One Was a Soldier Read online

  Anne leaned forward. “I don’t mean you should counsel him. You’re going way above and beyond as it is.”

  He glanced at the papers atop the file. Some sort of spreadsheet. He slid it aside and flipped open the folder. There was a copy of a PT order for Willem Ellis. Beneath it, a copy of an X-ray request. Beneath that, exam notes in his own hand. Bilateral TT amp, he read. Inadequate exercise. Depressed affect.

  “Let’s see how he responds to physical therapy.” He looked up at Anne. “That can have a dramatic effect on a patient’s mood.” He let his eyes drop to the notes again. P. 19. Was X-C. Touchy issue—P? or mom? “Especially for a young, athletic guy like your son.”

  The phone buzzed, thank God, thank God. He answered it. “It’s Cindy,” the voice on the other end said. “I’ve got the Ellis pictures for you, if you’re ready.”

  “I’ll be right there.” He could have kissed her. Cindy. He remembered her. He could picture her brightly colored lab coat, the way she wore her hair screwed up on top of her head. Last Halloween, she baked skeleton-shaped cookies for the office.

  He could remember her. Why couldn’t he recall a single thing about the file in his hands? He stood up. “The X-rays are ready. Do you want to wait—” He had no idea whether Will Ellis was still around or not. He changed the question to “Where would you like to wait?”

  “Why don’t you meet us back in the exam room?”

  Which one?

  “That’s fine.” He let her precede him out the door and watched her walk up the hallway to the waiting room. He took the side way to radiology and ducked into the staff bathroom. Locked the door behind him. Leaned against it. Breathed in. Breathed out. He had been forgetting things since he got back from his tour of duty. His wife had said … she had said … he couldn’t remember what she had said.

  He lurched forward to face the mirror. He looked pale and damp in his own eyes. “Stress,” he said to his reflection. “The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder include mood swings, sleep disorders, inability to concentrate, and short-term memory loss.” Reciting the symptoms made him feel better. He was a doctor. If he could survive going without sleep for thirty hours at a pop during his residency, he could survive this.

  His gaze shifted to the still-pink scar curling through his hair. It had been made by a chunk of cement, part of a makeshift clinic until it was blown to pieces by insurgents. The impact had rendered him profoundly unconscious, thank God. He had never had to witness what the explosions did to the kids and parents waiting to be seen by army doctors. He had done his time in his own Forward Response Station and been cleared for duty by his superior. These … memory lapses weren’t related. He was suffering from—

  Traumatic brain injury.

  “Stress disorder,” he said loudly.

  There was a knock at the door. “Dr. Stillman?” One of the insurance clerks. “Are you okay?”

  He closed his eyes. “Yeah.” Nobody can know about this. “Be out in a sec.” He turned on the faucet and flipped open the Ellis file. While the water ran and splashed, he read over the complete history. When he was done, he turned the faucet off and reflexively pulled three paper towels from the dispenser. He stared at them for a second before throwing them away, unused.

  The corridor was empty when he emerged. He had to get the X-rays and meet the Ellises—meet them—his mind was blank for a bowel-dropping second. Then he pulled examining room out of the darkness. He flipped open the file and wrote it down. Notes. That would be the key.

  He could deal with this. PTSD responded favorably to therapy and stress management techniques. He could prescribe himself Xanax for anxiety. He would—for a moment, his future yawned away beneath him, an endless, dark pool. He shuddered.

  Parker swung around the corner, nearly bowling into him. “There you are.” He thrust an X-ray folder into Trip’s hands. “Cindy gave me these to give to you. Don’t you have the Ellises waiting in D?”

  “Huh? Oh. Yes.”

  “Meeting at four.” Parker continued down the hallway. “Don’t forget,” he called over his shoulder.

  Trip’s hand, scrawling D and MEET AT 4 on the folder, fell still. “I won’t.”

  FRIDAY, JULY 1

  Clare had thought slipping in the deliveries door of the soup kitchen and tying an apron on over her jeans and sleeveless shirt would make her entrance a little less noticeable. She was wrong. As soon as she crossed from the large food storage area into the steamy kitchen, one of her congregation spotted her. “Reverend Clare!” he yelled. “It’s Reverend Clare!” A cheer went up. She resisted covering her cheeks, although she could feel them pinking up.

  The volunteer crew clustered around, smiling, laughing, pelting her with questions.

  “When did you get in?”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought we were going to have a reception!”

  Clare raised her hands, laughing. “If y’all will let me get a word in edgewise—”

  Velma Drassler, the head cook, wrapped her arms around Clare and squeezed her hard enough to crack ribs. “Oh, it’s so good to have our rector back.”

  “I got in late last Friday and took the weekend off,” Clare said when she had her breath back. “I’ve been meeting with Father Lawrence and with the vestry.” That had been a surreal experience. They, too, had hugged her and thumped her back and escorted her to her old seat in the meeting room, and the whole time she’d been laughing and talking and answering questions, she’d been thinking What is it? Why do they look so strange? When Mrs. Marshall laid her hand on Clare’s arm, frail bones and onionskin and blue veins, she realized: They’re old. With the exception of Junior Warden Geoff Burns, every member of the vestry was over sixty. In a year and a half, Clare hadn’t clapped eyes on another American older than—well, older than Russ.

  Of course, she had seen Iraqis, men and women who had been sandblasted by war and hardship and deprivation until they looked more preserved than alive. They weren’t healthy and affluent, either, like her vestry; they had been poor and angry, poor and desperate, poor and screaming for help after—

  “You met with the vestry…?” Velma prompted.

  Clare wrenched her head away from the narrowing bloodred place it was sliding toward. “Yes. Um. They had a very ambitious meet-and-greet planned for me, but I told them I just wanted to get back to work.” She hadn’t told them the idea of being hailed as the returning hero turned her stomach. “Instead, we agreed I’d drop in on as many of our groups and outreach programs as possible. Kind of like wading into the pool from the shallow end.” She needed to start at the shallow end. Her body’s clock was still set seven time zones away, and it was only thanks to the go and no-go pills she had brought back from Iraq that she opened her eyes in the morning and shut them at night. Plus, she had been having nightmares—

  “Are you going to be at church on Sunday?”

  Velma’s question brought her back to the moment. “I’ll be celebrating, yeah, but Father Lawrence will be preaching. Writing sermons is the only thing I didn’t miss while I was gone.”

  They laughed again, and the rest of her dangerous thoughts retreated into the dark, turned away by her parishioners’ good humor. She went to work in the dining room, taking the chairs off the tables, carting plastic glasses and coffee cups to the drink station; laying out cheap, disposable salt and pepper shakers at every table. She pushed open narrow casement windows and switched on every standing fan to move the sticky, overheated air around.

  At noon the doors, beneath their inscription I WAS HUNGRY, AND YOU GAVE ME FOOD, opened. One by two by four, the diners came in, some silent, some chatting with friends, some talking to companions only they could see and hear.

  It had surprised her, when she’d first arrived in Millers Kill, that there could be any street people in such a small town, but Russ had shown her the derelict waterfront buildings where they sheltered. The untreated mentally
ill, the hard-core alcoholic addicts, the people who would not or could not be reached.

  Then there were the teens and early twenties, often passing through; sometimes a couple of Appalachian Trail hikers looking to save a buck, other times twitchy, defensive kids who looked as if they could never remember being cuddled on someone’s lap.

  The St. Alban’s volunteers served lunch to men in mechanic’s overalls and feed store caps, and to women headed to Fort Henry for the afternoon shift behind a cash register at the Kmart or the Stewart’s. They served the slow-moving, dignified elderly, and occasionally the young, darting around their mothers or fathers.

  Clare tried to speak with as many people as she could, even if it was as brief as a greeting and a “Lord, it sure is hot today, isn’t it?” Pouring drinks, swiping spills off the tables, bringing diners seconds, she could feel her vocation reassembling around her, feel herself changing from a single recipient of God’s grace into a conduit, from someone clutching with tight fingers to someone giving away with both hands. She had long thought that if Jesus were around today, he’d be feeding people at a soup kitchen instead of washing their feet.

  There was a cry of distress and a flurry of motion at one of the tables farthest from the door. An older woman had knocked over her iced tea, and the two others sitting near her were trying to sop up the rapidly spreading puddle with their inadequate paper napkins. Clare strode through the dining hall, waving her large stained cloth like a martyr’s relic. “Let me. I can get the whole thing with this monster.”

  One woman in polyester uniform pants and a tired expression suggesting she was between two shifts plunked back down into her seat as Clare attacked the spill. The younger woman stayed by the old lady’s side, her hand on her shoulder. “Let me get you another drink,” she said.

  “Oh, thank you, Tally.” Her dining companion’s voice shook. “That would be nice.”

  Clare lifted her head. Tally? Tally McNabb had vanished last week from the Dew Drop Inn and hadn’t been seen since. Russ had waited twenty-four hours, then released her husband and Warrant Officer Nichols. Nichols had left town, and when Tally failed to turn up, Russ had speculated she had gone with him. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she had been living on the streets or bunking with friends until her husband cooled off.

  How many Tallys could there be in Millers Kill?

  Clare rolled the wet cloth and ice cubes into a ball and went after her. The young woman was reaching for a pebbled plastic glass. “Tally?” Clare said. “Specialist Tally McNabb?”

  She spun around, staring, and Clare had an impression of brown eyes and fear and a tattoo on one arm, and then Tally hurled the iced tea straight at Clare and bolted for the door.

  The plastic glass bounced off Clare’s forehead.

  “Ow!” Ice cubes flew into the air and chunked down onto her head and shoulders. Sweet tea drenched her shirt and runneled down her hair. She dashed liquid out of her eyes. “What the hell?” She took off after the fleeing woman, shouts of “She attacked Reverend Clare!” and “Call nine-one-one!” rising from the kitchen behind her.

  Clare dodged tables, chairs, people leaping and lurching to get out of Tally’s way. A grizzled man in an overcoat opened the door and staggered back as Tally rammed into him, caromed off his chest, and sprinted down the sidewalk.

  Clare skidded to a stop, grabbing the man’s shoulders to steady him. “You okay?” Alcohol fumes rose off him like heat shimmers off the street.

  He nodded and smiled, cheerily and toothlessly. “Enjoy your lunch,” Clare said and pounded after the younger woman, who now had almost a block’s lead on her. Clare concentrated on closing it, lengthening her stride, shortening her arm swing, matching her breathing to the thwap-thwap-thwap of her sneakers hitting the pavement. She’d been running six, eight, ten miles a day these past months, endless, punishing loops around the base perimeter, kicking it up, kicking it and kicking it until she outran her mind and was nothing but a body, all sensation, no thought.

  She drew closer and closer to Tally, her breath sawing in her ears, her feet thudding along with her heart. She was getting into that zone where all the noise in her head went away and she just felt: anger and excitement and the heat on her skin and the stretch and flex of her muscles. When Tally pivoted into an alley between the Goodwill and a dilapidated hobby shop, Clare didn’t hesitate. She followed—right into the garbage can the girl had toppled in her path.

  Clare hit the can, flipping over it, smashing shoulder-first onto the gritty asphalt. Her lungs emptied. Her eyes filled. She heard the pounding of footsteps behind her, then the thud and swish of someone leaping over her, then the footsteps receding as Tally ran back onto Mill Street.

  Clare swore. Pushed herself off the pavement, her shoulder burning and cramping. Wiped her forearm across her eyes to clear her tear-and-dust-clouded vision. Took a step and collapsed at the stab of pain in her right ankle. She swore again. Limped out of the alley as fast as one and a half legs could take her. Spotted Tally one block up, bent over, hands braced on her knees, her body bowed before the limits of her heart and lungs. When she saw Clare, she started upright and staggered toward the Riverside Park.

  “Wait, goddammit!”

  Tally ignored her. Clare cursed again then clamped her mouth shut as she realized she had brought more than a running habit back from Iraq. Limping up the sidewalk, she tried again. “I just want to talk with you!”

  Even Tally’s lurching half-jog was going to outstrip Clare’s speed with a twisted ankle. “It’s about Quentan Nichols!”

  Tally paused, still not turning.

  C’mon, Clare thought. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.

  A cruiser flew from the end of Burgoyne Street, crossed Mill, and kept right on going, over the curb, onto the sidewalk, and the door swung open and Eric McCrea was there, gun out, pointing it at Tally, bellowing, “Police! Get down on the ground!”

  What the hell? Russ’s officers didn’t respond to assault by a plastic cup with deadly force. Tally seemed locked in place, swaying; whether from fear or exhaustion, Clare couldn’t tell. She limped faster, trying to reach them, to tell McCrea that whatever he was told, there must be some mistake—when he closed on Tally and kicked across her shins, toppling her over.

  “Stop!” Clare yelled, but he didn’t seem to hear her. She watched, horrified, as he stomped his boot into the downed woman’s back and yanked her arm up.

  Tally screamed. Clare gritted her teeth and ran, feeling the tear and stab, almost light-headed with pain. “Sergeant McCrea,” she shouted, putting everything she had learned about command into her voice. “Release that woman now!”

  He dropped Tally’s wrist. Stepped off her. Stared at Clare. “Reverend Clare.” He sounded surprised. Defiant. She knelt on the sidewalk next to the moaning woman and helped her sit up.

  “What the hell were you doing? If Russ—if Chief Van Alstyne had seen this…” She was suddenly in her kitchen on a warm night in May, watching Russ open and close his fist after he had broken his own rules and, enraged, punched a man in his custody. If one of my officers had done that, I’da had him on suspension by now.

  McCrea jerked his chin up. The look in his eyes reminded her of an unsocialized dog, afraid and dangerous. “We had a report you’d been assaulted at the soup kitchen. I get to the scene, this”—he waved his hand toward Tally, bent beneath Clare’s arm, still gasping—“perp is fleeing, and you look like someone’s knifed and rolled you? What was I supposed to think?”

  “She threw a glass of iced tea on me. There was no need to—”

  “I used appropriate force for someone I believed to be dangerous. If you want to report me to the chief, go ahead.”

  She shook her head, all her anger and adrenaline beaten down to a heartsick weariness. “I’m not looking to tattle on you, Sergeant McCrea.”

  Tally looked up at her, her face mottled with exertion and pain. “You’re not an MP?”

  Clare sighed. “No, Tally, I’m not an MP.
I’m a priest.” Her brain caught up with what the woman’s statement implied. “You saw me last week, didn’t you? At the Dew Drop.” Tally nodded. “I’m serving in the Guard. That’s why I was in uniform. And the reason I approached you in the soup kitchen is that the police want to make sure that you’re not in danger from your husband or from Chief Nichols.”

  For the first time, McCrea looked at Tally as if she might be human. “That’s her? McNabb’s wife?”

  “Yes.” Clare tried to keep her voice even. “This is her.”

  “We’ve been trying to track her down since last Friday.” He stepped back, well away from the two women. “Mrs. McNabb, I’d like you to come with me to the station to make a statement.”

  Tally got to her feet. She rubbed her shins. Tried her shoulder. “You’re joking, right?”

  Clare struggled to stand up. “They need your side of the story about the fight at the Dew Drop, and if you need a restraining order, they’ll support your petition.”

  “Restraining order? Against who?”

  “Against whoever’s scared you enough so that you drop out of sight for a week.”

  “I wasn’t scared. Exactly.” Tally wiped a bare arm across her nose. “I just needed some time away so I could think. I couldn’t deal with my husband just yet.”

  Clare reached out and touched the other woman, sending electric shocks of pain through her own shoulder. “Tally. Go with Sergeant McCrea. I promise you, you’ll be unharmed and treated fairly. You can tell Chief Van Alstyne Clare Fergusson has given you her word.”

  “And he’s going to care … why?”

  McCrea snorted.

  Clare frowned at him. “Because the chief believes in doing the right thing.”

  In the end, the young woman went, sitting guarded and stiff on the other side of the cruiser from Clare, who was dropped off back at the soup kitchen. As Clare exited the police car, she saw she had left a smear of blood where her shoulder pressed against the seat. Oh, God.

  She paused before shutting the door. “Sergeant McCrea…” She didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound like a threat to run to Russ if he didn’t behave.