and sealed it shut.

  It had been three months since the funeral. In that time, she had taken a leave from her job and temporarily moved in with her mom to help sort out her dad’s belongings and to make sure her mom was okay. It had taken her mother and her that long to be able to bring themselves to begin boxing some of her father’s belongings. Erika had kept the dog tags and refused to take them off, as her father did. Her favorite t-shirt, frayed with some holes, had been her father's. It still smelled like him, a mix of musk, wood, and earth. She had barely left the house in those three months. The only time was to drive her mother to Quantico or to Culpeper to fax papers back to her office in L.A. She couldn’t bring herself to do anything more.

  With a heavy sigh, Erika stood and headed downstairs to the small kitchen. On her way, she passed her room where her suitcase lay opened on the floor next to her old bed and her laptop sat on the bedside table. She had another month before she had to return to reality, to her apartment in Los Angeles, and face each day knowing her father wasn’t coming home.

  Old pictures hung in the hallway. Erika idly trailed a finger over each as she studied them. Her first time riding a bicycle, her dad had just let go of her, arms still in the air. Her sweet sixteen birthday party she insisted on having in the backyard. Her senior prom with her father shaking her date’s nervous hand as she looked on laughing from behind them. Her parents' wedding at the court house on the front steps holding the marriage license and flashing their small gold bands. Her father and mother at one of dad’s many award ceremonies.

  So many memories surrounding her. Though she should be happy for the times they had spent together, Erika couldn’t help feeling the pain of loss and anger toward the career her father had chosen. Gripping the dog tags around her neck, she sluggishly wandered down the stairs.

  She found her mother in the kitchen looking through cupboards. From the old photos Erika had seen, time had been kind to her mother. She had high cheekbones—knife-edged some would call them—and doe eyes that were a mix of amber, gold, and brown. Her mahogany hair, once long, was cut to her shoulders for easy care. If you looked at a picture of Erika next to that of a young Brianne Gibbons you would think they were sisters, with one difference. Erika’s ice blue eyes were a gift from her father. They offset her dark hair and creamy pale ivory skin in contrast.

  She watched her mom move cans and boxes, and scribble notes on her weekly grocery list. The teapot had started to whistle and Brianne simply just turned down the heat. She moved with ease around the kitchen. Erika could remember crisp spring Saturday afternoons baking cookies with her mom from scratch. There would be flour all over the place and her father would just shake his head and laugh at the two of them covered from head to toe in white dust.

  Erika took a seat at the small dinette in the corner near the bay window. She knew she’d be the one heading off to the grocery store for her mother. Since her Jeep was the only working one at the moment, and her mom didn’t drive anything bigger than her old Ford compact, she’d get a chance to visit her daddy on the way.

  “What’s on the menu this week?” Erika asked as she picked at an imaginary spot on the small kitchen table.

  “I was thinking
chicken but I can’t find anything to go with it. I’ll have to put something together with what I have. I have some potatoes that are still good. I’ll figure something out. I don’t want you going out in the rain.”

  Erika looked out the window at the dark gray clouds that threatened in the distance. The rain wouldn’t come in for another few hours, and she knew that her car was built like a tank. Rain wouldn’t stop her.

  “Mom, my car can handle the rain. I don’t mind driving.”

  “No, no. You can go tomorrow.” Brianne waved her hand in the air as if to shoo away the topic.

  “I’d like to visit Daddy. Since I’ll be out, I can stop at the store for you anyway.”

  Brianne held one hand on the cupboard door and had a pencil in the other. She hesitated only enough that her daughter wouldn’t notice. She missed her husband terribly. She quickly jotted a few more items to her list, then closed the door. She gathered two cups and two tea bags and turned to Erika. She poured the steaming hot water into the cups and placed them on the small kitchenette. She returned with the tea bags and a small bowl of sugar. When she sat, she quietly measured her daughter as they drank their tea in silence.

  A mother knows, and she could see that Erika hadn’t gotten much sleep over the past few months. The west coast make-up she spent her money on couldn't hide the mauve color under her eyes. She was frail and had lost too much weight, Brianne thought.

  When she had decided to marry Hank fresh out of training, Brianne had resigned herself to being the proper military wife. She had moved across the country more than a dozen times, usually with Erika in tow. She knew what it was to be a soldier's wife and she never complained about it. She proudly hung the American flag from the front porch of each home they lived in, a yellow ribbon adorned to the railing at the base of the flag. She could never fault the United States government for taking away her husband. That was the work of an insurgent native, who carefully placed the IED that killed Hank and part of his unit and injured hundreds of others. She accepted that at some point in time that day would come. She had prayed it would be many years in the future, but she thanked the Lord every day for the time she was given with her husband. She was sad that her daughter didn’t have as much time as she had.