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My heart starts to beat faster, giving me hope that someday her and I will be together again; that we’ll be a family and living the life we thought we would. So much of me wants to dissect her statement and ask her what she means, but I don’t want to force her into anything she’s not ready for.

“I’m going back to California tomorrow,” I say instead, changing the subject. “As much as I love Evan and Ryley, living here isn’t my home. Not that a place in Cali will be either, but it’s what I know. I also have a hearing next week in front of a JAG judge to get my life back. Carole, Ryley’s mom, has been working her tail off for Rask and I.”

“What are you going to do?”

“About what?” I ask in regards to her open-ended question.

“About being a SEAL?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m going to take a leave of absence and get my head straight. Maybe take up surfing or something like that. Being in the Navy is all I know.”

“Oh the women will love seeing you on a surfboard,” she says, laughing. Her comment strikes me as odd, but it’s her laughter that keeps me focused.

“There’s only one woman I care about, Penny, and that’s you.”

She shuffles the phone, or drops it. I can’t be sure. I hear her move around and finally hear a door shut.

“Tucker, I have so much to say and probably should’ve done it when you were here, but words, even now, escape me. I’m torn up. I’m confused. I feel like I’ve cheated on you and that makes me feel so dirty. When Chloe goes to school—”

I close my eyes when she refers to our daughter as Chloe. I know Ray didn’t give her that name, but for some reason the jealousy inside of me makes it seem like he did.

“Can we call her Claire, please?”

“She wants to be called Chloe. I’m respecting her wishes and you should, too. I know what her birth names means to you, but this is all she’s known.”

Penny is right, even though I can’t see past the red. My grandmother raised me after my mom overdosed. My mother never told my grandma who my father was so she stepped in. Her name was Claire McCoy and from the minute Penny and I found out we were having a girl, I wanted to call her Claire. If it weren’t for my grandmother, I probably would’ve been into drugs like my mother. I should ask Penny about my grandmother, but I already know the answer. I make a mental note to see if what I was told about my grandma dying is true or not.

“I understand,” I tell her reluctantly. “I just … I don’t know her and can only remember her from when she was a baby.”

“I know, but she needs time just as I do. To say our lives are upside down and inside out right now would be the colossal understatement of the universe. Anyway, as I was saying, when Chloe goes to school, I sit in my shower and scrub my skin until it’s raw. I can’t get clean and I don’t know how to make those feelings go away.”

The image of her ripping her skin apart kills me. Sadly, I don’t know how to make those feelings go away either because my thoughts are just as dark. Half the time when I’m alone I set my pistol out and wonder if things would be easier if I ended my life. But Penny and Claire flash before my eyes. It’s their smiles that give me hope to look past the shit storm my life as become.

I can hear Penny breathing on the other end and the thought of having her here with me, lying next to me goes right to my groin. It’s going to be a long time, if ever, before I’ll feel her like that again.

“I miss you,” I say, biting the proverbial bullet. I know she could hang up on me or tell me not to call her again. She could change her number tomorrow and I’d be shit out of luck because I wouldn’t be able to reach her, but I don’t care. She needs to know and remember that she’s my wife, regardless if she feels like she’s still married to Ray.

“Tucker—” she says breathlessly.

“No, Penny, I get it, but you have to know. I haven’t lived the past six years thinking you were dead or knowing that you thought I was. I came home to you and Claire with roses in my hand only to be greeted by a stranger. None of the stories I was told about you added up. Ryley said you were gone before my funeral, Frannie said after. I didn’t know what to believe, but I refused to believe that you left me.

“I spent day and night thinking about you and our daughter when I was away, and the pictures I received were the only thing to keep me going …” My thoughts trail off. If Frannie had to follow us to find Penny, how the fuck did she have pictures of Claire?

“Tucker?”

“Yeah, babe, I’m here. Sorry, I just had a thought.”

“About what?”

There is no way in hell I’m telling her this so I make something up. “About you and I, on the back of my motorcycle. You know it was my bike which led me to you.”

“I know, Buzz emailed me.”

“He helped you?”

By the noise against the phone I’m guessing she’s nodding. “He did. I knew I was leaving, but didn’t know where to go, and I had to pay for the storage unit because I didn’t want to lose what I had left of you. He knew I was distraught and for some reason I spilled everything to him. He gave me a name of a guy in downtown San Diego who gave us a new identity and set us on the bus. I never asked him to do anything, but he knew to alert me that the Feds had shown up.”

“I’d like to thank him,” I say, before adding, “I hired a private investigator, three in fact, but only the last one proved to be worth the money. Her name is Marley and she helped Cara and I track you down. Do you know how many Amy Jones there are that use that particular bank?”