Flynn caught the speaker’s hand. She tried to drag him ashore, but he was heavy, and had to do most of the work.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” she said, stripping off her parka and throwing it over him. He remembered that parka. He bought it in New York for Christmas. “Come on, come back to the truck. Shit!”
He looked at her for a moment.
“Y-you never swear, Lainey.”
Elaine Bradford Taggart glared at him as if he had said the most ignorant, blockheaded statement on God’s green earth.
“You drive me to it,” she snapped. Elaine hauled on his arm once again, searching wildly with growing dread on her face. “Where is the goddamn truck….”
Elaine’s clean, white teeth had begun to chatter. She used to have a gap between her front teeth, but a few awkward years of braces had removed it completely. Flynn kind of missed the gap. Her blonde hair curled around her pretty, round face, just as it had the last time he had seen her.
She squinted into the storm, then caught the faint glow of headlights in the distance and began to drag him in that direction. He stopped, then, and very few things in existence had the strength to move him. The wind calmed a little.
“Elaine,” he called softly. “I’m fine.”
“You have a fever, you moron,” she said, her fingers wrapped around his bicep. “Oh God, we’ve got to get you to the hospital!”
“Elaine.” He took her hands in his, careful not to crush her fingers within the studded steel vises of his gauntlets.
She froze, still looking at the headlights glowing from the side of the highway. A small bridge crossed a half-frozen canal, its frosted surface churned to slush where he had fallen in.
Slowly, she turned to look at him, and saw something very different than the young man that had taken her to the courthouse three days after graduation day. The change had been sudden, as quick as blinking.
Flynn had always been big, but now he seemed larger than life. Olive green armor encased enormous shoulders and a massive chest, but the armor was designed like something right out of a movie. Dark, ragged fur mantled his shoulders, and every square inch of him was covered in scars that left the imagination reeling. His hair was short, and his eyes were still the color of unsweetened coffee. He looked older, but Elaine couldn’t tell whether the gap was a few years or a few centuries.
“Fly?” she asked, shying away from him. His armored hands upon hers were as immovable as steel manacles.
“Yeah, Lainey. It’s me,” he said, and his voice had eroded from a clean baritone to a worn-down growl. The world had suddenly gone so quiet that she could hear the snowflakes hitting the ground in between her heartbeats.
“What happened to you?” she asked. She could only manage a whisper.
“It ain’t about me,” Flynn told her. The water had formed a layer of ice on his armor, but somehow, the cold didn’t seem to bother him.
Elaine thought for a long while. She began to shiver, and Flynn gently returned her parka to her after he shook away the frost.
He had never been rough with her, but never precisely gentle either, until that moment. With all the softness of a summer sunset, he carefully wrapped her in polyester and goose-down, even going so far as to drop to one knee and fasten the buttons for her.
“Fly?” she asked when he finished. “Where am I?” She expected him to stand, but he sank to both knees, his hands folded in his lap.
“Long gone, Lainey,” he said. “You and my mama and my old man.”
A long moment passed.
“Oh.”
“Is Caleb in the truck?”
“Yeah. He’s got Daisy with him.”
“I’d like to see them, if it’s all the same to you.”
Elaine stood there for another small eternity before she tentatively took a step towards the truck. Flynn let out a sigh that she no longer knew how to read, and got to his feet. He followed her in silence, never taking the lead, but always close behind.
She couldn’t tell how much time had passed since she had run after her errant husband, but it had been long enough for Caleb to fall asleep. The plastic pet carrier in the back seat beside him had been opened, and a little brown rabbit was curled up in the boy’s lap.
Flynn removed his strange, alien gauntlet before he opened the door of the truck. His hands–long ago wrapped around the dusty leather of a baseball–had become blunt, weathered things, as scarred as the rest of him.
Daisy’s ears stood straight up and her tiny head shot up as fast as anything. Her nose, with the flower-shaped pattern of spots that gave her her name, twitched spastically as she scented him.
Flynn held out his fingers to her. She recognized him immediately and nibbled his fingers. He laughed softly and let her nuzzle the palm of his hand. Caleb lurched awake when she jumped to her feet in his lap.
Blonde, like his mother. Her eyes too, wide and as green as new leaves. He was six years old when Flynn had said goodbye for the last time, and Caleb hadn’t aged a day.
Caleb blinked once. Twice. Then, his nose scrunched up and he glanced at his mother over Flynn’s armored shoulder.
“Hey, champ,” Flynn whispered. “Do you remember me?”
He was quiet for a long time, and the scowl deepened as he racked his little blonde head for all the brains it had. He looked at his mother once more, then at Daisy, who was still nipping Flynn’s fingers.
“I don’t think so,” the boy said slowly, lisping on his missing front teeth.
“That’s alright,” Flynn said. “You ain’t gotta.” Elaine couldn’t see his face, but he was holding so still that she could have mistaken him for a bizarre statue. Caleb hugged Daisy close and cocked his head, still thinking.
“You look kinda like my dad, but…”
“But?”
“My dad never cries. He’s a Marine. Marines don’t cry. Did you know that?”
“No. I didn’t…I didn’t know that.”
“Daisy likes you!”
“I like her, too. Where…where did you get her?”
“Outside church! Mama didn’t want her, but my dad said I could keep her. I make sure to feed her every day and I share my Luke Skywalker when we play.”
“That’s…mighty generous of you.”
“Thanks! Um– Mama, can we go? It’s cold outside.” Caleb made a show of shivering, vigorously shaking his head.
“I’ll let…let you go, now. Right quick, do you think you could promise me something?”