Sara Reinke - Backwoods

Please try to understand, Eric Braddock had written. Our family has been through so much in the last fifteen months. The last thing I want to do is hurt you or your mother any further. I want her to be happy again, and she wants the same for me. And as hard as it is to admit it, that means no longer being married to each other. I’ve found someone else, someone I want to spend the rest of my life with.

Andrew crumpled the letter in his hand, tossed it into the far corner. At about that same time, he heard a knock at his door.

“Who is it?” he called with a frown as he got to his feet.

“It’s me, Specialist Santoro.”

“Let me guess.” His frown deepened as he opened the door half-way. Leaning his arm against the jamb, he looked down at her. “You found a scrap yard closer than Long Island.”

She cocked her brow and hoisted her chin to meet his gaze, then held something out at him, a fierce, forceful gesture. “You dropped this on the floor of the garage. At least, I’m assuming it’s yours. None of the other guys around here could land a girl who looks like that.”

Surprised, he glanced at her hand and saw she held a damp, wallet-sized photograph, a headshot of a young woman, her dark hair carefully curled and arranged, a sparkling rhinestone crown perched on top of her head.

“She’s not my girlfriend.” He took the photo from Santoro. “She’s my sister.” Cradling the picture in his hand as he might have a butterfly, he carried it to his bed, placed it with the other contents of his wallet—because it must have fallen out of his billfold as he’d left the garage—and carefully smoothed it flat with his fingertips.

Hey, Germ.

He closed his eyes, imagining her again in her hospital bed, so weary and weak, she’d seemed made of glass to him, fragile and fading.

Hey, Bess, he’d replied, because as a kid, he’d lisped; Bess had been as close an approximation as he’d been able to get to Beth and the moniker had stuck, even all of those years since his last speech therapy session.

“What is she, like a homecoming queen?” Santoro asked from the doorway behind him. He hadn’t meant to leave the door standing open, hadn’t realized that he had until she spoke.

“She was Miss Alaska,” he said, opening his eyes, looking down into Beth’s radiant smile. “Eight years ago.”

“Wow.” Santoro spoke with an awkward edge to her voice, as if she recognized she had officially become intrusive, but couldn’t find a graceful way to excuse herself from the situation. “You mean she competed in Miss America?”

“No. She got sick right after this picture was taken. She couldn’t go.”

“Oh.” She laughed. “I thought that got you brownie points or something with the judges.”

“She died.”

“Oh.” Her laughter cut short. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” He glanced at her, found her staring at him, her dark eyes round, her brows lifted. “You didn’t kill her.”

Santoro blinked, the softness in her face abruptly hardening again. “No,” she said. “But that’s what people say, you know, when they find out someone’s dead. It’s called being nice.” Spinning smartly on her heel, she marched off. “You should try it sometime.”

Suzette’s meatloaf turned out to be as good as her fried chicken. The same could be said for the sex that immediately followed. She didn’t stir as he eased his way out of the bed some time later and redressed. The gin and tonic she’d downed with her cigarette had only been a nightcap to top off the countless shots of tequila she’d had in place of any food for supper. His hangover from the night before had remained too fresh in his mind for Andrew to have joined her, but this hadn’t deterred Suzette in the least. And like the night before, she’d eventually passed out, obliviously unconscious.

As he made his way to the front door, he glanced toward the living room, half-expecting to see Alice sitting in the shadows at the coffee table again, computing the square root of pi. He was almost disappointed when he didn’t.

He carried his boots in his hand as he ducked out of the apartment, not wanting to clomp too loudly across the hardwood floor and disturb Alice or Suzette. Sitting on the top step leading down to the main floor, he shoved his feet back into the shoes, and cocked his head, listening to sounds of laughter floating up to reach him.

He went downstairs and saw the lights on in the rec room. The laughter emanated from here, along with the faint sounds of music. Someone had fired up the jukebox.

Shit. The last thing he needed was for the soldiers to catch him sneaking out of the Moore residence.

Failure to comply with these instructions will result in your being arrested and charged with felony trespass on government property. He could hear Prendick’s stern voice in his mind.

Shit.

He thought about going back upstairs to the apartment and laying low until the soldiers left. They were only allowed an hour of free time in the evenings, two at most, so he figured they wouldn’t be much longer in the rec room.

But then I’ll be risking getting caught if Moore comes home early. Which would be worse, he wondered—being busted by the good doctor, with whom he’d stand a snowball’s chance in hell of staying out of jail? Or the soldiers, who at least might be sympathetic to him, understanding that he’d been getting laid, for Christ’s sake, not pilfering government secrets?

“Shit,” he muttered, moving forward, trying to stick to the shadows just beyond the spill of yellow glow coming from the rec room doorway. His plan was simple: slip past the room unnoticed, then cross the foyer, head upstairs and dart into his room with no one the wiser. And it was a good plan, too, one that probably would have went off without a hitch had Corporal O’Malley not walked out of the rec room just as Andrew crept past.

“Hey, Mister Braddock,” he called with a broad grin, entirely too loud and cheerful.

“It’s just Andrew,” Andrew replied with a cringe, glancing nervously past O’Malley’s shoulder toward the interior of the rec room.

“You know how to play eight-ball, Just-Andrew?” O’Malley asked, still with that goofy-looking half-cocked grin on his face. “You know, pool.”

“Sure,” Andrew said, at a loss, wanting desperately to escape.

“Great,” O’Malley exclaimed, hooking Andrew by the arm as he turned to call back into the rec room. “Hey, Danny! Looks like the game’s back on. I found you a new partner.”

“What?” Andrew blinked, then shook his head even as O’Malley dragged him across the threshold. “Hold on. No. I didn’t—”

His protest cut short once inside the rec room, where he faced twin pool tables, one of which stood conspicuously vacant. Several soldiers had gathered around the other, most out of uniform and in the T-shirts, sweatpants or jogging shorts worn for physical training.

Not Danny, Andrew realized in surprise. He hadn’t pictured Santoro in his mind as someone who went by Dani.

Wow, he thought.

He hadn’t recognized her at first. Her hair, normally up in a ponytail or bun, hung down to her shoulders in loose, dark waves. Her grey T-shirt hugged the trim curves of her torso, the emblazoned ARMY lettering standing out against the slight swells of her breasts. Her black shorts revealed tanned, toned legs, generous hips and a slender waist beneath.

Wow, he thought again.

“Good news.” O’Malley slapped Andrew heavily on the shoulder that left him stumbling forward. “Just-Andrew here said he’d partner up with you.”