"Uncle Ian." Ian MacAllister presses the speakerphone button and gently sets the handset back in the cradle. He sits down with a grace that he has learned in his old age and picks up a soft cloth from the workbench beside him. "This is uncle and nephew time."
Lucas grins. His uncle's voice is much different now than the brisk bravado he heard on the phone this morning. Like Roderick, Ian employs a carefully honed public face for his career. But in his private time, he's just an old married man who smokes cigars in his garage while he polishes the reels of his long fishing rods, a man with only one nephew to replace the sons he and he wife never had. "I didn't withdraw the transfer."
"Later for that," Ian snaps wearily. "I don't want to spend this whole conversation arguing. What's new with you, son?"
Son, Lucas repeats silently. He taps his toe on the weathered wooden porch of his house and then pushes off, setting his rocking chair swaying. "Nothing much."
"Where have you been? You're supposed to be on leave."
"I went to Atlanta for a friend's wedding. Roderick Ross."
"Yes, Roderick." Ian smiles. He's met Roderick; he both likes and respects him. Roderick has the kind of life that Ian wants for his nephew. "How was the wedding?"
"Good."
"You were the best man?"
"No. His sister Marlowe was the best man. I was . . . a second lieutenant."
"His sister? Interesting. Why not a bride's maid? That's how it usually is."
Lucas snickers. "You don't know Marlowe. She's unusual."
"The best ones are." Ian grunts as he leans forward and retrieves a heavy brass reel from a flannel lined trunk. 'Margaret I' is engraved on the reel. He picks up his soft cloth and polishes the fishing reel like a treasured antique. "When was the last time you talked to the girls?"
'The girls' are Lucas' sisters, Karen and Kaitlin. "Mother's Day."
"Burning up the phone lines, are we?" Ian says grimly. "Last time you visited?"
"Labor Day." He goes back to Montana once a year, every year, on Labor Day.
"Traditions are good," Ian comments, shifting in his chair. "Emotions are better. A penny for your thoughts on the impending birth of Kaitlin and Rick's fourth child."
Lucas pauses, frowning. "I didn't know she was pregnant again."
"I didn't think so," Ian comments dryly. "Another boy, to be named Stephen Taylor Manning."
"A boy?" Lucas smirks. His sister Kaitlin, the younger of the two twins by three minutes, has been on the quest for twin girls ever since Karen had twins. Karen's twins, Amy and Amelia, the flaming redheads, rule the brood of children in much the same way that Karen and Kaitlin ruled over him. "I'm sure Kat's thrilled."
Ian chuckles. "How many do you think she'll have before she gives up?"
"She'll never give up."
"You're probably right," Ian murmurs. He's polishing another reel now, this one christened 'Margaret II'. "You should go home and visit. Kaitlin's having a hard time with this pregnancy. She had a c-section with Josh, and she's almost forty now."
"Labor Day," Lucas says softly.
Ian clears his throat. It's too early in the conversation for an argument. "So, when can I expect a grandson?" He doesn't say grandnephew; there isn't any point. Lucas is truly the child of his bloodline. He wasn't a difficult boy but he was difficult to reach beneath his thick skin and quiet demeanor. For years, Lucas was lost in the shadow of the twins and nearly neglected by Ian's sister and her manic husband, Austin. It wasn't until Ian started taking Lucas during the summers that the boy began to flourish. "When?" Ian repeats, skipping right over Lucas' long silence.
"I have no idea," Lucas murmurs.
"That is not a satisfactory answer, son," Ian says, his voice gritty with a touch of Colonel MacAllister. "You're thirty two. It's about time you had an idea. Which brings me to my favorite topic of conversation: drop the transfer."
"No."
"Transfer to Fort Myer instead."
"I can't do that."
"'Can't' is not a word that I like to hear," Ian barks. He leans back in his chair and closes his lips over an unlit cigar. "Do you want to go back into operation?"
Lucas rocks back and forth in his chair, considering. "Not right now."
"Well, you're a lot smarter than I thought," Ian comments sarcastically. "Do you really want to be an instructor?"
"Maybe. It depends on what I'm instructing." Right now, his job focuses on operational readiness. It's important and interesting work, but it won't last forever. When the war dies down, his job will revert to the hands of more qualified career instructors. He has to think ahead.
"There's plenty to do at Fort Myer, Lucas. Maybe not instructing per se. But there are interesting positions for sturdy young captains like you."
Lucas snorts. "Like what?"
"Homeland Security, son. Joint task forces and all that jazz. Somebody's got to keep the home fires burning. And we need some people up here to tell the politicians what to do. You'd almost be crafting your own position from the ground floor."
"I don't like politicians."
"Neither do I, but you can't run a government without them, or a military for that matter. Hell, I have to be a politician myself sometimes."
"You only want me in D.C. because you're there."
"You're right," Ian replies gruffly. "What's wrong with that?"
Nothing, Lucas thinks. He likes the idea of being near his uncle. He just doesn't like the idea of being cut off from his escape route. He could always count on an operation to take him away from the world of thoughts, from offices and paperwork and developing a web of connections. He doesn't absolutely hate those things. Lucas hates negotiating the public faces; he hates having to read between the lines, even though he has, of necessity, learned to do so. But it isn't in his nature. And so far in his life, the only outlet he has for his true nature is the immediacy of the far field.
"Come down for a visit. You're still on leave until Friday."
"I withdrew my leave today."
"Get it back!" Ian snaps.
Lucas' head falls back against the rocker as he laughs. He didn't withdraw his leave; he just couldn't resist the opportunity to irritate his uncle.
A few moments pass before Ian realizes the joke. "Jesus, son. You run up my blood pressure with that dry as dirt sense of humor." Ian quirks a brow. "Did you withdraw the transfer to Rucker?"
"No."
"You didn't, or you really didn't?"
Lucas smiles, but he doesn't answer.
Ian sighs. "I'll expect you tomorrow around noon. Come by the house; we'll have lunch with your aunt Margaret."
"Fine. See you then." Lucas clicks off the phone and falls silent, absorbing the beauty of Virginia Beach in early summer. The two years he's spent at Fort Monroe are the most he's spent in one place since he joined the Army fresh out of college.
It's about time you had an idea, Lucas repeats silently, rocking back and forth as he turns the words over in his mind. It's about time you put down some roots - that's what his uncle Ian meant. That's what these conversations are all about; Ian wants Lucas to find a place to call home. It is only this year that he has been suggesting that Lucas move to D.C. Before that, he suggested any and everything that would require Lucas to stay in one place for at least a year at a time.
"Life's no good alone," Lucas muses aloud. His uncle says that all the time. But alone is the only way of life that Lucas knows. He doesn't want to be by himself all the time. There are a few people in his life that he holds on to: Roderick and Tamara, his uncle and aunt, a childhood friend named Andrew that he visits every time he returns to Montana. But he can only hold on so tightly; they all have families of their own, lives that sometimes involve him but that don't include him. He is welcome to visit, but he doesn't really belong; being with them is just another kind of loneliness, like watching people open presents and having none of your own.
Lucas' mind drifts to Marlowe and for a moment, he indulges the idea of her. He rocks slowly back and forth, imagining what it would be like if she were there with him, if he shared this house with her instead of his roommate Jay, just another in a long series of roommates. Then Lucas rises from the chair, grim and resigned. "It'll pass," he murmurs as he turns and goes into the house.
