One September Morning. Rosalind Noonan

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      Flint knew Stanton through Abby Fitzgerald, one of his suitemates in college back in New York. Ancient history, but they were good friends back in the day. For a time, Flint and Abby had a little flirtation going, but Abby fell hard when she met John Stanton, her Scarlet Knight. Suddenly Abby was a football fan, coaxing them on a road trip to see a Rutgers game. It was a beautiful fall weekend and they had papers due back at the Wag, but who could stand to hole up in the library all weekend when you could kill yourself late Sunday night? Abby, Fanteen, Hitch, and him—they’d been inseparable until John came along and stole Abby’s heart. Once she got an eyeful of him in a football uniform, Abby never looked twice at anyone on campus, Flint included. If anyone was destined for a happily-ever-after, it was John and Abby.

      And now this.

      It sucked. It was the shorthand of the newsroom: shit happens.

      Hopefully, you can find some meaning along the way before everything goes bad.

      Flint searches for more information about the incident with John, but so far details are sparse.

      When was Abby and John’s wedding? He counts back to a year ago June when they walked together under the crossed swords of John’s fellow soldiers. It was the last time they’d all been together, Abby and Hitch and Fanteen and him. Fanteen was pregnant with her second, and Hitch kept joking about how he was going to quit his job and become a househusband. Flint had brought Delilah to the wedding, and Abby had joked that she wanted an invitation to their wedding. Ha-ha. Again, the commitment thing. Delilah had loved hearing that, though she was still waiting. Waiting for Flint to become the marrying kind? Waiting for freakin’ Godot.

      John’s death here in Iraq is going to be a huge story. The guy was already considered a hero. One of the best college running backs this decade, and then a star player for the Seattle Seahawks who left a promising career in the NFL to enlist in the army with his brother. And now that John had made the ultimate sacrifice, well, the media is going to go wild.

      “Can you say ‘feeding frenzy’?” he mutters.

      Will Abby give him an exclusive interview? Is he slimy enough to ask?

      Any reporter worth his salt would have been on the phone already, but Flint is still unsure. Abby was his friend. She is his friend, unless you factor in the fact that they haven’t had any contact beyond joke e-mails for the past year. Is he a scumbag for thinking about swooping in on her? It reminds him of the joke: When you X-ray the chest of a reporter, is there any dark spot for a heart?

      On the other hand, shouldn’t he e-mail and offer his help? Abby is his friend, and she could use someone from the inside to help her field the media. He’d like to help, and it looks like he’s stuck here for at least another day or two with this wind storm brewing. On second thought, the wind storm is going to keep other reporters from flying in. He opens his mail files to send Abby an e-mail.

      In the meantime, he can always join a convoy heading over to Camp Desert Mission and see what’s what. Stanton’s brother, Noah, is stationed there, too, a medic, the report says. Maybe Noah wants to talk. He scrolls through his address book and clicks on Abby’s name. He’ll offer to help, and if it delays his return to Seattle, he can tell Delilah it’s business.

      Which it is.

      Sort of.

      Chapter 9

      Fort Lewis

       Abby

      “What time did it happen?” Abby asks. “I don’t have that information,” Sgt. Jason Palumbo answers, thoughtfully tapping one finger against the rim of his mug of tea.

      Having spent the past few hours in her kitchen with him, Abby no longer finds him intimidating. The sergeant is the messenger, her only line of access to John’s whereabouts, and oddly she feels compelled to hold on to this man as if he offered a lifeline.

      “We do know that he was shot during a warehouse raid, sometime yesterday,” he adds.

      “Yesterday…” Abby says.

      “And their day is our night. They’re eleven hours ahead,” Suz reminds her, dumping the wet coffee grounds so that she can start a fresh pot. “What time did you have that dream?”

      “In the middle of the night. Though it wasn’t so much a dream.” Abby bites her lower lip. “It felt like he was right here with me. His side of the bed was even warm.” She hugs herself and closes her eyes, trapped between the memory and the raw pain of here and now. She has said too much, exposed an open wound. “I know it sounds crazy.”

      Suz leans back and fingers the charm strung around her neck, a golden “S” that was a gift from her husband. “Honey, when you look up crazy in the dictionary my picture’s printed there. What did John say to you?”

      “He just said my name, over and over.” Abby rakes one hand through her dark hair and holds it in a knot at the back of her neck, remembering. “At one point, the room was rocking and rumbling. The pictures and bowls on my bureau were shaking. Did we have an earthquake last night?”

      “Not that I know of, but then I’ve been known to sleep through tornadoes.” Suz turns to Sgt. Palumbo. “You read about anything rocking the Richter scale, Sarge?”

      “Nothing that I’ve heard about,” he says. The casualty assistance officer does not strike Abby as a man who believes in the supernatural, though Abby doesn’t sense that he’s judging her. Instead, she perceives concern, sympathy. And she’s come to appreciate that tiny spot on his chin where he nicked himself shaving. Against the smooth fabric and shiny buttons of his dress uniform, it’s nice to know he’s a human being.

      “Well, I say it’s all more than a coincidence, you seeing him in your dream and now this.” Suz punctuates the end of her sentence with the whirring bean grinder, then dumps the fresh-ground coffee into the filter. “Quite a coinkeedink, if you ask me. I wonder what he was trying to tell you.”

      “I don’t know.” Was there a message? Abby wonders, feeling revived by the earthy smell of ground coffee beans. Or was John just making one last connection, saying good-bye? She presses her lips together to ward off tears. And here she was thinking she’d gone beyond tears to numb denial.

      “I didn’t hear Scott’s voice when he was killed,” Suz says, leaning against the kitchen counter. “I sure would have liked to. Could’ve used a few tips on how to get the car started on wet days, where to reinvest his four-oh-one-K.”

      Pressing a napkin to her eyes, Abby feels comforted by her friend’s ramble.

      Beyond the kitchen, her house is swollen with people who’ve brought casseroles, cold cuts, and fruit, flowers and deepest regrets. Glancing out at them from the arched kitchen entry, watching two women move respectfully past her Monet print, Abby has the feeling that her entire life is being turned inside out, giving all the world a view of the snags and broken fibers she has held in her pocket all these years. It’s a raw, vulnerable feeling only somewhat softened by the warm support of the military community, which she did not fully embrace in her time here at Fort Lewis. John was the one who dove in willy-nilly, and now Abby, a more private person, is being forced to open up and let strangers in.

      You’re going to love the Northwest, John told her when they first learned of his assignment at Fort Lewis. It’s a beautiful slice of СКАЧАТЬ