A Conard County Homecoming. Rachel Lee

the kid who had signed up nearly twenty years ago, wanting the GI Bill, liking the promises the navy gave him of an education. Not much later he’d found himself getting an education of a very different kind. To this day he couldn’t begin to explain to himself why he’d volunteered for the SEALs. Maybe because he was eighteen and full of hubris or too much testosterone. He honestly didn’t know.

      But he’d done it, had passed all the arduous training, and had become a very different man in the process. He had been molded into a weapon.

      Funny thing was, he didn’t regret that choice. Never once felt he’d made the wrong one. But now he paid the price in memories that never left him.

      One hell of an education, indeed.

      Shaking his head a little, he wheeled back to the kitchen, deciding to have a piece of the apple pie Ashley had left. The aroma was making his mouth water.

      Nell sat hopefully beside him as he cut into the pie. Treat. She had very speaking eyes, he often thought. Hard not to read that she wanted her biscuit or a rawhide bone.

      The pantry was still open, so he said, “Nell, get a bone.”

      Her tail wagging, Nell trotted into the pantry, found the plastic bag of bones and brought them out, dropping them onto his lap. He ripped off the paper label across the top and pulled the bag open. In the process, he loosened the staples holding it shut, and he made sure to gather them into a pile on the table. He’d hate for Nell to get into trouble with one while picking up the bag.

      She accepted her rawhide bone with a woof and a wag then settled on the floor to gnaw happily.

      And now he could taste the pie. It was every bit as scrumptious as it smelled. Closing his eyes, he savored the first mouthful, tasting its every nuance with pleasure before he swallowed. It had been a long time since he’d had a good pie, but this one was spectacular. Whether he wanted further contact or not, he was going to have to compliment the chef on this one.

      Which meant making a connection he really didn’t want to make. Ashley Granger was a beautiful young woman, and he didn’t want to put any shadows on her face or in her heart.

      While he didn’t wallow in self-pity, he always tried to be straight with himself. His ultimate conclusion was that he was poison. Until he found a stable place inside himself, a way to reenter normal life, he didn’t want to poison anyone else.

      He looked down at Nell, his companion and aide, and once again saw his life with stark clarity. All these years, with one mission coming after another, with the time he wasn’t in the field mostly used for training and planning, he’d never felt like a fish out of water. The member of a tightly knit fellowship, surrounded by comrades with the same job, the same worldview—he’d belonged.

      Now he was a man who couldn’t walk and who depended on a dog to keep him from sliding into a past that he no longer lived.

      Yeah, he had no business bringing anyone else into this mess, even peripherally, until he got his head sorted out.

      But Ashley sure had tempted him.

       Chapter Two

      Ashley went to school in the morning with nearly a bushel basket full of apples for her students. She’d swiped some for the pie yesterday, but the basket was still brimming. A great time of year for apples, and she’d made a tradition of ordering a bushel each fall for her students.

      They all loved apples, and while she limited them to one a day, they still disappeared fast. With a class size of nineteen, four to five days would nearly empty the basket. When they got down to the last few, a spelling bee would determine who got the last of them.

      Her students usually loved the treat, and she felt good about being able to give it to them. Special orders were no problem at the grocery, and she’d been doing it for so many years that the produce manager always had a list of prices and quality for her. This year he’d recommended the Jonathans, a type of apple she loved herself.

      The students began arriving, and when they saw the apples, excitement began to grow. They’d heard of her tradition. “Not until after lunch,” she reminded them.

      Then Mikey’s mother rolled him in and pushed him up to the table the school had provided specially so he could get his wheelchair under it comfortably. It was also wider than usual so his mother could sit beside him throughout the day and help with his assignments. She turned the pages in the books for him to read, and when worksheets had to be filled out, she asked him which answers he chose.

      Today Mikey appeared to be in a fairly good mood. Ashley had the greatest admiration for his mother, Marian Landau, whose patience never seemed to flag. It couldn’t be easy for her to drive him in every day and then sit beside him throughout the school day. She could have chosen homeschooling, but she had told Ashley that she wanted him to have social interactions.

      “They might not all be good ones,” Marian had said. “I know how cruel kids can be. But I also know how nice they can be, and I don’t want him raised in isolation. Sooner or later he’ll have to deal with the rest of the world.”

      So far this year, not a single student had been cruel to Mikey. Some hung back, as if uncomfortable, but a few routinely made an effort to speak to him, or to ask him to join their groups when they split into them.

      A fund-raiser was being planned to get Mikey a better wheelchair, an electric one he’d be able to control with puffs on a straw. Dang, those things were expensive, Ashley thought as she called her excited and slightly rowdy group to order. But then so were service dogs, and Cadell Marcus was already trying to solve that problem. She spent a moment’s hope that Zane would actually call Cadell and offer some advice.

      “Okay,” she said when everyone was settled and looking at her, “there’s an apple rule. The rule is simple. If we get all of our morning’s work done before lunch, everyone gets an apple. If you guys cut up and waste time...uh-oh.”

      Giggles ran through the room. She smiled and plunged into the morning’s math lesson. The introduction to fractions always caused some confusion, but today she had apples and a small paring knife to help her. Given the times, she’d had to get permission to bring that knife, small as it was. She couldn’t help remembering her own childhood, when every boy had carried a pocketknife. No more. The zero-tolerance policy that had begun sweeping the nation a couple of decades ago had finally reached this little town. Considering how many of her students lived on ranches, at home they very likely carried their pocketknives and used much more dangerous implements.

      An awful lot of her students, girls and boys alike, would be going hunting this fall with their parents. In fact, one of her lessons at this time of year was about hunting safety and laws. Sometimes she was able to get the game warden, Desi Jenks, to come in and give a talk.

      But fractions required her whole attention, even with slicing an apple into halves, quarters and thirds. It was difficult for kids, for some reason, to see it for real and then transfer it to symbols on paper. That always took a while.

      Eventually she had the pleasure of seeing understanding begin to dawn.

      By the end of the day, however, despite recesses to let them run off energy, her kids were getting antsy. Their response to weariness was not to fall asleep, but to need something new to do. When she dismissed them, they tore out of the room like a stampeding herd.

      But Mikey and his mom remained. They always did, to avoid the crush. Ashley pulled her chair over to chat with them a bit.

      “How’s it going, Mikey?” she asked. “Do you hate fractions, too?”

      He smiled shyly. “They’re easy.”

      “Well, glory be,” Ashley said, clapping her hands together. “Someone gets it.”

      Mikey laughed.

      Marian spoke. “Cadell is trying to get us a service dog. I think I mentioned that. Well, he’s trying