The Last Letter (Page 7)

“No. She has a 10 percent chance of surviving the year.”

My knees gave out as my back hit the wall. I slid, paper crumpling behind me as my weight took down whatever had been there. I landed on the floor, unable to do anything but breathe. Voices spoke, and I heard but didn’t understand what they said.

In my mind, they repeated one thing over and over. “10 percent chance.”

My daughter had a 10 percent chance of living through this year.

Which meant she had a 90 percent chance of dying, of those angel wings she refused to take off becoming very real.

Focus on the ten. Ten was better than nine.

Ten was…everything.

…

I pulled myself together. Chemo. PICC Line. Appointments in Montrose and Denver. Aggressive cancer meant an aggressive plan. Binders full of information, notebooks with scribbles. Planners and apps and research studies became my every waking moment. My life changed in those first few days.

I changed.

As if my soul had caught fire, I felt a burning in my chest, a driving purpose that eclipsed all else. My daughter would not die.

Colt would not lose his sister.

This would not break me, or my family. Holding it together was my second priority only to Maisie’s survival.

I didn’t cry. Not when I wrote the letters to Ryan and to Chaos. Not when I told Colt and Maisie how sick she was. Not when she started vomiting after that first session of chemo, and not when a month later, during her second week-long session, her beautiful blond hair fell out in clumps the day before her sixth birthday. I nearly lost it when Colt showed up from the barber with Larry—his head as shiny and bald as his sister’s—but I just smiled. He’d refused to be separated during their birthday, and as much as I didn’t want him to see what she went through during chemo, I was incredibly thankful to be with both of them, not to be in a constant state of worry about one while I was caring for the other.

I didn’t break down.

Not until New Year’s Eve.

That’s when the uniforms came to the door and ripped my strong facade to shreds with a simple sentence: We regret to inform you that your brother, SSG Ryan MacKenzie, has been killed in action. Due to the nature of their unit, that was all I could know. The details—where he’d been, what had happened, who he’d been with—that was all classified.

When there were no more letters from Chaos, I had at least one of those answers.

They were both gone.

I broke.

Four Months Later

Chapter Five

Beckett

Beck,

If you’re reading this, blah, blah. You know the last-letter drill. You made it. I didn’t. Get off the guilt train, because I know you, and if there were any chance you could have saved me, you would have. If there were any way you could have changed the outcome, you would have. So whatever deep, dark hole of guilt you’re wallowing in, stop.

I need one thing from you: Get your ass to Telluride. I know your ETS date is right with mine. Take it.

Ella’s all alone. Not in the alone way that she has been, but really, truly alone. Our grandmother, our parents, and now me. It’s too much to ask her to endure. It’s not fair.

But here’s the kicker: Maisie is sick. She’s only six, Beck, and my niece might die.

So if I’m gone, that means I can’t get home in January like we’d planned. I can’t be there for her. I can’t help Ella through this, or play soccer with my nephew, or hold my niece. But you can. So I’m begging you, as my best friend, go take care of my sister, my family. Do whatever you can to save my little Maisie.

It’s not fair to ask; I know that. It’s against your nature to care, to not accomplish a mission and move on, but I need this. Maisie and Colt need it. Ella needs it—needs you, though she’ll fight you tooth and nail before she ever admits it. Help her even when she swears she’s fine.

Don’t make her go through it alone.

I’ll save you a seat on the other side, brother, but take your time. Take every single second you can. You are the only brother I would have wished for, and my very best friend. And just in case no one ever told you—you’re worthy. Of love. Of family. Of home.

So while you’re searching for those things, please make sure Telluride is where you look. At least for a little while.

~ Ryan

…

The mountains rose up above me, impossibly tall considering I was already at almost nine thousand feet. Sure, the air felt thinner, but it was also somehow easier to breathe.

Havoc rested her head on the leather console between our seats as I drove my truck through downtown Telluride. It was Norman Rockwell perfect. Bricked and painted storefronts, families strolling with children. Not quite the tourist haven I was expecting.

It looked like a hometown was supposed to.

It just wasn’t my hometown.

It was Ryan’s. Mac was buried here, at least that was what I’d been told. They’d only sent back Captain Donahue and a couple other guys for the funeral. I’d been kept in the field with the rest of the unit, too valuable to be given leave.

I knew the truth: it wasn’t me—at least not with the state I was in then. It was Havoc. They needed her, and she would only listen to me.

I rubbed the top of her head, promising her silently that she’d have a peaceful life from now on. That as quickly as we’d both been given terminal leave, she deserved a little peace.

Me? I lived in a hell of my own making. One that I more than deserved.

I stopped to fill the tank before heading out of town, following my GPS to the address online for Solitude.

Solitude. How fitting. Alone.

I was alone.

Ella was alone.

And we’d remain that way, because we’d never be together. I’d seen to that when I’d stopped writing the day Ryan died.

But I could do this. For Ryan. For Ella. But not for me. Thinking it was for me implied there was some kind of redemption that I was worthy of.

There wasn’t. What I’d done was beyond any redemption.

My jaw flexed, and my hands tightened on the wheel as I approached the private drive. I made the turn, my gaze catching the mailbox that hung at a haphazard angle on the post. How many times had she gone there looking for my letters? How many times had she found one and smiled? Twenty-four.

How many times had she made the walk without one? Wondered what happened to me? Maybe she thought I’d died on the op with Ryan. Maybe it was better that way.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

I drove up the asphalt drive, under the budding aspen trees that lined the way. Ryan would have said there was something fitting about arriving in spring, during the period of rebirth, but that was a load of crap.

There was no rebirth for me. No new beginning. I wasn’t here to watch life begin; I was here to help Ella if it ended for Maisie. If Ella even let me near.

The pit in my stomach was entirely too familiar, reducing me to that skinny, quiet kid I’d been twenty years ago, showing up at yet another family’s house, hoping this one wouldn’t find a reason to make him someone else’s problem. Hoping this time he wouldn’t pack his stuff in another garbage bag when he accidentally broke a dish or some rule he hadn’t known existed, then be labeled “troubled” and shuffled to another, stricter home.

At least this time I already knew what rules I’d broken and was more than aware that my time here was finite.

I pulled up to the circular drive in front of the main house, which matched the pictures I’d seen online. It looked like a log cabin, except huge. The style was modernized rustic, if that was even a thing, and somehow it spoke to me, reminded me of a time when men harvested entire trees to build houses in the wilderness for their women.

When they built things instead of destroyed them.

My feet hit the ground, and I paused, waiting for Havoc to jump down before shutting the door.

I threw the signal for heel, and she came right to my side. We climbed the small staircase that led to a wide porch, complete with rockers and a porch swing. The boxes that lined the porch railing were empty, cleaned out and ready for planting.

This was it. I was about to meet Ella.

What the hell was I going to say? Hey, I’m sorry I quit writing you, but let’s face it, I break everything I touch and didn’t want you to be next? I’m sorry Ryan died? I’m sorry it wasn’t me? Your brother sent me to watch out for you, so if you could just pretend that you don’t hate me, that would be great? I’m sorry I ghosted you? I’m sorry I couldn’t bring myself to read any of your letters that came after he died? I’m so sorry for so many things that I can’t even list them all?

If I said any of that, if she knew who I really was—why I’d stopped writing—she’d never let me help her. I’d get a boot in the ass and sent on my way. She’d already admitted in her letters that she didn’t give second chances to people who hurt her family, and I didn’t blame her. It was a torturous irony that in order to fulfill Ryan’s wish to help Ella, I’d have to do the one thing she hated—lie…at least by omission.

Just add it to the growing list of my sins.

“Are you thinking about going in? Or are you just going to stand out here?”

I turned to see an older man in his sixties coming toward me. Those were some crazy eyebrows. He dusted off his hand on his jeans and reached for mine.

We shook with a firm grip. This had to be Larry.

“You our new arrival?”

I nodded. “Beckett Gentry.”

“Larry Fischer. I’m Solitude’s groundskeeper.” He dropped to his haunches in front of Havoc but didn’t touch her. “And who might this be?”

“This is Havoc. She’s a retired military working dog.”

“You her handler?” He stood without petting her, and I immediately liked him. It was rare that people respected her personal space…or mine.

“I was. Now I think she’s mine.”

His gaze narrowed a bit, like he was searching for something in my face. After a prolonged silence, which felt like an inspection, he nodded. “Okay. Let’s get you two settled in.”

A bell chimed lightly as we entered the pristine foyer. The interior was as warm as the exterior, the walls painted in soft hues that looked professionally designed to give it a modern farmhouse look.