Page 3 of The Burning
“No. My mom’s with them back at Benning. I figured they’d been to enough of these for a while.”
“Haven’t we all?”
“That’s for damn sure.”
A woman approaches us and moves to hug Gloria. She seems to know her, and they start talking. My mom is still in deep conversation, so I look for Karina again. How is it possible that I haven’t seen her yet? The church isn’t that big. Then again, she’s good at blending in, hiding in the midst of a crowd. It’s one of her “things.”
My mom’s voice cuts through the hushed greetings and condolences being shared around me while I’m lost in my own head.
“Mikael, where is it your sister is wanting to go to college again?” she asks, confusion in her eyes despite the hundreds of conversations we’ve had about it.
“MIT,” I tell the woman talking to her, whom I recognize as Lawson’s mom. I know she’s a better person than her son, but that’s not exactly hard to accomplish. After spending the last few years with him in my platoon, two deployments to Afghanistan later, I know Lawson better than even his own mother does. War brings people closer than anything can, except death. They go hand in hand in my world.
“That’s it. MIT. She’s the smartest in her whole class this year, and last. Two more years to wait, but they would be crazy not to accept her.” My mom’s black hair is falling out of the clip thing she always wears. The curls I helped her put in her hair this morning were fallen now. I reach down to push her hair back from her face.
The memory of Karina laughing at me as I burned my fingertips on a hot curling iron fills my mind. I knew she had to be the most thoughtful, selfless person I would ever meet when she offered to help teach me how to curl my mom’s hair when we noticed burns on her hands. Some mornings mom’s hands would shake so badly that she couldn’t do it herself, but she was too stubborn to ask for help.
I don’t travel home as often as I should, but my mom loves to have me curl her hair when I do. She says it will make me a good father one day. Karina said the same, with a look in her eyes like she could see the future. Turns out she couldn’t, and neither can my mom, because she still hopes for grandchildren from me to pass on the family name. Not fucking happening. There’s no chance I’d ever punish the world with another me.
I sigh and grab my phone from my pocket, checking it out of habit while glancing around the room. It’s emptier now, so Karina will be easier to find. Eventually I’ll either know for sure that she’s not here, or she’ll appear from whatever corner of the room she’s hiding in. That’s if she didn’t slip out, and knowing her, there’s a high likelihood—
“I’m right here, Dory.”
Karina’s soft voice sends both shock and relief throughout my body.
“There you are. Everyone keeps talking about you, and here you are,” Ma says.
Karina’s brows draw together and she shakes her head. “Gossip as always.”
Her lips curl into a smile and she puts her arm around my mom’s shoulders and squeezes.
Karina’s fingers go to Ma’s hair, and she unfastens the clip. Her delicate hands twist her hair, then clip it back exactly how she likes it and hell of a lot better than I can do. Man, they’ve come a long way since the beginning. It drives me fucking crazy with guilt that because of everything that happened, my mom doesn’t have Karina in her life anymore. Unlike Gloria, who could drive to see Karina ten minutes away, my mom will never even sit behind a wheel again. Not safely, at least. The laundry list of mistakes I’ve made over the last several years just keeps growing. Even though now we are living separate lives, I’ve done too many unforgivable things to her.
“Do you want to go outside?” she asks Ma. “It’s getting a little stuffy in here.” The green of her eyes catches on the stained-glass church window.
My mom follows Karina and they both look back at me standing still.
“Well?” they say in unison.
“I’ll go with you?” I look at Karina.
She stares back at me, her lips parting slightly, but she doesn’t say anything.
As we turn, my phone vibrates in my hand. I go to answer and catch Karina’s eyes. She’s staring daggers at my phone, one of her worst enemies. She expects me to answer it, like I always do, so I ignore the call and keep her eyes on mine. She licks her lips and her eyes give away that she’s surprised and that she sees this as a win. It was just one of my contractors, anyway.
“Shall we?” I ask her, digging in my position of at least trying to stay on her game board. She nods and leads us out of the church as the bells from its tower ring through the air.
Chapter One
Two years earlier
Kael
My truck roared down the small street. I continued to hit my hands against the steering wheel as I drove far enough down the dark road to be out of her eyesight. I slowed to a stop on the gravel pullout a few blocks away and stumbled out of my truck. The ground was soaked with unforgiving rain and as I looked into the darkness, I couldn’t see more than ten feet in front of me. It had only been a few minutes since I left Karina at her house, but the guilt weighed enough to feel like thirty years.
Reaching for my phone, I called Austin first. My hands were shaking intolerably, and the rain was soaking my phone as I waited for him to pick up.
“Hey man—what’s up?” he asked in a casual tone. The nonchalant sound of his voice immediately triggered my anger. Even if I knew both of us did the right thing, I needed someone to be pissed at and I could hear women’s voices and music in the background of wherever the fuck he was.
