To Have and to Hold

by Fern Michaels

  “It was a suggestion. The cottage belongs to Della. You would need her permission.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Mexico,” Kate said, her heart thumping in her chest.

  “She’s Mexican? She owns a cottage on your property? No, that isn’t going to work. If you have all the money you say you have, buy it from her. I’ve had enough foreigners to last me the rest of my life.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t do that. I won’t do that.”

  “Yes, you will. I’m your husband and I’m telling you to do it.”

  “The government says you aren’t my husband. I’m not doing it, Patrick. You cannot make me do anything.”

  Patrick lunged at her, reached for Kate’s hair and dragged her off the chair. His rancid breath swept past her fear-filled face. Her daughters barreled through the door and were on their father within seconds. They dragged him backward, each pinning one arm. Kate coughed and sputtered as she fought for breath.

  “Mom, what—”

  “I gave your mother a direct order and she refused to obey it,” Patrick said, trying to jerk his arms free.

  “This isn’t the Air Force, Dad,” Betsy said. “What was the order?”

  “I told her I didn’t want any foreigners here. Your mother said a Mexican owns that little cottage. I told her to buy it back and she said no. Let go of me!”

  The girls dropped their father’s arms at the same moment and then joined their mother on the deck. “Della will be here tomorrow,” Kate told them in a low voice. “I called her before.”

  Patrick shrugged his shirt down over his shoulders and stomped into the house.

  “He’s like an animal,” Betsy said wildly.

  “Mom, you can’t stay here with him. He could have killed you. What’s going to happen when we leave?”

  “Della will be here. She’ll come, I know she will. Your father has been through a lot. He needs a few days to adjust. I think he feels betrayed, and rightly so.”

  “That has nothing to do with us,” Betsy said, hanging on to her mother for dear life. “I didn’t know . . . I had no idea . . . what did they do to him?”

  “Every terrible thing you could think of, I imagine. If things get bad or if I think I can’t handle it, I’ll call that man . . . what’s his name?”

  “Do you have his phone number?” Ellie asked in disgust.

  “Don’t you have it?”

  “No. Betsy doesn’t have it, either. They didn’t hand out cards. They contacted us, remember?”

  “This is unreal,” Kate muttered. “All we have to do is something they told us not to do and they’ll be all over us. I think we can get help if we need it. He doesn’t like us, me especially,” Kate said.

  “He’s disappointed in us,” Ellie said. “He wants yesterday.”

  Betsy sat down on the deck and hugged her knees. “Would it be wrong if we tried to give it to him? I didn’t think it would be like this. I knew he’d changed, but I thought . . . hoped, he’d still be the father who went away.”

  “Yes, honey, it would be wrong to try and go back. All we can do is be here for him. He’s going to have to work real hard, but then so are we.”

  “What’s going to happen when Della gets here?” Ellie asked fearfully.

  “I don’t know. Your father suggested moving into the cottage. I feel that would be a mistake, though. He needs to be around people and learn how to interact again. All of this is going to take time.”

  “I’m not leaving here till he settles down.” Ellie said. “You don’t think he’ll do anything to us when we’re sleeping, do you?” she asked, her eyes wide with fear.

  Kate had been wondering the same thing. So had Betsy, from the look on her face. “I think we can all sleep in my room this evening. It will be a slumber party. My God, did I just say that? I did, didn’t I?”

  “We started dinner,” Ellie said nervously.

  “What did you make?”

  Betsy giggled hysterically. “We took all the meat and dumped it in the Crockpot with some vegetables. It’s kind of soupy, so maybe he won’t know the difference. Ellie poured a lot of spices and stuff in it. It even smells kind of good. Mom, did he say even one nice thing? Did he say he missed us, loved us?”

  “In his own way he did. He feels those things, but I think he’s afraid it’s all going to be taken away from him again. He turned in one set of fears and accepted another set. It’s not fair, what they’re asking him to do. It’s not fair to any of us. I just don’t understand any of this,” Kate muttered.

  Through the open window they could hear the phone ringing. As one they moved to enter the house in time to hear the phone picked up in the middle of the third ring. From the kitchen they heard Patrick’s voice say, “Don’t call here again.”

  Kate bristled. “Patrick, who was that?”

  “She said her name was Della, that foreigner you said owns the little house.”

  “And you hung up on her?” Kate sputtered. “Don’t you ever do that again! You don’t hang up on people I know or do business with.”

  Patrick’s response was to yank the yellow phone from the wall. He threw it across the table. Carrots and string beans flew in every direction. The phone bounced twice before it skittered across the black slate floor. “Now we don’t have to worry about any more foreigners calling here,” he said, smacking his hands together. “I need some money.”

  The women stared at him speechlessly.

  “Mom, let’s get in the car right now and get the hell out of here,” Ellie said tightly.

  “I’m all for that.” Betsy pulled her mother toward the front door.

  “What do you need money for, Patrick?”

  “You said you have all the money. I don’t have any, so you should give me some. The government gave me a check and it’s been deposited, but they said it won’t clear for seven to ten days. It’s hush money.”

  “What do you want money for? The stores are closed now.”

  “You never used to ask questions, Kate. Now you ask too damn many.” He was rummaging along the counter, pushing and shoving everything in his way till he found the Betty Crocker cookbook. “You used to keep money in the back. I bet you thought I forgot about that. Well, I didn’t forget anything, Mrs. College Student with her degree.”

  “Does that intimidate you?” Kate said quietly.

  “Why should it? I have a master’s. Do you have one of those?”

  “No, but I have a doctorate,” Betsy said, stepping forward. “Does that intimidate you, Dad? Don’t put Mom down. I did enough of that over the years. She doesn’t deserve it.”

  “You raised a disrespectful snot here, Kate,” Patrick said, lifting the lid of the Crockpot. A rush of steam surged upward. He jerked backward, swinging wildly.

  “Oh, God,” Ellie wailed as vegetables and meat sailed up and out.

  Kate raised her eyes to see a chunk of celery on the ceiling. When it dropped, it landed on the tip of her shoe. She wanted to bellow her outrage, to call Gus and tell him to come and get her out of this nightmare. “Why don’t we change our clothes, clean the kitchen, and order a pizza,” she said calmly.

  In her bedroom, with the door closed and locked, mother and daughters clung to one another. I’m supposed to be the strong one, she thought, the guide, the one who leads her daughters in the right direction. She wanted to scream, run, run as fast as she could and not look back.

  “He’s a tormented soul,” she said.

  “He’s nuts, Mom. He should be in a hospital with trained people to help him,” Ellie said tightly. “He could seriously hurt one of us. You better start thinking about what’s going to happen when Della gets here.”

  Kate looked at Betsy. “I think he needs intensive therapy, but I don’t know if he’ll agree to it. What if ... they don’t want him in a ... place like that? He could say something that would . . . blow it all away. How can he have therapy when he isn’t allowed to talk about his past?” The horror of what she’d just
said hit Kate full force, her daughters, too.

  “They took him out knowing there would be problems, made him swear to secrecy, us too, and now they expect him and us to survive? What kind of people are they?” Betsy demanded.

  “Does that mean we scratch any kind of therapy?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid that’s exactly what it means,” Kate said quietly.

  “What do you suppose he wanted money for?” Betsy asked.

  “Men need to have money in their pockets. It’s right he should have money. I’ll give him whatever he wants,” Kate said.

  “He wants to buy a gun so he can shoot the birds,” Ellie blurted. “Don’t let him buy a gun, Mom.”

  “I won’t. Let’s change now. I don’t think we should leave him too long.”

  They scrambled into jeans, shirts, and sneakers, and they looked like triplets when they walked out to the kitchen. Kate pulled up short. The table was set, most of the mess cleaned up. The contents of the Crockpot were in a big bowl in the center of the table. Patrick was sitting at the head of the table.

  “I’m used to eating things off the floor,” he said. “My guards used to throw my food at me. Sometimes it had rat hairs on it, but I ate it anyway. We shouldn’t waste food. I didn’t think you would eat it, so I made you jelly bread sandwiches. Is that okay, Kate?”

  Kate burst into tears. She shook her head. “I don’t think the food is done, Patrick. I can fry you some eggs or open some soup.”

  “No, this is fine. I ate raw meat. This is a luxury. Sometimes I just had fat and grease on bread. This is good. I like it,” he said, trying to chew the food with his bad teeth.

  “These are good sandwiches, Dad,” Betsy said, her mouth full. “I remember you used to make them for us when you had a day off.”

  “I used to sprinkle sugar on the top and tell you not to tell your mother. Do you remember that?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Betsy said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Don’t cry,” Patrick said.

  “Okay.” She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt.

  “Kate, do you think I could get a dog? A big one. I think I’m going to need a friend, one who will tolerate me when I do something wrong. I think I need someone to love me. I thought . . . all this past week I thought I could handle anything as long as I was home. I can’t. It’s like everything is rushing at me, smothering me, and I have to do something. React in some way. For many years I wasn’t permitted to do or say anything. I used to whisper to myself so I wouldn’t forget how to talk. They beat you if they heard you clear your throat. Did you say I could or couldn’t get a dog, Kate?”

  “Yes, of course. We can go tomorrow if you like.” God, maybe this was going to work out after all. “Patrick, I have to talk to you about Della. I don’t want to upset you. Will you please listen?”

  “Yes.”

  Kate told him about Donald and Della, with the girls chiming in from time to time. “She took care of us, Patrick. She and Donald made us whole again. They wiped away our despair, made us want to live again. We wouldn’t be here for you now if it wasn’t for Donald and Della. Will you accept her and be kind to her?”

  “Do you think I’m a monster, Kate?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “If I say yes and you say yes to the dog, does that mean we are both working at”—he waved his arms about—“all of this?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Should we vote?”

  “Voting sounds good,” Kate said.

  “I vote yes,” Betsy said.

  “Me too,” Ellie said.

  “You always did that when you were little,” Patrick said. “You have to say, I vote yes.”

  “I vote yes,” Ellie said carefully.

  “I vote yes, too,” Kate said.

  “I vote yes, too. No hot peppers.”

  “I’ll tell Della.”

  “I think I’ll go to bed now, unless you want me to finish cleaning up.”

  “No, we can do it, Patrick. Sleep well.”

  “I love you all,” he said brokenly.

  “Is he trying or is it a trick?” Ellie said when she heard his door close. A moment later the door opened. She heard her father say very loudly, “I don’t like doors that are closed.”

  “Let’s believe he’s trying, and let’s all try harder,” Kate said, clearing the table.

  “Maybe it will work out.” Ellie sounded as though she didn’t believe what she was saying.

  “The Captain Patrick Starr I knew would never give up,” Kate said staunchly. “He was the best of the best. He’ll . . . make it. I know he will.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “I think I know what happened,” Kate said, wiping her eyes. “Your father has been locked up for so long, his thought processes can’t be normal. He’s got justifiable rage in him, and he lets it out the only way he knows how. He can’t vent that rage on the people who freed him, so who’s left? Us. The good part of him, the part they couldn’t take away from him, came through. It’s mixed up in his mind and tied to ... how he must have lived, afraid of doing something wrong and being punished or tortured for it—for no reason, more often than not. He may have . . . thought, for just a little while, that we were his captors. That we would punish him for what he’d done. The good part, the Patrick part, cleaned up and tried to make it right with the jelly sandwiches. Does that make sense?”

  “It’s as good as anything I can come up with,” Ellie said, rinsing the dinner plates.

  “None of us are qualified to offer therapy,” Betsy said. “You’re absolutely right, Mom, we can’t take him to any kind of professional. He can’t tell them where he’s been all these years and what he’s gone through. Those bastards really covered their asses on this,” she said bitterly. “I always dreamed this would be such a happy time. Damn it, I wanted it to be happy. Think about how we feel, and then think about what he must be feeling. My God!”

  “Della will ...”

  “Della will what, Mom? Clean up after him? Cook his meals? Wash his clothes? That’s not what I’m talking about. You’re it. You are Dad’s only chance of surviving this. It’s going to be a twenty-four-hour job. You’re the only one who can make him whole and well again.”

  And when he’s whole and well again and able to function in this big world we walk around in, then I can ... then I can go to Gus. “How long do you think it will take?” Kate asked, hating the desperate tone in her voice. When her daughters shrugged, she sank onto a kitchen chair. The shrugs had to mean a year at the very least, maybe longer. Would Gus wait for her to do her duty to her husband? How awful that sounded. How terribly selfish.

  “Mom, this is probably going to sound . . . weird, but did you notice how Dad talked, how he moved? He said all these strange things, and some of them he repeated like he was trying to make a point. It didn’t seem like he heard you. Do you think . . . is it possible he has a hearing problem, too? If they beat him, maybe they punched him in the head or something. I kept watching him. He heard us at the table because the table is small and we were close. What do you think?” Ellie said.

  “We’ll find out tomorrow. I’m taking your father for a complete physical, and from there to the best oral surgeon I can find. Hopefully the doctor who gives him a physical can recommend a good eye doctor. I think when they see his condition, they’ll want to do everything they can for him as soon as possible. The question is, do I take him to L.A. or go local? People know us in town. Questions might be asked that I can’t answer.”

  “I think you just answered yourself,” Betsy said. “L.A. is your best bet.”

  “All right, that’s what we’ll do, then. I’ll follow you girls back to the city. I know you want to stay and help and ... protect me. However, I think I’ll do better with your father one on one. Come up on the weekends, call, that sort of thing.”

  “What about your business?” asked the ever-practical Betsy.

  “I was hoping you’d step in, Betsy,
and take over for me. If I have to worry about the business, I won’t be able to free my mind and give a hundred percent to your father. Besides, your drawings were always as good as my own.”

  “What about Gus?” Ellie blurted. She covered her mouth instantly, her face full of guilt.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I know all about Gus Stewart,” Betsy said sourly. “Nothing you two did escaped me. So I was an ass. Let’s not go into all that old stuff. Well, Mom, what about Gus? Why don’t we go outside on the deck or walk around the yard,” she said suddenly.

  Ellie’s eyebrows scooted back almost to her hairline. Kate strode to the door and outside, her daughters right behind her. They sat down on the lounge chairs by the pool and whispered.

  “None of us would make good spies,” Kate said hoarsely.

  “The point being we are ordinary people thrust into an extraordinary situation. What about Gus?”

  “For now there is no Gus. It’s that simple.”

  “You love him, don’t you?” Betsy said.

  “Very much. We were going to be married in December.”

  “And now?” Ellie said.

  “And now we aren’t.”

  “Do you love Dad at all?” Betsy asked.

  Kate was tempted to lie, to wipe the miserable, hurt look off her daughter’s face. “Not in the way you mean. Your father was my first love. One never forgets that. But it was never a healthy relationship. I idolized him, worshiped him to the exclusion of all else. I was like some kind of robot going through the day-to-day motions. I existed. I only came alive when your father came home. I did everything by rote. I had all these schedules that only an idiot like me could follow. All they did was allow me to exist until your father walked through the door. I came alive then. In the morning when he left, I went back to being a robot. I thought I was normal. That’s why I couldn’t function when your father was shot down. I simply didn’t know how. All I ever wanted was his approval, a pat on the head, but he never gave it to me.

  “During our therapy sessions—do you remember, when you were sixteen or so?—Dr. Tennison asked me if Patrick loved me, and I said, without a moment’s hesitation, He doesn’t even like me. Then he said it was possible for someone to love another person but not like them, and vice versa. I pretended I understood what he was saying, but I really didn’t. I still don’t know what he meant. I don’t see how a person can love another person and not like them. Do you understand that?” Her daughters shook their heads. “So, I’m not so dumb after all,” Kate said ruefully.