A Soldier's Heart

How are you doing, Mary Kate? Really? How it must have pained Kenny to leave her, especially to let her see him dwindling away from cancer. No doubt Kenny would have preferred to go out in a blaze of glory fighting a fire.

Just as he’d rather have been standing a few feet closer to that bomb—to have died quickly and cleanly instead of coming home mutilated.

He glanced from her hands to her face, seeing there the look he dreaded. “I don’t want your pity.” He ground out the words, because if he didn’t he might scream them.

“I’m not pitying you for your injury. I’m just sorry you’ve come home such a jerk.” She leaned toward him. “Come on, Luke, admit it. You’re not going to get out of this. The U.S. Army won’t release you until they know they’ve done their best for you. You’re lucky they let you come home for the therapy, instead of keeping you in the hospital.”

“Luck is not a word I associate with this.” He slapped his useless legs, getting a stab of pain in return.

“Fine.” Her voice was crisp, as if she’d moved into a professional mode where friendship had nothing to do with them. “We both know I’m right.”

He’d like to deny it, but he couldn’t. If the army wanted him to have this therapy, he’d have it if they had to drag him kicking and screaming. Not that he could do much kicking.

“Okay.” He bit off the word. “When you’re right, you’re right.” At least with Mary Kate, he was over the worst—that moment when she looked at him and saw the ruin he was.

Surprise and relief flooded her face. “That’s great.” She shuffled the forms, picking up a pen. “We’ll send the van for you tomorrow—”

“No.”

She blinked. “But you said—”

“I’ll do the therapy, but I’m not going anywhere. You can come here.” Conviction hardened in him. He wasn’t going out where anyone might see him. “And don’t bother telling me you don’t do that. I know you do in-home therapy.”

“That’s true, but we have equipment at the center that you don’t have here. There’s a therapy pool, exercise bikes, weight machines—all the things you might need.” She dangled them like a lollipop in front of a recalcitrant child.

“So we’ll improvise. That’s the deal, M.K. Only you, only here. How about it?”

If she reacted to the high school nickname, she didn’t let it show. Obviously she’d toughened up over the years. Still, she had to be easier to deal with than those hard-nosed army docs who’d outranked him.

“I can’t authorize something like that.”

“Then go back to your boss and get him to authorize it. Deal?”

She must have seen this was the best she could hope for, because she shuffled the papers together and shoved them back in her bag. Her lips were pressed firmly together, as if to hold back further argument.

“I’ll try. I can’t speak for the director, but I’ll tell him what you said.”

“Good.” Well, not good, but probably the best he was going to get. He watched her hurry to the door, as if afraid he’d change his mind.

He wouldn’t. He’d drag himself through whatever torture she devised, because he couldn’t get out of it, but in the end it would amount to the same thing. Whether he was in a wheelchair or staggering around like an old man with a walker—either way, his life was over.

The butterflies in her stomach had been replaced by the tightness in her throat that said she’d bitten off a lot more than she could chew. Mary Kate drove down Elm Street toward her parents’ house, glancing at her watch. It was too late to catch Mr. Dickson at the clinic. Her revelation of the terms Luke had put on his therapy would have to wait until tomorrow.

How would Dickson react to that? She honestly didn’t know her new employer well enough to guess. He might be relieved to have a difficult situation resolved. Or he might think that she had overstepped her bounds and used her friendship with Luke to gain the case for herself instead of persuading him to come to the clinic.

It’s not as if I have a choice. You understand that, don’t You? I have to take care of the children, so I have to do whatever it takes to succeed at this job.

Sometimes she thought these running conversations with God were all that had kept her going throughout the past year. Even when she’d been venting her anger, raging at the injustice of Kenny’s death, she’d been aware of God’s daily presence. She might have been furious with Him, but she’d always known He was there.

I’m sorry—I’m thinking too much of myself. Please, be with Luke. Let me be the instrument of Your healing for him.

She pulled into the driveway. Shawna’s and Michael’s bicycles lay abandoned on the front lawn, but they were nowhere to be seen. She slid out, leaving her bag on the seat, and hurried toward the door. The visit to Luke had taken more time than she’d expected, so her parents had had the children for a longer time after school.

Not that they minded. All the members of her large family were only too eager to help her since Kenny’s death. She appreciated it. She just hated needing it.

She walked into the living room. The chintz furniture always looked a little worn and the coffee table bore the scars of the six children who’d been raised here. And now her own two would be here too much, probably, since she’d started work. Her parents deserved to relax in their retirement, not take care of her children.

“Mom?” She crossed to the kitchen, drawn by the aroma of baking chicken. “I’m here.” She’d almost said I’m home, the phrase the Flanagan kids had always shouted when they rushed in from school or play.

The phrase said that you belonged, that here you were important and valued and sure of your welcome. She thought again of Luke. How must it feel to him to be back in the house where he’d grown up, with his mother gone?

Maybe similar to the way she felt now each time she came here—torn between longing for the reassurance she’d felt as a little girl in this place and feeling as if she ought to be able to handle everything on her own.

“Mary Kate.” Her mother straightened from bending over the oven door, pushing the pan back inside. Her cheeks were rosy from the heat and her dark hair curled around her still-youthful face. “You’re just in time. Supper will be ready in fifteen minutes. I promised Michael biscuits with the chicken.”

Siobhan Flanagan never seemed to look any older—or at least any less beautiful. Why couldn’t she have inherited her mother’s ageless beauty instead of her father’s red hair and freckles?

“You don’t need to feed us. We can go home for supper.” And have frozen pizza again.

“We want you to stay. Your father and I can’t eat all this chicken by ourselves.”

She should take the kids, go home, prove to herself that she could manage the whole working-single-mother thing. Still, it was a family joke that after cooking for so many for so long, her mother couldn’t fix a meal for two. Twenty, maybe, but not two.

“You spoil us.” She’d work on self-reliance tomorrow. “Where are the kids?”

“In the backyard, playing ball. I’ve been keeping an eye on them from the window.”

Shawna and Michael were fine. Of course they were. So what compelled her to step out onto the back porch, just to be sure?

“Hi, Mom.” Shawna waved a bright red plastic bat. “Look at the neat ball set Grandpa got for us.”

“Very nice.”

Michael came running to give her a hug. She held him tightly for an instant, wondering how soon he’d begin to emulate Shawna’s independence, making these embraces a thing of the past.

Michael squirmed out of her arms. Looking at his blue eyes and golden red curls was like looking into a mirror. Everyone had always said the kids had little of their daddy in their appearance. That hadn’t bothered her too much until Kenny was gone.

“Grandpa says the ball set is ours, but we should leave it here to play with when we’re here,” Michael said, with his typical determination to do everything according to the rules. “They’re our Grandpa’s house toys.”

“That’s a good idea.” She ruffled his red curls. “I’m going in the house with Grammy. You two stay right in the yard, okay? If you hit the ball outside, you come and tell me. Don’t go after it yourselves.”

“We know, Mom.” Shawna gave an exaggerated sigh.

Was she being overprotective? Maybe that was inevitable. She’d learned that disaster could strike just when everything seemed fine.

She went back into the kitchen, to find her mother pouring glasses of iced tea. She handed one to Mary Kate. “It’s so warm for the first of May that I thought I’d make iced tea. So, tell me. How did it go with Luke? Did he actually let you in the house?”

“Not exactly let me in. I’m afraid I barged in.”