The Edge

Chapter 64

He drove her back to Jocelyn Point. They went out to the art studio where Alex had told him she needed to work on a painting for a client that was due to be shipped out soon. He watched her work away as the night fell more deeply around them. Her movements were fluid, her concentration complete. Devine had seen that level of intensity before.

Me, in combat.

“What’s that look for?”

He came out of his musings to find her staring at him as she cleaned off a brush.

“Admiration for your obvious skills,” he said.

“You’re such a sweet talker,” she cracked.

“It’s sincere, Alex.”

She put down the brush and wiped off her hands. “I know, Travis. My bullshit meter is pretty sophisticated and it hasn’t made a peep while you’re around.”

“But, like all women, you have so much more practice at it than men.”

“You really are far more evolved than many of your brethren,” she said, smiling.

“I try to see people for who they really are.”

She drew a step closer. “And who am I, really?”

He could tell, despite the flippant and flirty content and tone of their conversation, Alex was now quite serious. “I see a young woman maybe at a crossroads.”

Her features tensed. “Go on.”

“There’s a military term for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, though it’s now used throughout popular culture: No Man’s Land. But if you dig deeper, it gets more complicated.”

“How so?” she said quickly.

“Typically, to get to No Man’s Land, you had to take action. You had to move from where you were. So now you’re in a bad place, a place where you don’t think you should be and maybe your own survival is at stake.”

Here Devine paused and contemplated stopping. He wasn’t sure why he had chosen to bring up this topic, and now that he was here, he, ironically, felt like he was in No Man’s Land. Yet the look on Alex’s face told him there was only one path to take with this conversation.

“So, you have three choices: stay where you are, go back, or go forward.”

“And how do you know which is the right one?” she said, a tremble in her voice.

“I wish I could tell you that there’s a foolproof way to figure that out, but there’s not. Sometimes it’s trial and error.”

She slumped and looked beaten.

“But sometimes there is a sign to tell you which way to go.”

“What?” she said eagerly.

He leaned against a table and said, “When I was pulling a tour of combat duty in Iraq I would rotate through this same large village, looking for enemy combatants, informants, people who just needed help or wanted to escape certain situations. I’d go there regularly and felt like I’d gotten to know some of the villagers pretty well. Established a rapport, to the extent you can during a war. One of my jobs was to memorize every detail I could during each visit so that on future trips I could see if anything looked off. It was critical because my life and my colleagues’ lives depended on it.”

“I can understand that,” she said in a tone that was equal parts hollow and anticipatory.

“It was sort of what you helped me do at Bertie’s art studio. I never would have seen that pulley without your help, but you had been there many times before and noticed it right off. Anyway, one morning we reached the village. I did my scope of the village as we were walking through it, looking for anything that looked out of the ordinary.”

“Did you see anything?”

“No, I didn’t. But PFC Laura Diaz did.”

“What did she see?”

“A female villager came out of one of the huts. She seemed fine. Calm, ordinary. She walked toward us. We had seen her before, many times. But as she grew closer, Diaz called out, ‘Bomb.’ We instinctively all scattered and took cover. A second later the bomb that was secreted on the woman detonated. If Diaz hadn’t warned us, we’d all be dead.”

“What did she see that made her believe the woman had a bomb?”

“I asked her that very thing. Diaz told me her mother worked at a hair salon back in a small town in Texas. As a child Diaz would often go to work with her mother. Her mom did hair, makeup, nails, the whole shebang. Her mother told Diaz that women wanted to look their best in important moments. Weddings, parties, funerals. At critical times, they wanted to get their hair, makeup, and nails done. So Diaz noticed that the villager was not wearing her dusty burqa or usual hijab. She had on a beautiful robe with intricate embroidery. Her hair had been immaculately braided and done up in a fancy style. And her nails had been filed, shaped, and painted when they never had before. The woman was sacrificing her life for her cause and she wanted to look her best. That observation by Diaz saved my life and those of a lot of others because I never would have seen it.

“Now, you’re probably wondering what the hell that has to do with your situation, but here it is, for what it’s worth. I’ve sort of been Laura Diaz up here, observing you and others. Seeing things that maybe people in Putnam are too close to everything to see clearly. Your mother and others think you can be world-famous or rich or both, somewhere else. And you probably could. But I don’t think those things are important to you.”

“So you’re saying I should stay here, in Putnam?”

“No, I’m not. I’m actually saying that you have gifts that you need to share with the world. Something terrible happened to you here, Alex. Most people would want to get as far away from that as they could. Now, you didn’t. But I think you didn’t because you were too traumatized to embrace any part of the world. You became fearful of going out, of being around other people.” He looked out the window in the direction of the main house. “You go out but then you run back here, where you feel reasonably safe. But the thing is, your fear is no longer out there.” He tapped his head. “It’s in here. So you can’t outrun it. You can’t really hide from it, not even here.”

“Then what do I do?” she said pleadingly. “How do I get out of No Man’s Land?”

“You master it. You take back control of your life. You dictate the terms of how you will live and where you will live, not anyone else. And certainly not the person who hurt you.”

“But what if he’s still out there?”

“I’m sure he is still out there,” Devine said. “It’s my job to stop him. And I’m really good at my job, Alex.”

He put his arms around her and held her tightly.

“Do you really think I can... master this?”

“I would not have suggested it if I didn’t believe you could. You’re a lot stronger than you think you are.”

“I’m not as strong as Jenny was,” she replied.

He moved her to arm’s length so he could stare into her eyes. “You don’t need to compare yourself to Jenny, not ever again. She loved you. She came up here to help you, to end this misery you were trapped in. And it cost your sister her life. The best way to honor that sacrifice is to cast off the devil that’s in you right now and move on with your life. It’s what Jenny would have wanted. And it’s what you should want, which is what really matters.”

Alex, who had begun quietly sobbing, stopped, and her expression firmed. She looked up at him. “I do want that. And I want something else, Travis.”

She kissed him.

And Devine, hesitant at first, kissed her back.

The two were so focused on one another that they never saw the person who had been watching them move slowly away from the window.