LATER THAT DAY, while the men were in town, Becca used the cabin’s landline to call her boss and ask for time off, pleading a family emergency. If she was going to stay at the cabin for a while, she’d have to find an Internet-connected computer in town, and no way the local library was going to have the necessary design programs. Now she sat in the kitchen and explained the situation to her aunt, but Kath abruptly veered off topic. “Why’d you really come here, honey?” she asked, pointing her mixing spoon at her niece.
“Just postwedding stress,” Becca said, avoiding her aunt’s eyes.
“What’s that phrase your mother uses? ‘Too blessed to be stressed.’”
Becca thought about her mother at the Hands of God Church out in Colorado. There, a group of Christian faithful tended an organic garden and knit socks for orphans. And prayed, obviously. Jeanine probably had to feed her smoking habit on the sly, sneaking cigarettes behind the quinoa patch.
Kath continued. “The stress is supposed to come before the wedding, honey, not after.”
“Ben’s been touchy since he came back. King says he just needs some time.” Becca knew full well that if she was leaving Ben for good—divorce leaving—then eventually she’d have to fess up about it. But she felt like somebody had poured cement into her mouth. Kath said nothing more. With one hand, she cracked eggs into a bowl and tossed the shells into the garbage. She added oil and sugar. She did not use measuring tools. Her silence was heavy and dense as a ball of dough.
“So they’re going to Utah to visit an old commanding officer,” Becca said, unable to tolerate her aunt’s stoniness. “They’re talking about this trip like it’s a big deal.”
“Your father can’t help you if he doesn’t know what the real problem is,” Kath said.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Kath stopped what she was doing and turned to her niece. “Earlier today. You went for a run down the mountain? Trip Meester was out on his porch.”
The run had been painful; with each footfall and each breath, sharp flashes had shot out from the ring of bruises. It was nearly too much to bear—nearly. But Becca decided to bear it. The pain was a necessary reminder of her weakness and stupidity; she would not go back to Ben and she would never, ever, let anything like this happen again.
“You were in your sports bra, honey. Trip knew the men were here. Seeing you—” Kath nodded at Becca’s torso. “Well, he was worried. So he called me.”
The backs of Becca’s eyeballs stung, but she gritted her teeth until she was certain that not a single tear would fall. “Momentum, rhythm, stride,” she whispered to herself. Let the electricity burn itself out. Let the despair ease up. Let go of every hope you had for your life and be free. You’re running. You’re already gone.
Becca felt Kath’s warm body beside her, hovering close. “It’s not what you think,” Becca said, though her voice sounded very small.
“How is it not what I think?” Kath’s face was pitying. “Either he put his hands on you or he didn’t.”
“I’m not one of those women—the ‘he didn’t mean it, it was just this one time’ women. But we were asleep and then . . . I don’t actually know if . . .” Becca felt ill-equipped to explain. The events of that night lay broken in her memory, scattered like the shards of the fiddle Ben had smashed. What frightened her most of all was that Ben apparently didn’t know what he’d done. Didn’t realize that he was incapable of controlling himself. “I’m not naive!” she burst out. “I didn’t think that he’d come back and everything would be fine. I tried to get ahead of all of this.”
“Honey, you’re not making sense.”
“In the beginning he told me stories. On the phone, video chat, e-mail. He made me feel like I was with him. There was an Iraqi soccer-star kid who ate Corn Pops, and a platoon corporal with weird superstitions, and kitty litter to cover the latrine stink, and every other thing you could ever want to know. And then one day, out of the blue, he just stopped talking.” Becca knew she was rambling incoherently, but she didn’t much care.
“Who knows what might have happened,” Kath said. But Becca, who’d started pacing around the kitchen, wasn’t listening. She felt like an attorney arguing to a jury of one: herself.
“It was like somebody flipped a switch! He shut down and I didn’t know what to do. I asked him questions, but he wouldn’t answer. And I couldn’t stand it—the not knowing. So I tried to fill in the gaps. I read all this stuff—books and articles. You would have laughed at me.”
Even in her keyed-up, frantic state, Becca was too self-conscious to confess aloud all that she’d done. It had involved rereading all the books from a war-lit class she’d taken her freshman year, renting every war movie at the video store, and obsessively consuming soldier blogs. Anything for a glimpse into his world—and his head. She’d tried to bone up on information so she’d know what questions to ask him. But during their conversations, he was either too tired to talk, or they’d had a bad patrol (whatever bad meant, he never explained), or he was too stressed due to new orders from HQ. Nothing Ben told her was consistent. It was like running a race where the ground continually shifted beneath your feet.
Becca often felt lonelier after talking to him, but she refused to believe that all was lost. There were moments when he still laughed. When he shared some funny detail or anecdote. And he always signed off by saying, “I love you, Chicken.” Other women were baby or sweetheart or hon. But it was there, in the silly nickname Ben had given her, that Becca felt him close, as he had been before. So she continued to hope. And she continued to read and study and prepare. Just in case.
Kath asked no more questions. She walked to Becca, who had drifted to the far side of the kitchen, and reached for her, but Becca did not want comfort and pulled away.
“I’ve been thinking, honey,” Kath said. “If you want to go with your dad to Utah—”
Becca looked up with surprise.
“Well, why did you run to him if not for advice? For some insider knowledge? So he happens to be taking a trip. Even better. Perfect for bonding.”
Becca stared at her aunt with genuine confusion. She’d run to King because she could think of no place else to go. To speak of bonding was absurd. Traveling with her father, she’d be nothing more than extra weight on the bitch pad. Once she explained all of this, Kath’s face grew stern.
“Sit down, child,” she said and Becca obeyed. “I’m not saying you did wrong trying to get inside Ben’s head but there’s only one way to really know a person, and that’s to be with them.”
“I know that now.”
Kath sighed. “I don’t think you’re being honest about why you went to King. You could have called me. But you called him. And if he hasn’t given you what you came for, then just letting him go on his merry way would be a real waste.” Kath’s stare was more powerful than truth serum.
“He can’t advise me unless he opens up, and we both know he won’t. It’s not like I can guilt him into sharing.”
“Not guilt him, honey, communicate with him. Your father’s not so great at that, but I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit. You can’t expect him to do a thing for you, though, if he doesn’t realize he has to. And besides, you’re not staying here cooped up with me. I’m an old misanthrope. You’re young and adventurous. At least I thought you were.”
Becca remembered what Bull had said about confronting her fears. And her aunt was right; this cabin was the physical edge of what she knew—like one of those invisible fences that keep dogs from running into the street. Her father’s motorcycle would be more than sufficient to bust through. “Maybe I’ll talk to him tonight,” she said, searching Kath’s face for encouragement.
“Come on.” Kath breathed, exasperated. “You need to confront him soon and be forthright. Say you want to go with him. You’re a runner, Becca. It’s not in your blood to stand still.”
Just then, the growl of motorcycles blasted the windows.
“This is a horrible idea,” Becca said, but she marched outside anyway. Partly, she was allowing herself to be baited; she was not a person who stood still. But mostly, she wanted to show her aunt that King had zero interest in helping her.
“Rides like butter,” King was saying to the others. “I mean, it cruises like a yacht.” Reno and Bull saw Becca first and they must have noticed something in her face or her walk, because they hopped off their bikes and shuffled out of the way. Becca stopped her march and watched King dismount, trying to get a sense of this person—this father—who had produced her. Yes, he’d returned after a long absence, but Kath had made it clear that he was only halfway back—no closer than shouting distance.
The sun was setting into the valley, and the light glowed halo-like around her father’s head. He looked truly king-like and prophetic. Then he coughed, and the spell was broken.
“Dad, listen,” Becca said, closing the final feet between them. “I know it’s out of the blue. But Kath thought—well, not just Kath but me too—that I might be able to stay with you a little longer. The road’s good therapy, right?” These were King’s words. He’d said them to her many times.
“Oh.” King glanced around for backup and realized his friends had retreated to the porch. “It would be nice to take you out at some point . . .” His throat released a grating sound. “But this isn’t the right time.”
Becca hoped Kath was watching. She’d taken the plunge and the outcome was exactly as she’d predicted: her father was letting her sink. But then, King turned away and started toward the steps. He was literally turning his back on her.
“When?” Urgency welled inside of her, a feeling that bordered on panic.
King halted, looked back. “I know you and Ben had a fight, but if you two really love each other then I’m sure—”
But King stopped talking midsentence because Becca had pulled up her T-shirt. She did not glance down. She was already familiar with the sight: it looked as though Ben had tried to wring her out like a rag.
The trio on the porch—Kath had joined Reno and Bull—cast their eyes away. King looked stunned, his mouth slack. Quietly he said, “I’m so sorry, Becca. I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you want to kill him!” Becca screamed. “Say you can’t believe my husband did this to me. Say you want to take me as far away from him as you possibly can!”
But why would he take up her crusade? They were barely more than strangers to each other—which was precisely why she’d vowed to expect nothing from him. And yet she could not take her own advice. Her brain and her gut were working at cross-purposes, slowing her down. Momentum, Becca, she thought. Momentum. She turned from her father and took off down the mountain at a sprint.
Dinner that night was tense. Bull hid behind a phalanx of beer cans. Reno leaned back in his chair like an apathetic teenager, and King affected a forced normalcy, as though nothing much had happened. Eventually Kath stomped down to her metal shop. Becca took this as her cue to stomp upstairs to her bedroom.
Many hours later, insistent voices roused her from sleep.
“Everything will not be fine, and you know it.” Her aunt’s voice was uncharacteristically bitter. “If you insist on going through with this nonsense, then you’ve got to at least let her in. Leave her with something she can keep. That girl’s on the verge of losing everything. And if you think her mother’s going to step in once you depart, then you’re a fool.”
Becca didn’t know what nonsense her father was involved in or what her mother had to do with anything, but it hurt to hear her life discussed like this. She was just starting to sneak out of the room when King’s words froze her still.
“Jeanine came to the wedding,” her father said.
Aunt Kath gasped. “What?”
“Too much pride, that woman. She said she didn’t approve of the marriage—of Becca yoking herself to the military and all that—but in the end, she couldn’t stay away.”
“She came because she knew you’d be there, more like.”
“She knows there’s no chance of us—”
“You just go around breaking everyone’s heart, big brother. Your wife’s, your daughter’s. It’s a wonder that Elaine—”
“Enough!” King growled. “We’re done talking.” He stomped down the stairs.
Becca shrank away from the door and into the dark of her room. Had her mother really been at the wedding, hiding in the shadows? It was confusing and sad and Becca just didn’t want to think about it. But she also didn’t want to think about this other thing that her aunt seemed to be suggesting—that her mother was somehow hung up on her father. It couldn’t be true. Jeanine had kicked King out. She hated him. It made no sense.
Becca crawled back into bed. Stumbling into her family’s past was not part of her escape plan. She needed to keep moving forward. Running, after all, was what she did best. And running was a solitary activity.