“Rachel, are you all right?”
The crying slowed, her body trembled a little less, and she clung to him. “I’ll never be all right,” she said, lifting her head. “Never.”
“Is something wrong? My God, you’re not sick, are you?” He was overcome with dread at the thought that she might be seriously ill.
“No, no, nothing like that. At least not physically. My sickness isn’t of the body. It’s of the heart.”
She had pulled away from him and was rummaging in the pocket of her shorts. He reached into his own pocket and handed her a handkerchief. “Here,” he said.
She blew her nose. Her eyes were swollen from crying.
“I need to tell you, but I can’t bring myself to do it,” she said, almost to herself.
‘Tell me what?”
“Something terrible. Something awful. I never talk about it, Joe, not to anyone.”
“What’s so bad that you can’t talk about it?” he demanded.
“You think I’m a better person than I am. If I tell you, you’ll know the worst about me.”
He already knew what kind of person she was, and nothing she could say would lessen her in his eyes. He shook his head and smiled at her. “Don’t worry, you can’t shock me. And you’d better talk about it because we’re going to be sitting right here on this beach until you do.”
She drew a deep shuddering breath and gripped his hands tightly between her own. He waited, wondering what on earth she could possibly be going to say to him. When he thought he might have to prompt her, she looked him straight in the eye.
“I had a family once. A wonderful family. A husband and three children.”
This shocked and surprised him. He could only stare at her with the feeling that the bottom was about to drop out of his world. He’d thought of her as a footloose single woman, not so different from himself. To imagine her with a husband and three kids was impossible.
She watched him in the darkness, her eyes never leaving his face.
“They died, Joe. All of them. They died because of me.”
He couldn’t believe this of Rachel, so kind and caring. He couldn’t.
“No,” he said unsteadily. “That can’t be true.”
Tears began to stream down her cheeks again, and her pain cut through his heart like a knife. What he felt for her was more than love, it was anguish and sorrow and compassion. If he could have borne this terrible pain for her, he would have, and gladly.
He kissed away the tears from her cheeks, and he held her close.
“Tell me,” he said, and so she did.
Chapter Ten
To say that he pitied her would be to do his powerful emotions a deep injustice. Joe struggled to retain his composure as Rachel poured out the awful story, as she trembled with the telling of it. He had to keep the shock from his face, had to be strong because she was so strong.
“If giving my life would have brought them back, I would have done it,” Rachel said brokenly, “I wanted to die, too. Only I didn’t. I had to pick up and go on. So I moved closer to my mother’s nursing home in New Jersey, hoping I could make some sense out of the tragedies that had affected both of us. Somehow I managed to make a life for myself. And then I came here and met you.”
He was consumed with compassion for her. “And then what, Rachel?” he said, wanting to remove the source of her pain but knowing that nothing he could say or do would ever accomplish that.
“And then,” she said, lifting her eyelids, all shiny with tears, to look deeply into his eyes. “And then you say you love me. I don’t deserve it, Joe.”
He folded her in his embrace, wrapped his arms around her as if he would never let her go. “My darling,” was all he knew to say. “My darling.”
Her mouth was near his ear. “Not anyone’s darling,” she said. “Not anymore.”
“I love you, Rachel.” He relaxed his arms so that they were looking straight at each other. “What can I do to convince you?”
“I don’t want you to love me. Leave me alone, Joe.” I
“I hear you saying those words, but I don’t think you mean them. Your heart is saying something else.”
“Maybe it is. But I don’t have to listen.”
Her words twisted something deep inside him. “know you wanted to save your family, but you can’t go on blaming yourself forever.”
“You don’t have to live with nightmares where you hear your children screaming and your husband calling your name. You don’t smell the stench of the fire in your nostrils and know that you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life!” The words were wrung from her, each one rending his soul.
He swallowed, knowing that he would never be able to imagine what this woman had been through. He smoothed her hair, his mind groping for the right words.
“I think we all have things happen to us, things that we don’t handle well,” he said carefully after a time.
“Do we?” She was staring at him.
He refused to look at her as he collected his thoughts. Flashes of phosphorescence glimmered in the rise of the waves; unexpected points of light. Well, she might as well know the worst about him. Nobody’s life was perfect, least of all his.
“I was in trouble when I was a kid. It was the summer between high school and what was supposed to be my first year of college,” he said.
“What happened, Joe?”
Now he looked at her, and she was gazing at him, her brown eyes serious.
“I got involved with some guys who robbed a movie theater. It was the same Rio Theater where we all went every weekend when I was a kid, and a really great old guy ran it. Just a little theater where they ran second and third-run action flicks. The guy, Ziggy, was nice to us, even let us in free when we didn’t have money for a ticket, which was pretty often in my case.”
“And you robbed him?”
“Oh, I didn’t actually take the money. I wasn’t even sure what was going on. These older guys I knew were driving around that night in July, saw me walking from the Dairy King to my house eating an ice-cream cone, invited me to come with them. Said they were going to catch the late show at the Rio Theater. It sounded okay to me, I’d seen them around town, thought it would be something to do. I was always ready for adventure in those days—maybe a little too much.” For years he’d tried not to think about that night, and he didn’t often.
“What happened?”
“We got there after the show had started, and Ziggy was counting money in the box office. We watched him doing it. The two other guys jumped out of the car and said they were going to ask him if it was too late to get in to see the feature, told me to drive around the block because the car was obstructing traffic on the street double-parked like we were.” He shrugged. “So I drove around the block.”
“Then what?”
“I came back around the corner and suddenly the other two guys jumped in the back seat and started yelung at me to get going. I thought maybe they’d been mugged, I didn’t know what the hell was happening, so I followed my first instinct and floored the gas pedal. They were arguing between themselves, and suddenly a whole lot of; money spilled across the seat.”
“The money they’d taken from the theater owner.”
“Yeah, that’s what it was. I started screaming at them, wanting to know what had happened, and I nearly wrecked the car. A policeman happened to be parked at a stop sign when I ran it, saw the commotion in the car, followed us.”
“And caught you?”
“He flicked on his flashing blue lights, and I was too scared to keep driving, so I started to pull over to the curb. One of the guys I was with was pounding me on the head as I slowed down, and when the policeman approached, they both leaped from the car and ran. The police officer was a neighbor, had known me since I was a baby. That really hurt, for him to be the one to haul me into the police station.”
“And the other guys?”
“Oh, they were caught. But I was implicated, they s
aid that the robbery was my idea and that I was driving the getaway car. The getaway car! They’d hit poor old Ziggy over the head with a beer bottle. He was never the same after that, sold the theater to some adult movie house and kids didn’t have a place to go on Saturday afternoons anymore. The whole thing nearly killed my parents.”
“Oh, Joe,” said Rachel.
“My family stuck by me, though. I hadn’t been a perfect kid—I didn’t like school and acted up, sometimes went truant—but I’d never been in trouble with the law before. The judge sentenced me to community service, believe it or not. The sentence was commuted when I joined the Navy.”
“You didn’t mean any harm. It’s like you got caught up in a situation that you couldn’t have anticipated,” Rachel said, her arm going around his waist.
He looked at her. “True. And that’s what happened to you, too, Rachel. You did the best you could under the circumstances. Something bad happened You had to make a judgment during that fire, whether to go for help or not. Chances are no matter what you’d done, nothing could have saved your family. Just as nothing I could have done when those guys jumped in the car after robbing Ziggy could have changed the fact that they’d already hurt him and taken his money.”
Rachel wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and Joe took her hand in his and lay down beside her. “Rachel, I didn’t tell you my story so you’d feel sorry for me. I told you so that you’d know that we’ve both been through a lot All we can do now is go on. That’s all there is to do.”
Rachel stared down at him. “You’re a wonderful man, Joe. You’ve overcome obstacles to get where you are today, emotionally and financially. But, Joe, none of this changes the fact that I don’t deserve a family.”
He lifted a hand and touched her face. “Don’t say that. You deserve everything and more. It wasn’t your fault that the fire started. It wasn’t your fault that you couldn’t get them out Some things just happen, and we don’t know why.”
“Like falling in love?”
“Now you’re talking my language,” he answered, and he gently pulled her face down to his and kissed her.
“Sometimes there isn’t a why,” he murmured. “Sometimes there’s only a why not” He kissed her again, enfolding her in his arms and pulling her on top of him. In their solitude out here on the beach, captured under the giant dome of stars, it was as if they existed separate and apart from the rest of the world. Apart from the world and yet still in it, apart from each other but not so far, never far again. Somehow he would convince her that they should be together forever, and making love to her on this deserted beach with the stars and the breeze and the two of them wanting each other seemed like a very good start.
He wasn’t sure how it happened, but soon the two of them were lying on the blanket without any clothes and she was gasping his name over and over and he was caressing her breasts, kissing her everywhere, warming her cool skin with his breath. And then he was inside her, pure ecstasy, and he was desperate to ream those memories out of her, to vanquish them forever, but when she should have reached her peak, she only cried silent tears.
He held her in his arms, listening to her heart beating in cadence with his, and he knew that he would never rest until Rachel belonged to him. Not only her body, but her mind and her spirit and her soul. And, most of all, her heart.
LATER IT WAS RACHEL who made the first move to leave, They gathered up the blanket and shook it free of sand, and they walked slowly arm in arm back to the condo. Sherman had already gone off duty, and they let themselves in with the key to the lobby door.
Nothing was settled. Nothing had changed. And yet Rachel had begun to feel the stirrings of hope. Joe was a kind and understanding man, and he cared about her. He said he loved her, even after he knew about the fire. He’d shared his innermost pain with her. But did she love him? She didn’t know.
When they arrived back at apartment HE, it was to find Gina curled up asleep on the couch with Chrissy cradled in the curve of her body. They made a sweet picture, the two of them, and Rachel and Joe paused to look at them.
Rachel wanted to pick Chrissy up, but Joe held her back. “Don’t wake them,” he whispered, but with that, Gina opened her eyes.
“Oh!” she said, scrambling up, the baby in her arms. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
“It’s late,” Joe said. “We didn’t expect you to be awake.”
“Here, let me take Chrissy,” Rachel said, and she went to Gina and gathered the baby into her embrace. She kissed the baby, Joe watching her, and then she turned away. She knew that he wanted her to love him as she did this child, and she was embarrassed that she didn’t. No…that she couldn’t At least not yet.
“Come on,” Joe said to the Gina. “I’ll take you home.”
Gina went and stood close beside Rachel. “I could stay tonight and get up with the baby. I could feed her while Rachel gets some sleep. You’re tired, Rachel. You must be.”
“No, I’m fine. Chrissy will probably only need one feeding before morning. You’re the one who needs rest, Gina.” If anything, Gina’s pallor was even more pronounced than it had been on Christmas Day.
“That’s right,” Joe said, injecting a jovial tone into the conversation. “We need to get you up to par so you can go back and tackle those new courses you’re going to be taking next semester.” When Gina went into the bedroom to get her sweater, Joe slid an arm around Rachel. “I’ll be back after I take her home,” he said.
Rachel didn’t object. She wanted him to hold her all night, to feel the warm strength of his arms enfolding her. To give herself a chance to feel the emotion that she longed to feel.
She picked up the baby, and Joe held out his finger. Chrissy grabbed it and held on tight. “She likes you, Joe,” Rachel said, entranced by the idea.
“Babies usually do,” he said as Gina appeared in the doorway.
“Joe, let’s go,” she said abruptly.
Her curt tone, directly in contrast with her earlier wheedling, surprised both of them, but Joe pried his finger out of the baby’s grasp and dropped a parting kiss on Rachel’s cheek.
“See you later,” Joe said.
After Joe and Gina left, Rachel busied herself with settling Chrissy in her crib. Chrissy fussed and grew restless, but then Joe came back, picked up the baby and comforted her while Rachel took a long soothing bath.
Joe looked up when Rachel emerged from the bathroom in her black nightgown, and he smiled. Chrissy was asleep.
“Shh,” he cautioned. “The last thing I want to do right now is wake this baby.”
He went into the bedroom and laid the sleeping Chrissy down as Rachel tiptoed across the room to join him at the side of the crib.
“Chrissy’s so pretty,” Rachel said dotingly. “A perfect baby.”
“Hey,” Joe said. “What about me?”
“What about you?” Rachel leaned into him, and his hand came around to cup her breast. What about you? she thought to herself. What?
“Don’t you think it’s time to put me to bed, too?” He was teasing her, trying to make her laugh.
And so she did take him to bed, and before she slipped into a deep sleep, Rachel thought to herself what a comfort it was to have him there, so strong and kind and capable to the core. Furthermore, he was willing to overlook her faults.
That in itself was enough to make her love him. Wasn’t it?
JOE REALIZED DURING THE NIGHT that he was sleeping on the side of the bed with Mimi’s magnetic pad.
He woke himself sufficiently to get more comfortable, curving an arm across Rachel’s stomach, kissing her when she murmured in her sleep. But there were no vivid dreams, only something silly about a Santa with a birthmark who kept talking about Christmas wishes.
Joe’s only wish at the moment was that the dream would stop and that he and Rachel would live happily ever after. Which was worth a hearty ho-ho-ho from the Santa.
Just a silly dream, and anyway, he had promised to get up with Chrissy if s
he woke. Which she did. And so Joe got up with her, and in the midst of all the feeding and burping and diapering, he forgot about the dream, which was probably just as well.
THE NEXT MORNING after Joe had left, Rachel realized that she had forgotten to ask him if he’d had a chance to talk with Gina yet. Well, she would mention it later. There was plenty of time; Gina wasn’t scheduled to return for the second semester at Florida State for at least another week.
Rachel played with Chrissy for a while before she managed to tear herself away from the baby long enough to accomplish some work. Work had its benefits. Rachel knew that by keeping busy she was avoiding the two most important issues in her life at present: whether or not she would be able to keep the baby and whether or not she was in love with Joe. She knew she’d have to deal with both questions sooner or later. She only hoped it would be later on both counts.
She was so absorbed in her work that the phone startled her when it rang.
“Ms. Hirsch?”.
“Yes,” Rachel said cautiously as she recognized the voice of Madeline Ewing, the HSS social worker.
“Ms. Hirsch, I wanted to let you know that your background checked out. It looks as if you are indeed qualified to be a foster parent in Cane County.”
Rachel felt a rush of relief such as she’d never felt before in her life. It was short-lived, however.
“But there’s an irregularity. Your record was amended some years back, and there is no explanation. When you were approved as a foster parent, you were married. And your record was changed to show that you are not married at present. Is this 0016?”
Rachel looked out at the ocean, where a curtain of rain was sweeping across the horizon. “No, I’m not married,” she said.
“Since you are not presently married, you can’t possibly fulfill requirements to be a foster mother. We require both a foster mother and a foster father in the home. I’m afraid that we’ll have to send someone to pick up that baby, Ms. Hirsch. You should expect our people from this agency to arrive shortly.”
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