To Have and to Hold

by Fern Michaels

  “If your father agreed, if he can handle it, so can we,” Kate said.

  “Mom, if you were in Dad’s position, you would have signed anything to get out of there. He was coerced, threatened. We all have to remember that. Duress. But try and prove it. They’ll call him a defector.”

  “We don’t know that, Betsy,” Kate said.

  “Well, what do you think happened to us at the airport? Weren’t we threatened and coerced? It opens up all kinds of cans of worms. How many others are there? Where are they? Why hasn’t something been done? The press, of which your friend Mr. Stewart is a member, would have a field day. It would rock this country, and the government would have egg on its face. Listen, let’s talk about something else for a little while. What are we wearing tomorrow for the big moment?”

  “I don’t have anything with me,” Ellie groaned.

  “Me either,” Betsy said.

  “We’ll get up early and go shopping,” Kate said. “Mr. Spindler said your father won’t arrive till three or so. We can have lunch together like we used to. We also have to think about dinner. For the life of me I can’t remember what your father likes to eat. I should remember, but I don’t. I don’t remember what he looks like, either,” Kate said, crying softly.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mom,” Ellie said gently. “He won’t look like he did back then. It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember.”

  “You must be very happy, Betsy.”

  “Is this where I get to say I told you so?” Betsy said, pouring more wine.

  “Only if you want to,” Kate replied. “How am I going to explain that . . . burial?”

  “Mom, you don’t have to make explanations. You have nothing to hide. You did what you had to do. That’s the end of it.”

  “Your grandfather’s house. I sold it.”

  “So what?” Betsy said. “Dad isn’t Dad anymore. He’s Harry now, a long-lost cousin. The house went to you rightfully. I’m all for not even mentioning it unless Dad does, and then you tell him straight. Boy, is he going to be surprised when he sees this house. I almost fell out of the car when I saw it. Pretty pricey, Mom.”

  “I bought it with Donald and Della’s help. It’s paid for now. I made a will a few years ago, girls. In it I left half of everything to Della’s family. There are so many of them. I hope that’s all right with you.”

  Both girls nodded.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Time passed, as they knew it would, but slowly. They slept curled on the recliners in the large glass-walled family room, rose, ate, hot-tubbed again, ate some more, slept, and woke to what Ellie called “the day.”

  They canceled the shopping trip by mutual consent, the girls preferring to wear Kate’s clothes with a few minor adjustments. The decision not to shop for new outfits allowed them time to stew and fret, to dither and wring their hands in anticipation of Patrick’s return.

  It was barely light out when Kate plugged in the coffee maker. Her chest felt heavy, her eyes heavier still. The girls seemed to vacillate between a state of euphoria and total despair. Kate just felt numb. She dreaded the upcoming meeting, but some part of her couldn’t wait for Patrick to see and comment on her success. Dear God, she prayed at the kitchen table, don’t let this be the nightmare I think it’s going to be. Please help us all to get through what I know is going to be a traumatic reunion.

  Reunion. A happy time. Laughter, hugs, kisses, talking about old times. Happiness.

  “The early bird gets the worm, is that it, Mom?” Ellie said, coming up from behind to plant a kiss on her mother’s cheek.

  “This early bird is shaking in her slippers,” Kate said quickly.

  “That’s natural,” Ellie said. “We’re all going to do our best. I’m sure Dad is going through the same thing. I can’t even begin to imagine what he must be thinking and feeling. No one said a word about his mental state. I wish one of us thought to ask.”

  “Ask what?” Betsy said, yawning elaborately from the kitchen doorway.

  “What your father’s mental state is,” Kate said.

  “Shaky at best,” Betsy said.

  “Do we wait for his move, or do we ... I don’t . . . what I’m trying to say is, do we react to what he says or does? What if he doesn’t like the way we turned out?” Kate fretted.

  “What’s not to like?” Ellie muttered. She smeared three inches of jam on a piece of toast, looked at it, and pushed it aside.

  “Change is never easy to accept. For anyone,” Kate said quietly. “I don’t think I’m being overly melodramatic when I say our lives as we know them are not going to be the same. That frightens me.”

  “I feel the same way,” Ellie said.

  “This may surprise you, but I do too,” Betsy said.

  “All these years it was so easy to say I’ll do this or that, I can’t wait to show, tell, and now it seems . . . I think what I’m trying to say is I more or less thought we’d carry the ball, but that’s not the way it’s going to be. Mom’s right, we’re going to do whatever we do based on what Dad does or says. We are incidental.”

  How sad her voice is, how tortured she must be feeling, Kate thought.

  “Have you spoken to your fiancé?” Betsy asked.

  “Last night. Why?” Ellie asked fearfully.

  “These government guys seem pretty thorough. They have to know you’re planning on getting married. They aren’t going to overlook him. They’re going to want assurance he doesn’t talk. Can he hold up to what we’re all going to be going through?”

  “I don’t know,” Ellie said.

  Gus’s cautionary words rang in Kate’s ears. “We sound like we’ve done something wrong and ... we’re going to be under government scrutiny night and day.”

  “We are, Mom. Try, just try, to picture newspaper headlines, newscasts, talk shows, all of it. You . . . we simply cannot embarrass the government. We cannot endanger national security. I’m sure Dad will be able to tell us more. We’re beating a dead horse here. Until we talk to Dad, we have to accept everything. We signed away any rights we have. I don’t know if that would hold up in a court of law or if we could get a lawyer to defend us if we decided to go public. My best advice for all of us is we go with the flow and take a wait-and-see attitude.”

  “Your father was never known for his patience,” Kate said.

  “Dad is an officer in the United States Air Force. He’s not going to go back on his word. It’s that ‘do or die, defend your country’ thing.” At her mother’s worried look she said, “I have an idea. It’s a beautiful day, so let’s go to work on the flower garden. It looked a bit straggly to me yesterday. You guys did a real good job on it, it really does look like a rainbow.”

  “We did it for Donald,” Kate said.

  “I know,” Betsy said, staring out the window.

  “What are you making for dinner?” Ellie asked.

  “I have everything defrosting. I thought I’d wait to see what your father wants. Besides, I’m all thumbs.”

  “Sounds good to me. I’ll clean the pool, you guys do the gardening. I hate getting dirt under my fingernails.” Betsy hooted. Then they were off, racing down the hallway the way they used to do when they were younger. At least one good thing had come of this, Kate thought. Her daughters were friends again. And she had Betsy back. For that she would be eternally grateful. She remembered the promise she’d made to God at the airport. Don’t let anything be wrong with Betsy and Ellie. I’ll do anything. Anything. One did not break a promise made to God. Ever. She started to cry, silent tears of anguish.

  “Promise me tomorrow,” she whimpered. Patrick was keeping the promise he’d made so many years ago. Where had her faith gone? Why hadn’t she believed? Why hadn’t she trusted her husband to make good on his promise? Why? Why?

  Kate squeezed her eyes shut to stop her tears. All she could see was years of counseling ahead of her. Even when she was in a rocking chair on the deck, she’d be trying to explain, trying to understand where she went
wrong.

  Abruptly, she slapped her hands, palms down, on the table. “You’re going to do your best, and you aren’t going to look back. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow isn’t here yet, and today is all that counts. So there.” She slapped at the table again for emphasis. She didn’t feel one damn bit better, but she wasn’t going to think about that. She was going to get dressed and work in the garden. With her daughters.

  It occurred to Kate later as she was pulling on her gardening gloves that they were almost a family again. She wondered why the thought didn’t give her any comfort, since family was her most favorite word in the English language.

  “Hey, guys, it’s one o‘clock. Shouldn’t we be breaking for lunch and showering up?” Ellie called. “Three o’clock is going to get here real fast.” She propped the skimmer against the Sunrise fence. “Hey, it looks good. Tidy. Looks like you trimmed with a scalpel. Real good job.”

  “God, it’s a nice day, isn’t it?” Kate said. “Anytime the sun shines it’s a nice day.” She looked around at the garden, at the empty cottage in the back and the flowers bordering the little front porch. A cluster of birds sat sentinel on the rail on the deck. Waiting. She’d forgotten to put out the seed this morning. How patient her feathered friends were. Maybe that was the key to life: patience. The birdbaths were empty, too. She looked up at the lower limbs of the Joshua tree, where birdhouses hung.

  The huge redwood-and-glass house stared down at her. An architect’s delight. She’d done a rendering of it that hung over the fireplace. She loved it, felt as if it were her first real home. Shortly there would be an intruder, a stranger, living here.

  “Who’s doing lunch?” Ellie asked. “What are we having?”

  “You girls make it. Tuna or grilled cheese is fine with me,” Kate called from the toolshed. “I have to feed the birds and fill the birdbaths.”

  She saw her daughters running for the deck, their bare legs flashing in the sun. The pool sparkled, the hot tub bubbled, the birds waited.

  “How do we look?” Kate asked nervously at 2:45.

  “We look beautiful,” Ellie said. “We look like we belong together. You know, cut from the same mold or whatever it is people say about families.”

  There it was, that word again, family.

  “You look great, Mom,” Betsy said.

  “I’m not overdone, am I?” Kate asked nervously.

  “You mean the gold hoops in your ears? Nope,” Ellie said.

  Her dress was electric-blue, designed by Donna Karan to expertly disguise her thickening waist. It stopped two inches above her knees and reeked with chic.

  “I don’t want to know how much that dress cost,” Ellie said.

  “Good, because I’m not about to tell you,” Kate said. “Does my hair look okay? I had the gray colored before I went to Costa Rica. I used to have this long . . . ponytail.” She was about to say Gus loved her new Princess Di style, but she bit down on her lower lip to squelch the words. It was simple, wash and wear, and fit her needs perfectly. The fact that it looked good on her was a plus. Having a natural wave to her hair helped.

  “I remember the buttons and bows you used to deck us out in. God, we looked like dimity orphans.” Betsy giggled. “Even our socks had ribbons and bows on them.”

  “You looked adorable,” Kate said defensively.

  “Mom, we looked like dorks. Everyone else was wearing blue jeans and tie-dyed shirts, and there we were in our rick-rack and trailing ribbons. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t then.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kate said.

  “The boys liked our outfits, though,” Ellie said.

  “Yeah, they did, come to think of it. God, is that a car I hear?”

  “Yes, it is,” Kate said, swallowing hard.

  “Are we going to go to the door or stand here? Nobody said what we were supposed to do,” Ellie said.

  Kate looked at Betsy, whose eyes were glazed. “The screen door is open. He can just walk in. I ... I don’t think I can walk all the way to the front door.”

  “We’re going to stand here and wait, is that it?” Ellie demanded.

  “Yes,” Kate floundered. “We look like . . . like—”

  “Half of a family who’s waiting for the other half to make it complete,” Betsy said softly. “The screen door is opening.”

  Kate’s heart thumped in her chest. What was she supposed to do? Run to her husband, throw her arms around him? Wait to see what he did? Go with her feelings? I don’t have any feelings. She was so tense, she felt brittle. Ellie, on her right, felt stiff; Betsy appeared to be loose, but her facial features were tense, expectant. Please God, make this right for her. She’s waited so long.

  He appeared, the sun from the open front door at his back. Kate fought with her tongue and lips. He was drawn, his face pasty white. The clothes he wore were big on him, almost baggy; he’d lost a lot of weight. Somehow she’d expected him to appear in uniform, but then he wasn’t Captain Patrick Starr anymore. He was Harry something or other. She had to say something—or was it Patrick who had to say something? He advanced farther into the room, shuffling, his shoes squeaking on the oak floors. How shiny his shoes were, she thought; they must be new. This couldn’t be her husband, not this terribly old-looking man. Where was the dashing fighter pilot she’d married? God in heaven, what had they done to him?

  He was in the room now, staring about intently. He spoke in a voice that sounded strange, unused. With a Russian accent. Kate felt tears burn her eyes.

  “Kate? I know I look like ten miles of used road, but I’m here. I kept my promise.”

  “Welcome home, Patrick,” Kate said.

  The girls ran to him while Kate stayed rooted to the floor. She watched as her husband stared at Betsy, then at Ellie. “My eyesight is bad. I need to see you up close. You’re beautiful, just the way I knew you’d look. I won’t always look like this. Some good food, a little sun, some exercise, and I might pass for something human.”

  God, Kate prayed, please let me feel something. Please.

  His arms around his daughters, Patrick advanced into the room. Kate stepped forward. “It’s good to have you home, Patrick.” The girls stepped aside until she couldn’t see them in her peripheral vision. She felt his arms go around her, tentatively at first, as though afraid she would vanish. She smelled his foul breath, noticed the white film over his left eye, the scars around his neck and forehead. He was trembling, about to cry. Please God, let me feel something. I want to. Please. She hugged him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Patrick pushed her away, held her at arm’s length. He stared at her. “What did you do to your hair? You have on too much makeup,” he said critically. “I don’t like your hair. You smell different. For years I’d close my eyes and bring you to mind. You always looked the same. You smelled the same, like vanilla and lemon. I don’t like the way you smell. Is that real gold in your ears? How much did they cost? You all look so well off,” he said, peering at the hemline on his wife’s dress and then down at her high-heeled shoes. “You never wore high heels before.”

  The sisters exchanged glances. Kate stammered, “I—I’m sorry, Patrick. I wanted to look nice for you. We dressed up for your homecoming.”

  “I don’t like it.” He moved around the huge family room, peering at everything, touching the things he wanted to see better. “Whose house is this? How much rent do you pay here?”

  “It—It’s my house, Patrick. I don’t pay . . . rent. I own it outright.”

  He was shuffling again, yanking at the sliding glass doors. “Why don’t you let those goddamn birds out here? Don’t tell me you feed them. If you feed them, they never go away. I hate birds. Get rid of them,” he said forcefully. “Where did you get the money to buy a house like this?”

  “I—I worked for it. Friends . . . friends helped,” Kate said in a choked voice.

  “And what did you have to give those friends in return?” Patrick demanded. He made the question sound obscene.

 
“Just our love,” Ellie said hoarsely.

  “I didn’t ask you, I asked your mother.” He was moving again, shuffling his way out to the kitchen. “Well?” he called over his shoulder.

  “Ellie told you, just our love. Nothing more.” Her eyes were wild when they focused on her daughters huddled close together.

  “I don’t smell anything. Didn’t you make a welcome-home meal? The prodigal returns, that kind of thing. I don’t smell anything. I expected smells. I expected . . . I guess my return caught you all by surprise. Well, Kate, aren’t you going to make something?”

  “What—What would you like, Patrick?”

  “You know what I like. Or did you forget? I want stuffed chicken, pork chops, steak, lobster. You must be able to afford that, living in this rich house. Where did you say you got the money?”

  “I said I worked for it.” Kate began to get food out of the refrigerator.

  “You could never make enough money to buy a house like this. It must cost sixty or seventy thousand dollars.”

  “Try half a million, Dad,” Ellie said coolly.

  Patrick grabbed Kate by the arm. “Just what kind of work do you do?”

  “Mom has her own business,” Betsy said, coming up close to where her father was standing. Ellie took up her position on the other side of her mother.

  “Do you sell Avon products? You don’t know how to do anything.”

  He must be laughing. That sound must be laughter, Kate thought wildly. She dropped the chicken she was holding.

  “Mom went to college and got her degree,” Ellie said, her face a tight mask. “She does architectural renderings. She has three offices,” she added proudly. “She’s been written up in magazines. She’s a professional woman. They call her a ‘woman of the nineties.’ ”

  The chicken was in the sink, Kate’s tears splashing on the plump breast. Her children were defending her. To their father. It wasn’t right. She whirled about in time to hear her husband say, “You won’t be doing that anymore. I’ll take it over. You belong here at home taking care of me the way you used to. You aren’t going back to work.”