Page 32 of Spotted at Lighthouse Bay
“My status?”
“You’ve been deemed –”
“Don’t say worthy,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t bear it, Rick. I just can’t.”
“Trustworthy,” he said.
“Why? Because you’ve seen me at my lowest? Called old by a blind date? Being accused of being said date’s mother?”
He laughed. “I think he was bad at math.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not technically, no. If I were eighteen and I –”
Rick cut her off. “I’m trying to tell you my secrets, Adelaide, and all you can do is talk about technicalities.”
A smile spread across her face. “We’d better hurry up and get a table before you change your mind.”
Eleven
The place was nearly empty, so the hostess told them to pick a table. Addy chose one near the window. A single, yellow LED lamp shaped like a candle glowed in the center, casting its warm glow with a calming, artificial flicker.
They sat and Addy picked up a menu. The appetizers looked good. So did the salads, and the gnocchi.
If she had to be humiliated, she at least deserved gnocchi.
“I joined the army right after high school,” Rick said, setting his menu down.
Addy looked up at him. He was getting right to business. “When was that?”
“2002.”
The math flipped through her mind. He was forty. Only eight years younger than her.
Ha.Only.
“Wait. 2002?” Her hand darted to her mouth.
He nodded. “Yup. A few months after enlisting, I deployed to Iraq.”
“You were a kid.” She shook her head. “That must have been hard.”
He sucked in a breath, scrubbing the stubble on his chin with his hand. “I went in as a bright eyed, eighteen-year-old boy and after thirteen months there…” He shook his head. “I wasn’t that boy anymore.”
“My dad served in Vietnam,” Addy said. “He didn’t like to talk about it. He told me it was very boring, except when it wasn’t.”
Rick smiled, creasing at the corner of his eyes. “That’s accurate. It’s waiting around until all hell breaks loose.” He paused. “Excuse my language. War is the worst thing on earth.”
“You’re excused.” She’d heard far worse from her dad’s friends. “I am not one to judge a person who served our country.”
He leaned in, resting his elbows on the table and his head on his hands. “You know, I got lucky. After I was discharged, my uncle made me talk to someone. He was a shrink for the VA and he refused to let me hide away.”
“Like a therapist?” Something that hadn’t been available to her dad. He’d only had his friends and the sea. He did okay, but Addy always worried about him.
“Yeah. A therapist. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I needed to sort out what happened. Set my head straight. Not that I’ll ever fully understand. War can’t be understood, because it doesn't make sense. That’s that hard thing to understand.” He sighed. “Anyway, I’m not saying I’m perfect, but it helped. I had too many friends who came back from deployment but couldn’t put themselves together again. There were too many broken pieces. Too much…” His voice trailed off.
Her mouth was gaping. Rick didn’t seem like someone who could be broken into pieces. He was solid as stone.
Still, the world managed to crack him. It made it hard to not stand up and hug him.
