Haunted

It’s been seven days.
Seven days, five hours and four minutes since two sergeants knocked at Lacey’s front door. They stood there, faces blank, reciting the script that had been forcefully drilled into their minds years before.
“Miss Jameson, may we come in?”
“Miss Jameson, we are regretful to inform you…”

There it was, in plain writing from their colonel.
MIA.
It was obvious. Direct. A statement, meant to be understood without the need for questions.
But Lacey didn't understand. Lacey had far too many questions.
What happened? Where was he? Who was he with? What are the chances my fiance will come home to me?
“His squad was ambushed not far from base, ma’am.”
“He as stationed in Qatar, ma’am.”
“He was with his squad, two of whom were killed, ma’am.”
“We’ll do everything we can to get your fiance back to you, ma’am.”
Nothing was detailed enough.
Her questions were far from answered.

Now, she sits. She waits. She hopes. She wishes. Everything, absolutely everything in their modest little home smells of him. He has touched every surface, breathed this very air. She could feel him everywhere – as though the ghost of him follows her down the too-narrow hallways every night when sleep fails her.
Everywhere. He is absolutely everywhere.
She lies on his side of the bed, and thinks. She wonders why this would happen to such a good person, to someone who was so selfless, who felt an overwhelming desire to fight for his country, even though he had no will to leave home at all. She wonders why someone as young as twenty-five could be taken, held, tortured, simply for doing what he thought was right. For carrying out a duty he felt was required of him.
She remembers the day he told her. She wishes she could forget.

“Do you really believe that?” His voice sounded wounded, scathed. A little more broken than before.
“Yes,” Lacey was adamant, determined. She couldn’t back down, not after everything they’d been through. No matter how much she wanted to. “Yes, I do.”

It was strange. Terrifying, even, that every moment – every glance, giggle, stumble, every touch, whisper and smile, every lost thought and misplaced word, all of it, had lead them to that very moment. To that horrible decision. That moment, that heavy moment they wished so desperately to abandon. To forget about. To flee from.
“Well, that’s a stupid belief.” Max sounded young, like he was five years old again, deeming Lacey’s idea of riding bikes on the beach as ‘stupid’. “You can’t ride a bike on the beach, Lace!” he’d exclaim. “You’ll get stuck!”

She felt painfully stuck. Stuck between letting go and holding on. Stuck between letting him leave, and demanding him to stay. She felt like a horrible person either way.
“No, it’s not,” She held her ground. Lacey never was one to back down. “No, people die out there, Max. Every day, hundreds of them. Why, why do you want to be one of them?”
“I want to give something back-“
“Then volunteer at the homeless shelter! Go to church! Help Mrs Blake carry her groceries home!” She was livid, furious at him for thinking his so-called duty was more important than them. Their love. Their life. Their everything. “You don’t have to die to give something back!”
“I’m not going to die, Lace-“
“You will. You will, you won’t come home to me.”
“Are you saying I’m weak? That I’m not cut out for it?”
“No,” She shook her head, willing the thoughts to leave her. “No. I’m saying that’d be my luck.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m happy, Max! I’m finally, finally happy. And now you want to leave – go get yourself killed for your country.”
“I’ve been stationed before, Lace-“
“Not for that long, and not on the field. You’re an engineer, Max, not a soldier. You’re not destined to die on that battlefield and I don’t care what you have to say about it.”

Max, for a fraction of a second, felt lost. Should he go? Should he leave his girl like this? Alone? Max Jameson always had an answer for everything. Always knew what to do, how to do it and when. But for that fraction of a second, he couldn’t even answer his own question.
No. In that tiny, unremarkable moment, Max Jameson was irrevocably lost.
She stared at him, and he felt as though he was under surveillance. As though every thought that ticked through his misty mind was being read thoroughly. As though his mind was expected to run smoothly, every plan ever made to be executed to perfection.
But their situation was far from perfect, it was a mess. It was a horrible, horrible mess, and the consternation continued to rise inside him like bile, growing stronger as each second ticked by. He could feel it, taste it.
He longed for a mouthwash strong enough to wash away the aftertaste of the decision he was forced to make.

Lacey knows how much Max loves her. She knows that he intends on coming home to her. She knows that he wrote her every single day, counting down the seconds until he saw her face again. She knows all of this. She doesn’t blame her love, she doesn’t blame him at all. She knows he’s strong, that he was born with fight inside him. She listens to her friends when they say, “If anyone can make it home, Max Jameson can.”
But that doesn’t stop the anger, the fear, the despair. It doesn’t help her sleep at night, it doesn’t banish her nightmares, nor does it allow her the peace of mind to do much of anything. Working has become impossible, eating is a long forgotten task. She can feel herself withering away – her energy fading, her state of mind deteriorating. She begins to wonder – what am I without Max? Am I much of anything at all?

She refuses to imagine her life without him. She knows, she knows all too well, that her life would amount to nothing without hearing him singing in the shower every morning, without fail. No, she won’t think about that. She can’t.
If anyone can make it home, Max Jameson can.

She wanders through the narrow hallways like a lost soul, darkness consuming the entire home. She cannot bring herself to switch on the lights – the lights that will illuminate the photos on the white, intimidating walls, the lights that will illuminate his radiant face and shine upon the oak floor, where faint indentations made by his heavy work-boots lay beneath her soft, bare feet.
Lost. Lost, lost, lost. She is lost without him.

Her light steps grace over the creaky floor board in the downstairs hallway, the same creaky floor board he had been promising to fix for the past two years.
“I’ll get around to it,” He’d say, in his usual light hearted tone. “Eventually.”

She twirls through their living room, re-enacting one of their many nonsensical dances to ‘Heaven’ by Bryan Adams, the song they had chosen for their first dance. She slides her pale hands across the cold grand piano that he is so fond of playing. He is so wonderfully creative with it, too. He’d often play her lullabies as she drifted in and out of hazy dreams on their second-hand sofa.
She danced around their home until the early hours of Thursday morning, hunting, searching for his presence on every surface, in every note of the out-of-tune piano. She wonders, sometimes, if she learned to play one of his many lullabies, would she find him there? Could she stumble upon him somewhere between the notes, lazily singing along to the familiar symphony?
She falls into an uncomfortable sleep on Max’s side of their bed, hoping to find him somewhere in her dreams. She calls out, screams for him, but he is nowhere. He is not between the crevices of her memories, nor is he entwined in melodies crawling through her skin. She has lost him once again.

She wakes suddenly to the sound of knocking. The familiar three perfectly timed knocks, followed by a heavy silence. Each step down their creaking stairs is heavier than the last, every breath is forced.
White hats. She can see their white hats through the frosted panes of their blue front door – the blue front door Max had promised to paint red before they moved in.
“Remind me to get paint, and I’ll do it, I swear!”
She didn’t need to ask why they were there. She didn’t need to open her mouth. She didn’t even need to read the letter they placed so carefully into her shaking hands, nor did she need to listen to their speech. She knew. She knew from the moment she failed to find him in her dreams, she knew from the moment he could no longer find him in their hallways, or brushing his callused fingers across those familiar five notes.
“His remains will be flown back to Delaware tomorrow, ma’am. We’re so sorry for your loss, ma’am.”