Christmas To Remember Page 17

  God knows she had the power to bring him low. They might not have spent that much time together, but the time they had spent had been quality. Figuring things out, talking about the past. Moving on. She’d made him feel things he—

  He shut those thoughts off. He’d liked Marley, could easily see why he’d hooked up with her years ago even though he didn’t have a clue why he’d treated her the way he had. But why accuse him of being someone else?

  The truck sprayed gravel as he skidded into the drive. He pictured her tonight, head back, gasping as he made love to her.

  God, don’t let it be true.

  Marley’s face, her expression—this wasn’t a game to her and his anger boiled over into rage. This wasn’t revenge unless she was one hell of an actress. The horror in her eyes when she questioned him about the scar said it all.

  It wasn’t true. It would mean that Pop—

  He barged inside the house, uncaring that the door crashed into the wall when he flung it open. His head felt as if someone was taking an ice pick to it, but nothing was going to stop him from getting the answers he needed.

  “Pop?” What was it about the way Marley had looked while she screamed at him? “Pop!”

  “How could you do that to her?”

  He stumbled at the memory. A woman’s voice. Not Marley’s, not Angel’s. Definitely not his mother’s.

  Chills racked him as pain ripped through his skull like a buzz saw. Marley’s expression, the revulsion. The blond girl’s face. “Pop!” He lifted his hand and rubbed, careening off walls and furniture to get to the hutch on the far side of the room, vaguely registering Pop’s footsteps hurrying down the hall.

  There were photos in the hutch. He’d looked at them for hours on end already, but maybe now…He had to prove Marley wrong. Pop wasn’t lying.

  “She’s lying! I didn’t—Jack! Jack, get Pop! Go get Pop!”

  “Son? What’s wrong? Beau?”

  His head pulsed with every beat of his heart. He stood with his hands braced on the hutch, the image—Joe and…Jack. Joe had looked right at him when he’d said that. Screamed at him, called him…Jack.

  “You’ve got a bad one. Come sit down. I’ll get your pills.”

  He didn’t move. If he let go of the hutch he’d fall flat on his face. “Where are they?”

  “Where are what?”

  “The pictures. Where are all the pictures?” Still holding on, he turned toward his father, squinting from the pain streaking through his head, the room moving in odd waves. He wasn’t going to believe it until…“Mom liked to take pictures. She took a lot of them. Said she’d rather be behind a camera than in front of it.” Another piece of the puzzle. Bits and snatches came at him faster and faster, unfurling from the black stream in his mind. “Where are the pictures?”

  Pop’s expression changed. Became…guarded? No.

  “Son—”

  “Where are my school pictures? The—The one of me in Little League? The one of me and, what was her name? Annie or Andrea or—Andie! We went to the sixth-grade dance together. She wore a blue dress and Mom took pictures of us.”

  Pop ran his hands over his balding head, his face taking on a reddish hue, his eyes bright. Tears? No. He wouldn’t cry unless…

  “Come sit down before you fall down. I’ll call the doc—”

  “I can’t wait anymore!” He groaned at the pain his own voice caused. “Marley said—Pop, where’s the damn pictures?” The suffocating feeling was taking over again. The same sensation he’d had in the hospital when he’d been trying to wake up and couldn’t. He wanted to wake up right now and realize it was all a bad dream. It had to be a bad dream because no one would let a person believe a lie like this.

  “What did she say to you?”

  He laughed, but the noise that came out of his chest was nowhere close to the right sound. “She said I’m not me—Beau.”

  “Son—”

  “She’s lying.” He raised a hand and grasped his ID tags, holding them tight and trying to ignore the expression on his father’s face. No. No. “I’m Beau.”

  “No, son. No…you’re not.” His father—Barry said it gently, his voice low, a short, bare whisper. The man stepped closer, his eyes red and full of tears he made no attempt to hide. “I’m sorry. You have no idea how much. I regret…She’s right. You’re not Beau. Beau—my Beau—died back in September in the same bombing that injured you. You were friends, good friends, but you’re not him.”

  He ripped the tags off with a jerk and slammed his hand into the glass door of the hutch. The glass broke, slicing into his knuckles, but he welcomed the pain. Anything was better than the dazed numbness overtaking him.

  “Let me—”

  “How? Why?” Glass crunched beneath his boots when he shifted his feet and pressed his forehead to the cool wood. The anger inside him too much. He had to stay calm enough to get the answers he demanded. Had to think. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you lie and let me believe I was your son?”

  “I didn’t know at first. I swear, I didn’t know. And then I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I didn’t want to believe it, don’t know how it could’ve possibly happened. I’m to blame for a big part of what you’re feeling right now, Jack, but you and Beau looked so much alike.” He wiped a shaking hand under his nose. “Do you remember that?”

  Barry hesitated, then hurried away to grab a fresh towel from a drawer. Back again, he pressed it against the cuts on his hand.

  There it was—Jack. The friend Dr. Steinman had told him about?

  He lifted his too-heavy head and watched dazedly while Barry wrapped the material around his hand and tied it into a thick knot, the dog tags sticking to his palm. He didn’t remember anyone named Beau or Jack.

  “You could’ve been brothers. Back when you two met, we traced what we could of your history, but couldn’t find any connection to explain the resemblance. In the hospital with the cuts and bruises and swelling—the bandages…I should’ve been able to tell, but they said you were Beau and I never once thought something like this could have happened. I was just so grateful my son was alive, I never thought he—you—weren’t him. You were wearing Beau’s tags—that’s how they identified you afterward. I brought you home and—and the boy they sent home to your family—That was Beau.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Barry closed his eyes at his bitter, sarcastic tone, nodded slowly. “There were other soldiers injured but you—Beau was the only fatality. You looked so much alike. I’ve no doubt it’s him. And now that you know, we can get the answers you need, Jack. Figure out what happened and—and get Beau back to where he belongs.”

  The chain stuck out from beneath the towel, tinged with his blood. Beau’s tags. He stared at them, wishing he felt something more than a freaked-out sense of nothing. “How long have you known? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’ve known a few weeks now.”

  Weeks?

  “We need Dr. Steinman here. Jack, son, I waited to tell you because I didn’t want you traumatized when you found out. That girl—”

  “Don’t. Don’t say a word against her. She told me the truth, you didn’t.”

  Pop—Barry paused.

  He glared at the man, stared into eyes so like his own. The rational part of him heard the words about the ID tags and mix-up, but there was a part of him that raged because he’d lived a lie, carried another man’s sins. And for what? “You owe me the truth. When did you find out? How long were you going to let this go on?”

  Air rasped through Barry’s chest. “I noticed little things, but I didn’t give them much thought. Beau had changed a lot over the years, so I passed those off as that. Calling me Pop when Beau had always called me Dad. The way you picked up around here when Beau—” He laughed softly. “Beau didn’t lift a finger. H-He…Beau always liked to sleep on a pillow of a mattress, the softer the better. I saw you doing that stuff, but it didn’t register. And then you brought home the fish. Beau and I—w
e’re allergic.”

  “Allergic?” He remembered that night, how pale Barry had been, the way he’d collapsed. “I could’ve killed you.”

  Barry smiled a lopsided smile, looking old and worn-out. “It was the truth I hadn’t wanted to see, there in unmistakable detail. The stress of that and fatigue. I’d gotten off track with my meds after starting the job and traveling overseas. It wasn’t your fault, Jack.” He raised his head, looking sad and broken. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because I’ve had time to cope with the news. Mourn. You haven’t, but it’ll come. Regardless of whose tags you hold, son, it doesn’t change the outcome. The bomb still would’ve gone off, and it still would’ve been Beau who didn’t survive.”

  He didn’t comment. Couldn’t. He was turned upside down. Lost in that fog again.

  Barry cleared his throat. “You and Beau met a little over a year ago when Beau got his orders to join your division. He couldn’t believe it when he saw you. He e-mailed me pictures because of how much the two of you looked alike. I’ve got them, and a few others of you and Beau together.”

  “Why didn’t you show them to me?”

  “Because the docs said things had to be introduced slowly over time. You were remembering events from your childhood and healing fast, but I couldn’t pull out those pictures, pictures of someone who could’ve been your twin.”

  “But you could lie to me for weeks?”

  “I’ve been watching out for you for weeks, just like I would’ve wanted your father to do for Beau if the situation was reversed.”

  “I’m supposed to be happy you let my family think I’m dead?” The quiet of the small house closed in on him. How could Barry have done that? How could he have let things go on? Did he have any clue what kind of mess he’d caused by not telling the truth?

  “I didn’t want to, but it—The mix-up had already happened. I didn’t want to cause you any more pain than you were already in. I put you first, Jack. Not the son that I couldn’t bring back, you. The doctors—”

  “Weren’t the ones having to wake up and realize their life has been a lie!”

  Barry rubbed his hand over his head. “I told that girl to stay away from you, I warned you and tried to keep you too busy to notice her.”

  “Stop blaming this on Marley. If you’d told us the truth—”

  “You wouldn’t have handled it any better than you are now! That’s the bottom line, Jack. You think it couldn’t have been worse? What do you think the press will do when they hear of a military mix-up of dead and injured soldiers? Think they’ll leave you alone? Do you think they would let us deal with this privately or give you a chance to remember on your own?”

  He hit the hutch with his injured hand. “You still should’ve told me. It’s my life!”

  Barry held his hands out in front of his body, the gesture pleading. “I did what I thought was right, what I thought was best for you and your recovery. Son, you have to understand I hadn’t spent more than a few days with Beau in years. He stayed on base or with a girlfriend when he got leave. He didn’t come home because he wanted to party with his friends. It wasn’t until he met up with you that he…he started sending me e-mails. He told me how you two would play pool or cards and you’d talk about your dad. That got Beau thinking about things, about his youth and all the trouble he’d been in. He straightened up some, didn’t party as much. The boy who barely spoke to me wrote me two-page e-mails.

  “We couldn’t talk face-to-face to save our lives, but thanks to you and finding out what it was like not to have the family support that he had, we kept the Internet hot. Things changed between us. You helped us, Jack, and when I realized you weren’t Beau—” His shoulders straightened. “I couldn’t bring my son back, but I could damn well help the man who’d given a little bit of my son back to me before he was taken away.”

  “What about my family? You don’t think they’d care that I’m not dead?” He flinched when Barry put his hand on his shoulder.

  “Jack, according to Beau, you were dead to them already.”

  He stilled, didn’t breathe. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Son, you were more estranged from your family than I ever was from Beau. I know they think you’re dead, and I hated having to let them go on thinking that, but knowing the things Beau told me about—”

  “What?”

  Barry inhaled deeply, a frown on his face. “Beau told me you didn’t even want to list your father as your next of kin. He said you did, but you told him you only did it so he’d be forced to acknowledge your existence in your death. Son, I kept quiet because until you’re ready to go back there and face everything, what else could I do? I wasn’t going to ship you off to a place I knew you didn’t want to be, whether you remembered it or not.”

  So he had no one. Nowhere to go. No one to care. Marley’s image flashed in his mind but he shoved it away. No one.

  He stalked across the floor, found himself in front of the door taking deep, gulping breaths that didn’t help. “Do you know who Joe is?”

  Barry followed him, the man’s footsteps dragging like stones. “Joe’s your older brother. According to Beau, he’s the reason why you left home. Why you never went back. Joe killed his daughter and you got tired of your father defending him.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  HE STARED DOWN at the headline splashed across the paper. Baby Killer Transferred to New Prison.

  “Put that down and eat your breakfast.” Pop glared at him. “Go get ready for school.”

  “I’m not going to school.” He wouldn’t. Any time the prison system transferred Joe or even if somebody at the paper wrote an article on babies, everybody started talking again. Not that they ever stopped.

  “Yes, you are. We’re going to go about our business like—”

  “Like Joe didn’t kill the baby?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Then why was he convicted?” He tossed the paper aside.

  “It was a mistake. You know it was.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Pop looked up from his cereal bowl. “Watch your mouth. Don’t be talking about something you know nothing about.”

  “Fine, you want to know what I know? I know Sarah Peterson won’t go to the prom with me because of Joe, neither will Julie or Samantha.”

  “It’s just a dance.”

  “I don’t even want to go to the dance. I’d just like for people to shut up and quit comparing me to Joe! Pop, please, I graduate in a couple weeks. Let’s move. Let’s take off and go somewhere else. It doesn’t have to be far—”

  “No! We’re not taking the coward’s way out. Not when your brother’s innocent.”

  “He’s in prison! He’s not innocent!”

  “We’re not leaving.”

  He surged out of his chair. “Well, I am. I’m sick of this. I’m sick of living like outcasts because Joe couldn’t control his temper! I’m sick of the girls not being able to date me because their parents are afraid I’ll hurt them!”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “It is that bad! I’ve told you that!”

  “You heard me, boy. We’re not moving. Now, hurry it up before you miss the bus.”

  Tears burned his eyes but he wouldn’t let them fall. He was so sick and tired of this. “I’m leaving, Pop. My grades aren’t great, but I’ll graduate and when I do—I’m out of here. Come with me.”

  His father raised his head and stared at him, disappointment written on his face in the lines and wrinkles and the dark circles under his eyes. “If you don’t believe in this family anymore then you’re not a part of it. You want to leave, leave.”

  Something inside Jack snapped. It was like a rope holding an anvil over his head. One big hit and then everything came back in a rush, his life playing in front of his eyes at the speed of light. Too much. Too fast.

  He cradled his head in his palms and moaned at the stomach-c
hurning wave of nausea that came with the surge. Joe. Pop—his real father, not Barry. He remembered them. Josie. Baby Josie. Melissa, Josie’s mom, and Hal, Melissa’s dad. One by one their images stabbed through his head. The newspaper articles, the TV crews and the nightmare of his life appearing frequently on the six o’clock news.

  “The docs said it would be best to let you remember on your own. You know that, but I talked to your shrink once I realized. He was supposed to be talking to you about Jack. I’d hoped that, even if you thought you were Beau, you might remember things about yourself. That way when you realized what happened…”

  Mixed-up. Everything was so damned mixed-up. Images blasted him from every direction. Standing in the moon-shadowed doorway of the little house, he felt the sand and grit and blazing sun of Iraq. A radio playing in the background. Laughter. Christmases spent with guys he trusted, not the father he’d left behind because no matter what he did, Pop defended Joe, chose Joe, over him. Over moving on and actually having a life.

  He moaned softly, rubbed his eyes with his palm, his head imploding. Barry’s voice reached him, rough pats landed on his shoulder. Whispers that it would be all right. Nothing was all right. The vortex sucked him down, blindsiding him with the things he should’ve done, said. Never the person people needed him to be. Pop. Barry. Marley, too. First he’d been accused of Joe’s sins, now Beau’s. No one here, not Marley, not her family, would ever look at him and not see Beau. And Pop—

  Where was his father now? What had happened to him? There were too many questions to consider. Too much anger to deal with.

  “Jack, do you remember what happened? Anything about—about Beau’s last days?”

  The pain in Barry’s voice made him close his eyes, concentrate. Standing there in the doorway, he stayed quiet and still until things took shape. Camp. Wiring the various buildings and getting power going again.

  An image separated itself from the others, slowly beginning to form in his head. Beau. Laughing, always on the lookout for a good time. It all seemed so clear now. “He had a date.” The fuzzy edges sharpened, until a rough laugh tumbled out of him. He remembered his friend, his buddy, the guy who’d become his brother in all the ways that matter. “He had a date.”