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“Don’t be hard on yourself. When I talked to Luke earlier, he pinpointed more of the problem, as well as a resolution for it. As soon as we got off the Black Hawk at the airport, he hitched a ride over to the warehouse to talk with the foreman. He’s creating a system where every worker hired by the foreman is not only known, first name and last, but will also have to pass a security background check run on them. And if they can’t find out more, then they don’t hire the man. Those that make it through will also have to wear proper insignia showing their clearance level at all times. We don’t need any more terrorist ringers slipping through and causing us issues.”
“That’ll go a long way,” Willow said, nodding. Her stomach growled and Shep turned, grinning at her. “Guess I’m hungry.”
“Are you?”
She gave him a classic Willow-brand one-eyebrow-raised look. “Now, that’s a loaded question and you know it, Porter.”
Chuckling, he said, “I was just teasing you. I mean food, like on the table. I can throw us something together and we can eat.”
She smiled up at him. “You’re always a pot-stirrer, Porter.”
He released her and stood up. “Guilty as charged. You want to stay in that robe, or you want some real clothes?”
“Real clothes,” she said, pointing to the closet. “Can you grab me a pair of khaki cargo pants and a pullover tee? You choose the colors. I’m fine with not hobbling around on these achy knees of mine more than I have to.”
Opening the closet, he said, “The doctor said twenty-one days before you can fly again.”
Wrinkling her nose, she nodded. “I’ll go out of my mind with nothing to do around here.”
“Well,” he said, choosing a pink tee and light gray cargo pants out of the closet, “I have a nice little apartment, air conditioned, in Bahir Dar. Would you be interested in coming up there and staying with me for that time frame? The apartment is in a safe, walled area with a very nice courtyard, a pond, lots of trees and flowers, along with a nice, flat path. I think a little exercise daily on those knees might be good. What do you think?”
“I like that idea,” she said, taking the clothes from him, and with Shep’s patient help, she eventually got dressed. She had some funky-patterned tennis shoes, which were flat and easy to walk in, and he eased them onto her feet and tied the laces for her. Reaching out, she whispered, “Thanks… it’s sort of nice to be taken care of.”
He lifted his chin, giving her a warm look. “I kinda like it, too, Willow.” He rose, holding out his hand to her. “Let’s see how your knees react?”
She nodded and hesitantly stood, feeling the stretch of the surgical tape across several deep cuts that had to be stitched closed. “How about I put my arm around your waist, and you put your arm around my shoulder?”
“Anything you want, Angel.”
Her heart swelled with such love for him. “I’ve never seen this side of you, Shep, the mother-in-disguise, nurturing me. Making me feel safe.”
He walked her slowly out of the bedroom and down the hall. “Funny,” he murmured, “I was thinking the same thing. Maybe we’re changing for the better?”
“I think so. I like it. A lot.”
“I do, too, Willow.”
As they approached the table, he pulled out a chair for her. “You sit, and I’ll continue to nurture you,” he teased.
Laughing a little, she sat down slowly, some pain drifting up her thighs. The doctor had given her some Ibuprofen for the pain, and she thought she might take some. Shep scooted the chair closer to the table for her. “Seriously? Would you like to spend the next three weeks with me up at the job site? You won’t be as bored.”
“I’d like that. Maybe this is the good thing that comes out of something like this. I’ve never really seen you working. Never even saw what you did as a Seabee at our base in Afghanistan. I was always flying missions.”
Going to the refrigerator, he pulled out cold fried chicken, some dinner rolls and coleslaw. Placing it all on the counter, he said, “You might find it interesting. You’re mechanically minded and that’s what civil engineering is all about: mechanics.”
“Well,” she said, “since I can’t fly for a while, I think I’ll like staying at your home away from home.”
***
As it turned out, Willow had to wait nearly four weeks for her knees to heal up to the point where she could bend them without pain or stiffness. The first week with Shep had been one of quiet frustration for her because she couldn’t just walk anywhere anytime she wanted. But that was a minor nuisance compared to the upside: he’d go off to work and she’d have the lovely little apartment with its wonderful, life-giving air conditioning all to herself. Every morning, she would carefully walk the little path as advertised, not wanting to open up one of those deep, but slowly healing, cuts in her knees. And after he left at dawn to begin his day’s work, she would sit outside on a chair in the coolness of the morning and enjoy the beauty of the surrounding flower beds. Best of all, the birds sang at dawn, and that always lifted her spirits.
Dev kept herself busy on her laptop, helping to coordinate the new pilots and the two Otter airplanes that were taking over the workhorse routine of the many daily flights. But with two planes, they were each only flying four or five times a day, and for Dev, that was a relief. Willow would give anything to be in the cockpit again but decided to stop grumping about it and try to be patient. Her day always got better when Shep got home, sometimes well past dinnertime. His days were long, involved and demanding. She began to see how exhausted he was then. She had never realized his job was him sitting at the top of a pyramid of endless decisions that only he, and nobody else, could make. Everything always stopped at his door. He carried the weight of the entire project on his broad shoulders.
Without fail, he would bring dinner home for the two of them every night. And he always brought her desserts that she loved, small tokens, she felt, of his love for her. She was spoiled with such attention. Every night, he would ask how her day went. And only after they’d discussed the ups and downs of her healing, would he tell her about his own. There were enormous decisions to be made, millions of dollars in the mix, and she found herself in awe of how he juggled such responsibility. Toward the end of her healing period, he took her out one evening to a restaurant and then to a small hill overlooking the construction site. There were bright lights surrounding the entire area. For the first time, she saw the layers of reinforced barricades she had flown in the materials to build. Security guards were on duty twenty-four hours a day. The people of this small town must have heaved many a sigh of relief that their children were to be safe going to school, instead of the fear of the little ones being stolen away by sex-traders.
By the thirtieth day, her knees were well on their way to being back to normal. Willow had been industrious that day, cleaning, sweeping, dusting, and thinking that usually she would hate such things. But the fact that her knees were almost healed, and she could bend, flex and crouch, made her grateful. No longer was housework a drudge. After the enforced jail time of being hardly able to do anything, it was a joy just to move her body again like she used to.
There was a rhythm to Shep’s return from work, and this evening followed it: He arrived at sunset and kissed her hello, asked how she was doing, and then went to get a cool shower and some clean clothes. In the meantime, she set the table and put some of the wildflowers from the path she walked daily into a small blue pottery vase. She’d been able to bend all the way down and cut their stems with a pair of scissors she’d brought along for that purpose. They were a bright spot of color on the small, handmade wooden table and she smiled, knowing Shep would appreciate them.
