Marrying Goose had trapped him in trying to raise another man’s son. At first, Goose had acted uncertain about that responsibility, and Megan’s own inability to simply let go and trust Goose with Joey hadn’t helped. When things were good, Goose was Joey’s best bud.
But when things had turned for the worse and Joey was a problem in school or around home, Megan had insisted on handling the discipline herself. Discipline was her responsibility as Joey’s mother. She hadn’t wanted to push that chore off on her husband as she’d seen so many other wives do with their children. And Goose didn’t handle things the way she did. Goose was sometimes too direct, too honest. He let people know how he felt about something instead of hinting at it.
After living with Goose these past eight years, she knew her husband to be fair and just, but she’d made excuses, telling herself that Joey wasn’t used to having a man around the house. For a while, she hadn’t let Goose have a free hand with Joey, and that choice had limited the relationship they could have had now.
I made a mistake there, too, she told herself.
By the time she realized what she was doing and that Goose had followed her lead, all of their relationships were pretty much in place. But it was—for the most part—quiet, and they’d made the best of it. Actually, judging from so many cases she saw in her office, they’d gotten through the blended-family issues better than most.
The family dynamic had worked well enough until Chris was born. Then Goose stepped into the role of father with a natural ease that had proven surprising. Megan had noticed the change, the closeness between Chris and Goose, at once. There was no distance between Chris and his father. Megan hadn’t stood between them in any way. Goose wouldn’t have let her, and she’d never felt the need to protect Chris the way she had Joey. She knew that Joey had seen the difference, too.
Blended families, Megan knew from studies as well as from experience, were the hardest things to make work. Roles and rules seemed to operate on a sliding scale, shifting constantly on a day-to-day basis as everyone concerned tried to find commonalities, a set of rules they could all live by, and goals to make it worthwhile. The stress increased when the natural triangles that occurred worked two-on-one against each other.
Joey had lost a step in the family. Nothing Megan or Goose could do could have prevented that from happening, and she knew that now as she took herself apart with every piece of psychological ammunition she could lay hands to. Watching Leslie injure herself brought Megan’s insecurities to the forefront until it was almost too much to deal with. All her own shortcomings, all her failures, seemed strung together in Megan’s eyes. She’d pieced them together with quiet and thorough skill as she awaited word on Leslie Hollister and remembered the events in the room again and again.
When it came down to it, Joey wasn’t an only child anymore. After eleven years with his mother and three years with Goose, Joey had been forced to make room for his brother since Chris’s birth.
Goose had tried to stay close to his stepson, but being raised in the country outside Waycross, Georgia, then spending his next years as a career soldier, he lacked experiences he could share with Joey. Joey had grown up in the city, in malls and arcades, in a high school that had more students than the whole populace of the small town Goose had grown up in. If they weren’t involved in sports events, they hadn’t had much in common.
It’s all your fault, Megan told herself. You let Joey slip through your fingers. Now he’s out there somewhere, all alone and hurting.
Arms aching for Chris, wishing she could listen to his soft breathing and know that he was all right, Megan looked out the hospital window and wondered where Joey was. Her family was missing in action, and she’d never before needed the comfort and support they could offer so very much.
The private returned with two cups of coffee. Megan took one and thanked him politely. She held the cup in both hands, feeling the warmth and knowing the liquid was too hot to drink for the moment. Wearily, she closed her eyes, breathing out to clear her lungs and working on a relaxation technique she taught in classes. The effort didn’t work. Leslie Hollister, bleeding and still, lay waiting in her mind’s eye.
United States 75th Army Rangers Temporary Post
Sanliurfa, Turkey
Local Time 0537 Hours
Goose stood in the center of the security office and watched the security cameras the Ranger team used to manage surveillance all over the hotel. Litters of wounded continued to flow into the building, get marked for surgical attention by the triage teams, and get carried away to the appropriate waiting areas.
As he watched, Goose silently prayed that numbness would kick in and take away the horror and frustration that filled him. A soldier best served on a battlefield when somewhat detached from his immediate emotions. He’d experienced the battlefield calm several times before, but those times were generally during the heat of an engagement, not in the aftermath. Once a battle was over, the true cost of the action showed up on the bottom line in spent lives and wounded.
Later, he knew, other squads would bring in their dead. Detail leaders would assemble lists of Killed In Action and Missing In Action. Then the process of sorting the KIAs and MIAs out from the new wreckage of the city would begin.
Artillery continued to boom and fill the hotel with noise, but the frequency had dropped. Captain Mkchian and the Turkish artillery units obviously wanted to make
