Tarun and Damara exchanged looks and then both nodded. “It is,” Tarun confirmed.
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t think I’ve heard of any agency called the Enforcers before.”
“It’s a private sector,” Damara murmured as she cocked her head. “Six years… So you knew Noah in his Marine days, then?”
Swallowing hard, she glanced down at where her fingers clenched together, forcing them to relax as she looked back up and nodded. “Yeah. He was good friends with my late husband.”
Damara sucked in a breath. “Late husband—was his name Brandon?”
Her eyebrows raised as she looked over. “Yeah, it was. Does Noah talk about him?”
“Only once. He doesn’t like to talk about his time in the Marines, unless he’s talking about something he learned while he was enlisted. He mostly stays quiet about it.”
“I know he joined the Enforcers three years ago, so that must be when he got out of the Marines too, right?” Tarun asked with a thoughtful frown on her face.
Lily nodded. “He was injured pretty badly in the blast that killed my husband, and was medically discharged. Although,” she murmured with a frown, “he seems perfectly fine now. He must have really put some work in to get better.”
Damara glanced at Tarun as she nodded. “He’s worked very hard to get where he’s at today.”
Something about it all didn’t add up in Lily’s mind. She hadn’t thought about it because so much had happened so quickly since she arrived, but she’d expected him to be… well, not looking so perfectly healthy. He’d been in a wheelchair for most of the funeral service, although he’d insisted on standing as the casket was lowered into the ground, and he’d been leaning heavily on his cane.
She knew a lot of healing could happen in three years, but still—it just didn’t seem like it fit. She’d have expected him to at least have some type of limp, if not still use his cane. But he walked powerfully and with ease, not a hint of pain on his face, just like he had before his injuries.
It wasn’t that she begrudged his recovery. She didn’t, not in the slightest. She was happy that he didn?
?t have any long lasting physical effects—especially since she knew the mental effects war, and losing someone traumatically like Noah had, could have.
It was that something about it didn’t add up.
Maybe it was just the result of a lot of physical therapy and a lot of hard work. She didn’t know, but although she wanted to figure it out, she thought maybe it was something she needed to just let go.
Tarun cleared her throat and Lily glanced up at her. “So if you haven’t seen him in so long, what brings you here now?”
“Not grilling her, my ass,” Damara muttered.
She laughed as she shook her head. “No, it’s okay. My showing up out of nowhere must seem odd.” Pausing, she glanced down at her hands, searching for words. “I honestly didn’t know Noah very well. He and Brandon were really close, and he was at our house a lot, but he was always a lot quieter when I was around. I thought for the longest time that he didn’t like me. I actually just learned tonight that that wasn’t the case, but he still hasn’t told me why he was so silent when I was around.
“Anyway, the last time I saw him was at Brandon’s funeral. We barely spoke, and to be honest, it took me months to realize that I hadn’t seen him since then. I was in a bad place after my husband died. Even when I did realize Noah disappeared, I still wasn’t in any shape to wonder about it much. It was all I could do to get by day to day. Actually, not even day to day. It was more like minute to minute.”
Damara reached over and placed her hand on Lily’s arm, her touch comforting. “I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been.”
“It was agony for the longest time,” she replied softly. “But, in the last year or so, I’ve finally begun to get back to myself. It’s just… I don’t know. The more I began to live again, the more I wondered about Noah. About what he was doing, how he was doing—if he had a case of misplaced survivor’s guilt. I’ve been through counseling with other military wives who’ve lost their husbands, and I learned it was a thing some of the men feel when their friends die in combat.
“Noah was there when Brandon died. He watched it happen, and almost died himself. I thought I needed to find him. Talk to him. Make sure he was okay and that he wasn’t blaming himself for living, or something. I think it’s something Brandon would have wanted me to do, and I felt like I needed to do it for that final piece of closure. So I can try to finally put the past where it belongs and really start living again. I tracked him down, packed up a box of things I thought he might like to have, and drove here. And that’s it. That’s why I’m here.”
Silence rang through the room for a moment before Tarun spoke, her voice soft. “Are you sure that’s the only reason you’re here?”
She frowned, glancing between the two women. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, are you only here because you think it’s something Brandon wanted? Or are you here because it’s something you wanted, too? And not just because of closure.”
The attraction she felt for Noah sprang to mind, along with the weird electrical spark she felt when he touched her, but she shut those thoughts down. She wasn’t ready to admit to any of that. She might never be ready.
Besides, all those things happened after she got there. They weren’t the reason she came.
“Like I said, Noah and I weren’t close. We didn’t know each other well. But he was my husband’s best friend, and I came to care for him, too. The way Brandon spoke of him… I could see who Noah was, so clearly. So yeah, I guess I came here for myself, too. Because once I worked through most of my grief, I needed to know he was okay.”
“I hope you know we don’t mean anything by all the questions,” Damara said softly.