“You don’t owe me anything, Ari. I’m the one who owes you for making my son so happy since you came here. Besides, I’ve gotten used to five-star accommodations.” He gave her a small smile that made her heart beat even faster. “So you’ll just have to live with it.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.” He’d done so much for her in such a short space of time. It was almost over the top.
“Stay.” His eyes held hers. “Just promise you’ll stay with us, Ari.” He cleared his throat. “Noah has gotten very attached to you. I can’t think how heartbroken he’d be if you left now.”
She didn’t want to be careful. She wanted to be fearless. But for now, she simply nodded and made herself smile. “Of course I’ll stay for as long as Noah needs me.”
And then one day, maybe, Matt would finally realize he needed her too.
Chapter Seventeen
Zach Smith’s house was in a middle-class neighborhood with white picket fences and a bus shelter on the corner that was decorated with a yellow school bus. The lawn was immaculately cut, its hedge trimmed, and the front walk was strewn with toys—a pint-size baseball mitt, a Big Wheel tricycle, a bat. From the backyard, Ari heard shrieks of laughter.
Evidently, he worked nights and his wife worked days so that someone was always with the kids. Matt had made the appointment with him and, thankfully, Zach had seemed more than willing to talk.
As soon as Ari and Matt stepped up to the front door, a stocky, heavily muscled guy with a military haircut opened it. “Glad you’re here. I’ve got the coffee on.”
The interior of the house was as neat and tidy as the outside. Except for the toys. Ari stuck out her hand. “Thanks so much for talking with us.”
Zach shook hands with them both. “Gideon and me, we were like this.” He twined his fingers. “He told me all about you, Ariana.”
Ari could barely stop tears from springing to her eyes. Zach couldn’t know how much his words meant to her. And Matt couldn’t know how grateful she was that he’d found Zach and had come with her today.
She’d held on to the belief that her brother hadn’t forgotten her. That faith kept her going through the darkest hours. Finding him would be like the light finally showing at the end of a long tunnel she’d been traveling through for so long.
“Come on in and sit, you two.” Though not tall, Zach was a big man, about her brother’s age, with expansive gestures. He waved them over to the couch, where he’d set out coffee, mugs, creamer, and sugar on the coffee table. The backyard view out the sliding glass door was of the kids, two boys and a girl, all under the age of ten.“They just got out of school.” Zach wore an adoring-dad look, with a broad smile and laughing eyes. Whatever he’d gone through during his tours of duty, Ari was glad to see he hadn’t brought it home with him.
“Man, your brother was a kick,” he told her. “Huge prankster. You wanted to forget about it all for a while, you hung out with Jones.” Smiling with the memory, he shoved mugs at them while he sat in the side chair that gave him a sight line to the backyard. “But he had another side to him he didn’t show most guys. And it really broke him up when he couldn’t find you or your ma. He wrote letters and sent emails, but it’s hard when you’re over there, ya know.”
“My mom and I had to leave the apartment we were in.” Ari didn’t say they’d been kicked out, didn’t mention that drugs had torn them all apart. She felt the subtle shift of Matt’s body beside her, as if he were moving closer, wanting her to know she had his support.
“He figured that. And later he got a letter saying she’d passed.” He shook his head. “It was six months after, and he started writing letters like crazy, even more than he’d written before.” Zach shook his head. “But no one could tell him who to contact about what happened to you.”
Gideon had looked for her. She knew he wouldn’t give up—just like she would never give up her search for him.
“Thank you for telling me that. It really means a lot to know he tried so hard to find us.” Matt’s hand covered hers, and he squeezed it in solidarity as she said, “To find me.”
“Do you have any idea where he is now?” Matt asked.
“We lost touch. It happens like that when you get stateside.” Zach rubbed both hands along his thighs, his gaze down as if he were seeing things he’d long ago put out of his mind. Then he breathed deeply, let it go with a sigh, and his smile returned. “I was Smith. He was Jones. They called us Alias Smith and Jones, like that old Western TV show. You couldn’t have one without the other. It’s like they say in the movies, band of brothers and all that. Because all you’ve got is each other.”
“I know what that’s like,” she confided. “I have a really close bond with my friends from foster care.”
“I can see the similarity,” he said with a nod. “We thought it’d be a cakewalk, ya know. Do your time, collect your paycheck.” He snorted at his own naiveté. “But then there was 9/11 and everything changed. Me and Gideon were attached to the same squad. We got bumped up to team leaders. We didn’t think about getting out, because we were doing important stuff over there.” He puffed out a breath. “We re-upped,” he said, then clarified with, “Reenlisted,” though Ari already knew what he meant. He gazed at her with a deep sadness in his eyes. “Kiddo, if he’d known about your ma, he woulda come home, but he got that letter a few months too late.”
Kiddo. That’s what Gideon had always called her. Hearing Zach say it brought tears welling up again.
“I know he would have come home for me. I’m just not sure he would have found me.” After all, she’d been searching for three years and gotten nowhere. “The only thing I know is that he got out about nine years ago.”
Zach nodded. “We both did. It was a fu—” He cut himself off. “Sorry, kiddo.” He gave her a sheepish grin. “My wife gets on my case about the language ’cause of the kids. Anyway, it was a mess over there.”
“And there was something about Gideon losing some guys?” After nine years of a total black hole of information about her brother, she had to know everything.