Her Military Man

“But, Felix, I—”

He sobered. “Look, you know how I hate being the heavy, but remember that talk we had the other day?”

“A-about my ratings?” Her gaze plummeted to her scuffed brown boots.

“Yeah. How they’re the lowest in this station’s history—and that’s saying something, considering some of the junk we’ve had on the air.”

“But, Felix, I told you just as soon as folks realize how important caring about others’ feelings and incorporating manners into their everyday lives is, that—”

“Manners schmanners,” he said with a glint of his right gold canine. “All I care about are advertising dollars. Get this guy back on by the time I’m back from my trip, or your show’s in the can.”

Felix blustered off while Renee-Marie wandered in. They’d only been friends for a little under a year—the time Constance had been doing the show. Before that, Constance had worked more than a dozen small jobs that never seemed enough to pay the black hole of bills that came along with being a single mom.

She’d always dreamed of going to college, maybe earning a degree in history or literature to match her love of all things eighteenth and nineteenth century, back when everything seemed more…civilized. She’d fantasized about using that degree to work in a big city museum. Or the ultimate dream—penning a historic novel.

But then her and Garret’s relationship had moved to the next level, and suddenly being with him in every way a man and woman could—even though technically they’d still been teenagers—had meant more than future career aspirations. Her love for Garret had been like a living, breathing entity all its own. He’d made her feel cherished and safe and beautiful and interesting and above all, loved.

She’d have done anything for him—anything. Meaning, when she’d discovered she was pregnant a week before graduation, she’d loved him enough to let him go. To want him to follow his own dream of getting out of Mule Shoe, out from under his deceased father’s lengthy shadow.

“Felix doesn’t really mean it,” Renee-Marie said, wrapping Constance in a warm hug. “About firing you if you don’t track down that caller. You know how he is. Meaner than a crawdad with somebody dunking his tail in boilin’ butter. This’ll all blow over.”

Constance wished she could be so sure.

One thing was for certain, if the caller was Garret, he’d be easy enough to find. His mother lived only ten miles from Constance. All she’d need do was head that way, then politely inquire whether or not her son was in town.

On the one hand, if the caller was him, and if by some miracle Constance got him to agree to make a few guest appearances, then what? Yes, her much-needed job would be safe, but what about her most closely held secret?

“You going to be all right?” Renee-Marie asked.

“Maybe,” Constance said. Assuming Felix knocked off his foolish insistence on her old beau joining her show.

GARRET UNDERWOOD switched off the kitchen radio, wincing when the sudden movement stung deep within his bum left leg. Two months earlier, he’d busted it jumping from a helicopter onto a ship’s deck in choppy seas. Diagnosis? Comminuted fracture of his proximal femur. Docs fixed him with a steel rod, meaning no cast but plenty of pain. Recovery time? A good three or more months, which—taking into account time already served—left a minimum of three weeks to go.

He was now up to his neck in physical therapy. Plenty of weight-bearing exercises that left him aching, but if that’s what it took to get back on the job, so be it. His doc had yet to make a final decision as to whether or not he’d even still be fit to return to duty. He said he was waiting to see final X-rays to give his ultimate okay. Garret didn’t need pictures to tell him he’d be fine. He had to be. For if he no longer had his work, where did that leave him?

Lord knew he couldn’t spend the next fifty or so years stuck back in Mule Shoe.

He looked up to see his mother smiling. She calmly asked, “Mind telling me what that was all about?”

“What?”

She’d passed the morning in her garden, picking the first of that season’s green beans, zucchinis, cukes and tomatoes. She’d started her crop early in her greenhouse, placing her well ahead of everyone else’s garden game. At sixty, wearing jeans and a Rolling Stones T-shirt, Audrey Underwood looked a damn sight younger than he felt.

Tapping the portable radio she’d unhooked from the waistband of her jeans, she said, “I heard the whole thing. You do know Miss Manners is her, don’t you? Your Constance? The station has a billboard of her out by the cattle auction.”

“Yeah,” Garret said, trying not to glare, but not quite succeeding. “I know it’s her.” How many other people in the county had heard him make a complete jackass of himself? “But even if you did hear me, what makes you think I was talking about her?”

“Oh,” she said, setting her basket loaded with greens on the white tile counter beside the sink. The homey sight of her bountiful harvest completed the already disgustingly pleasant space. Yellow-flowered wallpaper set the tone for white cabinets and a worn brick floor. The flood of sunshine streaming through every paned window on the south wall didn’t do much for his mood, either. Where was a stinkin’ cloud when a guy needed one? “Maybe I don’t believe you’re over her because even after all this time, you still won’t say her name.”

Laughing, shaking his head while wobbling to his feet, he said, “Give me one good reason I should? That girl’s a snake.”

“That girl’s a woman now.”

He snorted. “A woman who ran off and married my best friend, then had his kid.”

“They’re divorced. Have been for quite some time.”

“And I’d care why?” he asked from in front of the picture window overlooking blue sky and rolling green pasture where a half dozen Herefords stood chewing their cud. Twenty or so stubby oaks dotted the landscape that otherwise consisted of nothing much but alfalfa and ragweed reaching as far as the overgrown fencerow serving as the boundary between his mom’s property and the Griggs’s. Though his dad had been gone for nearly twelve years, Garret remembered like it was yesterday when the two of them used to walk that fence, checking for breaks, mostly just swapping guy stories.

Though his dad, Ben, had been an attorney by trade and only a part-time farmer, he’d loved the land. He’d made sure that financially, Garret’s mother could live in the rambling two-story white Victorian plopped on the edge of five hundred acres of pasture and forest for as long as she liked or was able.

“Honey,” she said, stepping up behind him, resting her hand on his shoulder. “Let it go. Let her go.”

“What makes you think I haven’t?”

She shot him The Look. The one he’d always hated, because no matter how many missions he’d fought, or how many hellholes he’d barely made it out of, it was a look that instantly reduced him to a scraped-knee kid all of about eight. “How do pork chops sound for dinner? Mashed potatoes. Maybe sugar peas and a peach cobbler with plenty of ice cream?”

“Don’t do that,” he said, swinging about to watch as she hustled back to the sink to wash vegetables.

“Do what?” she oh so innocently sang over her shoulder.

It was no family secret the woman had been after him to settle down and give her grandkids for the past five years. But if she was for one second by way of reverse psychology suggesting he look up Constance, she could forget it. He’d been trained in all manner of mental warfare and he wasn’t about to succumb. “Never mind,” he grumbled. “Need help?”

She winked. “Only if you’re offering to get me a few dozen grandkids.”

MONDAY AFTERNOON after the longest, dullest weekend ever—but wait, he’d already barely survived that the weekend before—Garret sat in an entirely too girly white wicker rocker on the front porch of his mother’s house, trying to remember the last time he’d had fun.

For mid-April, the heat was fierce. Hot sun made even the usually blaring cicadas too weary to sing. Having been based on the East Coast for so long, he’d forgotten what Oklahoma heat was like—and this wasn’t anywhere near the prime of it.

He swigged bottled water, wishing it was beer, but his mom had strict rules about not drinking before five, and seeing how he was already in piss-poor shape, it probably wasn’t that hot of an idea to screw up his liver in addition to his leg.

Lord, how he wanted out of Mule Shoe and back to his own place in Virginia. Not that he was in the studio condo all that much, but it was the point of the matter. He needed his own space.

Far from memories being back here evoked.

Hard to believe that after all this time, after all he’d been through, all that old angst over Constance was still there. Simmering just beneath the surface.

Sitting here in the sweltering sun, if he closed his eyes and held his breath, he’d be back to their first time.

A sun-drenched May afternoon when he’d picked her up in Big Red—his old Chevy truck—for a day at the swimming hole on the backside of the Underwood land. The pond had a rock bottom and was spring-fed, meaning the water was clear and cool. Stubby oaks and maples and a few odd cedars provided dappled shade, save for the one grassy bank his dad had cleared for his mom years earlier where he’d planned on building her a gazebo. He’d died before making it happen, but at that moment, seeing how perfect the spot was for Constance to settle her oil-slicked bikini-clad bod on top of her towel, Garret was damn glad there wasn’t a gazebo mucking up the view.

Lord, Connie had been beautiful. Legs so long that every time he’d seen her in her cheerleading uniform, he’d been glad for the protection of his own football uniform’s cup.

The afternoon started out casual enough as they shared chips and Twinkies and talked in the blazing sun. Not before and not since had he ever felt more comfortable opening himself up to a woman. She’d had this way of looking at him—staring right into his soul. Made him spill secrets that in retrospect had been better off left inside. But he’d been a kid. Stupid in love. Stupid in the way she’d made him feel like the star of her life. As if being with her, he could do and be all things. With every part of his being, he’d secretly fantasized that one day, Connie would be his wife.

Later, they’d swum and laughed and took turns dunking each other. But then, he wasn’t even sure how, maybe because of the way water drops sparkled in her dark hair, he’d kissed her.

They’d been going out since just before Halloween, so it wasn’t as if he hadn’t kissed her before. Hell, most Saturday nights they’d round second base, sometimes even third, but something about this day was different. Never had they been so absolutely alone with nothing bearing witness but the blue, blue sky and a few chattering squirrels.