A Soldier's Promise

Brenna doubted that statement. “Other than some specialty stores, gift shops and local antique dealers, we don’t have much. But there are malls in Libertyville, Athens and Augusta.”

“Dad has taken me to those a couple of times,” Carrie admitted.

Poor deprived child...

“But this dumb town is nothing like California, where I used to live. Out there we had tons of cool places to go, outlets and twenty-four-screen movie theaters.”

Brenna understood that moves required periods of adjustments. Some people needed a lot of time to get used to a new environment, whereas others just seemed to fit in almost instantly. Brenna had been like that when she moved to Mount Union. The people who lived here, the town itself, offered much of what she wanted, the closeness of a community along with the privacy she needed, and especially a job she appreciated for many reasons. The students came from good, mostly two-parent families and didn’t arrive at class with heartbreaking baggage every day. Brenna had had too much experience trying to deal with students’ sad home lives, and she appreciated Mount Union’s solid family values immediately.

For four years now she had done an admirable job in the classroom while maintaining the independence and separation she expected in a town like Mount Union. Okay, maybe she’d never been voted teacher of the year like Diana, but no one had ever complained about the job she did. Now here she was sitting in a backwoods cabin listening to a morose, lonely girl complain about the place Brenna had come to love. And she didn’t know how she was going to handle it.

So she took a stab at counseling even though she knew it wasn’t her strong suit. “You know, Carrie, maybe you should give Mount Union a chance. You’ve only been here a few months, right?”

The girl slumped down in her seat. “Three long, miserable months. It feels like ten years.”

“Once you make some friends...”

She sat upright. “Friends? How can I make friends when I’m not allowed to leave this—” she stared around the room as if she were watching a horror movie “—this prison.” She grabbed Brenna’s hand. “Talk to my dad, will you, Miss Sullivan? Tell him to cut me some slack. He doesn’t know anything about being a father.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. He seems like a nice—”

“You don’t understand. Not only does my dad not know anything about being a dad, he doesn’t even know me. You ask him any question about me—what music I like, what movies I’ve seen. Heck, ask him my favorite color—he won’t know. He never tried to know me. Not when I was growing up and especially not now.”

The girl was close to tears. Brenna patted her hand. “What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t your dad know you?”

“He was in the army the whole time I was a kid. He hardly ever came home, and if he did, he stayed a couple of weeks and left again. He was always in Afghanistan or Iraq or someplace.” Her eyes grew moist. “That’s not the way a family’s supposed to be, is it, Miss Sullivan?”

Brenna had no idea how to answer. Her own family situation had been very different from Carrie’s. Brenna’s father never kept a job for more than a few weeks at a time, so he was home too much. Because of her dad’s inability to find steady work, Brenna hadn’t experienced stability in her life, either, for reasons very unlike Carrie’s.

“He didn’t have to be in the army all that time,” Carrie continued. “He wanted to be. It’s like he forgot he had a family.”

Agreeing with Carrie would mean betraying Mike, a man Brenna suspected was trying in his own way to make up for lost time. To disagree with Carrie would only alienate a young girl who was opening up about her feelings. After a moment Brenna said, “You know times of war are hard on everyone, the soldiers and their families.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. My mom just told me to appreciate the times Dad was home. But truthfully, the two of us learned to get along without him just fine. We didn’t need him.” She stared down at her lap. “At least until...”

“Until what?” Brenna asked.

She remained silent for several seconds, and then a voice, soft and low, came from the hallway. “Until her mother died,” Mike said.

CHAPTER FIVE

MIKE’S GUT FELT as if it had just been slammed with a cinder block. Why had he said that? Five minutes ago, he’d gone into his bedroom to shed his dirty uniform and put on shorts and a T-shirt. He’d intended to walk Miss Busybody out the door to her car and wave goodbye. Yet, he just blurted out the one fact that Brenna could use to explain the dysfunction in his relationship with his daughter. No wonder Carrie was sitting on the sofa slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

“Dad, I can’t believe you told Miss Sullivan about that,” his confused daughter said. “I thought we weren’t supposed to talk about Mom.”

“I said until we knew people better.” His defense sounded weak, but he had advised his daughter that the tragedy they’d suffered was best kept secret until they’d settled into their new town and started over. He didn’t think his daughter needed the well-intended sympathies of people who were practically strangers. And he knew he didn’t.

Well, he couldn’t take the revelation back now. And in a way, he was relieved Brenna knew. This nosy home ec teacher had worked pretty hard the past few days to find out what was going on with him and Carrie—lying and snooping and telling him what she intended to do about his daughter—maybe she had earned the right to know. If Carrie seemed sad, there was good cause. And her depression wasn’t his fault. Well, not entirely.

In the quiet shock that had settled over the women, Mike’s sandals flapped loudly against his heels as he crossed the room. He supposed it was his responsibility to break the awkward silence and offer some sort of explanation. He started to, but Carrie stood and reminded him again of his mistake.

“You always say we shouldn’t bring this up.”

“I know. Before, when I said that, I was concerned that people would ask questions about your mom and upset you,” Mike said. “Remember all the questions you got in California, all the forms we filled out? It wasn’t easy for you.”

“No, it wasn’t, but now you just told my teacher!”

“Yeah, well, all the secrecy doesn’t seem so important now.”

Brenna stood and moved close to Carrie, making him feel seriously outnumbered. “Excuse me, Mike,” Brenna said, “but why wouldn’t you tell people about your wi...Carrie’s mother? It would seem to me—”

Here she goes again. He held up his hand. “We didn’t move here to draw that kind of attention to ourselves. We don’t need anybody’s pity.”

“Again, maybe I’m overstepping...”

Since when did that stop you?

“...but sincere sympathy is different from pity. And the people in this town—”

“I know. You all have hearts of gold.” He regretted the sarcasm the minute he said it, but he didn’t want folks patting him on the back, offering artificial condolences and advising him how to raise his daughter. He’d figure it out on his own, even if it took him until she went off to college.