Amber Leigh Williams - Navy Seal Promise

“You’re afraid of Mavis,” Harmony noted. She shook her head. “I thought you big SEAL types were fearless.”

“Not entirely.”

“What else are you afraid of?” she asked experimentally.

He turned thoughtful. Again, his smile slipped. She wondered at the hitch before it vanished, and he responded. “Sharks.”

“It’s a good thing you’re home then,” she pointed out. She touched him, to assure herself again that he was really here. “You won’t find many of those inland.”

“I guess.” He looked over her head, saw the people watching and waiting. “I shouldn’t keep you. Your fans’ll want a piece of you, too.”

“Work, work,” she said, grinning.

He bent down, placing his lips against her cheek. “Amazing flying out there,” he told her, lingering. “I’m proud of ya.”

“The biplane’s next,” she told him, ignoring the little stir in her blood. It was little, after all. “You could tag along.”

He barked a laugh as he backed off, knowing her penchant for flat-hatting. “I live dangerously enough on your mac-and-cheese.”

“Ah, come on!” she chided.

“Not on your life, Carrots!” he shouted back. Lifting his chin to her, he disappeared into the throngs of spectators to join James, leaving her as spooled up as she had been in the cockpit of the old warplane.

* * *

DUSK FALLING ON The Farm was the essence of tranquility. As night approached, there was both a hush and a crescendo. Everything stilled. Even with the sun gone from the sky, the heat didn’t dwindle, but it banked, the air breathable once more. As the light faded, the sound of night bugs—crickets and cicadas—escalated. Amphibians struck up the tune, adding throaty backup vocals to the noise of the backcountry twang. Their combined pitch heightened to that of a diesel engine. After his time away, it was like a homecoming symphony from Mother Nature’s Philharmonic.

The mosquitos were out, but the farmhouse’s back porch screened them from feasting on flesh. Through the open window, Adrian and Mavis could be heard arguing lightly over the dish washing.

On the porch, James puffed a cigar. In his youth, he’d been a man of many vices. He was no longer controlled by substances. His weekend after-dinner Montecristos were his only remaining weakness. He tipped his head back, blowing rings into the air, looking every bit the striking, aging pirate. At fifty-four, he still cut an impressive figure, especially in the flickering light of Adrian’s tiki torches.

Kyle soaked it all in. The sweet scent of his father’s stogie. The familiar tumble of the land, rising and falling under wild grasses to the stable and pastures. A horse nickered in the distance. The animals’ slow-grazing silhouettes were fading against the inky backdrop of trees.

Some pockets of the world remained untouched. That certainty was what Kyle escaped to when the fighting was over. Change was inevitable. Cities moved forward. Small towns turned to progress. Backcountry places like this developed. People changed. Grandparents passed. Engagements broke. Teammates burned out or chose to leave the service to save their families. Some of them never saw the beauty of their final homecoming.

The Farm was rare. The way of life went on unceasing, the pace unbroken. It persisted and endured. Yet that shift in barometric pressure could be sensed here, too. The storm was gaining speed in the Gulf and hadn’t altered course. It would make a wet landing somewhere between Perdido and Pensacola. Home and business owners were already battening down in preparation for the first seasonal run-in with the tropics. Soon Kyle would help James and Adrian stable the horses, round up the litter of puppies spring had given them and board the windows.

The storm was small enough not to worry too much. The Farm would most likely remain unscathed. For now, Kyle drank an icy glass of tea and let his father smoke. “How bad is it?” he asked out of curiosity.

“What’s that?” James asked, turning his head from the view.

“The aviation industry,” Kyle indicated.

James took a final puff from his cigar, eyeing Kyle over the brown stump. Releasing a ragged stream of smoke, he leaned forward in his patio chair and stabbed it out in the tray at the center of the table. He’d take the tray out in the yard and dump it before going back inside, so the ashes didn’t get caught up in the breeze and dirty Adrian’s furnishings. Such courtesies between Kyle’s parents were simple and commonplace, performed with unspoken poignancy that was touching in the extreme. “It should be booming.”

“But it’s not,” Kyle surmised, daring his father to challenge the assumption.

James did a few more quick stabs with the Cuban before depositing it in the tray. Dragging a hand through his mop of hair, he settled back with a creak from the chair. “There’ve been some ruts in the road.”

“And?” Kyle posed the question again. “How bad is it?”

James folded his hands over his middle. “I’ve been a businessman for thirty years. I haven’t lost one entrepreneurship yet, and I’m not going to now.”

“No matter the cost?”

James hesitated. He glanced toward the window where Adrian and Mavis were talking. When he spoke again, his voice lowered to a murmur. “Those two are the chief reasons B.S. has to survive.”

Kyle frowned. “There’ll be collateral damage if it doesn’t,” he realized, trying to read James. It wasn’t easy. The man could bluff like a maverick and not just at the poker tables. “What did you mortgage? The cottage on the bay isn’t big enough. Was it the auto shop? Please tell me it wasn’t Flora or the nursery.”

“It wasn’t any of those,” James mused, no longer meeting his son’s eye. “It was a sure thing. Byron Strong went over the business plan. The best advisers on the coast took a look at the specs. The application market was ripe for new pilots. The only issue was lack of local training opportunities, but we fixed that with the teaching base of B.S.”

“So what’s the issue?”

“I don’t know, exactly. We’ve had two big contracts fall through based on minute technicalities. We’ve had farmers shy away after weeks of negotiation. Even advertising has had its windfalls.” James released an unsteady breath. “It was The Farm. I mortgaged The Farm to get B.S. off the ground.”

James might as well have pulled a WWE and hit Kyle over the head with his chair. For slow-winding seconds, he felt as if he were being choked out by one of his SEAL teammates.

Dragging oxygen into his lungs, he worked to clear the bright pinpoints in his head that told him blackout was imminent. Gripping the arms of his chair, Kyle stared at his father in something close to horror. “You...gambled The Farm?”

“Like I’ve been trying to explain to you, it wasn’t a gamble.”

Kyle pushed up from the seat. He braced his hands on his hips and walked to the far side of the porch. There were potted plants in most every variety hanging from chains, stacked on shelves and pedestals...and he couldn’t breathe. “Son of a bitch,” he hissed.

“Kyle,” James said, climbing to his feet, too. “It’ll be all right. We won’t lose. I don’t lose. The Farm is your birthright. Nothing’s going to change that.”

“Mom let you do this?” Dark gathered on the porch with only the torches to make up the distance between him and his father. “She knew what you were doing?”

“Of course she knew,” James said, insulted by the insinuation that she might not. “I’m always up-front with your mother. You know this.”

“Did you sell her the same old line of bull—that it was a sure thing? That we’d all come out smelling like roses?”

In a weary motion, James dipped his hands into his pockets. “Son. You’re angry. I get that. But there are no lies between your mom and me. There’s no subterfuge. We couldn’t be what we are if there was. It’s the same with you. Haven’t I always given you the truth, straight up?”