Julia Spencer-Fleming - One Was a Soldier

Around her, the world exploded. Clare hurtled out of the vehicle, flat on the hard, packed ground, shellburst and fireworks and her own terrified shout echoing around her, and there was the road, and the burning truck, and the blood-soaked body with its throat gaping wide and she heard the relentless hail of automatic weapon fire and the dogs barking and her heart pounding out of her chest and they must be everywhere and they were surrounded-

– and then the world tilted again and she was lying on a wet street in Lake George, hard needles of rain pelting her as a late-season thunderstorm roared and crashed overhead.

She staggered up off the road and got back into the Jeep. Her stomach lurched with nausea. She covered her face with her hands and breathed. Eventually, her pulse slowed to something close to normal.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. Let’s try this again.” She left her umbrella in the car, figuring the damage had already been done, and crossed the street. Inside, she took the stairs two at a time to the office hallway.

Julie McPartlin’s door was open, but she was on the phone. She flashed Clare five fingers and pointed toward the parish hall. Okay. Her little whatever-it-had-been hadn’t made her late. Clare peeled off her coat and continued down to the large, wooden-floored room.

“Hey, darlin’.” Russ gave her an obvious double take. “What happened to you? You’re half soaked.”

She hesitated. “It’s really coming down out there.”

He frowned as he took her coat. “Here. You’re going to want this.” He handed her a tall cardboard cup of coffee.

“Ohhh, God.” She took a drink. The hot, sweet brew cut through her exhaustion and settled her tight, queasy stomach. “Thank you. You have no idea how much I needed this.”

He wrapped his arms loosely around her. “You look like hell.”

“Flatterer.” He kept on looking at her in that way he had, the way that wouldn’t let her evade or change the subject. “It’s been a long day,” she finally said. “I think this thing with Will Ellis has… shaken me up more than I’d like.” She didn’t want to leave it there. She wasn’t ready to talk to Russ about everything that was going on in her head. “Also, my mother’s driving me crazy about the wedding.”

Russ nodded. “How is the Ellis boy?”

“Better. It looks like he may have missed out on liver damage after all. The hematologist said that aside from his amputations, Will’s about the healthiest teen he’s ever seen.”

“Kids are hard to kill at that age.”

“Thank God for that.”

He smoothed a wet strand of hair away from her face. “What’s going on with your mother?”

She took another long drink of coffee. “You have to understand, she wanted a ballet-dancing, debutante-party-going, white-wedding sort of girl. Instead I fixed airplane engines, played basketball, and joined the army. Grace was the one who fulfilled all Mother’s fantasies.”

“Except for the part where she died.”

“Except for that, yeah. So now I’ve finally found someone willing to marry me-”

Russ snorted.

“-but I only gave her eight weeks to plan the party of her dreams.”

“It’s down to two and a half weeks now.” He smiled. “Anyway, isn’t it supposed to be the party of your dreams?”

“Clearly you do not understand southern women. So all day today I’ve been barraged with photos of mother-of-the-bride dresses, because she has to change her outfit to go with the dress your mother’s chosen, which she does not like. ‘Go with’ in this case means ‘blow out of the water.’ She also called me three times to listen to selections from the DJ she’s hired.”

“Why do we need a DJ?”

“Because there wasn’t enough time to hire a live band, which would have been much more tasteful.”

He stared at her. “But… there’s going to be dancing? Where? The Stuyvesant Inn doesn’t have enough space for that, not with all those Victorian knickknacks all over the place.”

“The dancing will be in a tent, with a dance floor, which she has rented. I’m supposed to drop in Friday after the morning Eucharist to personally agree to everything she’s already decided.”

He shook his head. “And she’s running the whole thing from Virginia. I’m beginning to suspect that if the southerners had put their women in charge, they would have won the Civil War.”

She put her cup on a long table scattered with flyers and brochures and leaned into Russ, laughing because she wanted to scream. “I’m sorry. This isn’t what either of us wanted.”

He hugged her hard and kissed her wet hair. “I don’t mind. As long as you’re there, and you say the right thing at the right time, I’m good with it. You’ve got more than enough on your plate. Your mom can do what she wants as long as it doesn’t add to your burden.”

She let herself rest against him, her cheek pressed into his name tag. She rubbed her hand over the departmental patch on his shoulder. “You didn’t have time to change?”

“I’ve got to go back after we’re done. You remember Tally McNabb? The woman at the center of that bar fight the night you got home?”

Something uneasy slithered through her gut. “Yes…”

“Her neighbor found her dead this afternoon. It looks like she killed herself. Her husband’s missing, so we have to find him and get his story before we can definitely close the case as a suicide, but-”

She opened her mouth, but she didn’t seem to have any air with which to speak. Russ broke off. “Clare? What is it?”

Her skin felt clammy. She shivered. “Tally McNabb.”

He chafed her upper arms. “Yeah.”

She found her voice. “She was in my veterans therapy group. She was in the hospital with me just two nights ago. When Will was admitted. They all came. We all came.”

“Wait. She was in your counseling group?”

Clare nodded.

“Jesus. And she was there the night the Ellis kid tried to off himself.” He rubbed his lips. “That certainly gives more weight to it being suicide.”

“She couldn’t have killed herself. She couldn’t have.”

“C’mon, let’s sit down. You look like you’re about to keel over.” He snagged her coffee and steered her across the high-ceilinged room to a more human-sized alcove furnished with several overstuffed armchairs. “Now.” He handed her the cup. “Tell me why you say she couldn’t have done it.”

She plopped into one of the chairs. “She didn’t have any warning signs. Not one. I think in many ways, she was the least troubled of us.”

Russ sat down opposite her. “Who else is in the group?”

“Russ! I can’t break their confidences. Why do you think I never mentioned Tally to you?”

“It’s not like they were confessing to you as a priest. You’re one of them.”

“Anyone who’s in therapy deserves privacy. It’s not my place to break that trust.”

He held up one hand. “Never mind. Telling me what McNabb said about herself won’t bruise your conscience, will it?”

She glared at him. “No.”

“Good. Did she ever talk about Quentan Nichols?”

“Sort of. She said she regretted what she had done in Iraq, and that she had never expected it to follow her home, but she never specifically mentioned Chief Nichols. I got the feeling she was ashamed of the whole episode.”

“Did she mention him coming to see her again? Or being in contact with her?”

“No.” Talking it over with Russ made her realize how little of herself Tally McNabb had revealed.

He nodded. “How about her husband?”

“I think things were bad with her husband. She was stressed. Plus, she was being sent back to Iraq with the BWI construction unit. She told me-she told us, on Monday, that she was going to quit instead.”