Today We Go Home by Kelli Estes

Author:Kelli Estes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2019-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Present day: Woodinville, Washington

December 13, 1861: I wonder, when I die, will I see the face of the person who kills me and feel only pain and hatred toward him? Or will I see the face of God as His welcoming arms surround me and feel nothing but His love, as Aunt Harriet says happens in Heaven? Does God welcome those who have taken the lives of others?

I took a man’s life today. Possibly more than one, but one I know for certain because we were face-to-face and if I hadn’t killed him first, I would not be here writing these words. He was young. He was a person with a family waiting at home.

When I sleep, he is there. Taunting me, laughing at me, begging me to spare him. Blood, screams, terror, all the horrors of battle fill my dreams and make me wake often. I feel covered by that man’s blood.

I love most things about being a soldier, but I despise the killing.

Larkin closed the diary and sat for a long time with her eyes closed, remembering the first time she’d taken a life. It had been necessary, she knew. And doing so had likely saved countless other lives. But still, it had eaten away at her. She knew exactly how Emily Wilson had felt. Killing changed a person.

For the past week, ever since the winery fiasco, Larkin hadn’t left the house. Not even to go for a walk with Bowie. Griff’s suicide had hit her hard, and her nightmares and flashbacks were taking her over.

She wasn’t doing well. She’d called her therapist and talked with her for an hour—promising yet again to find someone local to see on a regular basis but knowing she wasn’t going to—and came away from the call feeling no better. She knew how to cope with her symptoms. She knew to identify her stuck points—the strong negative beliefs she held that were problematic—as they entered her mind and how to change them. She knew to name her emotions so that she could process them rather than avoid them or let them become consuming. She knew to confront her trauma, whether it was memories from Afghanistan or losing Griff, and process through it, challenging the assumptions and false beliefs she attached to the events. She even knew that yoga and meditation and deep breathing helped.

But it all felt like bullshit.

All she wanted to do was distract herself by reading Emily’s diary, and when the words started to blur, she shifted to the new laptop she’d ordered after ruining her last one to try to find anything connected to Emily on the internet. And when all that became too much, she drank, slept, watched Doctor Who reruns, and drank some more.

Reading Emily’s account of the Battle of Allegheny Mountain both thrilled her and shook her. She was so proud of Emily for standing strong with the men and proving she was fit to be there, but she knew too well what it actually felt like to have bullets whizzing past, each with the intent to kill.

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