Bonnie Winn - Rules of Engagement

“Reserves. I joined because they paid for my education.” As he spoke, he saw that she was studying him closely.

“But you stayed.”

“For a lot of reasons.”

Tess hesitated. “Are you glad you did?”

“Yes.”

Her expression shifted. “Oh.”

Unexpectedly, Cole felt the same way he did when he was writing home to the families of soldiers he’d lost. “Refocusing your grief into work can help. And it looks like you’re doing a good job here.”

“Just managing what David had already put in place.”

“Then I imagine he’d be proud of you.”

Her lips tightened. “He should’ve had so much more. He was too young to die.”

Of course he was. “He gave his life for a noble cause.”

“Did he?”

Cole wasn’t shocked. Grief had no rules, no set parameters. “Even Solomon couldn’t answer that to everyone’s satisfaction.”

She knotted a linen napkin in a jerky motion. “Maybe. Maybe not. Our dinner rush is about to begin and there’s so much I’d like to talk to you about…David, I mean.”

He needed to talk to her as well.

“Why don’t we meet after dinner?”

Her large eyes cleared marginally. “I usually stop in at the landmark Spencers when I leave…but I could let that go tonight.” She pulled a business card from the small pocket of her suit, then scribbled on the back of it. “How about eleven? At my town house? Not as distracting.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good. Now I’m afraid I have to get back to work.”

Cole nodded. “Later then.”

He watched her walk away, determined to get the answers she’d hidden under that meticulously polished exterior.

TESS HADN’T ENTERTAINED in her town house for months. Luckily her wine rack was well stocked. And she’d raided the restaurant for some decent nibbles, now arranged on the coffee table. Growing up in a restaurant meant there was always good food on the table whether it was a holiday or watching a game on television.

But the small town house itself wasn’t so easily fixed. Between her hours at work and those she’d devoted to Families of the Fallen, her compact home had become a place only to shower and sleep, a repository for clothes and not much else. And it showed. The cleaning service still came once a week so the place was spotless, but it lacked a homey warmth.

Maybe it had been a mistake to invite Cole Harrington here. But she had so many questions. There was so much she wanted to know. And she had no place else to go for answers. David’s unit was still deployed and although the officers at the base were polite, they didn’t have much time for her.

The doorbell rang and Tess ran nervous hands over the trim lines of her skirt. Belatedly it occurred to her that she should have taken time to change into something casual. The dogs barked frantically as she opened the door.

“Hi.” She leaned down, chastising her pets. “Hector! Molly! Enough.”

Undeterred, the small dogs pawed Cole’s knees, but he didn’t look annoyed. He knelt to accommodate their short stature and held out his hands. Sniffing him, they apparently approved as they quit barking.

“Sorry about that,” she apologized. “They get carried away with strangers.”

“Just being dogs.”

He sounded unconcerned and she relaxed considerably. “Thanks for coming.”

“I needed the break.”

“Were you still working?”

“The work doesn’t stop because the clock says it should.”

She gestured to the sofa. “Is merlot all right? I know it’s not trendy anymore, but my wine choices don’t follow fads.”

“Sounds good.”

He wandered over to her window, glancing around the room as she poured the wine.

She gestured toward the tray of food. “I snagged some food from the restaurant.”

He picked up an artichoke puff. “Looks better than the hamburger I had for dinner.”

She groaned. “I feel the guilt of four generations. I shouldn’t have let you leave the restaurant without insisting on dinner.”

“Hamburgers aren’t lethal.”

Tess sipped her wine. “I’m sorry I read your letters.”

“I guess that was because of your brother.”

“Yes,” she admitted.

She dug a bare toe into the hand-knotted silk rug that covered the oak floor. “I was touched by the way you wrote about the Iraqis.”

He shrugged. “They’re real.”

“And how you wrote about the men under your command.”

“Also real.”

She swallowed. “Especially the ones you lost.” She met his eyes, reacting to their startling shade of blue. She wanted to get past this small talk, to tell him that she felt as if she knew him, really knew him. That she wanted to talk with that man, the one she was sure would understand about David.

“It’s all right.”

“All right?”

“To ask what you want.”

What to ask first? She couldn’t decide. So she talked about David, about who he’d been, what had mattered to him. Then she had to know. “Were you scared?”

“Only a fool thinks he’s invincible.”

“And you’re not foolish.” She cleared her throat. “Does it bother you to talk about this?”

“It depends. Some people want to be armchair quarterbacks—telling me how it should have been done. Some people want gruesome details. It’s bad enough I lived through that part once. I don’t need an instant replay. But you want to know how it was for David. That’s different.”

“I hate to think about him being scared or alone.”

Cole’s smile was rueful. “In the Army you’re never alone.”

“David’s letters never told me how it really was over there. It didn’t occur to me when I read them that he was still being the older brother.”

“I thought you were twins.”

“He was born first, never let me forget it.” She smiled at the memory. “I wish he hadn’t felt the need to be so protective.”

“If you’re worried that he didn’t have anyone to talk to, don’t. That’s what battle buddies are for.”

“But you wrote letters that went below the surface.”

“Most of them were to my dad. He served in Vietnam. I could share things with him I couldn’t with other people.”

“It’s lucky you took the laptop.”

He paused for a long time. “Yeah. Lucky.” She wondered what he was leaving unsaid.

“Is that something many officers do?”

“Pretty much.”

“I keep thinking what a waste it was. All of it. David and the others who died. They had so much to give…now they’re just…gone. He never married, didn’t have any children. He would’ve been such a good father.” She couldn’t hide the entreaty in her voice. “Didn’t you feel that when you lost one of your soldiers?”

“I thought a lot of things. Sure, about their families they’d left behind. But, no, I don’t consider their heroism a waste.”

“When David was deployed, I was a little scared for him, but mostly proud. I believed in what he did, in how important our country and values are, how we have to keep that safe. I could recite the World War II heroics of my grandfather and his brothers by rote. And I’m not discounting what they did at that time. It mattered. Then it mattered. It was a different world back then. I don’t think there’s anything to idealize about this war.”

“What do you say to the people who thank us for their freedom?”

“What do they have to say to me? To my family?”

“Every time I lost someone under my command I struggled with what to tell his family, to let them know the sacrifice counted.”

“Your letters were kind…insightful,” she admitted. “But how do you rationalize the incredible loss of life? Especially young people who haven’t really had time to know better? Eighteen, nineteen years old? They aren’t even old enough to declare a major in college but they have to decide whether they’re giving up their lives? No. It’s not right! Not for a manufactured war.”