Lima was quiet when they pulled in around 10PM. Carole had been ecstatic on the phone and said she and Burt would be awake, and that both of them could stay there (if they wished). Rachel spoke to her dads, and said she'd come by in the morning and let Finn, his mom, and Burt spend some time alone with him. Hiram and LeRoy said that was a plan, and told her to say welcome back to Finn for them.
They pulled up to the house. The porch light was on. Finn turned off the ignition and sat in the car for a moment. The windows were down, and he listened to the once-familiar sounds of his childhood home. Most notable was the constant highway noise from I-75, which, even at a low level, was very different from the almost pure silences he had been used to for the past few years. He felt Rachel's hand on his arm, felt her warm encouragement and support. She said nothing, but let him get his bearings. He took a deep breath.
"Okay," he said finally, "I'm ready."
They grabbed their overnight bags, and, hand-in-hand, walked up to the door. It opened without them having to ring the doorbell. Carole stood, unable to speak; her right hand flew to her mouth. He dropped his bag.
"Hi Mom," Finn said. He bent down and enveloped his mother in his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and held on, silently sobbing into his shoulder.
For years it had just been the two of them, bearing the loneliness and the financial hardships together. Carole always worried, in the back of her mind, about Finn growing up without a father figure, and this just added to the stress and the guilt. She had to balance her job with keeping careful watch over his friends, but without micromanaging and causing him to rebel. It was exhausting playing both sides of the net at once, trying to be both mother and father, and the awful secret of Finn's father only contributed to it. But, she had reasoned, the lie gave him some kind of role model for a father. And, it seemed to have worked; Finn grew into a sensitive and caring teenager, for the most part. Then it all came crashing down. She cursed her decision to tell Finn the truth about his father, not just because it seemed to have been the catalyst driving him to propose to Rachel, but because, once he realized that was premature, all he could see to do was to choose the same path his father had chosen, the very thing she had revealed the secret to avoid in the first place. She found herself in a cruel déjà vu, worried sick every day for four years over her son's safety. For Carole, the truth had not set her free; it had condemned her to living the same agony over again. She saw it as punishment somehow, for an unknown crime, blaming herself for everything and yet unsure what she could have done, at any point, better. She shuddered to think what she would have done had it not been for Burt, whose calm, stalwart love kept her from perishing from guilt.
When Finn didn't come home, that guilt intensified. At first she thought Finn hadn't told her the truth, that he wasn't okay, but, instead, had been broken on the wheel of Operation Enduring Freedom, and was loathe to let her see what it had done to him. His little emails came regularly, however, and Carole's anxiety eased. But the ineffable bond between mother and son remained. She longed to see him again. There was simply no room for hurt feelings or recriminations anymore. There was only room for love.
They finally broke the embrace, and Carole, wiping her eyes, rushed forward and embraced Rachel in a huge hug as well, while Burt appeared and dragged Finn inside, slapping him on the back. Carole ushered Rachel inside as well.
There was hot cocoa laid out on a tray on the coffee table in the living room. Finn and Rachel sat together on the couch, while Carole and Burt sat on the easy chairs at each end.
"We figured you'd probably be tired, and not want coffee," Carole said, still wiping tears away.
"Yes, Carole, thanks," Rachel said. Finn nodded. There was small talk. How was your trip? It's so good to have you back. Fortunately, everyone was tired; Carole and Burt had just gotten back the day before from Washington. The full story would have to wait. As they stood up to go to bed, there was an awkward pause about the sleeping arrangements, then Burt waved both of them off to Finn's old room, laughing and shaking his head.
"There's no way I'm going to forbid a Silver Star winner from sleeping with a Tony Award winner, who also happens to be the love of his life, under my roof." Rachel giggled.
Finn looked at Rachel.
"Wow, those awards do come in useful, after all."
Burt put his arm around Carole and got serious.
"We couldn't be more proud of the two of you if we tried," he said, and bid them goodnight.
Later that night, Finn and Rachel cuddled, spooning together, on the verge of sleep, in his old bed. Neither of them spoke. Finn cupped Rachel's right breast, and she caressed his arm, running her hand up and down. The room conjured up a host of memories for both of them, but Rachel and Finn almost didn't recognize their old selves. Everything seemed more intense then. There was no melancholy in thinking this; what they had now was joyous. But it was an interesting exercise for both of them to make the comparison.
"When I was in Afghanistan," Finn whispered, "It was boring as hell most of the time, so I started reading at the base. They had a pretty good library of donated books from home."
She smiled at the idea. One thing she had noticed different about Finn was the way he spoke. His vocabulary had exploded, and he spoke with confidence and strength.
"What books did you read?" She whispered back.
"A hodgepodge, whatever was available. Catch-22. On the Road. The Odyssey and the Iliad. And poetry. There was this one collection of T.S. Eliot I read over and over, mostly because I couldn't understand it." She chuckled softly and squeezed his arm. "One of the poems had a weird title, 'Little Gidding', which I guess is a place.
Anyway, I was thinking about us just now. When I think back to the way we were before, I almost don't recognize us. I used to think that version of us was eternal, and the way we would always be. Man, was I wrong."
"You don't think we'll always be?" Rachel asked, not quite understanding where he was going.
"No…no. But I know I feel different about you and me now, in a good way. And there was a passage from that poem which stayed with me for some reason, and I think it applies to us:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. "
He pulled her closer.
"Here we are, after being apart for so long, back where we started, and yet so much happier, so much more at peace."
He pulled her so that she faced him in the dark.
"Rachel, I love you now more than I ever did before, something that I once thought was impossible."
"Me too," she told him. "When I think back, my epic love was puny by comparison."
They kissed, and eventually fell asleep in each other's arms, in Lima, in the town in which they were born and raised, in the place where they began.
XXXxxxx
Finn sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee, before dawn. He knew his mother would be up soon, wanting to make breakfast, and he wanted to have her all to himself. He wanted to tell her everything; he owed her that much. A lyric from a Dylan song ran through his head:
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been, my darling young one?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a gonna fall.
He felt like a wandering minstrel. And he wasn't sure what, exactly, he could tell her about Afghanistan. It wasn't that she was too delicate to deal with it; she was a nurse, for crissakes. It was more his inability to express what he experienced. Jane had understood, filling in the blanks where he could not. And she had been able to give Rachel a general idea of that last patrol. But she wasn't here to tell his mother. It was up to him. In the end, he decided to play it by ear.
Carole came downstairs a few minutes later, and looked surprised to see him there.
"I half expected to see Rachel," she said, grinning.
He chuckled.
"She sleeps on a Broadway schedule, now. And I like to get up early just to think in the quiet."
Carole poured herself some coffee and sat opposite him. He gripped his coffee cup.
"Mom, I am really sorry for staying away for so long."
Carole looked at her son intently.
"I have to admit", she said, slowly, " I was hurt—devastated-at first, when you said you weren't coming home. I- I didn't think there was anything we couldn't deal with together." She looked down at the table. "I just wanted to see my baby again."
He nodded.
"I don't want to know about Afghanistan—yet," she said firmly, "But please tell me where you've been these last three years, at least. I know you were in Sheridan, Wyoming, first."
"Yeah, that notification from the VA hospital there was what Rachel used as a starting point." He got up and poured himself some more coffee. "I was there almost a year. Then I was up in Canada, in Alberta." He paused, wondering how to phrase it. "I met a girl there," he said simply.
Carole's cup froze halfway to her mouth.
"A girl? "
"Well, she wasn't just a 'girl', mom. She was a bona fide Mountie, who had served in the Canadian Forces Military Police in Afghanistan, and was badly wounded there. Her name is Jane Feeney."
His mother recovered from the shock and motioned him to continue.
"We helped each other through the nightmares. Mine were easing off, but still fairly frequent; hers were only occasional by the time we met. We were together for two years."
"Wow. And Rachel?"
Finn smiled.
"She knows. In fact, they met. That's how she found out where I was."
Carole shook her head.
"It sounds complicated."
"Well, not really. Even though we loved each other, we realized, deep down, we were far more in love with someone else. For Jane, it was her ex-husband, Brian, a Mountie and ex-MP who was stationed far to the north. After Afghanistan, he couldn't handle crowds, and she couldn't handle the isolation. But Jane thinks they might get back together. As for me, well, it's been Rachel, right down the line." He sighed.
"You look happy, Finn," Carol said, taking his hands. "Are you okay for sure? Ready to be here?"
He smiled.
"Yeah, mom. Rachel helped me past some of the other issues. I feel whole, now. I just didn't want you to feel like it was dad all over again."
"You're my son," Carole said emphatically, tears in her eyes. "I would have taken you in any condition."
He knew that. But he also knew that she understood, and, more importantly, accepted, the reasoning behind what he did. Because he had been her son long before he was anyone's friend or lover.
He got up and just hugged her where she sat, and winked at Rachel, who had come downstairs and turned the corner into the kitchen, in hopes of scoring some of Finn's coffee.
His heart soared for them both.
A/N: The Poem is 'Little Gidding", by T.S. Eliot. The lyrics are from "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall," by Bob Dylan.