by Irene Hannon
“Sounds like you’ve done this before.”
“Twice, when I got distracted and was caught unaware.”
Fletch gestured for her to precede him. “I’ll follow your lead.”
She worked her way toward the stairs, watching the waves, waiting for one that would give them an opening to dash across the final stretch of wet sand and clamber up before the next one hit. Once they made the plunge, they’d have to forge ahead. There could be no looking back, no retreating.
It was the same thing she’d have to do if she opened her heart to Fletch.
And that might take more courage than she could muster.
But maybe...just maybe...with God’s help she could manage it.
* * *
Fletch took a flying leap onto the step below Rachel as a wave crashed at his heels. “Made it. Good call on the timing.”
“Too close for comfort, though.” Grasping the railing, she began to ascend toward the long bridge that led over the dunes.
Fletch followed in silence.
She wasn’t going to tell him her story.
Disappointment settled over him, weighing him down like the sixty pounds of gear he used to tote on his recon missions. Not that he needed any more angst today, but he’d hoped she’d feel comfortable opening up to him, trust him to listen without judging.
Then again, he hadn’t done such a hot job of that with Lisa.
Maybe Rachel was wise to keep her secrets to herself.
Fletch continued his ascent, one step after the other, the steep climb taxing him far more than it would have if he’d had two real legs. Some days, keeping up the physical appearance of normalcy was almost as hard as maintaining the in-control emotional facade he presented to the world.
Almost.
In front of him, Rachel reached the top of the stairs. But instead of continuing over the long bridge, she turned and looked out across the sea.
He crested the last step and stopped beside her. Stairs might be more challenging in this post-SEAL life of his, but at least his rigorous daily exercise regime produced results. He wasn’t even breathing heavily. An accomplishment he’d once taken for granted—like so much else.
“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it? Peaceful.”
“Yeah.” Fletch rested his hand on the railing, waiting for her to swivel around and cross the bridge over the dunes.
Instead, she gripped her arms over her chest, moistened her lips and swallowed.
He might have learned a lot about body language during his SEAL days, but a guy would have to be unconscious to miss the kind of stress signals Rachel was telegraphing. Waves of tension radiated from her, and her taut posture reminded him of a deer poised to leap over a chasm.
Every protective instinct in his body prodded him to take her hand. But would his touch encourage her to continue—or spook her into silence?
No way to know...and he couldn’t take the risk. He wanted to hear her story.
So he waited, motionless, as five seconds ticked by. Ten. Fifteen.
When Rachel finally spoke, he started breathing again.
“I came here the summer after Mark died.” Her throat worked, and as he adjusted his position a fraction to get a better view of her face, he caught the shimmer of tears in her eyes. “Just two weeks after I lost my baby.”
For the second time in a handful of hours, he felt as if he’d been sucker punched.
Rachel was the mother of a child who had died?
The blindsiding revelations of the past few hours were leaving him as shell-shocked as the explosion on that mountain night in Afghanistan.
“I had no idea.” Replies didn’t get much more pathetic than that, but it was the best he could come up with while he was still reeling.
“Not many people do.” Rachel brushed some sand off the railing and slanted him a quick glance. “Are you in a hurry?”
“No.”
“We could sit here for a few minutes and watch the tide come in.”
“Okay.”
She lowered herself to the top step, and he joined her. Fortunately, the bridge and the stairs were wide enough for two people—but the arrangement was still cozy.
That suited him fine.
By the time they settled in, he’d had a chance to gather his wits and string some coherent words together. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I can’t imagine losing both a spouse and a child. I have no idea how a person survives a tragedy like that.”
He wanted to ask more. Wanted to know why, beneath her understandable grief, she also seemed troubled—and guilt-ridden. He, of all people, knew what those shadows in her eyes meant. He’d stared at them in his mirror every single day since Deke died.
But he couldn’t risk pushing...and perhaps pushing her away. The implied question in his final comment left the door open for further discussion, putting the ball in her court. That was all he could do.
A single tear slid down her cheek, and she averted her face, scrubbing it away with her knuckles.
“It’s even harder when...when it’s all your fault.”
At her broken words, his throat tightened, denial ricocheting through him. “I don’t believe that.”
Rachel took an unsteady breath and hunched forward, fists clenched in her lap. “Believe it.”
“No.”
Her head jerked toward him.
Fletch locked on to her gaze and held fast. “The Rachel who’s working on a vacation home for the less fortunate, who got teary-eyed over a forlorn little girl she didn’t know, who listened with compassion to the tale of a traumatized soldier, would never be a party to pain—or death.”
Another tear formed and clung to a spiky lash. “Not on purpose.” Her words came out in a whisper. “But pain or death that results from negligence and self-absorption makes you just as culpable.”
Negligence and self-absorption?
Neither trait fit the woman sitting inches away from him.
A wave crashed into the base of the steps, sending spray flying, and Fletch tasted salt as he watched another tear trickle down Rachel’s cheek. Tossing aside his SEAL-bred tendency to analyze every move, he reached over and wiped it away with the gentle pressure of his thumb. Then he folded her taut fingers in his hand. He could refute her words all he wanted, but she believed them. He needed to hear more before making his case.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
She looked down at their connected hands and released a shuddering sigh. “It’s not a happy story.”
“Neither was mine.”
Lifting her chin, she studied him. “I thought the plan was to talk about the issues you wanted to sort through.”
“We can get to that later.”
After a moment, she refocused on the churning waves a few feet below them. The wind tugged a wisp of hair loose from her braid, and he was tempted to smooth it down, tuck it back in.
But once she began to speak, his attention shifted to her pain-etched words.
“I already told you about Mark’s cancer. What I didn’t tell you was that it would have been curable if we’d caught it earlier. It all started with a mole on the back of his leg that he’d had for years. I still can’t believe such a small, innocent-looking thing could turn out to be so deadly.”
The very same reaction he’d had to the small, innocent-looking children in Afghanistan.
Rachel continued as if she didn’t expect him to respond. “He couldn’t see it, but I could. I was just too focused on monitoring my own body, trying to pin down the perfect window for conception, to notice that the mole was changing shape and color. Once I did get pregnant, I was even more self-absorbed.” Her chin quivered and she swallowed again. “A buddy from his gym spotted it a month after we toasted our upcoming parenthood.”
>
Fletch did some quick math. Rachel had told him her husband only lived three months after the diagnosis. One month before that, her pregnancy had been confirmed.
Her husband had died while she was pregnant—and then she’d lost her baby, too.
A muscle in his jaw spasmed, and he closed his eyes.
Why, God?
It was the same question he’d flung at the Almighty over and over again while he was flat on his back at Landstuhl. While he grappled to accept that certain doors had closed forever. While he struggled to learn how to walk again. While he held a sobbing Lisa when she’d visited him in stateside rehab.
But God was as silent now as He had been then.
Rachel lifted her gaze from the churning waters and looked over at him, her eyes green pools of misery. “It gets worse.”
Fletch gripped the edge of the step with his free hand and gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. “Tell me.”
Her throat contracted, and she sniffed. “Mark died in early May. Three weeks later, on a rainy night, I rear-ended a car on my way home from the grocery store. It wasn’t much more than a fender bender. The air bag didn’t even deploy. But a couple of days later, I began to feel bad. By the time I went to the doctor, I’d been bleeding internally for two days.” She fished in her pocket for a tissue. “Have you ever heard of placenta abruption?”
“No.”
“Neither had I.” Her breath was coming in ragged puffs now. “But that’s what I had. The doctor told me if I’d gotten...medical attention after the accident, I might not...have miscarried. But I was so mired in grief and guilt over Mark’s death...I didn’t stop to think about the effect of the accident on my baby. I was self-absorbed—again. And it had fatal c-consequences—again.” Rachel choked out the last few words between sobs, tissue wadded in her fingers, head bent.
Fletch could think of a lot of things to say in response to her litany of shortcomings and her claims of culpability—but those would keep. Right now, she needed touching more than talking.
Erasing the distance between them, he put his arm around her hunched shoulders and tugged her close, hoping she wouldn’t resist.
She didn’t.
Instead, she nestled into his chest, cheek resting near his heart, wisps of hair from her braid brushing his jaw, the faint scent of...jasmine?...wafting upward.
A shudder rippled through her, and then quiet sobs began to wrack her slim frame. They went on long enough to suggest she’d been holding her tears inside for weeks...months....years? And that wasn’t healthy, according to the army shrink who’d visited him in the hospital. What had the man said? Something about how it was important to feel and release emotions rather than bury or bottle them.
At the time, he’d blown the guy off. Told him to get lost in language that could still make him cringe
But the man might have had a point. Since he’d spilled his guts to Rachel at Francis House, under that jasmine vine, he’d felt better. The fact that she’d listened to his confession with empathy and kindness had comforted him more than he could ever have imagined.
Perhaps he could do the same for her.
When her sobs at last tapered off, she unclenched the wadded-up tissue from her fingers and dabbed at her eyes. “Sorry about that.”
“No need to apologize. Turnabout is fair play. I dumped a lot on you that night at Francis House.”
She eased away, and Fletch was tempted to tighten his grip, keep her within the circle of his arms. But he needed to let her call the shots on how the rest of this played out.
“You didn’t cry all over my shirt.” She summoned up a watery smile.
True.
But he’d been crying on the inside.
“SEALs don’t cry.”
Another tear leaked out of her eye, and she swiped it away. “For the record, I haven’t cried like this in more than two years.”
Fletch clasped his hands between his knees. “Also for the record, there’s nothing wrong with crying. It’s a healthy release—or so the shrinks told me when I was in the hospital.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Ever?”
Did the stinging in his eyes during the endless, frustrating, excruciating physical-therapy sessions count? What about the way his vision had blurred when he’d visited Deke’s grave with Lisa? Or the countless times he’d lingered in that suspended state between sleeping and wakefulness, lamenting that his life would never be the same, only to awaken and discover a damp pillow?
“If you have to think about it for that long, the answer is no.”
He didn’t dispute her.
Rachel pulled her legs up and hugged her knees. “Thank you for the sympathetic ear—even if I don’t deserve it.”
That was his cue.
“Did Mark blame you for what happened to him?”
She frowned. “No, of course not. He wasn’t like that.”
“Would you have blamed him if the situation had been reversed?” It was the same question Lisa had asked him about Deke...and if it had helped alter his perspective a tad, perhaps it would help Rachel.
Frustration tightened her features. “Look...I know what you’re trying to do. But it won’t work. I get that nobody’s perfect. We all have our faults and make mistakes, and we’re all called to forgive. I can do that with other people. Not so well with myself.”
Fletch considered how best to proceed. “Where exactly was the mole?”
“Here.” She pointed to a place on the back of her leg, closer to her hip than her knee.
“And you discovered it in February?”
“No, his gym buddy did. They liked one-on-one basketball. He spotted it on the court while they were playing.”
“So Mark was wearing shorts?”
“Yes. He always did when he played basketball.”
“But not at home?”
“Not at that time of year.”
“Meaning in the winter you didn’t often get a clear look at his leg in the kind of bright lights they have at gyms.”
Rachel unclasped her arms from around her knees and rested her hands on top, her expression pensive. “No. I guess not.”
“So the season may be as much to blame as you are.”
“I don’t know...” She shook her head, but he could tell she was thinking about it.
Good.
If nothing else, he’d planted a seed of doubt on one score.
Could he do the same with her guilt over her unborn child?
“I think there are also a lot of reasons not to blame yourself about the baby.”
Her fingers tightened into fists, and she stiffened. He’d already pushed hard. Maybe too hard. But this wasn’t the time to get cold feet, despite the back-off message her body language was sending.
Once more he covered one of her hands with his. “Don’t shut me out, okay? Will you stay with me for a few more minutes?”
She exhaled...then nodded.
“Before that fender bender, you’d never heard of placenta abruption. Did the idea of seeking medical attention even cross your mind?”
“No. It wasn’t that hard of a bump. But after Mark was diagnosed, I stopped reading my baby books. If I hadn’t, I might have found out about potential problems like that. Maybe if I hadn’t rescheduled my doctor’s appointment to the next week he might have raised my awareness of the danger of jolts and bumps before I had the accident.”
“That’s a lot of ifs, mights and maybes.”
Rachel regarded his hand covering hers. “Some days it seems that’s the story of life.” She looked over at him, her jade eyes dark with the pain of regret and loss. “I should also have been paying more attention to my driving. I never told this to anyone else, but right before the acciden
t, I started to cry. The tears blurred my vision, and visibility was already bad because of the rain. I didn’t notice the brake lights in front of me until it was too late. I shouldn’t have kept driving while I was crying.”
“You’d just lost your husband, Rachel. I doubt you were thinking straight. Cut yourself some slack.”
“You didn’t.”
Touché.
But he’d learned a thing or two today.
“Can I ask you one more question?”
“I guess.” Her tone was guarded.
“Was your husband a happy person?”
She seemed taken aback by the query, but she answered. “Yes. Very.”
“So was Deke, as Lisa reminded me today. She said it wasn’t fair to his memory for the two of us to spend the rest of our lives mourning. That while yesterday is written in stone and unchangeable, we can shape our tomorrows. And we can choose to honor the memory of those we loved by following their example and living every day with joy. She also told me to give my guilt to God and move on. I spent some time on the beach today trying to do that.”
Rachel shifted toward him. “Did you succeed?”
“Let’s just say the lines of communication are open again. It’s a start.”
“I’m glad for you.”
A crane swooped low over the water in front of them, then dived. A few seconds later it flapped back into the sky with a fish in its bill, mission accomplished.
If only it were that easy to spot what you needed and retrieve it.
“I asked you once about the role faith played in your life.” Rachel spoke slowly, tilting her head back to watch the crane soar against the sky. “You know I go to church every week with Aunt El, but the truth is, my faith took a major hit three years ago. Even though I want to do what your friend’s wife said and give my guilt to God, I’ve never been able to manage it.”
“Maybe that’s why people say faith is a journey, not a destination.”
“Maybe.” The wind whipped some stray strands of hair across her face, and she brushed them back, gesturing toward the gray clouds cresting the horizon. “We may be in for a storm. Can I give you a ride back to your car?”
