“Going on two years now. Shortly after word came that you were missing. She never stopped believing you would come home. Said she’d know if her only son was...”
Her eyes grew shiny. She paused for a moment to gather herself, avoiding his eyes and sipping her tea. He wondered if she had known when Fitz died. If mothers had some secret connection that didn’t need someone showing up on their doorstep with an official-looking letter to tell them their son would be coming home in a box.
What was worse? Knowing your kid was dead, or not knowing and imagining the worst in between flashes of hope?
Jack fought the urge to suck in a breath, his lungs desperate for air as the sunshine-yellow walls closed in on him. “How?”
“Her heart. The doc said it just gave out, couldn’t take anymore. She went in her sleep. Did they not tell you?”
“No.” Someone had probably tried, but receiving mail wasn’t part of the amenities offered by the Viet Cong. After he and the others had been found, well, he guessed no one wanted to be the one to tell him. He had been in pretty bad shape.
“And Kathleen?” he asked, forcing the words past the constriction in his throat.
“She left, right after. Didn’t feel right staying there, I imagine.” Mrs. Fitzsimmons sighed. “She wasn’t there at the time. Her sister Erin was birthing her firstborn, and there were complications. When she got back, she found...” She trailed off. “The lass took it hard. Blames herself. Thinks that if she’d been there things might have ended differently.”
Jack didn’t comment on that. There was no second-guessing death. All the what-ifs in the world weren’t going to change anything, and speculating what might have been only kept the wound open and raw. He knew that, first-hand.
“Where is Kathleen now?”
“She moved back with her family. She comes round every week or so to check on the place, though. Keeps it nice, said she wanted it ready for you when you came back. Never gave up hope, that one,” the woman said. “She’s working at her da’s diner in Birch Falls. Does she know you’re home?”
Jack shook his head. When he’d been rescued, he’d been in bad shape, bad enough that he hadn’t wanted to get anyone’s hopes up. And after ... well, a phone call just wasn’t enough. Dreams of his homecoming hadn’t included a dead mother and an empty house, though. But maybe it was for the best.
“Did you say you have a key?”
The older woman looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Aye. Kathleen gave it to me, in case of an emergency.”
Jack thanked her and stood, suddenly anxious to be out of this warm, familiar kitchen where ghostly echoes of a much happier time warred with sadness and grief. Maybe he’d come back another time, when he’d had time to reacclimate himself to this world, but at that moment, the woman’s compassion made his heart ache. He wasn’t the boy she had known anymore, and the man he’d become needed to deal with this in his own private way.
Mrs. Fitzsimmons shuffled over to her canister set and extracted a flour-dusted key. She placed it into his outstretched palm, covering his hand with hers. “She’ll be wanting to see you, Jack.”
Would she?
Jack thanked her and walked back to his house, using the key to let himself in. He removed his coat and gloves, hanging them on the free-standing coat rack there, then remembered to wipe his feet on the mat and remove his boots. There was a part of him that knew it no longer mattered, but he did it anyway.
The place was chilly, but not freezing, which meant the heat was still on, too. A brief check of the thermostat confirmed that it had been set for fifty-seven degrees, enough to keep the pipes from freezing. He clicked it up to seventy-two, then moved into the kitchen.
Everything looked exactly as he remembered it. The pine cabinets. The Formica countertops. The aging white appliances. The goddamned tea kettle with the painted roses. Even the smell, though faint, was the same. Jack closed his eyes and inhaled the scents of lemon and wood and freshly-baked cookies. For a moment, he could almost believe that nothing had changed.
But it had. Everything had changed. Him, most of all.
Would Kathleen still want him, damaged as he was? This—– coming home –—was all he had thought about for so long. It was what kept him sane, a pinpoint of focus through a vista of horrors.
Now that he was finally here, the doubts began to creep in. He was no longer the man Kathleen had fallen in love with, mentally or physically. What if he’d been kidding himself? What if this—– this empty house, this feeling of no longer belonging—– was all there was?
That’s when he saw it, the tented notecard on the table. Cream-colored, with a tiny rose in the bottom right corner. The same design that was on the stationery she’d used to write him letters all these years. He knew that if he lifted it to his nose, he’d catch the faint scent of flowers, just like her perfume.