Chapter 3
Landon
I’d forgotten it was Christmastime until I tried to book my flight home. With such short notice, December 21st flights from Nashville to Seattle were slim pickings. I ended up settling on an early morning boarding time with a four-hour layover in Los Angeles. Since Fort Campbell is over an hour from the Nashville airport without traffic, I was awake by two am to catch my ride in. I tried to snooze in the gate waiting area, but two attractive twenty-something girls sat beside me and wouldn’t shut up about the band they’d come to Nashville to see.
The flight wasn’t any better. An elderly man took the aisle seat next to me, looked over the cammies I was wearing, and started talking about every person he’d ever known who’d served. I understood that the lonely old widower (he told me all about his wife, too. She passed away three years ago on Easter, her name was Marge, and she could bake the best apple pie he’d ever eaten.) needed someone to talk to, and although I was grateful for his niece’s son who’d done two tours in Afghanistan, all I wanted to do was sleep. Making a mental note to never wear fatigues on a plane again, I felt my eyes glaze over as he talked, sometimes nodding or throwing out the occasional “yessir.”
By the time I ambled off the plane into LAX, I was feeling the effects of having my six-foot tall body crammed into seats with no legroom, stuffed between people who didn’t know how to share a fucking armrest or shut up.
Damn, I was cranky.
And tired.
And the Los Angeles airport was a nightmare. Wall-to-wall people were trying to get somewhere fast, but most of them looked as clueless and lost as I was. I stared up at the electronic reader board searching for my next flight, but it wasn’t listed. Confused, I hunted down an airport employee and waited in line as she directed a dozen other people before getting to me.
Holding my ticket out to her, I said, “My flight’s not listed on the board.”
“No, it wouldn’t be. This is United. You need to get to Alaska. That’s concourse number four.”
Nowhere on my ticket did it say I was changing airlines. Feeling stupid and unprepared for not knowing this obvious information, I asked, “Okay. How do I get there?”
“You can take the train, or you can go outside and walk around the building but then you’ll need to go back through security.”
I started to ask her what train she was talking about, but she was already on to the next person in line and I was being pushed out of the way.
Deciding I could figure this shit out on my own, I started walking. I never did find the train she spoke of, but I did find my way outside. I searched for another employee to get directions from, but when I didn’t see one, resumed my march until I spotted a concourse sign. The number was increasing rather than decreasing, so I doubled back and went the other way. It took me about an hour to find the right concourse and make it back through security.
With almost three hours to go before the flight boarded, the gate was reasonably quiet. I found a seat on the edge of the waiting area, collapsed, and closed my eyes. Finally, nobody was talking, I was where I needed to be, and I could get in a power nap. Instead, memories of my mom flooded my mind. I thought about the last time I’d seen her. She was dropping me off at the recruiter’s, hugging me and telling me she loved me, but when she pulled away her eyes were so full of guilt and relief I could hardly look at her.
And she had to see the same thing in mine.
I loved my mom, but after Dad died, I couldn’t stand to be around her anymore. She had to blame me for what happened. Hell, itwasmy fault, so how could she not?
She didn’t know I was coming home.
I’d picked up my phone to tell her at least a dozen times since stepping foot back on US soil, but had yet to dial her number. Seven days ago, I stood beside my brothers and sisters as we buried Smiley before giving his Mom the flag that had been draped over his casket. She sobbed and lost it, and I felt like shit, but I stood there and took it like a man. Like the combat medic who couldn’t fucking save him.
The we headed to Marx’s funeral to do the same damn thing.
I’d faced two grieving moms and buried two of my friends, yet I still couldn’t seem to strum up the balls to call my own mom to tell her I was coming home alive and well. Truthfully, I was afraid she wouldn’t want me there—that she’d tell me not to come—and I knew I couldn’t handle her rejection any more than I could handle her forgiveness.
It was easier just to lock it all away and stay busy, so I didn’t think about my estranged relationship with the only family I had left. I rarely even called her anymore. A person could only apologize so many times.
And after the apologies, what more was there to say? Since I couldn’t talk about the shit I did in the Army, the few conversations we did have were made up of awkward silences interrupted by occasional ramblings about her job. Working was new to Mom. Dad was old-fashioned and wanted his wife home, raising me and taking care of the house, a role I’d never once heard her complain about. Even with him gone, she didn’tneedto work, at least not for financial reasons. Between Dad’s life insurance and the money I sent home, she was set. But she also had to be bored out of her mind and lonely as hell. But now that she was working, she sounded almost happy.
After seven years, Mom was finally piecing her life back together.
Now, here I came to fuck it all up again.
SeaTac was almost as crowded as LAX had been. Bodies pressed in on all sides as I made my way toward the exit. Everything was loud, bright, and heavily scented, overwhelming my senses and making me want to lose my shit and start shoving people out of my way. Needing to get away from it all, I slipped into the airport restroom and ducked into a stall. Leaning against the door, I drew in a few deep breaths and forced myself to calm the fuck down.
My job was stressful. This… this was walking through a goddamn airport on the way to see my mom for a vacation. What the hell was wrong with me? Determined to pull myself together, I quit hiding in the stall like a little bitch and headed to the sink. Splashing cold water on my face shocked my system and helped me regain control. I looked at the man in the mirror, barely able to recognize him. The dark circles around my eyes made me look much older than twenty-five.
I felt ancient.
And alone.
I couldn’t help but chuckle at that. Smack dab in the middle of a crowded airport, Iwasalone. For the first time in seven years I didn’t have brothers and sisters at my back, ready to cover my six, and I was lost without them. During training, they’d told us that the key to getting through shit was to focus on the job. But for the next forty-one days, I had no job—nobody to evaluate, nobody to stitch up, nobody to help—and no idea how the hell I was going to cope.
