Last Salute Read online

  Copyright © 2013 by Tracey Richardson

  Bella Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First Bella Books Edition 2013

  Bella Books eBook released 2013

  Editor: Medora McDougall

  Cover Designed by: Judith Fellows

  ISBN: 978-1-59493-372-1

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Other Books by Tracey Richardson

  Blind Bet

  The Campaign

  The Candidate

  Side Order of Love

  No Rules of Engagement

  The Wedding Party

  Acknowledgments

  It takes a village to raise a writer, and there are too many people to thank who have generously and unconditionally offered me support, encouragement, advice and joyous distraction over the years. Every single one of your actions has manifested themselves in my words. Every emotional connection I have ever made in my life resonates in these words also, and for all of that, I am thankful. My editor, Medora MacDougall—you rock! I am indebted to Bella Books for their loyalty and professionalism. You won’t find better quality books for women anywhere! And readers, thank you for spending a few hours of your time with me…you are the inspiration behind my work. My biggest thanks goes to Sandra for her love and rock steady presence. Okay, and for putting up with me when I’m in my writing mode!

  About the Author

  Tracey is the author of six other Bella novels, including the popular No Rules of Engagement, The Candidate and The Campaign. She has been a winner of /or finalist for several lesbian fiction awards, as well as newspaper awards. Tracey works as a daily newspaper reporter/editor and lives in southwestern Ontario with her partner and two very busy chocolate Labrador retrievers. When not writing or news reporting, Tracey enjoys playing ice hockey and golf and is trying to re-learn how to play the guitar. Please visit www.traceyrichardson.net.

  Dedication

  To my friend Lynn, who was taken too soon. And to those who have served and continue to serve.

  Chapter One

  Pamela Wright never thought it would happen again. Only much later, the myopia of grief having blurred, did she marvel at the cruel swiftness with which her world had crumbled with a simple, unexpected knock on the door. She never saw it coming, never expected it, though she probably should have. She’d been visited by tragedy before, had learned that hard lesson a long time ago. Her mistake had been in thinking it couldn’t happen again, that lightning never strikes twice. Allowing herself to be cradled in a false, flimsy sense of security was inexcusable and was something she vowed would never happen again.

  It began as one of those days in the ER of Chicago’s University of Illinois Medical Center—the kind that made Pam ache to race home and lie around in her pajamas, watch one of her old romance DVDs, indulge in the forbidden comforts of a bag of artery-clogging chips and a glass or two of wine.

  She had almost—but not quite—felt guilty about her little plan as she climbed the steps to her two-bedroom townhouse, the day thankfully behind her. If it’d been one of those crazy, adrenaline-infused ER shifts of car crashes on the Lakeshore or gang shootings from the South Side—the kind of tragic stuff that was fertile ground for medical heroics—she’d still be jacked up. Jacked up and throwing on her jogging shoes instead of rooting around in her fridge for leftover spaghetti and meatballs and trying to decide between Sleepless in Seattle or While You Were Sleeping. But there’d been no such luck. Instead, the day had been a dreary, soul-sucking one, and her exhaustion was more mental than physical, because she’d finished her shift with zero sense of accomplishment, zero sense of having helped anyone in a meaningful way.

  Hmm, she thought, Meg Ryan or Sandra Bullock? Both were cute and wholesome and girl next door-ish—exactly the kind of woman Pam secretly pined for but never had the time, the energy or the brazen confidence to pursue. A dog could be cute and wholesome too, and she had a much better chance of sharing her life with a chocolate Lab than a Meg or a Sandra, she mused. Pathetically, that idea was okay with her at the moment.

  Pam placed the plate of spaghetti in the microwave and poured a glass of cabernet merlot, silently saluting the fact that tomorrow would be a much-needed day off. It’d give her plenty of time to cast off the agitation of her shift, which had started out with Mr. Shiffler, a long-time two-pack-a-day guy with a bad case of emphysema. He was on a dozen or so medications, but he’d decided days ago that he was tired of the pills, so he quit them. Predictably his breathing had deteriorated and he was in her ER early this morning, wheezing and coughing like a man gasping his last breath—which in all likelihood he was. She’d filled him with steroids, antibiotics, given him a nebulizer treatment, and after all that, he still needed to go on a ventilator. Totally frustrating and futile. Then a fifteen-year-old kid had come in by ambulance—alcohol poisoning. Following that there were three successive patients complaining of mysterious back injuries and could she please just prescribe them some OxyContin and they’d be on their way. “Just a few pills doc, to get over the worst of it.” And those were the highlights of the day.

  Definitely a Meg Ryan night, Pam decided, slipping the DVD into place and retrieving her plate from the microwave. Tomorrow she’d go for a three-mile run along the lake, maybe take in the annual kite flying competition in Lincoln Park, write her sister Laura that inexcusably long overdue email. And who knows, maybe she’d finally take that cute little social worker, Connie Mayfield, up on her open-ended offer of a date—she’d been bugging Pam about it for three weeks now. In any case, she’d recharge her batteries and enjoy her days off and get over the fact that days like today made her feel as though all her training and education, all the hours she put in as an emergency medicine resident, were good for little more than patching up people and sending them back to their self-destructive lives.

  Self-pity wasn’t normally Pam’s nature. If she wanted to be a true hero doc, after all, she’d have followed her older sister Laura into the army, where she could be helping sick and wounded soldiers and villagers in Afghanistan right now, all while trying not to get her ass shot off. But she didn’t have the stomach for that brand of glory. No way. And she’d never been too proud to admit it was the part about trying to avoid getting her ass shot off that had kept her out of uniform. Her self-preservation was simply too firmly entrenched. She was no Laura.

  She shook her head and smiled as she remembered Laura teasing her about taking her residency in Chicago, about there being as many guns in the city as there probably were in all of Afghanistan. At least I’ll be armed when someone tries to shoot at me, Laura had said, her smile lacking any joy. “I worry about you, little sister,” she’d said. Ironic though, because it was Pam who worried about Laura.

  Pam shifted her attention to the movie, felt her body relax with the first soothing sips of wine. Meg Ryan was listening to the little boy on the radio show pleading for a girlfriend for his lonely dad when Pam’s doorbell rang. That’s odd, she thought. Her hours at work were so unpredictably long that anyone who wanted to see her knew enough to text her or call her first to make sure she was home. Maybe, she thought with a smile, some little kid somewhere was trying to set her up
with a hot but lonely widow, like the kid in the movie, and the hot widow was right now on her doorstep begging to come in. Yeah, like that fairy tale stuff is ever going to happen to me.

  Still smiling, she opened the door to a man and woman in full army dress, their brass buttons shining beneath the porch light, their ties perfectly straight, the crease in their pants sharp as a knife’s edge. The detail of their faces didn’t much register, but they weren’t smiling—that much she noticed. Friends of Laura’s maybe? She’d seen Laura in army dress only three times—her graduation from med school, a wedding and their mother’s funeral.

  A funeral. Oh my God! No!

  Her mind emptied to total blankness. Her knees began to tremble so wildly she was sure they’d give out. Nothing moved—not time, not these two strangers, not even traffic on the street. The background noise from the television seemed to have stilled too. Everything was silent, immovable—a black yawn of emptiness.

  In a toneless voice, the woman asked, “Are you Dr. Pamela Wright?”

  Pam barely managed to nod.

  “May we come in?”

  Involuntarily, she moved aside to let them pass, even though what she really wanted to do was send them away, the way she would some lousy door-to-door salesman. It occurred to her that if she didn’t let them in, they couldn’t deliver their message.

  “I’m Major Rowan,” the army woman continued in that flat voice of hers. “And this is Captain Mitchell. We’re here about your sister, Major Laura Wright.”

  I know, Pam wanted to scream. And now you’re going to tell me she’s dead!

  “Would you like to sit down?” Rowan asked, as if it were her home and not Pamela’s. She seemed to be the one with the speaking role, which was better than the alternative, Pam decided. The guy looked nervous, uncertain, like maybe he was learning the ropes.

  “No,” she rasped. She would take this standing up, the same as when she was the one delivering the bad news.

  “The Secretary of the Army has asked me to inform you that your sister, Major Laura Wright, was killed in action…”

  Oh Jesus, no! Pam’s heart thudded in her ears about a million beats a minute and she made a blind grab for the wall to stop from collapsing to the floor. Her chest heaved; she could not breathe. Her body was reacting far faster than her emotions, which was entirely a foreign concept to her. She was always so damned good at maintaining control. So practiced at being stoic, in command, no matter the circumstances. But this…this overpowered her, tossed her around as though she were a tiny rowboat in a thrashing sea. The major was still talking, but most of her words failed to register—only the part about a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, Laura not surviving her injuries—stuck with Pam.

  “Go,” Pam tearfully ordered when she could find her voice. “Please, I want you to leave now.”

  She couldn’t stand to look at those dark blue uniforms and colorful medals anymore. The two didn’t want to go. They offered to stay, to call a friend, someone. There was no other family, only her and Laura, and the two casualty notification officers looked like they’d been cheated out of something. Reluctantly they agreed to leave, fumbling with their caps in their smooth hands, saying someone would be in touch again tomorrow to help her with funeral details.

  Pam slid to the floor as the door closed, unspooling in every way possible. So this is what it feels like, she thought numbly, as though she were outside herself. Many times, she’d had to perform the grim notification duties herself in the emergency department. She knew what it was like to be on that side of the news, knew too what it was like to watch her mother slip away to cancer. But this. This was different. Laura was all she had, and now she was gone. “Laura,” she whispered in desperation. Laura, Laura, Laura. It can’t be true, please! No! She clutched a hand to her mouth as though the act might somehow lessen the impact of Laura’s death.

  Laura was the older sister who could do everything, the one who was smarter, braver, the better athlete. She was the one full of joy and adventure. She was the invincible one, the role model, the protector. The only family Pam had, for God’s sake! No, it didn’t make any sense. Laura had always been in her life—distant yes, but always there. Always a phone call or email away.

  Quiet tears grew into sobs. Pamela Wright had never felt more alone, more bereft, in her life.

  * * *

  Trish Tomlinson packed the remaining essays—she’d already graded about half of them—into her worn leather satchel. She was usually one of the last teachers at Ann Arbor’s Huron High School to leave work each day, but this time she had a vague but persistent desire to get home as quickly as she could. She wondered, with only mild concern, if she was coming down with something.

  She said good night to a couple of students lingering in the hall, waved to a fellow teacher and walked out the doors—the front ones this time instead of the ones closest to the parking lot that she usually took. A little walk, a little air might rid her of the tickle in her throat, she reasoned. A janitor was at the main flagpole, reefing on the rope that held the flag. She watched him for a moment before she approached. It wasn’t a common occurrence to see the flag dropped to half-mast, and when it was, it was bad news of course.

  “Hey, Jim,” she said breezily. “What’s the half-mast for?”

  The older man, nearly as slender as the aluminum post, shrugged bony shoulders. “Don’t know, ma’am, except that it was one of our own.”

  Shit. She hadn’t heard any news all day, but maybe the school had just been notified. She stood a moment longer, watched Jim tie the flag in place and mentally scrolled through a list of likely candidates. Michael Ferguson hadn’t been in school for a couple of days. Jarrod Murray had been gone all week without explanation. It was spring, and boys liked their cars fast, their music loud and, unfortunately, their beer warm or cold. A sure recipe for disaster, and a couple of students always succumbed every school year.

  Trish started toward the parking lot, stopped, turned sharply on her Blundstone boots. If she didn’t find out who had died, it’d bug her for the rest of the evening.

  “Have a good night, Jim,” she called out and hustled back inside.

  She ducked into the office, where the remaining secretary was packing up her things for the day.

  “Marla, hey.”

  The burly African-American woman beamed at her, gently shaking her head. “Why, Miss Tomlinson, I can’t believe you almost beat me outta here! Since when do you go hightailing it before five o’clock?”

  “You caught me. Decided to step out early today.”

  “Hot date or something?”

  All the staff knew she was single, though she rarely discussed her private life. She wasn’t exactly closeted. It was more like her life was too boring to talk about.

  “Nah, nothing like that. Listen, I saw the flag outside just now. Somebody die?”

  “Yeah, an alumnus from a ways back.”

  Relieved, Trish exhaled the nervous breath she’d been holding. Then her curiosity took hold again. She was an alumnus of Huron High herself, class of ’93, and the only teacher at the school who could make such a claim. “A ways back” could be forty years ago or it could be someone she’d graduated with. “Do you know who?”

  “As a matter of fact I do. A soldier. Just let me look up that email we got an hour or so ago.”

  Trish’s heart skipped a beat, then another. Then it crashed to a near halt. No, please no, don’t let it be her.

  “Let me see here. A woman. Hmm, such a shame, not very old. That darned war over there. Seems like it’s never going to be over.”

  Goddammit, just tell me who!

  “Okay, here’s the name. Graduated in 1993, a Major Laura Wright, thirty-eight years old. Killed yesterday in…”

  Trish didn’t hear anything beyond Laura’s name. The secretary was still talking, at least her lips were moving, but Trish could hear nothing beyond the blood rushing in her ears. She could not breathe. It was like choking on nothing more
tangible than air—air she couldn’t seem to force into her lungs.

  Not Laura, not my Laura, oh God. It was all she could think, over and over, like a song skipping in place for what felt like minutes. It simply could not be her high school sweetheart, her first love, her only love. This could not be happening. And while her mind refused to believe it, her body had no doubt. Her legs began to quiver, go numb, and then her vision shrank until it was no bigger than the head of a pin. She was falling, spinning, shrouded in blackness.

  She didn’t feel the floor as she hit it.

  Chapter Two

  Pam shivered in the backseat of the limousine. She was nervous, scared. Laura was coming home to Ann Arbor. In a casket. The thought made her shiver all over again.

  Through the car’s heavily tinted windows, she watched the large airliner crawl to a stop on the tarmac of Detroit’s Metro Airport. A plain black hearse inched toward it, followed by a nondescript van with government plates. Surely any minute the plane’s door would open and Laura would be standing there, waving and smiling, looking trim and fit and anxious to set her feet on American soil again. As hard as Pam struggled to accept reality, she wasn’t ready to concede that she would never see Laura again. Perhaps if she envisioned a different outcome, she could will it to happen. It was one of the mind games she’d been playing over the last couple of days—a defense against the shock.

  Eight soldiers in army dress uniforms exited the van one by one and moved into rigid formation next to the plane’s cargo door. It was like watching a movie where everyone had a part to play, including herself. She could do this. Unscripted, unrehearsed though it was, she knew how to do grief. She’d played the part of grieving daughter before, and while grieving sister was a new and even more heart-wrenching role, she had no choice but to go through the motions. She clutched the dry tissue in her hand, unsure when or even if tears would fall today. She’d cried so much already that she didn’t know how much was left.