Enemy Mine Read Free

there were none left in Laura’s garden.
    After giving her mother a gentle squeeze, Kathy released her. “I’ve got about five days before I go on a new assignment, and I thought I’d see you all before I left. Normally, I get thirty days of leave, but this OPs has allowed me less time than usual.”
    Laura dropped the weeds into a nearby can and pushed a strand of hair from her face. “I’m glad you have. Are you hungry? I haven’t eaten lunch yet. It’s been so hot here, nearly a hundred last week. I thought I’d make a pot of gazpacho soup and chill it for dinner. Want some now? It’s just done.”
    Opening the door, Kathy followed her mother into the service porch, where she shed her garden shoes and padded barefoot across the gleaming reddish-gold cedar floor. “Yeah, I took a whiff of it before I came out here. I’d love a bowl.”
    Looking over her shoulder, Laura smiled. “You bet. Come on, let’s get some and go sit out on the front porch. There’s a bit of breeze out there and I need to cool down.” She grinned and wiped her perspiring forehead with the back of her dirt-stained glove.
    Kathy nodded and followed. Her mother was a truechild of nature. If Laura didn’t have to wear shoes or socks or nylons, she didn’t, but went barefoot. She went braless whenever possible, as well. Kathy liked that streak of wild woman in her mother. She’d acquired that trait, too. Big time. They called her “Amazon” in her squadron, and she’d earned the handle.
    In the kitchen, Kathy brought down the white china soup bowls while her mother took the lid off the pot and set it aside.
    “So, you’re on a new assignment? South America again? More insertion and extraction stuff?”
    “Yeah,” Kathy said, setting the bowls next to the stove. That was what she did: insert Navy SEAL and Marine Recon teams into hotspots in South America, hang around in the jungle, then pick them up at a specific time and place, after they’d done their damage. The work was interesting to Kathy. She liked the element of danger that always went with the missions. They never went anywhere quiet or safe. Truth be known, she grooved on the edginess of those ops. More than a few bullets had creased the fuselage of her Seahawk, although she kept that knowledge to herself because she didn’t want her parents to worry about her.
    Laura filled the first bowl. Kathy didn’t want to lie to her mother, or at least lie as little as possible, so she didn’t go into detail about this new mission. She just let her mom think it was the same type assignment as before. She wouldn’t divulge her true intentions, unless pushed beyond her limit. She knew her father would want to know everything, and that was going to be tricky ground to tread with him.
    Chuckling, Laura pulled out a loaf of freshly made sourdough bread from the refrigerator, as well as the butter dish. “Talk about new assignments. You know what my summer mission is?”
    Kathy slathered butter on thick slices of bread. “No, what?” Her heart expanded. Just being with her mother lifted her spirits. Laura’s large, intelligent blue eyes shone with happiness. Kathy wished she could feel that elation. How many years had it taken her mom to finally climb out of the hell she’d suffered and get to this point? Two decades. Two decades of her precious life lost to those bastards. Kathy’s anger began to kick up again and she had to fight to shove it way down inside her.
    “Well, since the birth of little Alexander Morgan Trayhern to Jason and Annie, I got to thinking that this family has photo albums, but the children, individually, don’t have one. Do you realize their little one is one-and-a-half years old already? Gosh, time flies by!” She beamed and handed Kathy her soup, and then two buttered slices of sourdough. “I’ve just gotten Jason’s photo album finished and I’m almost through yours. It was going to be a Christmas gift to each of you. Rachel, Morgan’s mother,