Free Rhineland Inheritance by T. Davis Bunn Page B

you scared?”
    â€œI lived with fear all the time,” he replied. “Every time we were about to go into action, I used to get such a sick in my stomach until the first shot was fired. Then all that mattered was surviving. Keeping myself and my troops alive, and bringing the boys home.”
    â€œAnd so now you miss it.”
    â€œNo,” he stated flatly. “That’s not it at all. I know some guys do, and I can understand them. I really can. But that’s not the way I feel.”
    â€œWhat is it, then?”
    He wrinkled his forehead in concentration. “What I did stood for something. I fought for what I believed in. There was a clear pattern to life. That much about it felt good. I was doing something with meaning. Now it’s gone. All gone. I guess I just need something to believe in.”
    Sally filled their two cups, lifted her own, and said, “Here’s to all the yesterdays, soldier. Wherever they’ve gone.”
    â€œTo yesterday,” he agreed.
    â€œI want it all back. All of it. I’d trade my life for one day of how it used to be.” She set down her cup and said softly, “I can’t work out how it’s supposed to be now.”
    â€œI can’t either,” he agreed.
    Their meal was served, two steaming platters piled high with solid country cooking, German style. They ate in silence, gathering themselves, recovering from the shock of honesty.
    Eventually she set her fork down with a contented sigh.“I didn’t know how tired I was of army food, or how much I needed that meal, soldier. Thank you.”
    Jake nodded. “Will you do me a favor?”
    â€œDepends.”
    â€œStop calling me soldier.”
    The look of mock surprise returned. “All this time and I didn’t notice? Excuse me, sailor. I didn’t catch the cut of your uniform.”
    â€œNot sailor, either,” he persisted. “Jake. Just Jake. It’s my name.”
    â€œOkay, Just Jake. From now on, Just Jake, that’s all you’ll hear.”
    â€œWhy do you make a mocking joke out of everything?”
    â€œIt’s my last line of defense,” she said, her tone brittle. “Don’t knock it down. Please. It’s not much, but it’s all this girl’s got left.”
    He searched her face and said quietly, “Tell me about your fiance.”
    Her eyes became open wounds. Her mouth worked, but for a moment she could manage no sound. Then, “Why?”
    â€œBecause I want to know. Because I feel his presence with us here.”
    â€œNo you don’t,” she said shakily. “What you feel is his absence. He is not here. I wish he were, but he’s not.”
    â€œTell me,” Jake pressed.
    She turned away from him and looked out beyond their table, beyond the farmhouse wall and the darkened forest and the dusty tumble-down city and the war-torn country, to a place and a time that was no more. Jake let her be, content to sit and watch her search the unseen distance, and wonder if a woman would ever love him that much. Or if he would ever deserve such a love.
    She turned back and said with strength and a kind of fervor, “He was a great man, Jake. Not a good man. A great man. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my whole life is forgive God for letting him die. Sometimes I can, and sometimes it’sjust beyond me. I mean—” She stopped and took a couple of harsh breaths. “The world needs men like him, Jake.”
    â€œTell me about him,” Jake asked, because it seemed now that she wanted the question asked. It tore at him more than he thought possible to encounter this love for another man in her voice and her eyes. But still he asked.
    â€œStrong,” Sally replied, smiling with a tenderness that washed over him, making it hard not to stand and rush over and crush her to his chest.
    â€œStrong in body and strong in spirit,” Sally went on, unaware of