He squeezes his eyes shut again.
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“Maybe,” he whispers, “if I was there, I could have saved her.”
“Falk…” My voice trails off. I don’t know what to say.
“I can’t…” He shakes his head slowly as I walk over and place my hand over his on the railing. “I can’t let that happen to you, Hannah. I can’t let someone get to you just because I’m not there.”
“I’m sorry,” I finally manage to say. “That had to have been awful.”
“Yeah.” He takes another long drag off the cigarette. “I enlisted right after that. Deployed right after training. It was a good distraction.”
He turns his head and looks at me.
“I won’t let my guard down, Hannah. Talk to people if you have to, but I’m going to be there all the time. I already let you out of my sight once. I can’t fail like that again.”
“I understand,” I say, “and you know how much I appreciate what you’re doing for me. You don’t have to do any of it. It’s not like you’re still getting paid.”
“Not sure the cash would help much right now.”
“True, but still—you aren’t obligated.”
“Yes,” he says simply, “I am.”
*****
True to his word, Falk remains at my side. He hasn’t given me any shit about talking to other people and at least seems to be okay with me talking to Christine and Chuck even when he’s more than ten feet away.
He’s even started helping prepare meals just to stay close to me. Though he had been working hard on getting the freshwater well dug, he seems to have left the task to the other men.
“Have you ever even been inside a kitchen before?” Christine asks.
“What did I do now?” Falk drops the spoon he’s holding right into the pot of vegetables, beans, and chilies. It sinks into the mixture, and Christine shoves him out of the way.
“You have to keep stirring it, or it’s going to stick and get burned!”
Falk looks to me with pleading eyes, but I hold up my hands and shake my head. I’m not getting into the middle of this. The man may have been in combat, but he has nothing on the kitchen queen.
“Go get the tortillas from the fire!” she orders as she fishes the utensil from the pot.
I snicker as Falk grabs some tongs and tries to get the tortillas out one at a time without putting holes in them.
“It’s a good thing you can cook,” Christine says to me. “If things ever get back to normal around here, you’d starve if he was left in charge.”
“He did fend for himself for several years, I believe.”
“I bet he lived off carry-out and microwavable pizzas.”
I have no idea, so I don’t argue the point. I start gathering up plates and forks for dinner as Caesar, Brett, Ryan, Chuck, and most of the rest of the guys file out of the woods with their arms full of firewood.
“Smells good!” Chuck calls out as he drops a bunch of logs near the open fire. “We just need some margaritas to go with it!”
“There’s rum in the shed,” Ryan says.
“Close enough!”
Chuck mixes rum with a large can of pineapple juice, which works quite well. I’ve never been much of a drinker, but his concoction is pretty tasty. Even Falk has a small cup of the drink.