LOST AND FOUND HUSBAND

by Sheri WhiteFeather

  “It’s nice that you helped influence their ceremony.”

  “Kaley had a big hand in it, too.”

  “Like she did in ours.”

  He shrugged, smiled. “She’s turning into a regular little wedding planner.”

  Dana smiled, too. “She’s certainly good at it.” She stretched out her legs. “I can’t get over how pretty it is here. Look at all of the wildflowers. They’re everywhere.”

  “Even daisies. I noticed them earlier. I should pick some for you before we go back to the house.”

  “That would be wonderful.” She glanced at the ring he’d given her. “Daisies have become my favorite flower.”

  “I keep wondering if I should bring some to Corrine next time I visit her, as a gift from you.” He frowned. “I’m sorry I still feel funny about you going there.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, even if it wasn’t okay. It was worse now that she loved him. “You can’t help how you feel.”

  Torturing herself, she pressed on, wanting to know even more about his bond with Corrine. “When did you know that you loved her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you feel it right away? Or did it happen over time?”

  “I had an immediate attraction to her when we first met. But it wasn’t love at first sight. Those feelings developed as our relationship progressed.”

  “Do you remember the exact moment that you realized it?”

  “No. But I remember that she said it first.”

  “Really?” Naturally, Dana was intrigued by the similarity between herself and Corrine. “She told you she loved you before you said it to her?”

  “Yes, but I said it right back to her after she broke the ice. So maybe that was the moment I realized how I truly felt. Or maybe I already knew it deep inside but was waiting for her to say it first.”

  She looked curiously into his eyes. When she summoned the courage to tell him how she felt, would he react in the same way? Would he have a sudden revelation? Or would he pull away, leaving her wanting more?

  “Will you pick those daisies for me now?” she asked, needing to feel closer to him.

  “Sure.” He got up and scouted around for the flowers.

  He disappeared through the trees and came back with a handful of white and yellow posies. She accepted the bouquet, and when she reached forward, she felt a little flutter in her stomach.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “What?”

  “The baby moved.”

  “For real?” A grin split across his face.

  “Yes, for real.” She was grinning like a loon, too. This was the very first time she’d felt the stirrings of their child. “It was like a butterfly. Like the tiniest of wings.”

  He put his hand on her tummy. “I wish I could feel it.”

  “You will later, when it starts kicking.”

  “I can’t wait to get home for the ultrasound. I can’t wait to see who’s waiting for us.”

  “A bow or a sifter.” The appointment was less than a week away. She clutched the flowers and smiled. “I think our baby is happy that you picked these for me.”

  Eric leaned over to kiss her, creating more bliss. What a moment. Although Dana had already acknowledged to herself that she loved him, she realized that he was genuinely capable of making her feel loved, too.

  Chapter Twelve

  “It’s a boy,” the ultrasound technician said.

  Dana’s heart skipped a beat. She glanced over at Eric. He sat beside her, staring at the monitor. Staring and staring, as if he were in utter and complete awe. She’d never seen a more transfixed man.

  “A son,” he finally said.

  “A bow,” she replied. A hunter, a child who would grow up to be like his father.

  “Look how amazing he is, Dana, look how much he’s grown. He doesn’t look like a bean anymore. He’s even more perfect and beautiful than he was before.” His voice vibrated. “He’s everything he should be.”

  He absolutely was. Everything. She was overwhelmed, too. She wanted to count their son’s fingers and toes and wiggle each and every one, but she couldn’t do that until he was born.

  Eric still hadn’t quit staring. “Kaley is going to have a baby brother.”

  “We better start thinking up some boy’s names.”

  “We definitely will.”

  They left the medical facility and went home. Eric kissed Dana with family-man intensity and headed for the nursery, determined to complete the artwork on the walls. She decided that today was the day to tell him that she loved him. It was perfect timing. She couldn’t imagine a better setting or a better scenario. What could be more inspiring than your husband giving his all to the child both of you had created?

  Not that she wasn’t anxious about saying it. She was nervous as nervous could be. But that didn’t change the fact that it needed to be said.

  She waited for Eric to finish his daddy task, and when he called her into the nursery to see the outcome of his labor, she marveled at his accomplishment.

  Each animal had been painted with love and care, as were the spiritual meanings that accompanied them. The brightly colored Hummingbird was Joy. The age-old Turtle represented Mother Earth. The wily-looking Coyote was a Trickster. The bold, proud Eagle reinforced Spirit. The softly painted Deer depicted Gentleness. The shiny black Raven offered Magic. The high-nosed Moose boasted Self-Esteem. Everywhere she looked, there was a wondrous animal and its Cherokee meaning.

  “This is one of my totems,” Eric said about Wolf.

  Dana smiled. Wolf equaled Teacher. “He’s definitely part of you. But so is he.” She gestured to Panther because Eric reminded her of a big cat. And then she noticed that Panther represented Future.

  She took a deep breath. The future. Her life with him. Their life together. This was definitely the time to tell him how she felt.

  But before she could say it, he said, “Butterfly is one of your protectors, Dana.”

  She noticed the meaning was Transformation. “Why did you choose that for me?”

  “Because when you first felt the baby move you compared it to butterfly wings. And because your body keeps changing and growing, transforming you into the mother of our child.”

  She smiled and spun around, making the kerchief hem of her scarf-print dress flutter.

  He laughed and watched her. The sound of his laughter made her long for more and more. But she stopped before she got dizzy.

  “Our son is probably seeing stars now,” he said.

  “I just took him to the moon.”

  “My wife is a moon dancer.”

  His wife. She liked hearing him say that. She glanced around the room and caught sight of Antelope. “I want him to protect me, too.” Antelope was Action.

  He cocked his head. “What’s your action today? Besides taking Sweet Bean to the moon?”

  Her action. Her purpose. She gazed at Antelope for support. Then she returned her attention to the man she’d married. “I’ve been contemplating saying this since we were in Oregon, but I’ve been waiting for the right time.” Finally, she went ahead and did it. “I love you. I’m nervously, wonderfully in love with you, and I want you to know how I feel.”

  His dark skin paled, and he looked as if he couldn’t breathe. She was barely breathing, too. For the baby’s sake, she forced oxygen in and out of her lungs.

  “Say something, Eric.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just say anything.”

  He tugged a hand through his hair, spiking the short dark strands. “The only thing I can think to say is that I can’t handle you loving me.”

  “What’s wrong with a wife loving her husband? That’s how life is supposed to be.”

&nb
sp; “I can’t love you back, Dana.”

  “You can’t or you won’t.”

  “I can’t.”

  She looked around the room for guidance and zeroed in on Elk. Its meaning was stamina. A reminder for Dana to stay strong. “You’re just scared.”

  “Scared? I’m panicked. I appreciate that you love me. Love is one of the Creator’s greatest gifts. But it isn’t a gift that I can return, and that isn’t fair to you.”

  “I’ll decide what’s fair to me.” She glanced at Elk again. “And if I want to love my husband, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “You can’t fix me, Dana.”

  She started at his choice of words. “Who told you that I was trying to fix you?”

  “No one. But that’s your nature, isn’t it? To make everything all right? To be perpetually positive?”

  “Yes, and it’s a damn good quality.”

  “I agree. It is. But I’m not ready for this.”

  “Then why do you smile so much when you’re around me? And laugh? And kiss me when I need to be kissed? And hold me when I need to be held? Why do you make me feel loved if you’re not ready?”

  “I make you feel loved?” He took a step back. “How is that possible?”

  “It’s possible because you don’t see yourself for who you really are.”

  “I know who I am. Cripes, Dana. Wake up and smell the daisies. I’ve been widowed for seven years and I’m still talking to my dead wife.”

  “I’m willing to talk to her, too.”

  “That’s not going to do any good. She wanted me to move on. When she was dying, she begged me to find someone else someday.” He made a tight face. “But I refused to listen.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” he mimicked, as if it was a foolish question. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you see? Love means loss to me.”

  “Yes, I get it. I’ve gotten it all along, but you should be focusing on how grateful you are that she loved you enough to want you to move on, rather than how much it hurt when she died.”

  “I don’t want to have this conversation. I don’t want to do this.”

  He walked out of the room, then out of the house. Dana stayed behind. She sat in the rocking chair in the nursery, surrounded by the Cherokee animals.

  Was Eric on his way to the cemetery? She hoped that he was. She also hoped that Corrine would be able to help him this time. That somehow, she would be able to reach him, even if it was from beyond the grave.

  * * *

  Eric bought Corrine a bouquet of daisies similar to the ones he’d picked for Dana in the woods. In a sense, these were from her, too.

  His new wife. He’d noticed how she kept looking at Elk, trying to draw upon its strength. Yet she was already strong. Dana had the spirit of a warrior. But he still didn’t want her to love him. Not if he couldn’t return that love.

  Corrine had been just as strong as Dana. Not as wild or impulsive, but a warrior nonetheless. And where had that gotten her? Stricken with a disease that she couldn’t beat.

  He knelt at her grave, preparing to tell her everything that had transpired. He’d been keeping her abreast of things all along, and today he needed her more than ever.

  He needed a cold white headstone?

  A shiver ran through him, and he almost got up and left. But he stayed instead, doing what he always did.

  He said, “We found out today that Sweet Bean is a boy. We saw him on the ultrasound, moving around in his mama’s womb. He’s the most beautiful kid you could imagine. When we got home from the appointment, I finished painting the nursery. I wanted to make his room as special as I could.” He paused to take a hard, deep breath. “Something else happened today, too.” Something he couldn’t handle. “She says that she loves me, Corrine. Dana loves me.”

  He was met with silence. But he didn’t expect an answer. These conversations were always one-sided. But they still were his lifeline to what he’d lost.

  “She thinks that I behave as if I love her, too. That I laugh and smile when I’m with her, and that I hold her and kiss her when she needs it.”

  Were those things true? he asked himself.

  He said, “She does make me laugh and smile more than I ever have.” Ever? Even when he’d been married to Corrine? He quickly clarified, “But she’s uplifting that way. People can’t help but smile and laugh around her. As for the holding and kissing when she needs it—”

  He stalled, his pulse quickening. “I do it because I need it, too.” Because he needed her as much she needed him, he realized. “I like having her as my wife, and I like how good we make each other feel.”

  He imagined that Corrine was smiling now, happy that he was admitting how successful his second marriage was.

  “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t make this easy on me. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

  Doing what? his subconscious mocked. Falling in love with the woman he’d married? The fun, sweet adorable woman carrying his child? The woman who wanted nothing but the best for him?

  Now what was he supposed to do? Go back and tell Dana that she was right? How was that going to help? Eric was still scared, far more troubled than when he’d first come here.

  “Thanks a lot,” he said to Corrine. “I’m a bigger mess than before.” He scowled at the daisies and got to his feet. “I should have known that you would take her side, without any regard to how I feel. I should be the one to decide when the time is right for me to face my fears, not you or Dana or anyone else.”

  Frustrated, he walked to his car, and before he climbed inside, he noticed a piece of paper stuck to his shoe. He peeled it off and saw that it was a bookmark with an image of a man dressed in Biblical-era clothing holding a gold-toned pendant. The caption below the picture read, “Saint Jude, The Miracle Saint and Patron of Lost Causes.”

  Eric wasn’t familiar with the practice of praying to saints. They weren’t connected to his spiritual beliefs. Yet he slipped the bookmark into his pocket, anyway. He couldn’t deny that he was feeling like a lost cause.

  Or that he was in need of a miracle.

  Eric went home and found Dana in the nursery, where he’d left her. She was sitting in the rocking chair, like the mama-to-be that she was.

  She turned and saw him. She stood and came closer. “Did you go to see Corrine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you feel better now?”

  “No. Everything is worse.” He was still in lost cause mode. The bookmark wasn’t his miracle. It hadn’t turned his feelings around. He probably should have left it for someone else to find, someone worthy of it.

  “Why is everything worse?”

  “Because I figured out that I’m falling in love with you, too. And I don’t like it.”

  She merely stared at him. Then in her usual Dana way, she flashed a big bright smile. “Eventually you’ll start to like it. How could you not? Being in love is miraculous.”

  “Yeah, and once it goes away, it’s the most devastating thing in the world.”

  “What we have isn’t going to go away. There aren’t any obstacles, except your fear.”

  “Our age difference could be an obstacle. You’re young, Dana, and there might come a time when you’ll want to leave me, when I’ll be too old for you.”

  She looked at him as if he were crazy for saying such a thing, much less thinking it was possible. “I’m not going to outgrow my feelings for you. You need to get over the belief that love equals loss. Because I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t.”

  “Since when were you an authority on love?”

  “Since now. Since I went bonkers over you.”

  Did she have to be so damned sure of herself? “Fine. You love me, and I’m spiraling into that same type of feeling for you. But
that doesn’t give us the power to control the outcome.”

  “I’m not going to get sick, Eric. What happened to Corrine isn’t going to happen to me.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “No, but we both know that’s your biggest fear, and you need to stop dwelling on it.”

  “Easy for you to say. You don’t know how it feels to watch the person you love waste away.”

  “No, I don’t. But I know how it feels to watch my husband die while he’s still alive.”

  Her words kicked him square in the gut. “If you got sick, Dana, I’d want to die, too.”

  “Oh, my beautiful man. No one is going to get sick. And no one is going to die.”

  “You can’t make a claim like that. No one can.”

  “I can believe that everything will be all right. I can live by that belief.”

  She could. But he couldn’t. “I got angry at Corrine today. It annoyed me that she was siding with you.”

  Dana quirked a smile. “She told you that she’s on my side?”

  He fought not to smile, too, or laugh, which would be worse. “Not in so many words.” He deliberately frowned. “Everyone is on your side. Even Jude.”

  She flinched. “What?”

  “St. Jude.” He took the bookmark out of his pocket and handed it to her. “After I walked away from Corrine, I found this stuck to my shoe.”

  “Oh, this is wild. And wonderful, too.” She rushed over to the table beside the rocking chair and picked up a sheet of paper. “While you were gone, I started compiling a list of names for our son. Names I was going to discuss with you.” She showed it to him. “Check out the first one on the list.”

  He glanced down. Jude. He lifted his gaze to hers, his heart thumping like mad. “We’re going to have to name him that now.”

  “I know, right?” She threw her arms around him. “It’s meant to be.”

  He slid his hands down her spine. “What made you choose that name? What drew you to it?”

  “I wanted a name that represented hope, and I started thinking about an old Beatles song that my grandmother used to play when she was feeling sad. ‘Hey Jude.’ The lyrics are about everything getting better. And it just seemed to fit.” She held him close. “Everything is going to get better, Eric. Our little Jude is telling us that it will be. And so is Corrine. I think she made it possible for you to find the bookmark.”