One Summer by David Baldacci Read Free Book Online Page B

had been, “Daddy’s boo-boo’s gone.”
    Cory had blurted out, “When are you coming to see me?”
    “I hope soon, big guy. I’ll let you know. I’ve still got a ways to go. But I’m getting there.”
    Mikki’s reaction surprised him, and not in a good way.
    “Is this some kind of trick?” she asked.
    Jack slowly sat up in his chair as he stared at her. “Trick?”
    “When we left you, Dad, you were dying. That’s what hospice is for. You said good-bye to all of us. You made me go live with Gramps and
her
!”
    “Honey, it’s no trick. I’m getting better.”
    She suddenly dissolved into tears. “Well then, will you be coming to take us home? Because I hate it here.”
    “I’m doing my best, sweetie. With a little more time I think—”
    But Mikki hit a key and the computer screen went black.
    Jack slowly sat back. He never heard the squeak of the gurney as the woman across the hall made her final journey from this place.
    Day turned to night, and Jack hadn’t moved. No food, no liquids, no words spoken to anyone who came to see him.
    Finally, at around two a.m., he stirred. He rose from his bed and walked up and down the hall before persuading a nurse to scavenge in the kitchen for some food. He ate and watched his reflection in the window.
    I’m coming, Mikki. Dad’s coming for you.
    A week later he weighed over one-sixty and was walking the halls for an hour at a time. Like an infant, he was relearning how to use his arms and legs. He would flex his fingers and toes, curl and uncurl his arms, bend his legs. The nursing staff watched him carefully, unaccustomed to this sort of thing. Families of other hospice patients observed him curiously. At first Jack was afraid they would be devastated by his progress when their loved ones still lay dying. At least he thought that, until one woman approached him. She was in her sixties and was here every day. Jack knew that her husband had terminalcancer. He’d passed by the man’s door and seen the shriveled body under the sheets. He was waiting to die, like everyone else here.
    Everyone except me.
    She slipped her arm through his and said, “God bless you.”
    He looked at her questioningly.
    “You give us all hope.”
    Jack felt slightly panicked. “I don’t know why this is happening to me,” he said frankly. “But it’s an awfully long shot.”
    “That’s not what I meant. I know my husband is going to die. But you still give us all hope, honey.”
    Jack went back to his room and stared at himself in the mirror. He looked more like himself now. The jawline was firming, the hair fuller. He walked slowly to the window and looked outside at a landscape that was still more in the grips of winter than spring, though that season was not too far off. He’d spent several winters apart from his family while he carried a rifle for his country. Lying in his quarters outside of Baghdad or Kabul he had closed his eyes and visualized Christmas with his family. The laughter of Mikki and Cory as they opened presents on Christmas morning.
    And then there was the memory of Lizzie’s smile as she looked at the small gifts that Jack had bought her before he was deployed for the first time. It had been the summer, so he had gotten her sunblock, a bikini, and a book on grilling. She’d later sent him a photo by e-mail of her wearing the bikini while cooking hot dogs on the Hibachi with mounds of snow behind her. That image had carried him through one hellish battle after another. His wife. Her smile. Wanting so badly to come back to her. That all seemed so long ago, and in some important ways it was.
    He went to his nightstand and pulled out the bundle of letters. Each had a number on the envelope. He selected the envelope with the number one on it and slid the paper out. The letter was dated December eighteenth and represented the first one he’d written to Lizzie. He gazed down at the handwriting that was his but that also wasn’t because the disease had made