“I figured it weren’t somethin’ you were ready to talk about,” Walter answered.
He was right. I wouldn’t have been. I technically wasn’t even sure I was now. Something jarred in my memory and then the image was there clear as day. I’d been confused at the time, but now it made more sense.
“You called me Lenny,” I said. “The day you got hurt… Cam and I came to see you and when I walked in you called me Lenny. You… you looked at me like…”
Walter was caught off guard by my comment. “I did? I’m sorry, my boy, I didn’t know I’d done that.” Walter dropped his eyes to study his fingers. I regretted having said anything because Walter looked positively heartbroken.
I looked at Cam. He reached out to grip my shoulder. It was frightening how easily this man was able to read my thoughts. I patted his hand and then linked our fingers as I returned my attention to Walter. Cam sat down next to me on the bed and subtly shifted so he was touching my back with his front. I leaned into him.
“I’m sorry, Walter, I shouldn’t have said anything,” I began. But Walter shook his head.
“I keep figurin’ someday I’ll wake up and not think about him, but fifty years later and he’s still the first thing I see in my mind’s eye when I wake up and he’s the last thing I see before I fall asleep. Then all I do is dream about him.”
“You were in the war together?” Cam asked.
Walter nodded. “We met a couple months before we shipped out. He was a few years younger than me and he was scared to death about going over there. He’d been drafted while I’d chosen to enlist. His family paid some people to get him out of it, but Lenny wasn’t no dodger. He didn’t know the first thing about fightin’ but he wanted to serve his country. I kept my eye on him from the start. I didn’t know what to make of it when I started feeling somethin’ bigger for him. But we were so different and I thought I was the only one feelin’ it. But I wasn’t,” Walter said softly.
“What happened to him?” I asked. My heart was breaking for Walter and I couldn’t help but squeeze Cam’s fingers just a bit harder.
“It was one of our last missions… we’d been arguin’ about what we were gonna do when we got stateside again. He came from a rich family and there were a lot of expectations for him. He was supposed to take over his father’s business in Boston… they even had a girl all picked out for him to marry. Some fancy Kennedy relative or somethin’ like that. I wanted him to give it all up… figured we could start over fresh together someplace quiet where no one would care who we were. He wasn’t sure he could just walk away from the commitments he’d made.”
Walter paused, then slowly shook his head. “I was angry and called him a coward. It was the last thing I said to him. He was sent on a rescue mission to get some of our guys out who were takin’ on heavy fire. The Huey he was in got shot down. We went out to look for him but we couldn’t get to the site. He was listed as MIA for years. Government changed it to KIA in seventy-six.”
“I’m so sorry, Walter,” I whispered.
“We used to have this sayin’ between us whenever one or both of us was leavin’ on a mission. ‘Leavin’ a light on for ya.’ It was our way of promisin’ each other we’d always find our way back to one another. I… I didn’t say it to him that day.”
I felt tears sting my eyes as I remembered the porch light Walter always left on at his house. Walter began to silently cry. I scooted forward so I could put my arms carefully around him. The older man’s body trembled for a couple minutes before settling. He eased back from me and wiped at his eyes. “Okay, you two should get on outta here… you gotta go get my girl. I don’t want that wolf of hers thinkin’ she’s easy.”
Cam had told me this morning that he’d had Alex call Isaac on the way back from the hospital in Duluth the previous night to ask the young man if he and his family could keep Puddles for the night. My own phone had long since been dead by that time, so Isaac hadn’t had any way of reaching me to let me know about Cam’s condition. I hadn’t even considered going back to the sanctuary to wait with the little family of men to hear about Cam. Instead, I’d sat in his driveway for hours by myself imagining the worst.