The Last Hour by Charles Sheehan-Miles Read Free Book Online Page A

once. Most of the time, we didn’t talk about the future. Most of the time, our only goal was to get through the present. But we did talk about kids, just once.  
    It was during a phone conversation. Carrie had returned to Texas, and I was in New York, helping out Dylan and trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life now that I was out of the Army. That night, I had been sitting on the roof of Dylan’s apartment building, looking out over the rooftops and at Morningside Park. It was unseasonably warm, just a couple of days before Thanksgiving last fall, and we were having one of our many long, long phone conversations.  
    “What are you doing?” she had asked.
    “Thinking about you,” I said.  
    “Stop that,” she replied. I could almost hear her blush.
    “Stop what? I’ve also been working on applications. And babysitting Dylan.”
    “Applications? Where are you thinking about?”
    I sighed. Awkward question, because I’d given a lot of thought to a few places. “American University. Georgetown. Columbia … Berkeley ... Rice.”
    “Oh yeah? Why Rice?”
    “Lot warmer in Texas than Long Island.”
    She laughed. “How do you rate your chances?”
    “Good. I know I seem like a knucklehead, but I’ve got a 3.9 GPA and a full ride from the GI Bill, or close enough.”
    She chuckled. “You know I teach undergraduates. Dating you ... if that’s what we’re doing ... it feels like robbing the cradle.”
    “Lady, you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. I’m a lot of things, but ... I don’t feel young. Not anymore.”
    She was silent. I’d stepped in it a bit. I usually didn’t even make oblique references to the Army or Afghanistan. I didn’t like to talk about it, and she knew it.  
    “Sorry,” I said.
    “You don’t need to apologize,” she replied. “I’m happy to talk about it any time. It’s you who won’t.”
    “There’s a lot of good reasons for that,” I said.
    “Alexandra said…”  
    Her voice trailed off, and I waited. Finally, after what seemed like an interminably long wait, I said, “Alex said ... what?”
    “She said Dylan has talked about Afghanistan quite a bit.”
    I didn’t answer right away. I just looked out at the park. The sun was going down, and headlights bracketed both sides of Morningside Park. So why could Dylan talk about it and I couldn’t? Why could a 60-watt bulb light up a room, yet be swallowed in the darkness of the park below me? Why not ask the ocean why it had current? Or the sky, why there was wind? It was just too big. Too big to get my mind around, too big to think about even. Not to mention that any day now, a JAG lawyer was going to open an envelope, and find a letter and thumb drive inside. And when that happened, my whole future would come into question, my whole life.  
    Or maybe not. Maybe the lawyer would look at the contents, and decide it was better left alone. A simple format command, and everything on the thumb drive would be erased.  
    Maybe I shouldn’t have turned it in.
    Maybe I should have gone in person.
    No. I couldn’t stay there. I couldn’t stay in the Army. At least now, when it all came out, it would be on my terms.  
    Finally, I said, “I think is Dylan is starting to see a future.”
    Abruptly, she changed to a quick, almost clipped tone. “Maybe that’s it. I’ve gotta go, talk to you later.”
    I sat up straight, as it started to sink in that I’d said something seriously wrong.  
    “Wait,” I said, but it was too late. She’d hung up already.
    I get it. I’m not the brightest bulb in the room, but even I know when I’ve said something stupid. I had this awful feeling in my gut. Because if she was feeling about me the way I was about her ... then I’d have been hurt if she said something like that. So I called her back.
    It rang three times, and I thought for sure she was going to send me to voicemail before she finally picked up. By the time I heard her voice, I was sitting up