Already Home (...because I wasn't feeling very creative at the time)

I originally wrote this story in 2007, I believe, in response to a challenge by my friend Anne, Wench of Aramink.  We were to take a popular song of our choice and write the story of that song.  This was the result of that challenge.  The song is "Already Home" (hence my silly title above) by Tim McGraw, one of my favorite country singers.

Sean watched Lucy as she waddled over to the sink.  He had been waiting all week to ask her, and then the letter had come, and he knew he couldn’t … again.  It was too soon.  Baby names could wait till after …  He heard the sob, although she tried to hide it.  His heart was torn, and he couldn’t stop the impulse that had him at her back in the next instant, holding her, not doing anything else.  When she turned in his arms, he enveloped her as best he could, the baby in the way, and let her cry.  The letter fluttered to the ground, and the baby kicked.  Sean didn’t move, even when the tiny infant kicked her again, hard enough for him to feel it.

She sniffled.  “Sorry, Sean!”  She sniffled again, and he took a handkerchief from his back pocket and handed it to her.  He would have loved to do the tender thing and mop up her face, but she would have slapped him as hard as the baby had kicked her.  She took it from him, wiped her eyes and blew her nose, then tidily put it away in the pocket of her maternity slacks.  He bent to pick up the single sheet of paper, neatly typed, and handed it back to her.  Then he went back to his place at the wide old wooden kitchen table.

“I dreamed about this, you know,” she said, her back to him.  “Ian was calling to me from across the river, but I couldn’t get to him!”  Her shoulders shook, once.

Sean waited.  He knew the contents of the letter, because he had been visiting when the tall military messenger delivered it.  Ian had always been a little bit of a joker…”a one-way ticket over here” was just the kind of thing he’d say.  What a way to describe a death sentence!  His mom had quietly wiped her eyes, her heart clearly broken, but yet she worried about the fragile young woman whose hands she had held.  They had held on to each other like that, while he had finished the pie they had been making together, had tidied the kitchen, and had taken the dog for a walk.  When he came back, Lucy was upstairs, resting Mrs. Johnson had said, while she herself sat numbly in a kitchen chair, tears streaming down her cheeks.

He remembered playing war games with Ian when they were kids.  The four of them – Ian, Sean, Bobby, and Tom – ran around in their yards pretending to be marines, or Navy SEALS, or foot soldiers, bringing the war to the enemy and whipping butt.  Sean had sat next to his best friend’s mom then, as he was doing now with his wife, and held her hands, and reminisced.  It seemed to comfort her to hear someone talk about her only son with love and honor.

It had been a month since Ian’s military funeral, which had been a poignant ceremony celebrating his life.  They had laid him to rest, finally, in the old cemetery on the edge of town, as he had requested, a large headstone adorning his grave.  The words engraved on it were simple, and taken from the letter his widow now held in her hands: “I’m in a better place.  My soul is where my momma always prayed that it would go.”  His dad had read the eulogy, and sharing parts of that last letter, his voice breaking on the words “Tell dad I don’t regret that I followed in his shoes!”  The last words of the eulogy had been, again, words from his letter: “I’m already home.  I’m up here with God, and we’re watching over you!”

“The family is coming over for dinner,” Lucy said, her voice drawing him out of his reverie.  “Will you stay too, Sean?”

He nodded, suddenly unable to speak, and watched her face relax.  “Anything I can do to help?’ he asked finally.

“No, thanks!  Momma’s bringing dinner.  They just didn’t want me to be alone, and I’m not supposed to be taking long rides anymore.”  She passed a loving hand over her belly as she spoke, and sighed quietly.  “She’s tired, you know.  I’d better take a nap before they get here.  Will you stay?”

“I’ll take the dog for a walk,” he answered, and watched her turn and walk up the stairs that led to the second floor bedrooms.

He reached for the dog’s leash, which hung from a hook behind the door, and heard the clatter of sharp claws on the hardwood floors as the old German Shepherd, Razor, ambled in.

“Let’s go, boy!”  He whistled, and the dog padded over more quickly.  Sean attached the leash to his collar and led him outside.  He followed the dog’s lead, and eventually they made it to the old cemetery.  If Sean didn’t know better, he’d say the dog knew his master was buried there.  He let the animal off the leash and watched as he nosed around the graves, old and new, relieved himself against a tree, and wandered down the little slope to the pond.  He and Ian used to sneak out some nights and come for a midnight swim in “Dead Man’s Pool”, as they had called it, on many a hot summer night.  That’s where they had talked about girls…where Ian had told him he had his eye on that shy little strawberry blonde named Lucy.  Where his own heart had been broken, when Ian told him she returnedhisfeelings.

He had been the one to introduce them, those many springs ago.  Lucy had been his friend, since first grade, when Ian moved into town.  He had known for a long time that she was the girl he wanted, but she had never shown him anything but the face of a friend, and he didn’t want to lose that.  So though it hurt him every day to see his best friends as lovers, he had left rather than hurt them in return.  Now here he was back again, walking their dog, preparing to be the godfather to their child, being her rock…and loving her more than he had when they were kids.

************************************************************

            Lucy laughed as the little girl stumbled and fell over her feet.  Siobhan, called Shae, since so few people could say her name correctly, was almost a year old now, and learning to walk.  She tumbled around the house, squealing with delight at the world, and bringing a piercing joy to her mother’s heart.  She had baby-fine strawberry blonde curls like her mother, and the deepest sea-green eyes Lucy had ever seen.  Just like Ian’s.  Her life was a bittersweet reminder of the man Lucy had loved with all her heart.  Now he was gone, but he lived on in the bubbly little girl who had his eyes, his smile, and his ready laugh.  Ian would never be far away while Shae was there.

            The doorbell rang and Lucy went to get it, Shae rolling along behind her as fast as her unsteady little legs could carry her.  Lucy felt her skin flame to life when she opened the door and Sean stood there.  Only she knew the dreams she had been having lately about this tall drink of water on her front porch.  She could not meet his steady blue gaze, and she stepped aside hurriedly to let him in.

            “What?  No hug for me?” he asked softly, putting his arms around her.  “Well, I’ll take it, if you won’t give it!” he continued, hugging her to his chest and kissing the top of her head.  “I’ve missed you, lil Lucy!”  If he noted that she held herself stiffly, he didn’t remark on it.  “And what have we here?” he said, loosing her to pick up the tiny child at their feet.

            He swung her around, and Shae giggled with pleasure and delight.  “My, how you’ve grown!  And walking already, too!  Precocious little puddin’, aren’t ya?”  he kissed her soundly on both cheeks, and Shae pressed her soft baby lips against his mouth.

            “Dada!” she said, and laughed. 

            Both Lucy and Sean laughed, too.  The first word out of her mouth had been “Dada”, when Sean had been visiting after his last trip abroad.  Lucy felt herself relax, and scolded herself as she went around her daughter and her friend to the kitchen.  Sean loved her, and she loved him, but there was nothing romantic about it. 

            “Coffee?” she asked.  “I just put a fresh pot on.  Or would you prefer tea?”

            Sean strolled in after her, the baby still in his arms.  He looked at Lucy and smiled, a knowing smile that brought back the jitters and a flush to her cheeks.

            “Coffee’s fine, Luce!”

            She turned away to pull a mug from the cabinet above the counter, and wished the image that sat in her head would leave before she had to face him again.  The dreams had been happening on and off for a while now, and though she had steadfastly ignored them, there seemed to be nothing she could do to stop the way her heart sped up every time she saw him these days.  It would never do for him to know the effect he was having on her.  She was still a new widow, and they had been best friends forever.  It was just impossible…

            She remembered the way he used to look at her, in the early days after Ian’s death, when he thought no one was watching him.  She had been afraid then of what those looks meant, and it had been convenient and easy for her to pretend she was ignorant of any feeling between them other than the deep friendship that they shared.  Sean had been the soul of discretion, too, never saying anything to give his feelings away.  But now, looking back, she knew.  She supposed she had always known how he felt, on some level, but it had been easier to push that knowledge into the far outer reaches of her consciousness.  Until now…

            “Here you go!” she said, forcing a brightness into her voice that she was far from feeling.  She placed the big mug of coffee on the table, prepared the way he liked it, black.

            Sean put the little girl down and picked up the mug, sipping slowly.  Lucy went to go around him, and his arm stopped her short.  She had never really looked at Sean before, and the breadth of his shoulders, the strength of his muscular body, the scent that she recognized as uniquely his, surprised and delighted her, as they made her afraid.  She couldn’t let anything destroy their friendship.

            “We need to talk, Luce!” he said.  “Sit down.  Please?”

            He sat down himself, and drew her into the chair next to his at the table.  Lucy could hear the words that Ian had written to her at the end of his letter: “There is going to come a day when you move on, and that’s okay.” 

           She had a feeling that that day had come…