JACKSON’S NECK MUSCLES quivered under Wade’s hand. It had taken hours of standing in the corral to get to this point, but his new horse was finally letting Wade touch him. Sure, he looked ready to bolt at any moment, but it was progress. Jackson took a tentative bite of the alfalfa hay Wade offered in his hand. His ears twitched as Wade talked. He had been telling him about Lori all morning. About their date gone wrong. About how beautiful she’d looked. About how he’d messed it all up. How for some crazy reason she still wanted to hang out with him.
Maybe Jackson just felt sorry for him, but he reached over and nuzzled Wade’s shoulder for a brief moment. It felt like a blessing. It felt like medicine.
It was medicine. Having to be calm for Jackson forced Wade to slow his breathing, move with deliberation and empty his mind of everything but what the horse needed. It was calming Jackson down, but it was soothing Wade, too. When they were together he felt like all the jagged edges inside his brain smoothed over. His hypervigilant nervous system went from red alert to yellow. It was the only time since he’d come home that he’d felt this way. Training the horse was bringing him closer to peace than he’d thought possible.
He had to thank Todd, though it needled him just a little that his future brother-in-law had been right about how much the horse would help him. Todd was thoughtful that way. He had some kind of special insight into the way people and animals and nature interacted.
Jackson snorted, probably sensing that Wade’s mind was wandering. “Hey, boy,” he murmured, running a slow hand over the horse’s withers and resting it on his back. “It’s okay. I’m here. And I appreciate the chat.” He pulled a piece of carrot out of his back pocket and offered it to the horse, who whuffled it up.
Over by Jackson’s pasture, JM whinnied, missing his friend. Jackson threw his head up, listening. “Okay, you can go back now. You did good today.” Wade unbuckled Jackson’s halter and opened the gate that separated the round corral they’d been using from the pasture. Jackson trotted out, tail up, and headed for JM. There was a little squealing and prancing on both sides of the fence, but then both horses settled down to grazing side by side.
Wade closed up the gates, glancing at the sky. The day was almost over. Somehow he’d gotten through it, just trying to breathe.
Frustration at himself, at his faulty brain, rose every time he remembered how he’d cowered on the sidewalk last night because he couldn’t see a simple movie. How pitiful he must have looked to Lori’s eyes.
He started toward the house, so lost in thought it wasn’t until he got almost to the porch that he saw his sister’s Jeep parked next to his truck. She was sitting on the porch steps, a large pizza box next to her.
“Awesome,” he breathed, reaching for it.
“There’s a price for it,” she said shortly, batting his hand away from the box. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Todd’s friend Jack and his wife Samantha were at the movies last night. They saw you run out. Jack called Todd today. He was worried.”
“This town!” Wade crossed his arms over his chest as if that would help keep the prying eyes of Benson away. “What the hell is wrong with this place? Don’t people have anything else to talk about?” He could feel the words, all the words people said about him, crawling across his skin, stealing his privacy.
“Not all gossip is bad. There are good people here. People who care and don’t judge. Jack is one of them. He just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m okay.” Maybe he was being stupid, but it rankled. He admired Jack. The man was taking him step by step through working with his new horse. He didn’t want his pity. Didn’t want to seem so weak.
“Let’s go inside. We’ll eat way too much pizza and you can tell me what’s up. Come on. Don’t make your big sister worry.”
He owed her so much. Those words were ones he couldn’t refuse. He nodded. She hopped up and grabbed the pizza, leading the way into his house. Their house, really, though she’d moved over to Todd’s when they got engaged. Wade missed her.
Working in comfortable silence, they got out plates and napkins, and Wade popped the tops off a couple of beers. Plunking herself down at the well-worn kitchen table, Nora fixed him with her big sister glare. She took a gulp of her beer and then commanded, “Shoot.”
“What, no small talk? What’s new with you?”
“What’s new with me is I’m leaving in the morning to consult on a ranch near Bakersfield. And I need to know you’re okay before I can go.”
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not. You had a hard time at a movie.”
“Well, who needs movies? They’re overpriced. Predictable.”
“Wade Hoffman, stop!” she ordered.
He hated her fussing. But he heard the concern in her voice. “Okay. Here’s what happened. I went to the movies with Lori. And all the noise made me feel really weird, so I walked out. Well...ran out.”
Nora nodded. “What about Lori? Is she okay?”
“She’s amazing. I told her we shouldn’t date, and she told me where to go.”
“She’s a great girl.”
Wade sobered. “I don’t deserve her, Nora. She should be with someone normal who can handle stress. Who can take her places.”
“But over time you’ll be able to do more,” she assured him.
“I hope so.”
“Wade, it’s not about hoping. It’s about working at it. The medicines will never work by themselves. Dr. Miller told you that. Have you called any of those counselors I wrote down for you?”
“I just don’t see how talking to someone who’s never been through it is going to help.”
“Okay, who do you want to talk to? Because keeping it all locked up inside is obviously working real well for you.”
“I dunno,” Wade mumbled. He was used to her sarcasm, but the truth in it still stung. “Someone who has actually been in the military before, I guess.”
“What about Dan Sanders? He told me he asked you to come on by his store in the early mornings sometimes and have coffee with him. Have you gone?”
Wade remembered Dan’s kind eyes. His generous offer. “No,” he admitted.
“Go see him tomorrow. Tell him what happened at the movies. He’s probably been through something similar.”
“I don’t know...” he started, but Nora cut him off.
“Wade, this is your pride getting in the way! You need help.”
“Okay,” he said quietly. She was right.
“Isn’t there some kind of veterans’ group that meets in town?”
Ethan’s group. He’d never shown up. “They meet Mondays.”
“As in tonight?” Nora glanced at her watch. “Have you fed the animals? I’ll do it for you if you’ll go tonight.”
“I fed them already. Everything’s set for the night. But I dunno, Nor. I’ve had a long day, and...”
Nora stood up so suddenly her chair fell over behind her with a thud that had Wade on his feet, combat ready, in an instant.
“See? Look at you. A chair falls and you jump a mile.”
He glared at his sister until he took in her pale skin, her hands clenched into fists. She was furious. And frightened.
“I won’t lose you,” she said. “We’ve lost them all. Mom, Dad, Arch, Blake, and I will not lose you.”
“You won’t lose me. I’m not going to kill myself or something like that. It’s not that bad.”
“But if you don’t deal with it, if you push Lori away and you isolate yourself out here, it could get that bad. Please go to this meeting tonight. If you need me to, I will drive you there and wait in the truck until it’s over. Just go get help. Now.”
He couldn’t argue. Not when she was scared like this. They’d only ever had each other, and they’d always had each other’s backs. He sighed. “Okay, I’ll go. As long as I can eat one piece of this pizza without you giving me a hard time about anything.”
He grabbed another slice of the meat combo with enough cheese to clog an artery. But what the hell. He was going to need the extra strength to walk into that meeting tonight and admit the truth. That he had a problem. And he had no idea how to fix it on his own.
* * *
THERE WERE LESS than a dozen vehicles parked outside Grange Hall when Wade pulled up. He was glad to see it. He didn’t think he could go in if there was a huge crowd.
Taking a few deep breaths as he approached the entrance, he pushed open the door. His limbs were leaden and anxiety was rippling through his chest, but he forced himself forward across the hallway toward the main room.
He froze at the doorway, scanning the scene. A few guys were helping themselves to coffee from an urn set across from the door. There was a plate of cookies that looked homemade. A circle of chairs were set in the center of the room, and a handful of men were already sitting down. He recognized one of them vaguely. Maybe they’d gone to high school together?
“Hey, man, you made it.” Ethan’s beefy hand grasped his shoulder. “I thought I was going to have to pay you a visit out on that ranch of yours and drag you down here myself.” He propelled Wade into the room by the sheer force of his enthusiasm. “Hey, everyone, we have a newbie. This is Wade. He got back from Afghanistan just a couple of months ago.”
“Hey, Wade,” several people said, and every single one of them came over to shake his hand.
“Coffee?” Ethan asked. “It’s decaf. None of us want to be up in the middle of the night with too much caffeine in our systems. Feeds the demons, you know?”
“Sure,” Wade answered.
A big black-haired man offered him a seat next to his. “I’m Luis. Welcome. Glad you could make it.”
Luis looked like he could bench-press Wade. Here he’d been worried that this support group would be some kind of sissy thing, but these men were all pretty formidable. Luis wasn’t even the biggest guy here.
Ethan handed him a cup of coffee and a cookie. Wade accepted them and set them on the floor under his seat, too nervous to eat or drink anything.
Ethan took a seat on the other side of Wade. “It’s eight o’clock, guys. Let’s get started.” When everyone had joined the circle, Ethan bowed his head. “Let’s start with a moment of silent prayer.”
It was a long moment. Wade prayed he’d get through the meeting without throwing up or making a fool of himself. When he finally looked up, it seemed that everyone was done praying. They were waiting on him. Great.
Ethan read from a page in a binder that explained the rules of the meeting. Confidentiality was evidently a big rule, as it came up a few different times. Then Ethan closed the binder. “First order of business. Does anyone here need anything urgent? Urgent means housing, medicine, a referral to a doctor or shrink, or a job. And Wade, just so you know, a need to get laid doesn’t count.”
Everyone guffawed. Ethan had effectively broken the ice. Luis said he’d been living with his parents since he left the Marines, and he felt like he was ready to get a place of his own. He asked whether anyone knew of a place. A guy named Parker said he’d forgotten to fill his prescription and missed a couple of days of his medicine, and he wasn’t sure how much to start taking now. Wade just stared at them all in awe. They were so relaxed, so casual, mentioning their troubles and asking for what they needed like it was no big deal.
Once everyone had finished offering advice to Luis and Parker, Ethan got his binder out again. “We have a speaker tonight. Darren is going to share his story. How he first realized he was having some problems and how he’s been dealing with it. You ready, Darren?”
Darren was the guy Wade had recognized. Now he remembered him. He’d been a year behind Wade, a star on the basketball team. Kind of a stud, really. He still carried that prom-king aura, but he was somber, one booted foot tapping restlessly as he straightened in his chair and started speaking.
“I first realized I had a problem when I threw a chair through a window.”
He wasn’t the most articulate speaker, but it didn’t matter. Wade was transfixed. Everything Darren shared sounded familiar. Losing his temper, feeling irritated all the time. Feeling lost and missing the companionship of his platoon. The night sweats, the dreams so real he couldn’t wake up. The anxiety about noise, about losing control in front of others. Getting frustrated easily. Every word provided Wade with another inch of relief. The shared experience didn’t fix his problem. He sure as hell wished it would. But at least he wasn’t the only one going through it. Was it selfish to take comfort in that?
He heard something else in Darren’s talk. Something that wasn’t spoken in words but came through anyway. A yearning to get better. To feel normal. To feel like he belonged and could trust himself again.
Wade recognized it. The sense that there was something out there he was reaching for but was scared he wouldn’t obtain. He was just reaching for normal, and putting a name to it made it feel a whole lot better.
When Darren was finished, Ethan gave them some information about the next meeting and their plans to march in the Veterans Day parade coming up in a few weeks. Then he led them in another moment of silence. And that was it. A quick glance at the old clock on the wall told Wade the meeting was over and he’d survived it. And it hadn’t been too bad.
His phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his jacket pocket. It was a text from Nora asking if he’d made it through.
Yes. Quit worrying, he sent back. And then he relented, adding, It kind of helped.
“Hey.” Ethan clapped him on the shoulder with a thump that reverberated through Wade’s bones. “What did you think? You gonna come back next week?”
“Yeah, I think I might,” Wade told him, almost surprised by his own words. He did want to come back. Even sitting in the room saying nothing helped. Just being near people who were going through something similar to him was healing.
“You’ll march with us, right? On Veterans Day? It’s a quiet parade. Just the high school band plays. No fireworks or sirens allowed.”
Wade remembered Tabitha’s sneering comments at church. “A Hoffman marching down Main Street? I don’t think Benson is quite ready for that.”
“Well, ready or not, you’re here and you’re a veteran. So they can take their prejudice and shove it.”
Wade laughed. Ethan was so totally unapologetic. It was refreshing. “I’ll see,” he told him. “But I don’t know if I’m ready for a parade just yet.”
“Well, think about it.” He handed Wade a card with his name and phone number written on it. “Call me anytime, day or night, if you want to talk.”
“Thanks, Ethan.” Wade tried to imagine calling the confident man after one of his dreams. Or after he’d run like a scared kid out of a movie. He couldn’t. He shoved the card in his back pocket anyway. “I’d better get going.”
“A few of us are heading out for a beer. Want to join?”
“Another time,” Wade said. He felt exhausted all of a sudden. Like he’d absorbed too much, felt too much and his skin was too thin. He gave Ethan a wave and headed out the door, welcoming the chill. Ideally it would wake him up enough to get him home to his bed. Anxiety knotted inside him when he thought about sleep. It was unnerving not knowing if it was going to be a good night or bad. Maybe he’d take one of Doc Miller’s jumbo sleeping pills just to make sure he got some rest.
He looked up at the stars, shining crystal clear across the autumn sky. He took a breath and let it out slowly, watching it form a cloud around his head. Tonight hadn’t changed everything, but it had shifted something inside of him. It was a relief just to acknowledge that things hadn’t been going so well.
He thought of Lori and her faith in him. He hoped he was worthy of it. Tonight he’d learned that healing was a long process and could take years. But if he did what he needed to do, he could make progress. And after his panic at the movie last night, one thing was clear. Any step forward was better than staying where he was. He had to make progress, and if he didn’t, he had to let Lori go.