He shook off the sensory image and took the plate of buttered toast from Ben, put it in the middle of the table, then went to get utensils. He smiled reassuringly at his brother and Sarah as he passed them. He took the opportunity to keep thinking.
Why in God’s name had he seen his mother’s face in his dream? Images of his little sisters had haunted him for years, ever since they’d all been separated when their mother had gone to jail for manslaughter after murdering her boyfriend. He’d had nightmares since then of himself running away through a dark, blurry night, the girls screaming and footsteps right behind him, gaining on him. But he’d always been very much alone. What was his mother doing in his dreams? And in Iraq? He scowled fiercely.
“Jack?”
He looked up at the sound of his name and saw Sarah holding up an egg. “You okay?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Good. Two or three eggs in your omelet?”
He smiled. “Two, please.”
Ben put the jam down in front of him. “You’re starting to scare me, bro. You sure you’re okay?”
Jack kept smiling. “Thanks, I’m good. You know how real dreams can be. I’m just having trouble putting it out of my head.”
“Afghanistan?”
“No, Iraq. For whatever reason, it was the Humvee explosion in the middle of my first tour that keeps coming back to me.”
“You can talk about any of that, you know. I’d be glad to listen. I know I wasn’t there, but I kind of understand war.”
“Thanks.” Jack knew cops saw ugly things all the time. But terrible memories of war entangled with ugly childhood memories made for an awful hybrid.
It would be hard to explain to Ben what was going on in his head. He and Ben had been friends as children, then brothers when the Department of Human Services had allowed Ben’s parents, Gary and Helen Palmer, to adopt Jack. At the same time, his younger half sisters had been sent to live with their respective fathers.
“I’m going to be fine,” Jack insisted. “I just have to get my head together.”
Ben looked him in the eye, clearly trying to read what Jack wasn’t saying. “You know it’s more than that. No one can survive such things without venting it to somebody.”
He’d been doing that to his shrink at the fort, and although being home again was gradually pulling him away from the past six years, the sharply revived memories of his childhood and the big-time return of his dreams were driving him toward the only solution he could think of to get his life on track again.
“Actually,” he said, “I have an idea about how to help myself.”
Ben put down his fork. “What’s that?”
Jack met his waiting gaze and said, as though it was going to be easy, “I’m going to find my sisters.”
BEN SHOOK HIS head and stabbed his fork into a bite of sausage. “Jack, it’s been too long. You have no idea where they are, and they have different names.”
“Yeah. But technology puts the world at my fingertips. I’m going to find them.”
Sarah saw the zealous light in Jack’s eyes and the defining caution in Ben’s. They were two very different men with one very strong connection. They weren’t brothers by birth but by the courage that brought them together as boys and now defined them as men—the soldier and the cop.
“I hate to see you get hurt, Jack. And you’re kind of...vulnerable right now, don’t you think? You’ve had about all the pain you can deal with.”
Jack shrugged as though he had no control over his need to reconnect with his sisters. “I have to do this.”
“Why can’t it wait until you’re...adjusted?”
“Because ‘it’ has waited so long already. And this is as adjusted as I’m going to get until I find them. I promised our mother that I’d work on the carriage house out back. That’ll help me regain my carpentry skills, hopefully, so I can get Palmer Restorations going again, and in my spare time, I’m going to start looking for Corie. Or Cassie. Whoever I get a lead on first.”
Sarah knew that Helen Palmer had long dreamed of fixing up the old carriage house, now used as a storage shed, to rent it out to writers. For the past ten years Helen had been a freelance editor for a Portland publishing house. Over the years she’d hosted several writers in this home while they’d discussed revisions. She’d often talked about how good it would be for a writer to spend time in a comfortable spot in this country setting with more privacy than the guest bedroom could provide.
“What are you going to do with all the stuff in there now?” Ben asked.
“Rent a Dumpster, throw away the junk, save the good stuff and store it in your room.” Jack spoke with a straight face and spread jam on his toast while Ben looked heavenward.
Since Ben had moved back into his old room, he’d been less than tidy. It had become a family joke.
“I mean, really,” Jack went on with a grin at Sarah. “You could hide an elephant in there. You’ll barely notice lumber and storage boxes.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“I’ll clear a corner of the basement,” Jack said seriously. “You can look over the iffy stuff with me. We’ll save a pile for Mom to check out before I throw it away.”
“Yeah, well, much as I’d love to do that, I’ll be busy busting perps and saving lives. I’m afraid you’re on your own.”
“Does it really come to that in Beggar’s Bay? I mean, isn’t it more directing parking at the fairgrounds and taking runaway dogs to the animal shelter?”
“Just the other day,” Sarah said gravely, “Ben jumped into the bay to catch a drunk driver evading arrest, remember?”
Jack wrinkled his nose. “Hard to forget. He smelled like a salmon for two days.”
“But, still. Heroic.”
Ben made a sound of distress and turned to Sarah, pretending hurt feelings at her dubious defense. “Hey. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, remember?”
“That’s for married people, Ben.” She gave him a wide-eyed look of innocence, phony but very sweet. It gave Jack a mild case of arrhythmia for a minute. “People just dating get to harass and annoy.”
Ben stopped her, laughing, and leaned toward her for a kiss. Jack had seen enough. As if his life, his recovery from the ugliness of war and his bizarre nightmares weren’t complicated enough already, he had to be attracted to Sarah Reed, his brother’s girlfriend.
He pushed away from the table. He could deal with it. Attraction, after all, was such a small thing as far as love was concerned, and attraction was all he was going to allow himself to feel. He hoped.
Fortunately, neither Sarah nor Ben had noticed.
The table was littered with empty plates. “All right,” Jack said, standing and pointing to Ben. “You go save lives.” He smiled at Sarah. “And you get to work before Vinny and your other clients expire without you. I’ll clean up.”
There was no false reluctance to leave him with the task. They were both gone in an instant. He cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher, then grabbed a jacket