“I should’ve made him wear jeans,” she muttered.
“Ahh, he’s fine,” Sean said, and she supposed he was right. “Hey, I almost forgot. There was a sergeant I met at the VA hospital, a real nice guy. His wife collects old wartime keepsakes that have gotten lost over the years—like letters and photos from Korea, World War Two, Vietnam. She tracks down the families of the vets they belonged to and returns the stuff. Anyway, I got ahold of her through her Web site. Just told her you were doing a genealogy project, and that you were looking for information about a distant relative with Jakob’s name. I only gave her a few other details. Don’t know if she’ll find anything, but figured it couldn’t hurt. I could send her your contact info if you’d like.”
“That’d be great.” Audra smiled, again touched by his efforts. Under the circumstances, few people, much less a virtual stranger, would offer this much support. “Thank you, Sean.”
“It was nothing.”
“No, really. Thank you—for all of this.” She gestured to everything he had brought along.
He shrugged and reciprocated the smile. “It was good for me too. Gave me an excuse to go through my old things. Even had a few memories pop up because of it.” He began to gather the papers, letter, and articles. “You’re welcome to keep these, by the way. For however long you need.”
“Are you sure that’s okay?”
“My family’s not doing anything with them.” He slid the contents back into the manila casing. When he handed it over, she found herself wishing details about Sean, too, were inside.
“The memories that came back to you,” she ventured to ask, “were they helpful at all?”
“I don’t know,” he said after a pause. “They don’t seem like it.”
“Your mom mentioned that you’re still feeling ... out of sorts.”
“That’s one way to put it.” His clipped laugh made Audra wince.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean for it to sound like a small issue.”
“No,” he insisted, “you didn’t.”
She nodded, deciding to leave him to his privacy, already in awe of how much family history he’d been willing to share. But he surprised her by continuing.
“The best way I can describe it ... is a bad night with a fifth of tequila. You blink and everything blacks out. Except the next day, you don’t wake up in your frat house to hear about how you did keg stands, or danced on a table naked. Instead, you wake up in a hospital, and when you get home everyone is suddenly three years older. You find out you not only joined the Army, but you fought in a war—where, incidentally, you were the one person in your vehicle who made it out.”
Audra tried to imagine the shock of it all. Assembling the pieces would seem horrifically surreal. She wasn’t certain how to respond. “Do you at least remember wanting to be in the service? Earlier in your life even?”
“I guess I’d thought about it. But it was way back in high school.” He half smiled. “Probably because I thought the uniform would help me get more dates.”
Based on his looks now, she couldn’t imagine his needing a uniform for that. “But you went to college instead?”
“Yeah. Made my mom a lot happier.”
“Your dad too, I’d bet.” Audra caught herself, once more speaking as if she and Sean were old friends.
“Actually, I wouldn’t know,” he said, then appeared to realize the ambiguity of the remark. “He and my mom got divorced when I was three. He moved to Ohio and started another family. So I always knew him, but not well.”
Audra could relate to the nature of the relationship, with both of her parents, but on a lesser scale.
“Anyhow,” Sean went on, “my mom says she came unglued when I enlisted. Apparently, as a news producer, I told her I was tired of watching from the sidelines. Wanted to make a difference.” He shrugged. “Whatever the reason, I quit my job. Sold my condo. It’s like in a single day my whole life turned upside down.”
Audra could relate yet again, this time to the fullest degree.
“What do the doctors say, about the memories you’ve lost?”
“That it could stay this way. Or I could get little things here and there, maybe chunks once in a while. Or one day it could all come rushing back. Basically, it’s anyone’s guess. I suppose that’s why I’ve been dragging my feet in a lot of ways. Hard to move forward when you’re not sure exactly who you are.”
Audra recognized the irony of this. To her, moving forward had appeared the best way to reestablish an identity. What’s more, there were times over the past two years when amnesia would have seemed a gift; now, given Sean’s story, she wasn’t so certain.