Free Moondance Beach by Susan Donovan Page B

week, when she had stopped by the Safe Haven to pick up her mother. Duncan had been coming out the kitchen door with Clancy, and the two of them had been laughing. Lena had carefully backed away from the bed-and-breakfast so as not to draw attention to her car. She had noticed her hands were shaking.
    “He looks like a movie star nowadays, doesn’t he?” her mother had commented.
    Lena hadn’t answered.
    Her mother had turned in the seat to look at her. “Don’t you think he looks like a movie star,
menina
?”
    Lena had kept her eyes on the road.
    “Lena?”
    “Who are you talking about, Mother?”
    Mellie had laughed all the way to the house.
    Duncan was thirty-four now, six foot two, hard and chiseled and maybe just slightly leaner than she recalled him being the year before. Despite his injuries, he remained a study in masculine lines and motion, sleek and in control. It was no wonder a group of women had just stopped in their tracks and stared as he walked by.
    He was that kind of gorgeous.
    When Duncan disappeared into the market, Lena felt her body relax. There was no denying it. She was a coward. The reason she hadn’t run into Duncan in the month he’d been home was because she was afraid to. She had waited till the very end to stop by Frasier’s dinner party, in the hopes that Duncan would have already called it a night.
    And just now she’d run away from him.
    Lena gathered her tote and wound her way through the bistro tables, once again headed toward the parking lot. She longed to spend time with him, to hear him laugh and see him smile, but the truth was, she was too afraid to risk getting her bubble popped.
    What if he was nothing like she’d built him up to be all these years? What if he was not the man of herimagination? What if she’d been wrong so long ago and had continued to be wrong every year since?
    What if Duncan was not her one and only?
    *   *   *
     
    Duncan sat at the desk in his room at the Safe Haven, the only light coming from his laptop, his whole body nothing but a ball of frustration. He couldn’t keep putting this off. Duncan placed his fingers on the keys and forced himself to start writing.
July 28
Dear Nestor and Beth,
I think of you both every day, and I know I’ll be visiting you in San Diego soon. I’m headed to Little Creek next week to meet with Capt. Sinclair, my first official step toward getting back to active duty. I still have a ways to go before I can even think of passing my physical screening and dive medical, but I’m running again, and hope to start swimming in the choppy Atlantic soon. (No pansy pools for me!) As Justin used to say—“It ain’t a good swim unless you damn near drown.”
     
    Duncan stopped typing. Would the Jaramillos want old jokes from their dead son? Would they hear Justin’s voice in their heads and laugh with him, or would they think Duncan was being flippant about death?
Their only child’s death.
    “Shit.”
    He could change it later. Right now he needed to keep typing. It had been two months since the Jaramillos had come to visit him on the rehab unit at Walter Reed, and he hadn’t yet reached out to them. That was unacceptable.
As I continue to get stronger, my memories of the ambush become clearer. I believe it is my responsibility to share with you some of the details of that night, not because I want to cause you additional suffering, but because it is my duty, as Justin’s best friend and teammate, to share everything I know. I realize the Navy has given you an official report, but I am the only man on earth who can tell you about the last seconds of your son’s life. It was a promise we made to each other during Hell Week, when we both knew we would be among those going through. We said that if anything ever happened to one of us and the other survived, we would be the eyes and ears for our families. I am not a writer, but I will do my best to help bring you closure.
     
    Duncan paused, his trembling fingers