A Soldier's Promise

“Thanks,” Val said, refusing to meet Levi’s gaze. “Did you put the receipt in the can?”

“I did. And you don’t have to keep asking—I’m a quicker study than you might think.”

She might’ve smiled, but she still wouldn’t look at him. So he glanced around the kitchen instead as he clunked and rattled his tools back in their metal box. In the past week, besides finishing up the porch, Levi had replaced a couple of the worst windows on the side of the house that got the most brutal winds, installed three new ceiling fans and changed out the disintegrating faucets. Except for the porch, all Band-Aid-type stuff until Val stopped dragging her feet about the more major projects. Like a sorely needed kitchen remodel. Hell, half the cabinets didn’t even close anymore, and the laminate counters were completely worn through in places. However, since Val seemed loath to talk to him for more than a minute at a time, there was no telling when that—or anything else—might actually happen.

So he prodded. A skill he’d inherited from both his parents, apparently.

“You decide yet what kind of cabinets you want?”

He heard her sigh. “Keep going back and forth between white and cherry. Or maybe maple?”

“And the counters?”

“Butcher block. Or quartz.” She pushed out another breath. “The family said it’s up to me, but...” Levi glanced over to see her bony shoulders hitch. “What’s the hurry, right?”

“Although you might as well take advantage of free labor as long as you can. Since I don’t know how long I’m gonna be around.”

Her brows, as pale as her hair, dipped. “I can afford to pay someone, Levi. I could afford to pay you. I’ve got my own money—”

“And you’ve got plenty better things to do with that money.” Meaning Tommy’s life insurance. As if there was any way in hell he’d take that. “Like put it away for the girls. For college or whatever. This is my gift, Val. To all of you. So let it go.”

She paused. “And how long... I mean—”

“Until I’m done or you throw me out. Whichever comes first.”

Pressing fingers into the base of her skull underneath her ponytail, she looked away again before offering another half-assed smile. “Well. Okay. Thanks.”

“So I take it you’re not throwing me out?”

“No. Not yet, anyway.”

“Then we’re good,” he said, even though they weren’t. Not by a long shot. He started toward the front door. The dog didn’t even bother to get up. Lazy butt mutt. “But since we can’t get going on the kitchen until you make a few decisions,” he said, facing her, “I may as well start digging up those dead bushes out front on Monday. Maybe we could go over to the nursery, pick out something to replace them?”

“Oh, um...no, that’s okay, I’ll take the girls one afternoon. That’ll save you some time, right?”

It was no skin off his nose whether they went to the nursery together or not. Especially since she was right, it would save time. But what rankled was how obvious she was being, that she didn’t want to be around him.

No, what rankled was why he even gave a damn. But all he said was, “Sure, no problem,” then called back down the hall, “Bye, Josie!”

“Bye, Levi! See you on Monday?”

“You bet,” he said, then walked through the door, across the newly stained porch and out to his truck, feeling unaccountably pissed.

Again.

At first, Levi thought maybe her reluctance to move forward was because the house wasn’t really hers. Except he eventually realized it wasn’t the house she was avoiding talking about as much as it was him she was avoiding talking to. So he’d apparently imagined things thawing between them, when he’d made her laugh...when he’d thought he’d caught her looking at him like maybe he wasn’t quite the slimeball she remembered.

Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be the first time his imagination had played tricks on him. Not that she was snotty to him or anything, but she was cool. Careful. What he didn’t get was why that bugged him. Especially since he couldn’t remember the last time he’d given a rat’s ass whether or not somebody approved of him. Even so, he wouldn’t mind hearing that laugh again.

Being the cause of it.

Hell.

He pulled up in front of the nondescript ranch-style house his folks had been living in for the past year, a gift from Dad’s old boss after his father’s heart attack two years before forced him into early retirement. But the squat little house with its brown siding and white shutters seemed too small and plain to contain his parents’ boisterous personalities. Too...ordinary. Heart attack or no, Levi doubted Dad would go gently into that good night. And for sure his mother never would, he thought with a soft laugh. But he supposed it would do.

His father was making sandwiches in the kitchen—bright, cheery, reasonably updated—when Levi got home, so he guessed Mom was on call. But since Billie Talbot had been a midwife ever since her boys had been old enough to fend for themselves, this was hardly the first time Dad had been left to his own devices.

Half smiling, Levi dumped his toolbox by the back door. “Dad. Really?”

Heavy white eyebrows raised, Sam Talbot turned toward Levi, a slice of bologna dangling from his fingers. He’d definitely lost weight after his scare, but the vestiges of a beer gut still hung over belted jeans. “What?”

“You could at least fire up the grill.”

“Doc said I should avoid too much charbroiled meat.”

“But bologna’s okay?”

“It’s chicken. Or turkey. One of those. Disgusting, but at least on the approved list. Zach said you guys got together for dinner the other night?”

“We did.”

“How’d it go?”

“It went fine.” He chuckled at his father’s side eye. “We’re all grown up now, Dad. We can be around each for more than five minutes without coming to blows.”

“Those boys of theirs...they’re something else, aren’t they?”

“They are that.”

Levi was grateful for the easy, ordinary conversation, one that would’ve never happened a dozen years before. So unlike that excruciatingly long stretch when he and his dad never quite saw eye to eye. About anything. If Dad took one side, Levi invariably latched on to the other. In fact, he’d once heard his mother tell someone at church—laughing, at least—that Levi had been born fighting the world. Unlike his brothers, had been the unspoken addition to that sentence, who’d never seemed to struggle like Levi did to live up to their father’s high standards.

Not that Dad had ever actually said, “Why can’t you be more like them?” but Levi hadn’t been blind to the frustration in those smoky-gray eyes. Problem was, he’d had no idea how to do that. Hell, at that point he hadn’t clue one how to be himself—or what that even meant. Even now he wasn’t entirely sure if one of the reasons—among many—he’d enlisted was to prove something to himself or his dad, but considering how much better things were between them since Levi’s return, he’d achieved his goal. He and Dad might still be feeling their way with each other, but he knew his father was proud of him.

Levi opened the fridge to get a beer—light, of course, nothing else allowed in the house—spotting the defrosted, already seasoned chicken breasts sitting on a plate, right at eye level. Where, you know, even a man wouldn’t miss them. “There’s chicken in here, ready to go. Real chicken, I mean. Why don’t I cook ’em up for us—”

“And I swear if I eat one more piece of chicken I’ll start clucking.”

Levi looked over at the sandwich. Piled high with the fake bologna. “But...” He sighed. “Never mind,” he said, then pulled out the plate of chicken. Although frankly he’d kill for a steak. Or a hamburger. But these days the animal protein offerings at Casa Talbot were limited to things with feathers or fins. Didn’t seem fair to torment his father by bringing home something the poor man couldn’t have. So pan-broiled chicken it was.

For the third time this week.

“So how’re things progressing with the house?” Dad asked, sitting at the table with his sandwich and a glass of low-fat milk as, with much clanging and banging, Levi wrestled the cast-iron frying pan out of the stove’s bottom drawer.

“Okay.” He clunked the pan onto the gas burner. “Needs a boatload of work, though.”

“I can imagine. Place was falling apart thirty years ago.”

“You were inside it?”