Free Legacy by David Lynn Golemon

only thing Alice Hamilton ever really knew for sure was that Garrison Lee loved her, and she him.
    She took Lee’s hand and squeezed it gently when he turned his head first left and then right. He mumbled something again and then fell silent. Alice allowed the tears to flow for the briefest of moments before swiping them away.
    “Jump, Ben, jump!” Lee shouted as he tossed his head to the right.
    Alice froze at the moment her long dead husband’s name was mentioned. It was a subject Lee and she had discussed on only one occasion and that was in the months after World War II had ended. It had never come up again and Alice never once asked him to repeat the story of how her husband had died.
    “Oh, no, no, no—you bastard—you bastard!”
    Lee sat up so fast that Alice had to lean back to keep from being knocked silly by the man’s still large frame. He sat up and his left eye opened and he had a look of murder on his face. The ugly scar ran under the eye patch covering his right eye and ran pink into the gray hairline. Gone were the dashing good looks of the Hollywood leading man that was once General Garrison Lee. Now all that remained was a dying man with a guilt-ridden memory and a woman who had fallen in love with him in only a few short years after the war.
    “Garrison, wake up,” she said as she tried to gently push him back onto the bed.
    Finally Lee took two large breaths and looked over at Alice, allowing his one eye to adjust to the faint light filtering into the bedroom. He blinked and then finally realized where he was. He slowly lay back, but not before taking Alice’s hand in his own.
    “Dreaming,” he said as his eye closed.
    “Yes, I know,” Alice said, leaning over and kissing his brow.
    “It’s hell dying, old woman. All the ghosts start to pop open the tailgate to the welcome wagon.” He opened his eye and looked at Alice. He tried to smile and for the first time in her life she saw that Lee had a tear in his good eye that he didn’t try to swipe away.
    “I tried to bring him home alive. I—”
    “Stop, don’t even think about it. Ben will be there waiting for you. After all that we’ve been through and learned at the Group, you have to believe he’s there. Hell, he may even have a choice word or two for you about stealing his wife,” Alice said, smiling.
    Lee returned the smile. “The only reason I regret going is that I have to leave you.” Lee half turned and lifted his free hand. He held her face. “You saved me. Every day you were in my life, you saved me from being that bleak man you met all those years ago.”
    “You’re not gone yet and I’m still here, old man. You get some more rest.” She let his hand go and reached for several large files that were spread across his blanket. “And no more reading material for you,” she said, stacking the red-bordered files and then standing, but not before she leaned over and kissed the 103-year-old-man deeply. “If you get your rest, I’ll give these back to you.”
    “You’re such a bully,” he said as his eye closed.
    “Yeah, and you know where I got that training.” She turned for the doorway and then stopped and looked back him. “Jack called and asked if he and Sarah could stop by later tonight, I told them yes.”
    “Always good to see Jack and his girl,” Lee said, without opening his good eye.
    Alice watched as the senator went to sleep, then she turned and went through the door, leaving it cracked open by a foot as she expected his sleeping mind to bounce back on him again.
    Senator Garrison Lee was near death, and there wasn’t anything Alice could do but watch him die.
    SHACKLETON CRATER, LUNAR SURFACE
     
    For the first time since Apollo 17 the United States had returned to the surface of the Moon. Peregrine, the code name for the package of four robotic lunar rovers, George, John, Paul , and Ringo , named for their resemblance to a large-tracked beetle, had landed safely with its air-cushioned (balloon)