“Daniel.”
Daniel Moore.Irish lawyer, murdered by dissidents.Right now, it didn’t much matter, but when the fog cleared Jed knew he had some reaching out to do. “What about you? I’m guessing your name isn’t Kim.”
Kim let out a watery laugh. “Not quite. My name was Kibibi. It means….”
“Little lady,” Jed finished for her. “Swahili, right?”
“You don’t seem very surprised.”
“I’ve heard Max call you Bibi. I’ve heard the name before.”
“Small world, eh? Max was ‘Mumba’ to me, but I’ve never slipped. To me, he’s dead. Everything we ever knew is dead.”
Jed didn’t answer. Kim’s story was huge, filled with uncertainty and unanswered questions, but his mind was already filing it away to think over later. For now, Kim had some more explaining to do. He pointed to the military photographs scattered on the coffee table. “Where the hell did you get those?”
Kim pulled the coffee table closer. “Nick spent all the money you sent him and more on moving us across the country, and then your father got sick. To make extra cash, I started taking commissioned work, creating paintings from old photographs. These were sent to me by an aid charity when I was pregnant with Belle. They wanted to highlight the role foreign troops played in distributing humanitarian aid. I forget which one it was now, but I’d seen the photos before. They were in the newspapers.”
Jed felt a little high. “What did you do with them?”
“Nothing. I didn’t complete the piece. Babies are a full time job, and I didn’t have the time. They got put in a box with everything else I didn’t have a time for.”
“A box in Max’s boat shed.” Jed felt so tired he wanted to cry. He leaned forward and tapped his finger on the man clinging, machine gun in hand, to the right-hand side of the first Apache helicopter. “That’s me, Kim. The dude on that chopper is me.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
MAXDIDN’Tmean for his morning walk to take him past the VA campus. But he somehow found himself sitting on a bench across the street, watching the injured soldiers come and go. The men varied in age. Most were in their twenties and thirties, but there were older men too—men who’d served in conflicts Max had probably never heard of.
The automatic doors to the hospital opened. A young man with a walker appeared, maneuvering himself slowly out onto the street. Max stared at him, watching as his companion reached out to assist him and the soldier waved him away. He was young, barely out of his teens, if he was at all, and his face was set in a determined line.
Max tore his gaze away with a wry smile. He’d seen that stubborn expression on Jed, and he wondered if all soldiers were as complex and damaged as him.
Jed.
Max’s smile faded as an image of Jed’s cold, closed-off face flashed into his mind. Max hardly recognized the man he’d grown to love.He’d seen Jed angry before, but never like that. That night it had been like looking into the eyes of a stranger, a stranger who hated him like he’d never been hated before.
Max thought of the long-forgotten passport Jed had thrown in his face, and for the millionth time cursed his own carelessness. But the uncertainty bugged him more than anything else. He’d told Jed about the drug box under the sink before Christmas, and the bottle of tramadol had appeared inside it a few days later. Max knew Jed rarely succumbed to the powerful narcotics—too pigheaded to admit he was in pain—so he could only figure Jed had known about the passport for a while. So why hadn’t Jed said anything? And if he was so upset by it, why on earth had he slept with Max and allowed them to grow as close as they had?
It didn’t make any sense. None of it did. Jed would never have given himself over the way he had if he’d harbored any sense of the betrayal Max had seen in his eyes the night of the wedding. No. Despite it all, the bond they shared was deep and real. Max wasn’t sure of much, but he was sure of that.
He put his head in his hands. It was such a mess. He’d fought with Jed, and with Kim, and had shown up on Carla’s doorstep without a clue what to do next. What the hell was he supposed to do? Go home and ask Jed to let it go? Perhaps he should tell him the truth, but how could he? It wasn’t just his secret to tell.
Years of resentment bubbled in Max’s gut. He’d buried it for so long, pretended it wasn’t there, but it was. Kim and Nick had moved past it. Some days, Max was sure they’d forgotten it ever happened, but maybe it was easier for them. They hadn’t heard his father’s dying gasps, or Makemba’s screams. They hadn’t seen the cold dead eyes of the men who killed them.
Max had told them he couldn’t remember the fateful night, but he did. He remembered it all.
Flo pulled on her leash. The city made her restless and she wanted to move. Max got to his feet and let her have her way. He headed for Carla’s apartment block, but as he walked beneath the suspended sky-bridge connecting the VA center with the main hospital, Jed remained on his mind, or more precisely, the old art project of Kim’s that had kindled Jed’s explosive anger in the first place.
Helicopters. Guns. War.
Max felt awful about the photographs. He’d always been careful not to leave newspapers lying around, or let the news play on the TV when they were reporting from places Jed might have been… places where he might still have friends. Carla’s grandfather was a veteran, and even the smell of the charcoal grill on the patio set him off.
It had never occurred to Max to check the dusty shelves of the boat shed. Why Kim couldn’t store her own crap, he’d never know. The boxes had been there so long, Max had forgotten all about them.
Flo abruptly veered to the right. Max tripped over his own feet, cursed, and yanked her back. “Stop it. Carla’s place is this way.”
Flo whined, but Max wasn’t in the mood to indulge her. It was late morning. He’d cleared out of Carla’s tiny apartment to give her some space and walk off some of his agitated energy, but he’d promised to cook her brunch before she left for work.
She was in the kitchen when he got back, already chopping vegetables for salsa omelets, an American custom that always put a smile on Max’s face. It sure beat a bowl of soggy Weetabix. He nudged her aside and reached for the jalapenos. “I’ll do it.”