Private (Private 1)

I called his name. Then everything stopped. There was a sound in my ears, like static, and my vision blurred.

I tried, but I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t get a clue what had just happened. I’d just lost a few seconds, though.

The action began again.

In life as in the dream, I had pulled Danny out of the aircraft, slung him over my shoulder, started to run with him across that burning battlefield.

I’d put him down safely and then—what?

I was flat on my back, and Danny was lying lifeless a few feet away. I had died and come back. With Del Rio’s help.

I put a pillow over my face, and more images of Danny came to me as I lay in my soft bed.

Danny had been a dairy farmer, the son of a son of a son of a dairy farmer in a small town in Texas. He had enlisted in the Marines because he felt it was his duty. And also so that he could get the hell out of the barn. I’d done the same—to get free of my father.

There was something so open about that kid, so gee-whiz about everything, that I had to love him. He had no guile. And while he was mostly innocent, he was also very aware of words and of feelings.

I’d served with him for just six months before he died, but in those six months, he was the only one besides Del Rio I could talk to in the squadron. The only guy who didn’t see me as privileged, just let me be myself.

I flashed ahead to meeting Danny’s wife, Sheila, when I got back to the States. She had strawberry blond hair and gray eyes. I remembered sitting in a small dark parlor in their house. There was black fabric draped over the mirror. The small-scale furniture was uncomfortable and looked unused.

I told Sheila that I’d been with Danny when he died. I told her that he’d been unconscious. That he hadn’t been in pain. That he was a brave man. That we’d all loved him. Every single word of that was true.

Sheila had clasped her hands across her distended stomach. She didn’t sob, but the tears poured down her face.

“We’re going to have another girl,” she said.

The static filled my mind again. It was that blank in my memory that told me something was missing. Something else had happened. What was it? What didn’t I know?

The damn telephone started to ring again.

Chapter 82

THE PHONE VIBRATED inside my fist. The faceplate read 7:04. Incoming call: T. Morgan.

I put the phone up to my ear, said to my brother, “Did you call here a minute ago?”

“I called last night. Didn’t you get my message? My shrink wants to see us together. This morning at nine.”

“Today? Are you kidding? I have a business, you know?”

“Sure. It used to be Tommy Senior’s business,” he said. “It’s important, but hey, suit yourself.”

Now I was sitting in a reception pod at Blue Skies Rehab Center, a pale blue windowless room with a wraparound ceramic tile mural of birds in flight and discrete groupings of streamlined Scandinavian furniture.

I was upset that I’d been summoned the morning of the meeting, but I’d be damned if I’d give Tommy any excuse to fail at recovery. With luck, I’d be in the office by 10:30. Schoolgirl was bubbling—and so was the NFL.

While I waited, I joined a conference call with one of our clients in the London office, then signed off as one of a half dozen doors down the hallway opened. A man stepped out and came toward me. He was lanky, gray-haired, wearing a yellow cardigan and pressed chinos, had reading glasses suspended from a chain around his neck.

He was also smiling. I stood to shake his hand, and he lurched and was literally thrown to the floor.

Suddenly everything was sliding sideways. I grabbed for my chair and fell into it, hard.

What the hell?

Light fixtures swung overhead, and shadows swooped over the pale carpeting. There was a roar, like wind—but there was no wind.

The floor rippled like the surface of a river.