Shelter Me (30 page)

The words cut right through Mike, sharper than any shrapnel. He sat with his hands between his knees, not knowing what to say or do to fix this day—this life—the kid was having. And no matter what Nathan said, he
was
still a kid, too young to be living with burdens this heavy.

Movement from the yard caught his attention, Sierra gathering her work off the hammock. For a moment he thought she was going to rescue him, but when her eyes met his, she shook her head. She nodded toward her mom, standing alone in the driveway as the vet’s truck drove away.

Mike nodded back wordlessly, understanding. She wanted to be with her mother to help her through the day. Maybe to take some comfort for herself, too.

Sierra smiled and mouthed,
Thank you.

This unspoken communication between them was a new thing, somehow more intimate than their quickie in the barn earlier.

Although he wasn’t against quickies. Not by a long shot.

There just weren’t going to be any more tonight.

He turned back to Nathan. He couldn’t walk away from this kid, even if that meant facing a little time on the battlefield. “Hey, wanna move the video games inside so we can use two controllers?”

“Uh, sure,” Nathan said, shoving to his feet, the fat boa’s head lifting until it was nearly nose to nose with Mike.

“But could you put the snake away first? That thing scares the shit out of me.”

Nathan snorted in disdain. “Some badass warrior you are.”

*   *   *

ON HER WAY
out to the front porch, Sierra pushed backward through the screen door, two glasses of wine in her hands and the corked bottle of chardonnay tucked precariously under her arm.

She stepped out onto the deep veranda that overlooked the driveway, letting the screen slam behind her. Looking up and down the long, planked space, she realized there wasn’t an animal in sight. Unlike the glass-enclosed back patio where puppies stayed. Or the concrete slab picnic area where they kept an eye on the play yard or the barn. Not even in the house where various creatures in crates or cages may need tending.

Out here, all alone, her mom sat in one of the four white rockers.

Funny how she’d only just now realized that the front porch rockers were the only part of the house that wasn’t devoted to the Second Chance Ranch’s four-legged guests. Her mother and father used to chill out here at night and talk. She’d forgotten that.

Sierra held out the Waterford crystal wineglass she knew her mother treasured, the last left in her wedding set. “I thought you might like something to drink.”

Smiling, her mother took the glass. “You thought right.” Her head tipped to the side as she looked at Sierra’s other hand. “Is that a Mason jar?”

Sierra grinned wickedly back at her mom. “Sure is. It holds more wine.”

She dropped into the rocking chair next to her mom, all too aware that this used to be her father’s seat. She set the bottle on the ground next to her, her arm chilled from holding it. Night sounds carried on the wind, crickets and frogs, a couple of barks. A hint of the soothing classical music from the kennel run area, although her grandfather’s constant stream of television almost overrode it all. She smiled. Then there was also the occasional squawk and explosion from the video games inside. She appreciated Mike taking time to hang out with Nathan. He spent too much time alone these days.

She stifled a yawn, exhausted from the full day, physically and emotionally. Morning would come too soon.

As the moon rose higher, she found herself wondering, “Mom, do you ever sleep?”

“Not much. No.” Lacey sipped her wine.

Sierra had meant the question lightly, but something in her mother’s tone worried her. “Have you talked to your doctor about that? I thought right after Dad died, the doctor gave you some pills, just to get you through until things are . . . easier.”

“They don’t work.” She took a larger swallow of the amber chardonnay, the moonlight filtering through the glass in a watery prism. “Besides, even if I medicate myself into oblivion, I still have to deal with this when I wake up. There’s no escaping my life.”

Okay, now she was getting seriously worried. This was about more than it being Father’s Day. “There are balanced alternatives to the oblivion method.”

“Thank you, Dr. McDaniel—” Her mom stopped short and looked at her quickly, apologetically. “Damn, I’m sorry, Sierra. I’m being bitchy and you’re just trying to help. All the time. So much more than you should have to.” She reached out and squeezed Sierra’s hand. “I just want to get through this so my children can live their lives and be happy. You deserve more than this.”

“What about you?” Sierra squeezed back. “Your life? What you deserve?”

“Go to bed, sweetie.” Her hand slid away and went back to cradling the cut crystal glass. “Or go see Mike.”

“Mom.” Sierra set her Mason jar on the small table between them and crossed her arms. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m talking to you. We’re both adults so I’m going to say it straight out. I don’t think you should be alone tonight. Whether you’re awake or asleep or drunk, you’re stuck with me.”

“I’m not drunk. Yet. But I would like to be.” She took Sierra’s jar and poured some into her own glass.

“Guess this means I have to stay for sure then since you shouldn’t drink alone.” Had her mother self-medicated more often than she realized? Had she missed this in the mad scramble to help her mom with the day-to-day chores, that Lacey was quietly falling apart alone at night?

“You staying here won’t make me drink less. Not tonight,” her mother warned.

There was a fierceness in her tone, but Sierra could almost hear the desperation underneath. God, she wished she didn’t appreciate that set of emotions all too well.

She was scared to death she’d be right back here next week when Mike left.

“I understand.” She took her jar before her mom stole all her wine. “And just so
you
understand when you’re hungover and cranky tomorrow, I’ll be too hungover and cranky myself to care.”

Lacey cocked her head to the side. “There’s logic in that somehow.”

“For now, I’m all for the one day at a time approach.” She would not borrow heartache when it would come her way all too soon. She sipped her wine. “Eventually, though, you need to start really sleeping. A full night’s rest.”

“I
am
sleeping some. Just not a lot,” her mom admitted. “But I’ll be okay. This is just a difficult time for all of us.”

“Mom, it’s Father’s Day.” Her mind crowded with images of construction paper cards and lopsided homemade cakes from celebrations in the past. “That makes this more than an everyday tough time. This is a really, really tough time. It’s okay for you to be sad or mad or even just unreasonable.”

Lacey kept rocking, but her chin started quivering, her hand trembling until the wine threatened to slosh. “I’m not ready to pull the cork out of those emotions yet.”

What could she say to that? Hell. She sure could use some of her friend Mary Hannah’s training in psychology and counseling right about now. Sadly, though, all she had was a bottle of wine and a line from
Macbeth
. “‘Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.’”

Her mother shot a dry look at her. “Seriously, if you start bombarding me with the Emily Dickinson poems, I am out of here and I’m taking that bottle of wine with me.”

Sierra snatched up the chardonnay and held it hostage. “I’m the official bartender tonight, but I promise to make it a quote-free evening if you’ll let me stay here with you, however late that may be.”

“You’ve got a deal.” Lacey held out her Waterford glass, empty for the second time tonight. “Now fill her up so we can toast.”

“Can do.” Steeling herself for a long night, she hoped Mike would understand. She poured for her mom and then herself. “To girl time.”

“To girl time,” her mother echoed, scraping away a handful of honey brown curls from her face in a familiar gesture. “I don’t even have to dress up or cook a fancy dinner. And no one expects a blow job.”

Sierra spewed wine, then choked on a laugh. “Wow. You
are
drunk.”

“Maybe a little.” Her mother smiled, rocked, sipped some more. “Wanna hear something crazy? I think I got hit on twice tonight.”

And wasn’t that a hell of a mixed bag at a time like this?

Sierra hitched up her feet and hugged her knees, her Mason jar resting on top. “Okay. Definitely not a time to sleep. I want details.”

*   *   *

IT’S TRUE WHAT
they say about dogs having incredible hearing.

Even sleeping under the General’s bed, with that television of his blaring war movies all night and Gramps snoring like a buzz saw, I could hear everything going on around the McDaniel house. I heard the creak of rocking chairs and the low voices of Sierra and Lacey laughing together. Mike and Nathan played stupid war games on the television, which was why I camped out under Gramps’s high four-poster bed. It was like a bunker where I could be safe from those bombs.

My nose twitched with the memory of air raids. The soldiers put on weird suits and talked about possible chemical attacks. They didn’t have a suit that fit me, though.

Smells are a big deal to me, too. I could get drunk off sniffing a glass of wine. I prefer the woody scents personally, but any will do. One of the benefits of my heightened senses. Give me a few sips and watch out, I’m cra-zy. Booze was bad for the McDaniel family, and I needed to figure out a way to get Lacey to give up that crutch.

The Colonel and I talked a lot in the desert about his family and alcohol. Okay, he talked, I listened, since I don’t have many options for answering. A lick for howdy. Leaning closer for comfort. A few different kinds of barks and a whine. And yeah, I talk with my tail a little. I have nuances that other dogs understand, but people? Seriously, not much of a lexicon to work with.

So mostly I listened and leaned on the Colonel in those days, and he used me as his own personal counselor. Remember how I said there was something I had to share, but you needed to wait? That it was too much for me to take except in chunks?

Well, this is it, and even now, it’s difficult to remember without wanting to shred something. Or hide.

This one night during an air raid, he was particularly chatty. We hunkered behind some sandbags to wait it out. Not much else we could do since there wasn’t a ground assault.

“Mama was a drinker,” the silver-haired Colonel said. “She spent a lot of days alone while Dad chased getting general’s stars for his uniform. She held it together pretty well until my older sister died. Ruptured appendix. Can you believe that? Totally operable condition if they’d caught the symptoms in time. But we weren’t big on complaining. My old man believed in staying tough. And my sister was the toughest. Dad called her his favorite son.”

He smiled, but it was one of those darker smiles. Remember how I said dogs are better at reading people than people are at reading dogs?

“My sister was thirteen, old enough to stay on her own while Mom took me to an all-day soccer tournament. My sister’s name was Sierra, too, and she told Mom she had homework. She knew if she told the truth, that she was sick, Mom would feel torn. Mom would have to stay with her, and I would ride with another family. So my sister took a couple of Tylenol and curled up in pain. By the time we got home, she was bad off. Her appendix ruptured on the way to the ER. The doctors tried . . . but the poison spread too fast and she didn’t make it.”

I leaned in closer so he could scratch my head. I could smell the pain in his sweat and the tears on his face along with the breakfast on his fingertips—eggs and pancakes.

Bombs reverberated, sounding a lot like the echo of Nathan’s video games. Except over there, the ground shook and one of the sandbags slid off. The Colonel huddled closer to me, even shielding
me
while we waited out the attack, when I was supposed to be the one protecting
him
.

Talking to me seemed to make him feel better, so I listened rather than doing what I really wanted. Every bit of me trembled, desperate to dig a hole under the bags where I could hide even better. But the man who’d saved me, the man who taught me how to bond with a human, he needed me to hear what was weighing on his spirit.

“My mom started drinking after that, and Dad started chasing those stars harder.” He held an origami cat in his hand, tweaking the folds. He carried those papers around in his pocket all the time now. “It was like they both found their way of numbing the pain. Except her drinking pushed him away, and his travels made her drink more.”

I wanted to ask where Allen as a kid had fit into all that. I pawed his chest until he let me climb up in his lap. It was strange at first, being held that way. But then I realized I could hear his heart, and that sound, the heavy pounding, told me he was every bit as scared as I was. He wrapped me in a big bear hug and I could feel his pain radiating off him as that paper cat crackled, trapped between us.

“Yeah, it sucked for me. But you know what sucks most? I’m doing the same thing to my family. I’m hiding out here in the desert so I don’t have to face feeling anything back home.” He stopped for a ragged breath, his heart thumping louder against my ear.

“Trooper, my friend, this place has broken me.” His words came slowly, as if dug up from deep inside where we animals keep things hidden so no one else can find them. It was about survival. I understood.

“I’m so hardwired to shut down and serve out here, going home feels . . . alien now. I want to be there. God knows, I want to go home.” His fingers buried in my fur and scratched my spine as he spoke.

“But my throat closes up at the thought of being there. How damn stupid is that? I have a wife with a heart as big as the whole state of Tennessee who not only holds down the home front but takes care of my sick father.”

The bombs grew closer, sending sand and rocks spewing over the bags. Once the noise eased and the dust settled, he continued, “I have a brilliant daughter and this great quirky son who I barely know anymore. And if I open myself up to experiencing all of that, then I have to let in all the feelings from the shit over here. When I’m here, I can compartmentalize.”