A Life Rebuilt Read online

  He’d tried to spare her from the despair that dogged his every step, but in the end he’d broken her heart.

  Even so she’d never given up on him. When he’d finally made his way back to Austin, he’d learned that his grandmother was dead, and that she’d left him the house he’d grown up in.

  As penance and tribute to the love Abuela had given him all his life, he’d begun to restore the house bit by bit, as if somehow that would make up for his neglect of her.

  He didn’t live in it, though. He couldn’t. Instead, he camped out in the garage. He wasn’t sure he’d ever feel right about making himself at home in the place he should have returned to the day he stepped back on U.S. soil.

  The run hadn’t helped this time, he realized as he stood outside the small frame house. Guilt and violence were a nasty mix.

  He was still working on both.

  So, right there on the grass where a boy had once played, Roman removed his shoes and stood motionless, letting his bare feet feel the coolness of the earth and allowing the sensation to calm his uneasy mind. Deep, slow breaths, in and out. This moment. Only this.

  A slight breeze rustled in the leaves of the pecans and the live oaks, a peaceful caress over his skin. When at last his mind was emptied of all but the now, Roman slid into the unhurried movements of the tai chi he’d practiced for years.

  The night surrounded him, settled him. The darkness that was his friend once more carried him away into a place where he could live with himself, where he could forget about all he’d done wrong, where he could simply…be.

  At least until morning.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AS DAWN’S LIGHT first cast its faint glow, Roman returned to the house where the woman had been assaulted. A couple of neighborhood dogs barked, but otherwise the houses were quiet.

  He circled the structure and peered in the windows. When he reached the rear of the house and saw the state of the kitchen, he frowned. Another window was broken back here, and Sheetrock had been destroyed so that the thieves could get at the wiring.

  He carefully picked the glass shards from the window frame, pushed aside the drywall scrap wedged there and climbed in, though getting his six-foot-two frame inside was a struggle.

  He couldn’t stay long, but he couldn’t forget what he’d heard from the woman before he’d slipped away in the darkness.

  I’m trying to do good work here, and I actually do trust the people in this neighborhood.

  Then she’d moved closer to the guy who’d been ready to knife her, for God’s sake. You don’t have to live like this. There are people who will help.

  Naive, dangerously so. And too damn valiant for her own good, just as Abuela had been, so trusting when the world was so full of evil.

  This woman was small, too, only a few inches over five feet, he’d bet, and she looked like a teenager with that ponytail. They’re a bit overprotective, she’d said about her family.

  Hell, they needed to be. If he knew who they were, he’d contact them himself.

  Methodically he picked up shattered fragments of drywall from the floor and placed them in the Dumpster outside. He stood there, hands on hips, and examined where the wiring had been cut, thinking about what it would take to fix it. His efforts to rescue his grandmother’s house from decay had made him pretty good at a lot of areas of construction. He didn’t have his tools with him, however, and regardless, there wasn’t time to rewire before the workers showed up, even if he’d had enough light to see. Besides, some of the wire itself had been damaged by the idiots who’d tried to steal it.

  He grabbed the broom resting in one corner and swept up the debris, using a piece of Sheetrock as a dustpan. Then he heard a car start up nearby and realized the light outside was much brighter now and he was risking discovery by staying.

  Time to go.

  * * *

  JENNA KNEW TEO always arrived by seven to be the first person on-site, so she made sure she was there before him, to ease him into the news from last night. She’d just made it to the front door when she heard him drive up and get out of his truck.

  “What on earth happened?” He nodded toward the broken window in the front.

  She turned. “This was here last night when I came by.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  She looked away. “I handled it.” She could handle much more than anyone gave her credit for.

  “Handled what, exactly?”

  “They were stealing wiring. There were two of them.”

  “How would you know that?” His expression became pained. “Unless they were still here when you arrived. Please don’t tell me you confronted them.”

  “They were just kids.”

  “Kids kill people in this neighborhood. You called the cops, right? They arrested the thieves?”

  “It’s taken care of, Teo.” She opened the door. “The damage was confined to the kitchen, except for the window in front.” She moved ahead of him, eager to change the subject.

  “Wait a minute, missy. You did call the cops, right?”

  “Someone did. And they came.”

  “Why do I hear a but in there somewhere?”

  “There’s a big mess, a lot of Sheetrock torn in here and—” Jenna halted abruptly.

  Teo walked around her. “You cleaned up already?”

  She could only stare and shake her head. “I just got here, right before you did.”

  “So who…?”

  “Surely not,” she murmured. “He left.”

  “Who left?” Teo faced her. “Jenna, give me the facts—all of them. Who did this, and are they in jail? Exactly what went on here last night?”

  “I’m not sure…I need to think about this.”

  “Jenna…”

  Just then the front door opened. “What happened to the window?”

  The voice was Lucia’s, and the fear in it snapped Jenna out of her absorption. “We can talk later, okay?” she said softly to Teo. Without waiting for his response, she moved past him to soothe the woman whose dream had just been vandalized.

  * * *

  ABUELA’S KITCHEN WAS the most difficult for Roman to consider remodeling, mostly because the room was filled with memories. The entire house was badly outdated, but to make major changes seemed a betrayal of the life he’d been given, of the woman who’d sacrificed so much to care for a lost boy. The house might not have been much, but Carmen Gallardo had put her heart and soul into it, every wall, every floor, every window bearing traces of the woman who’d come to this house a young bride and survived being widowed early. Who’d raised a daughter who’d gotten pregnant too young.

  Then, when she’d deserved to relax and take things a little easier, instead she’d started all over, raising Roman from the age of four, after his mother had left them, disappearing one day with a boyfriend who didn’t want children and never coming back. His father—whoever he was—had never been in the picture.

  The two-bedroom house had one bathroom, a living room, the kitchen and a tiny enclosed storeroom, plus a small screened-in back porch where a washing machine had rocked on the uneven wood floor. Carmen had supported both of them with a beauty parlor she’d created in the storeroom with the help of a neighbor who’d installed the deep sink she needed by tying on to the kitchen plumbing. Roman could still remember her pride as she’d given him the first shampooing.

  But Abuela’s heart had been in the kitchen. Many pots of frijoles had simmered in this room, and countless tortillas had been cooked on the cast-iron griddle. Just outside his grandmother had grown a large garden of tomatoes, peppers, squash and onions, plus assorted herbs and two peach trees. She’d raised chickens to provide them with eggs, as well as the occasional bird for the pot. Every summer of his life, they’d sweated through long evenings to
preserve the extra produce that would tide them over the winter.

  They hadn’t had much in a material sense, but every morsel Roman had consumed had been produced with love.

  As he looked once again at the faded linoleum counter, at the ancient stove and outdated refrigerator, Roman knew he had to confront the future, had to decide what to do with the house that had been his only home. So far he’d focused on the basics—shoring up the foundation, replacing windows, tearing off old shingles and making the roof safe from the weather—all things he wished he’d come home and done for his grandmother while she was living, instead of logging endless empty hours in unfamiliar towns and long, lonely roads in a futile effort to outrun his nightmares.

  If he was going to sell the place, he had to transform it, erase the familiar sights and scents of his memories and make the shabby place shine.

  But he didn’t need the money, not yet at least. He’d saved virtually all his pay from the army, and with careful spending, he could last a long time before he had to reenter the world seeking income. If he stayed here, replanted the garden, followed the example of self-sufficiency he’d been taught, he could stave off that day even longer.

  Right now, though, he was stuck, nearing the end of the needed structural improvements but unwilling to make the cosmetic ones that would forever alter the house that had sheltered a small, scared kid.

  In truth, he was stuck in more ways than one.

  As he entered the garage where he was camping out, Roman threw himself down on the cot he used when he pretended to sleep. He stared up at the unfinished wood ceiling and tried to will himself to unconsciousness.

  But as he did, the image of a small, fierce blond warrior kept intruding.

  She really was like his abuela, he realized. He wasn’t the only pitiful creature his grandmother had taken in. Though she’d worked countless hours to support him and many more hours taking care of him, she had also been the first to cook food for the hungry, to take in a woman running from the brutal hands of her man. Her home was small, but there was always room for a sick child whose single mother couldn’t afford day care or an old man with no one to watch over him. She’d insisted on Roman having his own room after he’d been dragged around so many dirty, miserable places by a mother who couldn’t settle. A big wooden blanket box that doubled as an altar was filled with quilts she had pieced and afghans she had knitted. Those had formed many a pallet on the living room floor for the transient in need.

  She’d expected him to pitch in, and he had, sharing his toys with the children, delivering meals to neighbors, helping her in the garden. As an older boy and a teenager, he’d helped out with the children because kids always seemed to flock to him. As he got bigger, he’d also assumed the chores that required heavy lifting, doing whatever he could to shoulder burdens an old woman shouldn’t have to carry.

  Maybe it was inevitable that Roman would reach out so unwisely in Iraq. The plight of the people had moved him. They had suffered under a dictator and they continued to suffer after being freed, buffeted around by the ill winds of warfare and tribal hatred.

  But it was the children whose anguish affected him most. He, too, had been small and alone, with no one to watch over him—until his lost mother had brought him to the old woman who would save him.

  He’d been naive, believing he could do for others what Abuela had done for him, and the Iraqi children had been the battleground. Innocents like Ahmed, whom he’d first met when he’d rescued the boy from being beaten after trying to steal a bag of rice to feed his sister. He would have been better off if Roman had never tried to save his life. In the end, the boy had died because of Roman’s notion of being some kind of hero.

  The small blonde was courageous and compassionate, but she was not wise. She needed to take off her rose-colored glasses and see the world for what it was—a dark and lonely and dangerous place.

  Or the world would eventually teach her that lesson.

  Let it go, he told himself. Sleep. Finally, he drifted off.

  * * *

  SMALL, TORN BODIES carelessly tossed like a child’s rejected toys across blood-soaked sand…

  Ahmed in his arms, his eyes on Roman’s as the little boy’s life drained out of—

  Picking his way through the bodies, stumbling…

  A sound, a click.

  He whirled, weapon ready, already firing—

  No one there. He tripped, righted himself.

  Looked down.

  A body. A woman, so small…

  Her hair, strawberry-blond.

  Heart thundering, Roman bolted from his cot, lashing out, the screams echoing in his ears. His battery-powered lantern tumbled to the ground. Lost in darkness, he fumbled for his weapon—

  Then street sounds filtered in.

  A dog barked.

  Slowly he began to come back, to feel dirt beneath his feet, not sand…

  Realized the shouts were his.

  The adrenaline surge waned, leaving him shaky and sick and so damn tired of being a freak.

  He wrenched open the door and charged into the sunlight, standing still while his heaving breaths slowed. He glanced at the house, searching for what was real.

  His shoulders sagged. He hadn’t had such a bad one in weeks.

  And the strawberry-blond head…where had that come from?

  But he knew. Another innocent who needed protection.

  But not his. Hadn’t he learned that lesson?

  He would get no more sleep now. Roman raked his hands over his head, clasped them behind his neck. If only he could wash away all of this filth, the misery and guilt that tainted him.

  He looked up. The house. The only cure he’d found was concentrating on specific tasks, like pounding nails or focusing on solving electrical problems, or…

  But he couldn’t start on the inside of Abuela’s house. Not yet.

  Then he knew what he was going to do, however much it went against every move he’d made since he’d returned.

  Hadn’t he learned you couldn’t really save anyone?

  But he had to know more, he realized. Had to understand what she was up against, this small, unwise champion.

  Just a short reconnaissance mission, he told himself. He would stay out of sight. He would not get involved.

  * * *

  “WE CAN HANDLE this, Jenna,” Teo said. “Go on to the office.”

  “As you can see, I’m not dressed for that.” She wore jeans and sturdy shoes. “I am perfectly capable of managing my workload, and right now, getting this job back on schedule is at the top of the list.” She put her hands on her hips. “Begging for money can wait for another day, Teo. You could use more hands, and it’s sure not my first experience with manual labor. I didn’t grow up on a ranch for nothing. I’ve even learned a thing or two about remodeling a house, since most of my family is obsessed with doing that. I’ve been slave laborer on more than a few occasions.”

  “You’re too little, girl.”

  Nothing could fire up her temper more. “Go tell Grace MacAllister that small women are weak. Come on, I dare you. My mother will serve you on toast for breakfast.”

  Teo chuckled and shook his head. “Okay. Then, what are you best at?”

  “Whatever I need to be. I don’t have as much familiarity with electrical or plumbing, though I’ve helped my dad do both, but I can swing a hammer and I can paint. I’ve even done some taping and floating.”

  “You could never lug a Sheetrock panel.”

  “No, but once it’s up, I can take it from there. Or I can clean up or sweep or—just put me to work, Teo. I don’t care what I do.”

  He studied her for a long moment. “You need gloves.”

  She whipped a well-worn pair out of her back pocket. “Not my first rodeo, remember.�
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  “We are behind,” he admitted. “But it would be better if you focused on finding more volunteers.”

  “I’ve already put out some feelers, and my intern, April, is doing follow-up for me. I’ve got my phone in my pocket if anyone responds.” She put on her gloves and fisted her hands on her hips. “So?”

  Teo shook his head. “All right. Lucia wants flower beds in front, but first we have to get the area cleaned up so she has decent soil to work in.”

  Her face split in a wide grin. “I’m on it, boss.”

  The older man walked away, chuckling.

  Jenna got to work.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT ON HIS RUN, Roman thought about what he’d witnessed earlier from the invisibility of the rampant vegetation surrounding the site. We are behind, the older man had said. You’re too little.

  Roman would agree, except that his grandmother had been even smaller than this woman…Jenna, she was called. And there was not much his abuela hadn’t been able to tackle.

  Jenna. He hadn’t been sure of the name when she’d answered the cop that night, though he’d caught the name of her street, not far from his own.

  Jenna—it somehow fit with the red-gold ponytail that bounced from the hole in the back of her ball cap, the one that read Recovering Blonde.

  He smiled, a motion his mouth wasn’t accustomed to.

  He’d watched her joke with her coworkers and smile as she cleared the yard, as though sunshine was her normal habitat, and he was aware of a strange sensation he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Then it had struck him.

  A door had been opened into his solitude.

  He didn’t care for it much, but he couldn’t seem to close it. And the sunshine was dispelling the soothing darkness that had become his lifeline. He couldn’t quite get comfortable there now, couldn’t relax and slip into the unconscious ease he’d come to count on.

  It was all her fault. For whatever reason, the small blonde, this Jenna, had trespassed into his solitude as she had his thoughts.