His father's car was parked in clear sight.
Gray turned to leave … then remembered all the nights his dad had taught him about the stars. Gray's feet slowed as he thought of his night with Lori under those same stars. For the first time in too long, he'd enjoyed the memories of learning to navigate from his dad—without the bitter sting that followed.
He pivoted on his heel. He might as well stop in and say hi before he left. Things couldn't get much worse.
After three unanswered rings, Gray swept around to the back of the condo. He almost gave up, deciding his dad must be off on a walk, when he happened to look through the mesh webbing on the screened-in porch.
He found his father, sitting, staring out over the water. Gray loped up the three steps and shoved open the screen door. "Hey, old man."
His father straightened. "Hi, son. I thought you left for Washington."
"I did." Gray sprawled in the porch swing. "I came back to tie up business here."
"Something to do with Lori?"
Regret stabbed him, followed by a blanketing sense of failure. Damn it, he'd met his every goal in life. Except one. Lori. "That's over, Dad."
His father nodded slowly, his gaze staying fixed on the water. "Hmm."
A grunt from his dad. The usual response.
Gray hooked his arms along the back of the swing. His dad's chattiness at the family picnic must have been a fluke, or maybe he'd made an extra effort because Lori had been there. Whatever the reason, Gray was disappointed—for his mother's sake.
The older man folded his hands over his barrel chest. "I've been seeing this doctor out at the VA Hospital."
Slowing the swing, Gray recalled all the times his mother had asked him to visit recently. Had she needed his professional advice, and he'd blown her off, too preoccupied by the mess he'd made with Lori? Guilt was becoming a familiar companion these days. "Have you been sick?"
"Not the way you mean. Not that kind of doctor."
Gray planted both feet on the ground and stopped the swing. After all these years, his father was finally seeking help? Hell, acknowledging there was even a problem? Gray scrambled for something to say and came up dry. Instead he waited, opting to take his cue from his dad.
His father scratched a hand along his salt-and-pepper hair, still trimmed to military regulation even ten years after retirement. "We've been talking about those days in the camp. Getting some things straight in my head. If it were up to me, I'd just let it all lie. But your mother needs this. So I go. Sometimes we go together."
Those were more words than his father had strung together in as long as Gray could remember. The talkative bent at the family party hadn't been a fluke. "That's good, Dad. Real good."
"So your mother says. And I have to admit … it helps." He stared out over the water, silent for one of those long stretches habitual since his POW days. Without looking away, he cleared his throat. "Back in 'Nam, there was this box they put us in."
Gray winced at the conversational leap, his mind catching up even though his stomach still lurched as if he'd pitched off the swing.
His father's brows knit together. "In some ways the box was good, because they left you alone as long as you were in there. Then it got hot. And you needed some distraction. I came home in my mind."
Gray tried to relax his fists. He knew all about the box, a crate about the size of a dog carrier, but without a window.
His time in survival training had included a stint in a mock POW camp. How many days he'd spent there, he'd never known. He'd had no watch, and most of the time was spent with loudspeakers blaring away any hope of sleep. He'd been marched through a hellish regimen meant to prepare flyers for possible capture.
Definitely hell, and he'd had the reassurance that he would be leaving soon. Hours spent in the box had given him too much time to think about what his father had been through, a torture beyond any the instructors could have doled out.
Gray studied his father. What could he say, though, Hey, Dad, I pulled a weekend stint in one of those, so I understand your pain? He let his father talk.
"When I came home in my head, you and I sat out under that tree, and I taught you about the stars. Sometimes we pitched a ball around." His eyes fogged with a distant look, as if seeing long-ago days. "Other times I told you things you needed to know, things a father should tell his son. I may have been in that box, but I couldn't stop being your dad."
The words slammed on top of so many memories of waiting for his father to come home, the years after when he'd felt he lost his dad altogether. How strange to get his old man back right before a move cross country. "Dad, it means a—"
His father held up a hand. "Funny thing was, once I got home, I didn't do all those things with you like I'd planned. I was still stuck in that box, more so than when I was back over there." He turned to face Gray. "Son, you've put yourself in a box."
"What?" When had this become about him? Not three seconds ago they were discussing his father.>Still she yearned to go with him, to be with him. "I can't go."
"Because of your job."