His Best Friend's Baby

“How have you been, man?” Patrick slapped a clammy hand on Jesse’s back. Jesse fought the urge to shake it off. It wasn’t Patrick so much—though he had never liked the guy—as it was anyone and everyone getting too close. Even alone in a room he felt crowded. Too many ghosts.

Jesse shrugged and the gesture apparently satisfied Patrick. “We haven’t seen you in town since…?”

“My mother’s funeral,” Jesse said carefully, his throat a solid throb of pain.

“God, right, three years ago. I thought you were still over in Iraq.” Patrick slid onto the stool next to Jesse. “I heard about Mitch. Terrible news. Just terrible.” Patrick’s belly strained against his yellow golf shirt. He ran his hand over his thinning hair. “Agnes and Ron are all messed up over it.”

Jesse didn’t smile, didn’t in any way encourage this intrusion, but Patrick didn’t seem to need encouragement.

“I’d steer clear of that house if I was you. She’d probably skin you alive if she saw you.” He laughed, as though what he was saying wasn’t the heartbreaking reality of Jesse’s life. Luckily, Jesse had grown a thick skin, from years of letting the casually hurtful and completely stupid things people said roll off him.

Billy sauntered over and threw a cardboard coaster on the bar in front of Patrick.

“What can I get you, Pat?”

“Draft and whatever Jesse here is drinking—”

“No thanks,” Jesse declined. “I’m good.”

Billy shot Patrick a look indicating what he thought of Jesse’s manners, before walking away to get the beer.

“So are you on leave or something?” Patrick asked, turning back to Jesse.

“Something.” Jesse took a big gulp of his coffee, eager to get out of this place.

“I tell you, that war…” Patrick shook his head. “Lots of good boys dying over there. Mitch Adams, I still can’t believe it. He always seemed to have a horseshoe up his ass or something—luckiest damn guy. Did you ever see that girl he married?” Patrick whistled through his teeth and Jesse had the sudden and powerful urge to smash in those teeth.

“I heard she was gorgeous,” Patrick continued.

Time to leave.

Jesse shifted, digging into his back pocket for his wallet.

“Guess old Mitch’s luck ran out.” Patrick’s well of insight was seemingly bottomless. “The whole town thought it was nuts when he went into the military after you. He could have done anything, football scholarship, anything. His mother…” Patrick wrapped his fat fingers around the pint Billy slid over.

“Will never forgive me. I know.” Her name was at the top of a long list of such people.

I shouldn’t have come in here.

Jesse threw a few bucks on the bar, drained his mug then made an attempt to stand. But his bum knee buckled. Too many hours in the car.

“Whoa there.” Patrick laughed, putting up a hand to brace Jesse. “What’d you have in that mug?”

Jesse’s arm jerked instinctually. He stood frozen, knowing exactly how he could kill Patrick with an elbow to the windpipe or the heel of his hand to the nose.

Jesse didn’t do it, of course, but he was capable of it and that was somehow worse.

“Hey, man, sorry if talking about Mitch—” Patrick looked nervous but there was something else in his small eyes, a certain morbid curiosity. The rumors had made it home. “Terrible accident.”

If Jesse stood here long enough, maybe Patrick would just come right out and ask what he clearly wanted confirmed. But Jesse didn’t have time to pussyfoot, he had a house to get rid of and a life to get on with, so he took pity on Patrick.

“I killed him.” Jesse said. “I killed Artie McKinley and Dave Mancio. I put Caleb Gomez in the hospital. And I watched Mitch Adams burn up in his helicopter.” He patted Patrick on the back, like the good friend Patrick had always wished him to be, and limped away.

Mitch ghost dogged Jesse out the door.

The bright sunshine blinded him. Jesse blinked and gave himself a second to adjust before tackling the steps down to the asphalt parking lot.

A hot wind blew down from the mountains, carrying the smell of tar and sun-warmed grass. The scent of the southern California desert reminded him all too much of being a boy.

He’d grown up in this town on the edge of nowhere, and if it weren’t for the damn house his mother left to him in her will, he would never have returned. The war had kept him occupied for three years, but now, thanks to the discharge papers, he could no longer ignore this little obligation.

All he had to do was get rid of the house and he could leave. Chris Barnhardt, a buddy from before the war, waited for him in San Diego with more construction work than he could handle and an interesting proposition that included the word partner.

If Jesse were a smart man, something he’d never claimed to be—he’d be halfway down Highway 101 on his way to the rest of his life. A life he could taste like clean, cold water after years choking on dust in the desert.

Instead he was in New Springs. Just him, more dust, the dumb dog he couldn’t get rid of and the ghosts.

The bright spot of reflection bounced off his Jeep’s windshield sitting the corner of the parking lot. A small woman stood next to the vehicle. Her brown hair blew out behind her like a flag. Like a warning.

He lurched to a stop.

Not this, Jesse thought, panic kick-starting his heart. Not her.

She pushed away from the Jeep and Jesse forced one foot in front of the other, inching his way toward his sister.

She had a lot of nerve. A lot of goddamned nerve tracking him down this way, ambushing him when he hadn’t been in town long enough to get his bearings.

“Hello, Jesse.” Rachel took a few steps closer. He tried not to notice the chin she thrust out as though she were ready for whatever he might throw at her.

It was exactly the way he remembered her. Even at thirty-four, she still looked like that eighteen-year-old girl who’d been so damn fired up to take on the world.

“How’d you know I was here?”

“You know small-town gossip. Mac and I got word the second you drove into town.” She tried to laugh, but it came out all wrong. Broken in all the important places.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and he was struck by how short she was. How fragile she appeared. He almost laughed as he thought it. Fragile? Rachel? As a boy he’d believed she was the biggest, tallest, strongest thing on earth.

But now she didn’t even come up to his shoulder and he could easily snap her in two.

He never figured his perspective would change.

He opened the driver door only to have Rachel slam it out of his hand. She slid along the side of the vehicle until she was right in his face. “You’re not going to run from me like you did at Mom’s funeral.”

“Get out of the way, Rachel,” he growled, not necessarily on purpose, but the effect was good.

“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Please just listen to what I have to say.”

He didn’t care what Rachel had to say, so he turned and started walking back to the bar. He’d take Patrick and his barely veiled insinuations over his sister any day.