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“Besides you?” He chuckled. “No.”
“Me? We’re involved?” She said it under her breath; he almost didn’t catch it.
“You wouldn’t say?” He sent a glance her way, reading confusion in her eyes before he focused on the woods, raising his hand to point out a family of rabbits.
“I don’t know what to say other than this week is happening very fast.”
Was he the only one feeling this way? When he woke that morning, he’d looked over and felt such a sense of peace to find her beside him. It was, in its own way, like when he had seen Max and known they belonged together. It had been such a solid sensation. It had such a rightness about it that—Yeah, that was bloody unfair to this woman.
Halo decided to move the conversation back to basics. “And you have children? You mentioned you had sons?”
“Twins. They’re twenty-one now. Both were diagnosed with ADHD when they were little. And to say that I was very busy and very exhausted all the time is putting it mildly.”
“Military wife, that, too, isn’t an easy go.”
“No, it wasn’t. It felt like Dan always had one foot in the marriage and one foot somewhere else.” Squeezing Halo’s hands, she lifted one foot and swished it back and forth through the current. “When the boys hit high school, the writing was on the wall for the death of my marriage. It was a bit terrifying. I had a high school education. I had been a mother and a volunteer. Busy, always busy, exhausted in my busyness, but there’s not much to put on a resume—not for a job that makes enough money to pay the bills. So Dan—my ex—was staying in the military until he hit his retirement requirements at twenty years. I asked him to hold off on the divorce until then, let me get through college on spousal benefits, and at least have something in the way of a future. That’s how it spun out. My friend Deidre, who I’m traveling with, went to nursing school with me.”
She paused with her hand shielding her eyes and cast her gaze around before she looked at him again. Halo thought she might be trying to figure out what to share and how much was too much. As far as Halo went, he hoped she wouldn’t censor herself. He found everything about Mary fascinating.
“When our kids graduated high school, we graduated with our nursing degrees. Deidre does surgical nursing now. I spent four years in the emergency department. This last May, my kids graduated from university and permanently flew away.” She frowned. “I am officially an empty nester.”
She turned and watched the water slide over the lip of rock. They stood that way for a long moment.
Turning to him, the grip on his hand a little tighter, Mary said, “I’m making progress on being an individual. I have my own little place with a garden. I just finished up my qualifications and am about to start my new job as a flight nurse.”
“My nurse friends have the best stories,” Halo smiled. “Did you get a lot of crazy things in things happen in the emergency room?”
“When I was at the store the other day, I saw they were already putting up Christmas decorations in the far corner when it’s not even Halloween yet. Anyway, during the holiday season, we get a lot of tree-shaped objects stuck up people’s—and by people, I mean men’s—backsides. Sometimes, they’re made out of material that breaks under pressure, and that’s problematic, often surgical. Soon manufacturers are going to need to put warning labels on their seasonal décor.”
“Ouch.”
“That about sums it up.”
They turned and, still hand in hand, walked up the river, watching as Max ran joyfully from one side to the other, bounding up the rocks and leaping back down.
“And your divorce? You have a child?” Mary asked. “Children?”
“A daughter. Stella. My ex-wife and I separated early in our marriage. She wanted to pursue a career that could only happen in Europe. She wanted Europe for our daughter.”
“And you agreed?”
“I was deployed when she made the decision unilaterally.”
“Oh, wow.”
“We were in touch,” Halo clarified. “She didn’t sneak away. My career took me to Afghanistan. How could I tell her that her career needed to keep her in Australia?”
“I guess you couldn’t. Did you think you would join them after your tour?”
“I had contracts to fulfill. And I was doing the thing that I felt in my heart I was supposed to be doing. I’m not a selfish enough man to keep her from her goals.”
“But your daughter.”
“Wasn’t in Afghanistan. She was safe. Healthy. Well cared for. Great schools. Lovely friends. And I got to always be the good guy. Which to this day pisses her mother off.”
“Mmmm.”
“What does that mean?”