He drove there, carefully, paying close attention to every stop sign, every speed limit. If he concentrated on the road, he could just about push everything else to the back of his mind. He hadn't changed into his dress uniform, as he was supposed to. He still remembered the day his father had died, and how the minute his mother had seen the General walking up her path in full dress uniform, she'd known her husband was dead, and she'd screamed, just once, before going down to open the door. He didn't want Pete to guess, so he'd changed into civilian clothes, to make it seem like a social call.
Except, of course, Sam's death was written all over his face and imprinted on his soul.
Pete was in the front garden, tugging at some weeds. It was autumn, and the garden was beginning to die, although the sun was bright. He grinned, and waved when he saw Jack, and continued to pull at the weeds. Jack walked up the path to him, sunglasses on.
"Hey, what are you doing here...it's Sam." Pete said suddenly, his smile fading.
"We'd better go inside." Jack told him. They went indoors, Pete first, Jack following, trying to frame the words. He knew Pete would be broken, would hurt, and cry, and scream, and he wanted to spare him as much as pain as possible. But still, there was a tiny part inside of him that hated this man for taking Sam away, for robbing Jack of the last few months of her life.
"I know that face." Pete said, turning to face him as soon as they got indoors. "I've done the bad news run myself. How bad is she?". His voice was calm, but his hand was gripping the edge of a table so hard his knuckles were white. Jack took his glasses off.
"I'm sorry." He said, and the words sounded so trite for an emotion that was swamping him. "It's the worst possible news."
"She's dead?" Pete said, his face crumpling. His knees buckled, and he sat down heavily on the chair behind him. "How?"
"I can't tell you. It's classified." Jack said, wincing at the harshness of the words. "But I can tell you she died saving lives. In fact her whole career was about saving lives. She did more for this world, and other worlds than anyone can ever know, and I was proud to serve with her." The General said.
"Sam." Pete said, and the teas were beginning to flow down his face. "We argued, this morning, we didn't make up before she left, she thought...I didn't tell her I love her. It was the first morning since we moved in together that I didn't tell her I love her."
'I never told her' Jack thought, savagely, but only said, "She knew. She wore your ring...not on her finger, that was against regulations, but on a chain, round her neck. I bought it back for you." He put the ring, still on it's chain, on the table in front of Pete. He picked it up, slowly.
"Was it painful? Her death?"
"No, it was fast, and painless." Jack told him, but he was thinking 'But for ten minutes she fought and struggled to survive, and I stood outside the door and begged her to come out, and I would have told her I loved her if it would have made her come out, and she must have known, at that very last moment, that she'd failed, and she was going to die, and my God, those last seconds cam be an eternity, when you realise you have no time left.'
"That's what we always say, isn't it?" Pete said, "When we tell them, the widows and orphans. It was fast and painless. But there would have been a moment, wouldn't there, when she knew?"
Jack said nothing, but swallowed convulsively.
"Thanks, for coming here, and telling me. I know that can't have been easy." Pete said, standing up. "Especially not for you." He told Jack, then he turned away. "I have to call Mark."
Jack left a moment later. He got into his truck and drove to a park he knew, where he used to daydream that if he ever proposed, this would be the place. The watery autumn sunshine was beginning to fade now, but he found the park, and his spot by the lake. The last of the sunlight reflected off the water, onto the red and brown trees, and the dying grass. Jack got out of his truck, and sat down, the fallen laves rustling beneath him. He stared out at the lake a moment. Then a crushing sob ripped through his body. Another and another, sobbing, tearing the sorrow out of himself, grasping his hair as if the physical pain could get rid of the emotional pain, keening into the wind, her name, over and over 'Sam, Sam,', crying, screaming, for hours, at the lake where he would have taken her one day, and asked her to marry him.