Five Years Later.
Max slid the bottle of beer across the bar without me having to ask.
“You look like hell,” he told me cheerfully.
“Melody’s teething,” I rumbled, picking up the beer.
Max winced in sympathy and moved down the bar to help someone else.
I carried my beer across the Bear Den toward the corner booth where Cade and Hall were already settled in, a pitcher sitting between them.
They had the relaxed posture of two men who’d managed to escape their houses for a rare evening out.
I dropped into the booth with a heaviness that had nothing to do with unhappiness and everything to do with the fact that I hadn’t slept more than four consecutive hours in two weeks.
“There he is,” Hall said.
“Here I am,” I agreed, as I took a long pull from my bottle.
Cade leaned back and studied me with an easy grin. His kids were slightly older and sleeping through the night. “How’s the bass running out past Miller Creek? I was out there Tuesday and pulled in almost nothing.”
“Too warm still,” I told him. Cade wasn’t a Red Oak Mountain native, so he didn’t know all these things. “Give it another two weeks and they’ll move back into the shallows. I took Peter out to the south bend last Saturday and we did all right.”
A familiar warmth rose in me that came from saying my son’s name out loud. It still hit me in the chest every time. “Kid’s got patience. More than I had at that age.”
“More than you do now,” Cade lobbed back.
I grinned.
Everyone knew I was patient as hell.
And Cade knew it better than anyone. We’d been in the same SEAL unit together.
I was always the one who could sit still and keep watch, even when our shifts sometimes stretched for weeks at a time when we were staking out a target. I never got antsy. I’d trained that out of myself.
“I had good luck with a crawfish rig down near the old dock,” Hall offered. “Might be worth trying.”
“I’ll take Peter down there next weekend.”
Our buddies Eric and Knox strolled over.
Eric set his glass down. “You look like shit, man. Is Melody still teething?”
“She is,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “She was up from two until four last night and then again at five-thirty. Lucy got up with her the second time, and I pretended to be asleep for about thirty seconds before I felt too guilty and got up, too.”
They all laughed. None of us were young men anymore. I understood why making babies was better in your twenties. Not that I’d give mine up for anything in the world.
Cade reached under the table and produced a small paper bag, setting it in front of me without ceremony.
“Mary sent that,” he told me. “It worked better than anything else we tried. She bought a dozen of them back when we were going through it, and this one’s for you.”
I opened the bag and pulled out a soft silicone teether still in its packaging. I turned it over in my hand and felt a rush of genuine gratitude that was slightly embarrassing for a man who had once neutralized threats in international waters without blinking.
“Tell Mary thank you,” I said. “Seriously.”
“She’ll want a full report,” Cade warned.
I tucked the teether back into the bag and set it beside me on the seat, and then all five of us turned toward the stage in the far corner of the Bear Den, because Lucy had just stepped up to the microphone.
