More, Please (4 page)

- LOGAN -

My niece is tearing a path across my
parents’ front lawn toward my truck and, just like that, my world lights up.

Hannah is beyond adorable in her two
tight braids with her glasses that are just a little too big for her face. Despite
the sour attitude of her mother, my niece seems to have retained that special
joy that comes from being seven.

She’s at that age when she doesn’t mind
me calling her names like Peanut, Sugar Puff, and Pumpkin. Which is good,
because I think I’ll always think of her as Pumpkin. She still takes me on
fairy hunts in the woods that line the banks of the creek beyond my parents’
house. And she closes every day saying it’s X number of days till Santa comes.

I think we’re about at day 230 now.

“Did you get the doggie? Did you get the
doggie?” Hannah chants as soon as I open my door.

The smile that had just been on my face
threatens to disappear. I’ve tried to forget about Kosmo and the bat-shit crazy
girl who seems to like playing God with the animal. It’s been a week since I
saw her in front of the pet store, and I still haven’t heard a word about my
application.

I’ve rewound the 24 hours I had known her
a few times in my head, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why she
turned into a cold-hearted ice queen overnight.

Thank God I hadn’t slept with her.

Seriously… I bought her dinner. She
pretty much invited herself to my room, plastered me against the elevator in a
kiss that was off-the-charts, then disappeared on me as I sat waiting in my
room with two orders of lava cake (which I managed to eat later by myself). Then
she treats me like I committed a crime the next day.

But my niece, in all her wide-eyed
innocence, has reminded me why I’m really pissed off.

That woman has blocked me from getting
the dog I want.

“No, Pumpkin,” I answer. “Not yet,
anyway. But hopefully soon.”

Her hazel eyes are sad, ripping the heart
out of my chest, until she brightens only three seconds later. “Want to hunt
for fairies?”

“You bet.” I love the way her mind
works—changing direction as quickly as the wind. My niece has ADHD, and I
always joke that between her ADHD and my PTSD and my brother’s OCD (though
he’ll never admit to it), we’ve got enough acronyms in our family to sound like
a branch of the federal government.

She is a whirlwind of energy, a whirlwind
that her teachers complain about relentlessly, according to her mother.

“Just let me drop these groceries in to
your grandma.” I take her hand and walk up the paved driveway to my parents’
house.

I can never seem to call this place my
home, even though I have many memories here. This house is luxurious, and I
don’t feel like I fit in. Especially not after five deployments and countless
missions that showed me how most of the people of the world live. This is the
kind of opulence that almost makes me feel a sense of shame.

Don’t get me wrong. Even though it was my
grandfather who started JLS Heartland, my dad worked his ass off to get the
company to where it is today, and I give him a lot of credit for that. He never
even went to college, and started working for JLS the Monday after he got his high
school diploma. With Dad at the helm, JLS grew from a solid construction
company to a housing development empire. JLS Heartland has developments in 32
states now.

Even since his diagnosis, Dad still manages
to work eight-hour days, doing most of his work from home. “Eight hours is a
short day for me,” he is always quick to remind my mother when she nags him to
rest. And he’s right. Fourteen-hour days were always the norm for him. I barely
have any memories of my father because of it.

My mom smiles at me as I walk into the
kitchen.

“I still don’t get tired of seeing you
walk through my door, Logan,” she says. I know she’s referring to the years I
was away. They were hard for her, and I still feel a pang of guilt for putting
her through that. But she understands why I felt the need to serve.

Which is more than I can say for my dad.

I smile in reply. “I picked up the stuff
you asked for,” I tell her as I set a bag of groceries on the counter. My mom
is chopping some vegetables for tonight’s Sunday dinner. She could easily hire
someone to do the cooking for her, but she politely refuses. She won’t hire a
driver to take Dad to his doctor appointments and, until last year, wouldn’t
even hire someone to clean her house.

She is a proud woman who thinks she can do
everything herself. Which is one of the reasons I came back to Ohio. She needs
help with Dad. And even though I have brothers, I know that as Dad’s dementia
progresses, she’ll need all her sons here.

I share a conspiratorial look with Hannah
as I witness her snatching a cookie from the plate Mom has reserved for
dessert.

Over her shoulder, my mom asks, “So, I
don’t see that dog with you today. Did you not get him yet?”

Again, with the dog. Obviously, sharing
the idea with my family was not the thing to do. “No. I put in an application,
but haven’t heard from the woman who runs the rescue organization yet.”

“Maybe she didn’t get your application. I
never trust all those online forms they have these days. I always think it’s
better to hand things to someone in person.”

Sure
, I think,
unless the lady apparently hates you with a
vengeance
. “She got the application. I saw her in person last week. I just
think she doesn’t want me to have the dog.”

“Why on earth not?”

I sigh. I’m not about to tell my mom that
I had nearly slept with the woman. “For some reason she doesn’t like me.”

My mom drops her knife and eyeballs me.
“Why on earth would she dislike you?”

I crack a smile. My mom is always saying
why
on earth
this and
why on earth
that.

“Maybe she has something against military
guys.” There actually are women that do. I’ve known a couple kids of service
members who had some resentment toward a line of work that took away one of
their parents for most of their lives. I can’t blame them in the least. I even dated
a girl briefly who was terrified she’d fall too hard for me, and then just be
waiting around all the time like her mother did for her Navy dad. Waiting for
me to come home. Waiting to get orders that would send me away again. Waiting
for that dreaded day when a Casualty Assistance Calls Officer might show up at
her door and tell her that I wasn’t coming home again.

There is a lot of waiting in the
military.

But Alexandra didn’t seem to mind that I
had a military background when we talked over dinner that night. I can’t
remember all that I told her, but she definitely got that predictably dazzled
look in her eyes when I told her about my life as a SEAL a while back. Damn,
she had been cute with those dark eyes and gentle curves, and a wholesome
façade hiding the inner witch that I got to see the morning after.

“Are you just giving up, then?” my mom
asks.

I glance over at Hannah before I answer. I
never want that little girl to think that her uncle gave up on anything. “Just
trying to figure out what my next move is.”

“You could just go to the county shelter
and adopt a dog there.”

“Yeah, but this one really needs some
medical help.”

My mom glances my way. “Taking on another
hard luck case, are you?” She smiles, probably remembering all the injured
animals I used to bring home as a kid. “Well, then just do what you always did
when you were a SEAL.” My mother perks up a smile as she reaches for the
refrigerator door.

“What’s that, Mom?”

“Command. Take the lead. Tell that woman
what you want and ‘don’t give up the ship.’” She ends her statement with a
famous Captain James Lawrence quote. I have to love the way Mom is always weaving
some Navy heritage into the conversation. You’d think she had been married to
an Admiral all these years.

She is right
, I realize hours later as Hannah and I
are deep in the woods looking for fairies, armed with flashlights and
magnifying glasses, and covered in some kind of apple-berry scent that she said
would attract them. And yeah, I realize that my brothers in the SEALs would
never let me live it down if they knew I let my niece douse me in perfume.

My mom is right. I don’t need to retreat.
Time to march forward.

I slip away to the front porch just after
dessert with my phone and start typing out a message to the contact email
address I found online, when one of my brothers steps out on the porch.

“It was nice of you to come,” he says.

Ryan is my younger brother by ten months,
which classifies him as my Irish twin, I guess. “I always do,” I tell him.

“Yeah. Keep it up, okay?”

“I will.”

“I know Dad appreciates it.”

I nod slowly, knowing immediately where
this conversation is headed. I’m the eldest son—the one Dad always
imagined handing over his business to one day. Even though I enjoy construction,
I love actually building something with my own two hands. Dad’s business has
gotten so huge that the only place for me in his company is something behind a
desk, wearing a suit, and having godforsaken business lunches with people I
don’t give a shit about.

I know; I interned there in high school before
I got accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy, breaking my father’s heart.

“He’s glad you’re home. We all are. Especially
now.”

I sigh deeply, wanting to ask him
something, but not really ready to hear an honest answer. “How’s he been,
anyway? He always seems fine at dinner.” About a year ago, when I was stationed
in Annapolis, I got a call from Dylan, my youngest brother. He had received a
phone call from Dad asking when Dylan’s plane was going to land and where he
needed to be picked up.

Trouble was, Dylan wasn’t flying on any
planes that day.

My dad is pretty stubborn, and he
insisted that Dylan had told him that he was flying into Ohio that day. We all
shrugged it off. Dylan does travel a lot, and Dad was under a lot of stress at
work.

But then about a month later, he called
me from his car. He didn’t know where he was. Not just like his car had made
the wrong turn and he was in an unfamiliar part of town. He didn’t even know
what state he was in.

I’m not sure why he called me, actually,
but I’m glad he did. Because if I hadn’t heard it for myself, I never would
have believed it.

He hung up the phone with me against my
pleas, and I called the police to try to get some help finding him. They found
him in Pennsylvania two hours later.

The diagnosis was vascular dementia.

That day when I had flown to Ohio to meet
my family in the hospital, I learned that the man I knew as strong and
determined and successful would slowly wither away into someone who didn’t even
recognize me. It would take a while—maybe five or so years depending on
how quickly it was advancing, the doctor said. But it was inevitable.

“He’s doing well,” Ryan tells me, and I
fight back the hope that always churns up inside of me when I hear things like
this. I can’t help thinking sometimes that the doctors have made a mistake. But
then another episode happens, and reality stabs me in the gut.

“He’d really love it if you came to work
for the company, Logan.”

I roll my eyes childishly at the
statement.

“It wouldn’t have to be running the show.
But right now, while he still knows what’s going on around him, don’t you think
it would be a good thing?”

I know what he’s insinuating and I hate
it. I could work for him for a while, until Dad reaches the point when he
doesn’t know who I am anyway. I don’t like thinking about that. “Ask Dylan.”

Ryan cocks his head. “You know he has no
place at JLS Heartland. Never had any interest. Even Dad knows that.”

My youngest brother Dylan had been
blessed with enough talent to eclipse any plans my dad had for him at the
company. He went to college on a full wrestling scholarship, spent every free
moment training, and ended up with a medal at the Olympics. So while I was
deployed to third world countries armed with an HK416 and wondering if I’d come
home in a body bag, Dylan was raking in millions from cereal and shaving endorsements.

I’m happy with my choices in life, don’t
get me wrong. But Dylan’s a pretty hard guy to relate to.

“Besides,” Ryan adds, “he’s busy now. Got
another gym opening up in LA.”

And I’m
not
busy is what he’s
really saying, just renovating a handful of little townhomes. In this family,
that classifies more as a hobby than a job.

“I’d go crazy locked in an office all
day, Ryan. Besides, I’ve only started renovating my townhomes. You’d know that
if you ever stopped by,” I add. Hey, if he’s going to toss a little guilt my
way, I can throw it right back at him.