Page 6 of A Veteran's Desire

“Who put these up?”

Hannah folds her arms. She’s pissed at me, and I don’t blame her. But I don’t want to add to her worries right now.

“I did. Why?”

The pictures have left a mosaic of bright squares and rectangles where they’ve protected the wall from the sun and kept it in the original bright hue.

“What did you use?”

“I drilled the screw into the wall. I do know how to hang a picture.”

I’m sure she does. What I’ve learned about Hannah, observing her the past few months, is that she’s resourceful. She’s had to be. If I have my way, she’ll never have to hang a picture again. I’ll be the man doing the DIY around the house, making it a home for her.

I push the fantasy out of my mind. I like to dream about an alternate reality where I deserve a woman like Hannah and a family of my own. But I’m in this reality, where I took that away from someone. In this reality, I barely deserve to breathe the same air as her.

A screw pokes out of the wall. The picture must have hung on it ever since they opened this place. If it was a stick-on hook, I could imagine a gust of wind blowing it off, but Hannah’s workmanship looks solid.

I notice something else. The photos remaining on the wall are of the town, Hope in the 1920s when the clock tower was erected and the sycamore trees were saplings.

The photos knocked down are of the Baxter family and their farm. This is personal.

“How many entrances are there to the cafe?”

Hannah must hear the edge to my voice, because her expression goes from annoyed to worried. “The main entrance and the back door.”

“Show me the back door.”

She looks like she wants to ask something, but she doesn’t. Instead, I follow her around the back of the counter, where I’ve never been before, and through the kitchen. There’s a small office to the side, and Rachel sits in an office chair with her phone pressed to her ear.

“She’s on the phone with the insurance company,” Hannah explains.

Past the office is a small corridor that leads to the back door. It opens to a loading bay that’s shared by several businesses.

“Anything unusual when you arrived today?”

“We entered through the front because we wanted to see the damage from the outside. When I came back here, the door had blown open.”

I examine the latch. It’s been smashed as if the door was forced open. It would have to be an extremely strong wind to do that.

“Any of the other businesses along here have their doors blown open?”

“Not that I noticed.” Concern turns to fear as she begins to grasp my suspicions.

I move back through the cafe. I need to ask the other business owners what they found when they arrived and check if their damage is anything like this. I bet it isn’t.

“Can you tell me what the hell is going on?” Hannah follows me through the kitchen and into the cafe and around the counter.

I stop abruptly before the window, and she crashes into the back of me. Her soft body bounces off my hard one, and that moment of contact breaks through the uneasiness that’s brewing inside me and turns it into something fiercer by reminding me what’s at stake. A protective instinct surges inside of me.

Someone targeted the cafe and Hannah. She needs my protection.

“I’m your new protection detail.”

I sidestep until I’m in line with the traffic cone and imagine throwing a rock. I map the projection in my mind through the window. Glass shatters across the sidewalk and spills onto the road, the rock rolls a few times and comes to rest. The sound of shattering glass is covered by the storm.

“Sorry, what?”

“From now on, I’m your new bodyguard.”