A Few Good Men

She shook her head slowly back and forth. “You should know that you can’t put the bullets back in the gun after they’ve been shot.”

“Damn it, Sara.” Eric stood up and faced her.

She turned away. “Please…just go.”

She disappeared into the bathroom and he was left with little alternative as the door clicked closed behind her.

Truman’s soft whine brought his gaze down to the questioning canine.

“You think you’re confused?” he asked the mutt.

He got dressed, gathered his things and headed for the front door, Truman following his every move.

SARA CLEARED the dinner plates from the dining-room table and brought in the apple pie she’d made from scratch. Her father-in-law had moved his chair back to make more room for his expanding stomach and rubbed the area in question, a satisfied smile on his face, while her mother-in-law stood in front of the banquet against the wall, picking up the photos there as she did every time she visited. Nearly every shot contained Andy. On the first vacation together in Colorado, their first anniversary, Christmas with the in-laws…every photo marked a moment in their lives that would never be repeated.

“We had a surprise visitor yesterday,” Gertrude said, putting down a shot of Andy and Truman as a puppy.

“Oh?” Sara used the server to cut the pie and picked up a dessert plate.

“Eric Armstrong dropped in as if he’d parachuted from a C-150.”

“C-130,” Howard corrected.

Neither of them seemed to notice that Sara had dropped half a piece of pie onto the white tablecloth.

Gertrude turned from the banquet. “You remember Eric, don’t you?”

“Sure, I remember him.” If they only knew that she had memories to draw on that were much more recent than their own.

Howard picked up his fresh fork to dig into the pie. “He said he stopped by here to pay his respects.”

Gertrude looked at him. “You didn’t tell me that.”

He shrugged. “Didn’t think I had to. He was Andy’s best friend. He was there when he went down. Of course he’d want to see his widow.”

“Yes, but why didn’t you tell me?”

Sara was glad the two were too occupied with each other to see her reaction to the news that Eric had told them he’d stopped by there.

She tried to stop her hands from shaking as she handed Gertrude her pie.

“You’re not going to have any?” she asked.

“No, no, I’m…” She swallowed hard. “I must have eaten too much pot roast.”

“You didn’t eat any at all. Howard ate enough for all three of us.”

He chuckled, his mouth full of pie.

“You’re getting too thin, Sara. Is everything okay? You barely eat when we go out, your clothes are at least one size too big, if not two.”

Howard looked at her. “She looks all right to me.”

Gertrude gave an eye roll. “Of course, you would say that. Men don’t notice anything until it’s waving flags in front of them…or a gun.”

“I’d notice if she’d gotten fat.”

Her mother-in-law ignored him. “Sara? You haven’t answered my question.”

“Actually, I think I will have some pie,” she said, concentrating on cutting herself a piece.

“Good,” Gertrude looked satisfied.

Problem solved. For now…

LATER THAT NIGHT she sat in front of her glowing laptop, her fingers hovering above the keyboard. There was a time not so long ago when she’d looked forward to logging on to her e-mail account and checking for new messages. Rather, she’d been eager to check “Saman-tha’s” box. But now that Eric knew who she really was, would he seek her out at her regular account? And if he did, what would she do?

“Ignore him,” she whispered.

Easier said than done.

Despite the awkward moments with her in-laws earlier, every time she turned around she was reminded of her time with Eric the other night. She hadn’t changed the sheets yet because at night she snuggled into the side he’d slept on, crushing his pillow to her nose, absorbing the scent of sandalwood and hot male.

He’d tried calling, but she’d had the answering machine on. His first two attempts he’d merely hung up. On the third, he’d left a message: “Sara, call me, please. You and I need to talk.”

What was there possibly to say? She’d made a mistake. A mammoth mistake. And while there was no taking it back, she did have a say on whether or not it continued.

Sara drew a deep breath and entered her password. She clicked on the mail button and scanned the contents. A couple of spams, an e-mail from a cousin in California and…nothing.

She squinted at the screen, sure she was seeing things.

She deleted the spam, then opened her cousin’s e-mail, which was essentially a vent about work.

“I hear you. Some days are a bitch to get through,” she wrote back. “I—”

An instant message popped up in the middle of her screen, scaring the daylights out of her.

Sara stared at a screen name she’d come to know very well over the past few months.

Armstrong3001 had written a simple: “Hey.”

She swallowed hard, trying to decide whether she should respond or to shut down the feature.

Before she knew that’s what she was going to do, she typed back: “Hey, yourself.”

She sat staring at the blinking cursor in the message box until her eyes grew dry and she had to blink.

What did Eric want? She’d been both afraid and hopeful that he would seek her out again. After the other morning, she wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t want to speak to her again. After the other morning, she was afraid she’d eagerly welcome a repeat if he offered it.