Chapter 1

It all began innocently enough, as nightmares usually do.

“Dammit,” I remember saying in a whisper, as my finger clicked on the mouse with nothing changing on the computer screen.

Realizing that I was getting nowhere, I stood up with a sigh.

“Anyone else's program freezing up?” I shouted to the office.

Over the drone of gossip, ringing phones, and the clacking of keys on keyboards, I heard back responses that floated over the partitions, “No. Not mine.” And “Not over here, Linda.”

“Try clicking the mouse,” someone added.

 A grumble left my lips as I sat back down and clicked furiously on the mouse again, as if the program would begin to work if I tapped in a secret code with a right and left click.

 As I tapped, a small white box opened in the corner of my screen. The help desk ticket I submitted was the first line in the message, then my name, followed by a numeric code blinking beneath.

“Hello,” the tier two engineer typed in the box. The initial troubleshooting at tier one did nothing to unfreeze the troublesome program, so my ticket was, thankfully, escalated.

“Hello,” I typed back.

“I hear you're having problems with the sales program?” The person replied.

In my mind I imagined some sweaty twenty-something typing back at me, with bed-head hair, thoroughly annoyed that I was bothering them with my program.

But I was just being mean.

“Yes. It's frozen,” I typed, thinking a silent prayer to clear my mind, trying not to take the program screwing me again out on the poor engineer. It wasn't their fault our systems were hopelessly outdated.

“I can't lose this data,” I whispered as I typed the same words.

“You should save your data often, ma'am,” the engineer replied.

I let the cursor blink next to my name, my mind racing with a series of expletives to reply with.

I prayed again.

 “Just kidding. I do it all the time,” the engineer typed, saving themselves from a very unladylike series of words, and me a trip to the confessional. “Mind if I cut in?” The engineer continued.

Before I could type a response, the black cursor on the screen moved on its own.

Strange programs flashed on the screen, buzzing with words moving too fast to understand. The programs then disappeared, filling the bottom of the computer screen with a row of minimized gray tabs. I watched the screen with my chin on my palm and tapping the eraser of my pencil on the desk in a cadence.

The video meeting with the chief financial officer was already going on without me, and I was hopelessly behind; saving the data I had entered into the program while it was working was the only thing that could salvage a blown morning.

Then the programs stopped popping up, the still frozen accounting program almost mocking me with its static image.

“Hmm,” the engineer typed in the box.

A flush of worry chilled my skin cold, and I sat up quickly.

“Please don't tell me you can't fix this,” I typed quickly. “And please don't tell me to hold the power button for ten seconds. Don't ruin my life help desk.”

“Lol,” the engineer typed back. “It's not responding, but I'm not defeated yet. Mind if I come to your desk, ma'am?”

I glanced about, watching as the rest of the accounting department forged ahead, leaving me behind – and with promotions just around the corner.

It was a no-brainer to allow them in my space to fix the program, right?

“Sure,” I typed back.

“Rgr,” is what they typed back.

The engineer confirmed my location with me, column C-24, on the third floor, and was at my desk within minutes when it normally took these engineers hours to respond.

To me, it was nothing.

Nothing but superb customer service. I didn't question otherwise.

I didn't have a reason to, then.

“Hi, I'm Henry,” was the first thing he said to me. I thought I could hear an accent in his voice. Southern, but not the slow Georgian drawl.

Henry looked nothing like how I had imagined the IT person before. He was tall, with a full head of short shaven dark brown hair. Wearing the company polo shirt, it was hard to miss the muscles that stretched the material. Several of the women in my cubicle looked over, probably noticing his lack of a ring on his finger, like I had. He also had deep blue eyes, the kind that made you look twice. There was an arrogance in them, something I recognized, and I knew right away that I had the right man for the job.

Henry leaned on the desk, looking me directly in the eyes.

“May I have this dance?” He asked. I did not respond, and he smiled before indicating the computer with a nod of his head. He didn't talk like I imagined either. His smile reminded me of Christopher Reeves - you know, Superman - but again with that hint of haughtiness that implied assurance.

“Oh,” I blinked, feeling my face flush as I stood up. “Sure, let me get out of your way.”

My head came up just to his chest and bowed as Henry moved past me, the sweet, musky scent of his cologne trailing him as he took my seat. He slipped a thumb drive into the slot of the desktop, and with a crack of knuckles, began typing away.

I watched as he worked, my arms crossed and leaning against a filing cabinet, seeing the same boxes flying on the screen. As Henry's arms moved, the short sleeve of his shirt rose up his muscled bicep, revealing a series of numbers that I realized was a date tattooed in black. Above the date, I could see the bottom jaw of a skull, a bone white.

“Were you in the military?” I asked.

Henry stopped typing and looked up at me, eyebrows raised. Embarrassed by the sudden attention, I pointed at his arm, and he smiled again, going back to work.

“Yes ma'am, I was army,” Henry replied. He had that crisp way of speaking, like a military man. The kind that was used to giving orders instead of taking them.

“Special forces?” I asked and he glanced at me again, blue eyes shining. “My husband served.”

“Was he SOF?” Henry asked, turning back to the screen to type again. 

“Sort of,” I replied. “He was a Ranger.”

Henry nodded, and just said, “Mmm.”

Part of me wanted to leave him alone, so I could get back to the meeting as quickly as possible, but another part wanted to know more about the special forces turned engineer that had come to my rescue.

“So, did you go to the sandbox?” I asked.

“Sandbox?” he laughed, not looking up that time. “Did you learn that from your husband?”

“Perk of being a military spouse,” I replied with a shrug. “You learn the lingo,” and let out a giggle that I couldn't help.

“Yes,” he replied, the ambient light from the screen highlighting the side of his face in blue. “I did a tour in Iraq, then back when the haji's started acting up again.”

He stopped typing.

“Sorry,” Henry said, his face softening as he looked up at me again.

It took me a moment to realize why he was apologizing, until I noticed the glances of our co-workers after he used the word haji.

I laughed to assure him. “Don't worry, I hear worse when Shawn's Ranger friends come by.”

“Shawn?” He asked, eyebrow raised.

“My husband,” I replied.

“Right,” he nodded, before he turned and clicked the keyboard with his index fingers. His smile was intelligent, and kind when he spoke again. “Okay, done.”

I blinked at him, then at the screen where the frozen sales program was gone. Just my desktop picture of Shawn and I on a cruise vacation in the Caribbean was left in its place.

“Wait, no, I wanted to keep the data,” I moaned as Henry rose from the seat and I replaced him, tapping again at the mouse.

“You're clicking too fast,” Henry said, and I felt the warmth of his hand as he moved mine off the mouse. Leaning over my shoulder, feeling his body heat, he clicked twice, slower than me, launching the sales program. The program launched, and I noticed the last line was my numerical entry right before the program froze.

“You're killing me Henry,” I sighed, leaning back into the chair, smiling as I turned to face him. “How did you do that?”

He twiddled his fingers as if playing an air piano. “Magic fingers,” he replied, and I heard Lana snort a laugh behind him.

“You're just as bad as my husband,” I replied, laughing as well. “Thank you so much, Henry, really.”

“Part of the job,” he replied, as he gathered his paperwork and equipment. “And it's part of our motto, De oppresso liber, we free the oppressed, in your case, liberating you from a tyrannical program, ma'am.” 

I laughed again, finding his type of humor, admittedly, very charming.

“Linda,” I said.

“What's that?” Henry replied, pulling his thumb drive from the computer.

“My name is Linda. Don't call me ma'am...it makes me feel like my mother, and I'm not that old yet.”

That crooked reeves-like smile returned, and he reached out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Linda. I'm Henry Collins,” he replied.

I rose and took his hand, which felt coarse and calloused from years in the military. My husband's hands felt the same whenever he returned from deployment, so I knew Henry had not been discharged long.

“Nice to meet you too,” I replied.

And at the time, that was true.

Later I had returned home, tired after a long day and taking that long drive out into the country where Shawn and I lived. We owned several acres, secluded and away from people, in a house that we had built after years of hardscrabble saving. It was lavish compared to what either of us had grown up in, but we wanted our kids, when we had kids, to have more than we did. We wanted the American dream and worked hard to achieve it.

We loved that house.

“Shawn?” I called out over the beeping of the door alarm. I punched in the code while hanging my jacket on the hook next to the door. “Shawn?”

I passed the foyer and then the couch in the family room that faced the gray brick fireplace and bay window with its soft couch ledge I liked to read upon when the sun was right. I glance to the right, up the stairs that led to the loft, not seeing Shawn in the study that was lit by the moonlight from the window that looked out onto the yard.

Turning left, I walked down the hallway, past the darkened guest bedrooms and bathroom, lit only by small nightlights we had plugged into the sockets that looked like small stars.

In the living room, the couch and loveseat remained unused, and the flat screen mounted on the opposite wall was turned off. Walking further, I pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen, and saw that Shawn wasn't in there either. Why a swinging door? It reminded Shawn and I of the door we had to hip through at the restaurant we both waited at in college. We fell in love in that greasy dive just before he left school and volunteered to join the army after 9/11.

Pale light from the window over the kitchen sink made everything glow like moonlight shining off water. Thinking of our time together in that restaurant made me smile as I glanced through the opening on the left wall that looked out into the darkened living room. Fumbling for my phone in my cluttered purse, I saw that it was close to nine, which meant Shawn must have been working late.

Again.

When he was in the service, Shawn was annoyingly punctual, often arriving ten minutes early to everything, but as a civilian, he worked himself to the bone. Like a Ranger, he wouldn't leave until the job was done, and that meant many nights eating alone. It was that same determination that pushed him through months of Ranger School phases, so I thought I understood the sacrifice.

But I can admit, it would have been nice to have him home more often.

The light from the refrigerator nearly blinded me as I reached in and grabbed a bottle of orange juice, taking in half the content before I sat it down on our granite island that I always thought was a tad too big for our kitchen. Plus, I always hit my head on the pans we had hanging around the oval rack above.

Shawn was the cook, not me, and it was his idea for the island and to have concussion-inducing pots hanging in the dark.

After finishing the bottle and tossing it in the bin in the island compartment, I walked towards the opposite kitchen opening, not before banging my head against a pot that clanged against another, mind you. A loose board before the opening squeaked as I walked over it. I had badgered Shawn to finally fix the thing, and he said he did, with a grin that didn't tell me if he was telling the truth or not. Not wanting to be a dramatic about something so trivial, I had let it go, but it was annoying to hear that squeak every time I got up for a late-night snack.

I passed the dining room table that I felt we hadn't used in months, into our master bedroom.

The bed was still made from that morning.

The shower I took felt like water from heaven. Like warm little needles that massaged my stressed shoulders. After the shower and slipping into my red bathrobe made from Turkish cotton, I was too tired to read anything, or listen to the news that was always bad. Instead, I eyed the bed as I towel dried my hair; it called to me with its thick, lush blankets, and it felt as if someone had suddenly attached weights to my eyelids.

The pillows and covers felt like warm clouds as I sunk into the mattress, with sheets that had so high a thread count that I couldn't remember the actual number.

Laying on my side, eyes fluttering close, and hand between my knees, I thought about the new friend I had made. His funny jokes, and smile, and, I can admit, those blue eyes. I wondered who I could set him up with. If I knew anyone who could handle what it took to date a military man.

“I can't believe he's single,” was the last thing I thought before I succumbed to exhaustion.