56.
~ "It's good to see you again, Sir." Arthur said when arrived to the Cobb's home.
"I'm not your CO anymore, Arthur." Cobb said. "Why don't you call me Dom like everyone else?"
Arthur shook his head and looked embarrassed.
"No, I don't see that happening. I'll just call you: Cobb." Arthur said with a laugh.
The two me watched Cobb's children playing in the grass. Autumn was quickly approaching and they little ones were enjoying the last of the summer's warmth.
The last of the summer flowers.
"I want to thank you." Cobb said softly. "I never would have made it home if it wasn't for your sacrifice."
Arthur shook his head. He didn't like to think about that camp. That place covered in snow where he was hungry and cold. Where he knew at any moment he could die.
"So how have you been?" Arthur asked sitting up straighter and wrapping himself in a shield of steel. A thing that no words or memories of the war could penetrate.
Cobb laughed.
"It was hard being home at first. I wasn't used to seeing all the family and neighbors again. They all look at me really strangely." He said.
Arthur looked at his shoes.
Ariadne was always looking at him oddly at times to. Like she was worried he might break. Like she was afraid of him.
"How have you been dealing with it?" Arthur asked.
"Fighting with Mal a lot." Cobb confessed. "Sometimes, James won't finish everything on his plate and I just get so angry."
Arthur said nothing.
"Sometimes, I wish I was still over there. Things were much more simple." Cobb admitted. "Now, I just don't know how to act. I don't know how to act around my friends, my family."
Cobb looked at a very pretty woman who called to the children.
"My wife." Cobb said sadly.
"It will take time." Arthur said. He didn't know how to comfort his old friend. Didn't know the right words to say.
"This obviously stay between us, but Mal has be seeing a head shrink." Cobb laughed. His laugh was forced and their was nothing happy in his eyes.
"Really?" Arthur said is shock.
"Yeah. A Dr. Robert Fischer. He's nice enough for a civilian during war time." Cobb told him.
Arthur looked at him in disbelief.
"He has asthma and counseling returning soldiers is his way of helping." Cobb explained
Arthur snorted back a laugh.
"The thing is, I think it's working. I think it's helping." Cobb told him.
"What? Getting your head shrunk?" Arthur teased.
"No." Cobb said numbly. "Just talking and working out what went on over there. He's always telling me to leave it behind. Not to let that world infect this word."
"That's very profound, Cobb." Arthur said. A smile tugging at his mouth. Cobb looked at his friend. A certain light dancing in his eyes as Arthur started to laugh.
"Yeah, I wondered if he stole it from Plato or something." Cobb said breathing out a laugh. A real one this time.
The men sat for a long time talking at the summer day gave way into evening.
~ Arthur arrived home for dinner and was greeted by his wife and son.
"I saw Cobb." Arthur said before he noticed the larger dinner party.
He almost stopped breathing at the sight of his mother.
"What are you doing here?" Arthur barked as Beth stood beside the older woman.
"Arthur." Ariadne said in that nurses voice she used to keep people calm. "I invited her."
Arthur looked at his wife like she had betrayed him.
"Arthur, I'm so sorry." Lydia said. "For everything."
"You called my wife horrible things. You..." Arthur bit back what he really wanted to say. He swallowed hard.
"I want her to see her grandchild." Ariadne explained holding the baby.
He couldn't hold onto anger when he say his pretty nurse holding his son like that. The baby's feathery hair had been combed, only to float back up again.
"You saw him, now you need to leave." Arthur snapped at the older woman.
"Arthur, the woman lost her husband and two of her sons. Don't make her lose the last one." Ariadne said.
There was a fire in her eyes as she glared the colonel. Arthur stepped back as if she had slapped him.
For a long time, they dueled with their eyes. She still had that same fierceness, that same stubbornness that made her go to the front despite his wishes.
~ It had been an strange dinner. Arthur didn't talk much as Phillip introduced his new girlfriend and announced they were getting married.
"Wonderful!" Beth cried. "I'll finally get a wedding to plan. You know since Ariadne says she's already married and won't let me plan a renewal wedding for her and Arthur."
"We already had our wedding." Ariadne smiled. She was thinking back to that perfect day and night when she wore her favorite blue dress and ate chocolate cake. Her Major looking so handsome as she danced on his feet.
~ That night, after dinner, Arthur noticed the large brown stone on his wife's finger.
"Your mother brought it over. Said she was sorry for everything." Ariadne said as he made sure Adam would stay down for the night.
He nodded as he climbed into their bed. The idea of sharing a bed with her was still so new. Arthur's mother didn't talk much at dinner. He had noticed she had lost weight and looked to have aged so much in the past few years.
Her one comment to him was how glad she was he was home.
Ariadne left her baby to sleep for a few hours and returned to her husband.
"So how was Cobb?" She whispered as Arthur turned down the light.
He sighed. His former commanding officer looked so different now. Like ghosts haunted him each night.
"Are you worried that the war made me crazy?" He asked instead. "Cobb is seeing this head shrieker. A Dr. Fischer and now he talks all this psycho mumbo jumbo."
He thought he saw Ariadne flinch but it might have been a passing shadow.
"I worry about it." She whispered. "I worry that you saw things there that might trouble you."
"I did. I did see things there that were horrible." He said sharply.
"Tell me about them." She said.
He shook his head.
"Arthur, I can tell by the way you look at Adam, the way you look at me, your mind is still in the war." She said softly. Her fingers lacing up his shirt.
"Tell me. Tell me everything. Then we never have to talk about it again." She said in the darkness.
Arthur said nothing. His mind chasing images of bodies that looked like old socks, snow, hunger and piles of shoes.
"It's not something I can talk to you about." He whispered.
"Arthur you act like I was here safe during the war. I walked out of France, remember? I survived bombings and I saw the beaches of Normandy. Stop acting like you have to protect me." She said feeling tears drop out of her eyes.
Her husband's strong, calloused hand going to her cheek.
"You know, while you were gone, I was surrounded by people who thought this war was so romantic and exciting. People who could never understand what it really was. The sacrifices, the fear, losing everything and everyone." Ariadne cried softly.
His lips were kissing hers.
"People who weren't there. We were there, and I missed having someone who I could talk to about it. Who had seen the things I saw." She added.
Arthur started talking. He told her about the camps he found. The bodies. The ovens meant to turn people to ash. Those haunted places where horrible crimes happened. The ambush, Dax dieing, the
Nazis capturing him. Little Prick, Colonel Burch, the march into Berlin. The children he had shot in the fog.
Ariadne was quite and asked no questions.
She absorbed everything he said and processed it.
"I think the general wants me to testify soon. At the trials in Germany." Arthur whispered.
She nodded and wiped away tears. She had heard about the death camps. Heard about the horrible waste of life. She thought about how lucky she was her son was safe and that most of her family was still intact.
She told him the dream of being a black crow in a field of white. About staying out in the snow so she could feel cold and hungry. She told him about Robert. How Maurice had thought he would be a grandfather. How kind Robert had been to her. How he was there when Adam was born. How Robert wanted to marry her if Arthur didn't come home.
"Do you want to be with him?" Arthur asked. His voice indifferent.
"No." She said honestly.
"Why not?" He asked. "He sounds like a nice guy. He was right, our romance was very quick. We were swept up in the war."
She thought about it for a long time.
"How could I love anyone but you? He could never understand me like you do. I was always meant to be with you." She whispered as her husband was kissing her her. Their lips meeting over and over with such hurried passion, they feared they might die if they separated.