He shifted his hat down over his eyes as she slipped on her sunglasses and walked to the pathway leading down into the gorge. Rose’s boots shuffled behind him, but he still thrummed with tension at the feeling of her in his arms, here, alone, while her herbal smell lingered in his nose.
His phone buzzed in his pocket against his thigh. Text message. Not many people had his number except for his brothers and a few of his poker buddies, and it likely wasn’t Travis. That SOB could go weeks without being in touch, and when Toby messaged him, he usually only got a one-word reply, such as:
Toby:How you doing, man? It’s been a while. Things going good?
Travis, hours later:Yup.
That one-word reply was the new normal for Travis. Before 9/11, Travis had been happy-go-lucky and one of Toby’s best friends, while Ty, whose age gap was bit wider, had tended to treat them like babies. When the army had contacted his parents two months later to inform the family that Trav had indeed survived the roadside bombing in Afghanistan and had made his way to a friendly British base, it was only the start of peeling back the layers of the trauma Trav had endured—the loss of his foot only being part of it. And while he’d finally gotten help; gotten over Skylar Rivers and gotten on with med school, he’d never been much of a chatterbox since. Some things were just too hard to say. Toby tamped down the memories of complaining at Travis to stop talking through every movie they watched while Tyler threw fistfuls of popcorn at him to shut the hell up. They’d both told Trav that so many times growing up. Quit talking through Sunday service. Quit talking so some of us can get a word in edgewise. Shut up and listen to the F-ing radio…
What they’d give to hear Travis chatter on about something inane now, when the war had silenced him.
He ignored the phone. It was probably Tyler texting to remind him that their parents’ anniversary was coming up. They usually raised a beer together, even if it was done over the phone. Damn these memories. They rarely crept up on him. Odd that they were resurfacing now.