Free Running for Her Life by Beverly Long

difference between coming home whole or in a pine box, can be just a couple inches. They taught me how to be a man.”
    He wasn’t giving himself enough credit. He’d accepted a man’s responsibilities at the age of eighteen, long before he’d become a marine.
    “You came home,” she said, stating the obvious.
    “Yeah. Although I still didn’t have a job or an education and my family was a mess. My parents were separated, my younger brother was a suicidal drunk.”
    “What happened while you were gone?”
    “Sam is just a year younger than me. He’d always been the student of the family. He got an academic scholarship to Northwestern, a pretty swanky private school in Chicago. Great journalism program. He swung an internship at the Chicago Tribune, and all he talked about was working there after graduation.”
    Friends from school had gone to work at Mother Tribune, the flagship of the Tribune enterprises. She had visited them just months before she’d run from D.C. Michael would have contacted them, looking for her. Who knew what kind of crazy story he’d told them about why she’d left? He sure as heck wouldn’t have told them the truth.
    “While I’d taken a local train, with lots of stops and starts and getting-off points, Sam was on the express, in full pursuit of the American Dream.”
    “But something happened to derail him?”
    “Yeah. His fiancée got murdered. He found her. Her skull had been bashed in.” Jake’s voice had turned hard and his jaw looked stiff. “Even worse, for a while, he was the prime suspect.”
    “Oh, my.” It seemed inadequate, but it was all she could think of to say. Even after all these years the pain was evident in his voice, and she knew that Jake Vernelli had suffered for his brother.
    “I’m sorry. It must have been a horrible time.”
    “Something like that changes a person. It changes the people who love that person.”
    She understood that. Violence had changed her.
    “Is that why your parents had trouble?”
    “Evidently before I got home, Sam had been spinning out of control for a while. My parents didn’t know what to do. My mom made excuses and my dad thought tough love was the answer. They fought about it constantly. I think they were both just scared that they weren’t going to be able to pull Sam back from the edge. It got so bad that they separated.”
    His family had fallen apart. “Not exactly the Welcome Home party you were expecting?”
    He shrugged and gave her a half smile. “Not really. But I got my brother sobered up, worked full-time and went to school full-time.”
    “You make it sound easy but I’m betting it wasn’t.”
    “You spend enough hours burrowed into the ground during a sandstorm and you get your priorities in line.”
    “What happened with your parents?”
    This time it was a full smile that reached his dark eyes. “They got back together. If it weren’t for them, I’d probably think all marriages were hopeless. But they showed that love can endure.”
    “But yet you never got married again?” She was sorry the minute she asked the question. It was too personal and what did it matter anyway. “Never mind,” she said, holding up the palm of her hand.
    He shook his head. “It’s okay. Fourteen months of wedded bliss at the age of eighteen didn’t scar me for life. Maybe someday, if I find the right woman, and I know she’s not going to lie to me, then, who knows?” He rinsed his now-empty coffee cup in the sink and placed it on the drying rack. Then he took two steps toward the door before turning suddenly.
    “You ever been married?” he asked.
    She was scarred—both literally and figuratively. “No.”
    “Not even close?”
    It was the perfect opportunity. She could tell him the truth. But he was a cop. Had worked hard to become one. How could she expect him to look the other direction?
    She worked hard on her own smile. “Not even.”
    He rapped his knuckles on the wood door frame. “Here’s hoping