“Who did you hear that from?” Skye demanded. “Is Mitch sleeping with someone else?”
“Ooh.” Lexi looked delighted. “So you
Skye felt herself flush. “I really hate you.”
“No, you don’t. You love me and we’ll stop teasing you now.”
“He’s not sleeping with anyone else,” Dana said. “He’s all yours.”
“You make me insane. Both of you.”
Lexi and Dana grinned at each other. “We know,” Lexi said. “It’s a gift.”
SKYE GOT HOME a few minutes before the bus arrived with Erin. Her daughter burst into the house and began talking about her day.
“I got an A on my book report,” she said as she put down her backpack. “My teacher says over the summer I need to read books that are about more than horses.” Erin wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know why.”
“She wants you to broaden your horizons.”
Skye cut up an apple and put it on a plate, then added some cheese and crackers. They sat across from each other at the table.
“What else happened today?” she asked her daughter.
“We have to bring in somebody to school our last week before summer vacation. Like show-and-tell only about work. Mandy’s dad owns a McDonald’s and he’s going to talk about that.”
“Who were you thinking of bringing?” Skye asked, hoping it wasn’t Jed.
“Mitch,” Erin said, watching her. “He could talk about being a SEAL and his leg and stuff.”
Mitch would shine in the classroom, she thought. “I think that’s a good idea.”
“You’re not mad at him?”
Skye sighed. “No. Not anymore.”
Erin nodded, then bit into an apple slice. “He made you cry.”
“Sometimes people who know each other for a long time have fights. But we get over them and are friends again.”
“So I can ask Mitch?”
“Yes.”
Erin chatted more about her day, how she’d eaten lunch with her friends and that maybe, just maybe, she would read a book that wasn’t about horses.
Skye listened and talked, but she couldn’t stop thinking about her conversation with Lexi and Dana and their assumption that she was still in love with Mitch.
It wasn’t true, she told herself. She might not be able to totally define her feelings but they weren’t love. They were complicated and rooted in the past. In time she would sort them out. Not that it really mattered one way or the other.
But as she listened to her daughter, she couldn’t help wondering what it would have been like if she’d stood up to Jed and refused to marry Ray. If she hadn’t slept with him and gotten pregnant. Where would she and Mitch be now?
MITCH STOOD outside the closed door. He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to talk to a group of people he didn’t know anything about. Joss waited patiently beside him.
“Let me answer the question,” the other man said. “Yes, you have to.”
“Technically, I don’t,” Mitch muttered.
Joss shook his head. “You’re consistent. I’ll give you that. Talk to me about the energy exercises I’ve given you.”
Something else Mitch didn’t want to do. He’d mocked and resisted and finally he’d given in and done them. Every morning he rubbed his hands together like a cartoon villain to start the flow of energy. He moved his hands up and down his body, including where his leg had been, matching his breathing to the motions. He held pressure points and cleared his mind and dammit all to hell, it had helped. His phantom pain was nearly gone. If he skipped a couple of days, it started to return.
“Because organic beef and free-range chickens aren’t enough,” he grumbled. “You’ve got me chanting and hugging trees.”
“No one is asking you to chant. Now are you going in or are you going to continue to waste my time?”
He really wanted to waste Joss’s time but knew that wasn’t the right choice. He straightened, raised his chin and pushed open the door.
Inside were a bunch of people sitting in chairs pulled into a circle. The men ranged in age from maybe eighteen to sixty-something. At first glance they seemed to have nothing in common. Then Mitch noticed a hook here, a wheelchair there. They were a support group for amputees.
Joss had been pushing the group for a while now. He’d offered Mitch the choice of times and places, but not the option of not attending. Mitch had picked an all-male session with mostly vets. At least they would have that to talk about.
“This is Mitch,” Joss said, walking into the circle and greeting several of the guys. “He’s new.”
An old guy in a wheelchair laughed. “Let me guess. He doesn’t want to be here.” The man patted his two stumps. “I don’t want to be here, either. But every week I show up.”
“Burt here is the leader of the group,” Joss told Mitch. “He’ll take care of you.”
Mitch wanted to bolt. Instead he took a seat, knowing this was where he had to be. Joss slipped from the room.
“I’ll start,” Burt said when the door had shut. “I’m Burt. I got stupid when I was twenty and lost both my legs when I played chicken with a train and lost. I still dream I can walk. Just the other night, I was walking on the beach with Raquel Welsh. Now most of you young pups don’t even know who she is, but trust me, she was something. A lady worth walking for.”
Burt grinned. “Right now I’m in a good place. If I could get you gimps to let go of your anger, I’d be in a better place. But that’s why we’re here. I’m going to drag you kicking and screaming back into the world.” His smile broadened. “Some of you I have to drag because you can’t walk, but that’s a different story. Who wants to talk?”
A man in his thirties raised his arm. The utility prosthesis glinted in the light.
“I wish I could dream about some broad,” he said. “I keep dreaming about Iraq. Every time I close my eyes, I’m back there.” He was still staring at the group, but his gaze seemed to turn inward. “I can’t turn it off. It haunts me. All of it. Then I wake up feeling the pain.” He glanced at Mitch. “My arm got burned off. It all comes back to me. Every second.”
Mitch swallowed. “I’m sorry, man,” he said.
“Yeah? Me, too.”
Mitch waited for Burt to say something, to help, but the old man was silent. Finally the one who looked like he was barely eighteen said, “You try sleeping with a dog?”
They all looked at him. Even Burt seemed startled.
“Cliff, there are some things we don’t need to know,” a guy said.
The kid flushed. “Not like that. I mean get a dog. I got one from a shelter. A mutt. He’s happy as hell and sometimes that bugs me, you know? But he’s always there. Always ready to listen or play. He takes me out of myself. I’m saying a dog can help. They curl up next to you at night.” He shrugged.
One guy mentioned tai chi as a way to deal with the pain. Another talked about the energy work Mitch was already doing. Nobody said he should get drunk and forget about it. Nobody assumed it would fix itself.
Over the next hour, problems were presented and solutions offered. A few men just wanted to talk, which Mitch couldn’t understand, but maybe time would change that. When the session was over, he found Joss outside.
“What’d you think?” Joss asked. “You coming back?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“We all have choices. They’re not always good ones, but we have them.”
Mitch thought about the group, how they were all different but each understood the loss of a very real part of themselves.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
“Good.” Joss shoved a brochure in his hands.
