The Widow of Conard County

by Rachel Lee

  Carefully, slowly, she lifted the flap. With time, the glue had dried, and it almost popped open at her touch. Then she drew out a single, small sheet of paper, and felt her eyes flood as she saw his penciled handwriting.

  Sharon, my dear, if you’re reading this, well, it’s obvious. I want you to know that I don’t forget you for an instant out here, not one. No matter what’s going on, you’re on my mind. You’re my home fire, the reason I keep going. All I ever really wanted was you, and all I want out here is to get back to you.

  Just remember all the joy and happiness you’ve given me, all the happiness we shared. And when you remember that and remember me, remember also what I told you more than once.

  Move on, Sharon. Make a life for yourself, find that happiness again. Because if you don’t, my heaven will become hell.

  Love forever,

  Chet

  Trembling, Sharon clutched the crinkly paper, then doubled over sideways on the couch and gave in to grief in a way she hadn’t in a very long time. Deep, wrenching sobs escaped her, and the tears scalded her cheeks and soaked the couch. She felt as if the pain were tearing her in two.

  * * *

  Outside on the porch, Liam hesitated. Well, how had he expected her to react? If he hadn’t been wounded, that letter would have been in her hands a year ago. Instead, it had arrived late and reopened her wounds.

  The thing was, since he’d looked through his belongings before leaving rehab, that letter and the promise he’d made had been burning a hole in his mind, heart and soul.

  “Maybe not so smart, buddy,” he muttered to himself. Talking to himself had become a bit of a habit since it kept his thoughts on track. His condition was a whole lot better than six months ago, but he could still sometimes lose track of where he was in space and time. So he talked himself through things, and ignored the odd and uneasy looks many people gave him.

  More than once over the past few weeks he had wondered if he should have ditched Chet’s letter. But he’d made a promise to a buddy, and you didn’t break those promises, even if you wondered if you would be walking in on a woman who had built a new life and didn’t want to look back.

  When he’d learned she still lived on the ranch, though, it had seemed to him that maybe she hadn’t quite moved on yet. Maybe the letter would help.

  Regardless, he had to keep the promise.

  Then, horrifying him, he’d barely set eyes on her before he felt the stirrings of desire. For Sharon Majors. For his buddy’s wife. God, she was a desirable woman, a small compact bundle topped by shaggy brown hair and a pair of eyes as blue as a gas flame. Parts of him he’d almost forgotten existed had sprung to life at his first sight of her. That sure as hell made him feel like a double heap of manure. He closed his eyes a second, filled with self-disgust. And guilt. Chet hadn’t sent him here for that.

  But now he was listening to her sobs and wondering why he and Chet had ever thought writing such letters would be a good thing. “Words from beyond the grave,” Chet had called them. Yeah, and they came as such a shock. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been able to get here a few months after Chet died. But now it seemed awfully cruel.

  His own letter had vanished with Chet, and that was just as well. Considering his sister, his only living relative, had given up on him after a few months when it had looked as if he was going to need to be spoon-fed for the rest of his days, he wouldn’t have wanted that letter landing in her lap. Not now. Not ever.

  The sound of the sobbing renewed and yanked him back to the here and now, thousands of miles away from Afghanistan, a year away from his sister’s desertion. Not that he’d been much aware of it at the time. Later, after months of therapy that had helped him recover mobility, and much of his memory and speech, the VA helped him understand: his sister back home in Texas wasn’t interested in looking after him.

  And when it started to appear that he’d be able to take care of himself, he’d managed to let go of the hurt and make up his mind that he’d never count on anyone again.

  He listened to those sobs and wished he knew what to do. Thing was, he was no longer sure what to do about most stuff. He’d gathered that his reactions were sometimes off, that he didn’t always make himself understood and that socially he seemed to say a lot of the wrong things.

  Somewhere inside he could remember a time when he didn’t have those problems, but he couldn’t remember them clearly enough. It was as if when he’d lost some of his function, his ability to remember how he had once functioned had almost completely evaporated with it. He just knew that he had.

  He unleashed a heavy sigh of irritation and looked at the door. Instantly he remembered that he’d broken it and had promised to fix it. He stood there staring at it, trying to figure out what he needed to do and in what sequence and realized he absolutely couldn’t.

  A burst of savage frustration exploded in him. He’d brought a woman who was trying to mend to tears of anguish, and he’d busted a door and couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

  Nor did it help one damn bit to remember what the doctors had said when they’d cut him loose. How he’d come further and improved more than they’d ever hoped. That he would probably still improve.

  It didn’t help when he didn’t know what to do about a woman’s tears or how to fix a splintered piece of wood.

  A cuss word escaped him too loudly. He knew he wasn’t supposed to do that, but right now he damn well didn’t care.

  He ought to go back inside, grab his pack and leave this woman alone.

  But he couldn’t go back in there, not while she was still crying. Instead, he stomped away from the house along the rutted drive and tried to cool down.

  Frustration was part of it. He knew that. He had to work it off now before it busted out of the cage and hurt someone or something.

  At least he’d learned that much.

  * * *

  Sharon cried until she couldn’t cry any more. When she finally sat up and wiped her face, her throat was raw and her diaphragm ached. God, she hadn’t cried like that in nearly a year.

  Liam was gone. At first she felt awful that she’d driven the man away when he’d just been keeping a promise, but then she saw his backpack was still on the floor in front of the recliner. So he hadn’t left yet.

  She should at least offer him coffee, a bite to eat. Be courteous enough to thank him for making this trek to the back of beyond to deliver a letter. It couldn’t have been easy for him, either.

  Besides, he’d been Chet’s best buddy. Every single letter she’d gotten from her husband had mentioned something he and Liam had done together. Man, Liam must be feeling the loss as much as she, and she hadn’t even acknowledged that.

  She hurried to the bathroom to wash her face with cold water, but not even cold water could ease the puffiness around her eyes. Not that it mattered. Grief was an honest emotion, not something she needed to hide.

  She saw the doorjamb again, splintered where the hook had pulled out of the wood. She regarded it for a moment, feeling it was somehow symbolic, but her brain was too cloudy from her crying jag to make sense of it.

  Movement caught her attention and she saw Liam coming back up the dusty drive, just as he’d done before. Except this time she felt relief, relief that she hadn’t driven him away. That would have been a mean thing to do.

  He reached the porch steps and looked up at her, just as he had earlier. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m sorry I drove you away.”

  “Wasn’t you. I said I’d fix that door, but damned if I can figure out how.”

  She almost told him not to worry about it, but she caught a hint of frustration in his voice. TBI. Of course.

  “How about we do it together?” she suggested. “I could use something to do with my hands. But first let’s have a little to eat. I
don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  He hesitated only briefly before he mounted the steps and joined her inside. She noted for the first time that he was taller than Chet, and bigger in every other respect. Probably all that weight lifting he’d mentioned.

  She led him to the kitchen, a sunny room with white cabinets, yellow walls and curtains and a laminate floor that stood up to spills. The first room she and Chet had finished after they’d bought the place. The rest of it she had worked on while he was gone.

  She motioned him to the wood dinette with its ceramic-tile top, long a favorite of hers. “Anything you don’t care for?”

  He gave her half a smile. “Where I’ve been, you learn to be grateful for anything edible.”

  “I think I can do better than that. Are you a coffee drinker?”

  “Can’t live without it.”

  She started a fresh pot of coffee, then set about making sandwiches. Ordinarily she made small ones for herself, but this time she made two thick ham-and-cheese ones for Liam, the kind that Chet had always liked. For him, it hadn’t been a sandwich unless it was loaded.

  It felt good to be doing something for someone. For years now, her friends had made a practice of gathering here for a card game once a month, and except for a brief break when Chet had been killed, the tradition had continued. She always liked buzzing around making food for folks.

  Her mood improved with the activity, and she was able to give Liam a bit of a smile when she served him his meal. She sat across from him, with her own little sandwich and coffee, and wondered where safe conversational ground lay.

  “So were you on your way to somewhere?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Half a sandwich in her hand, she paused. “You just came all the way here to deliver the letter?”

  “Yeah. This sandwich is great. The best I’ve had in forever. Good coffee, too. Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” She watched him eat like a starved man while she chewed and swallowed a small bite herself, beginning to feel troubled. “Did you just get out?”

  “Of rehab? Nearly a month ago.”

  “Family?”

  He shook his head.

  “Liam, what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll figure out something.”

  No plans, no family, fresh out of rehab with a traumatic brain injury. She didn’t like the sound of that at all. She was no expert on the subject, but just drifting didn’t sound good to her. As a teacher, she had occasionally dealt with people who suffered from cognitive deficits, and some of his statements made her certain that he suffered from some important ones.

  “Well,” she said slowly, knowing exactly what Chet would want her to do, and what she needed to do for a man who was willing to make a trip like this to keep a promise, “I could use some help around here. If you’re not in a hurry.”

  He stopped eating. “I’m in no hurry,” he admitted. “But I don’t know how much help I’d be, Mrs. Majors.”

  “Sharon, please.”

  “Sharon. Honest to God, I don’t know how much I can help. I need lists to keep me on track now. I have to talk to myself a lot to keep my train of thought going. How can it possibly help you if you have to ride herd on me to get simple things done?”

  She bit her lip, thinking, trying to avoid words that might give hurt when she intended none. “Well...looks like you have a strong back.”

  Again that half smile. “Yeah. Strong back, strong everything except for a weak brain.”

  “I don’t think your brain is all that weak.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “True. But I’ll tell you what. Riding herd on you would be helpful for me.”

  He frowned. “How?”

  “I need to keep busy, Liam. I’ve been letting this place go. My neighbors occasionally stop by and keep one thing or another from going to total ruin, but I hate depending on them, and I hate that I’m not doing it myself. You’d give me a reason to do the things I need to do.”

  His frown deepened, and she feared she’d said exactly the wrong thing. But it turned out he was parsing it through in his head.

  “So you want to offer charity for charity?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of it that way, but I suppose you could.”

  “I don’t want charity.”

  “Actually, neither do I.”

  “I don’t want to be taken in like some stray dog.”

  “Hadn’t even crossed my mind. Like I said, I’ve been letting this place go. You’d be doing me a favor to help me.”

  “Maybe. If I don’t muck it up.”

  “You know what? I don’t care if it gets mucked up. Messes can be fixed. I made enough of them to know. The thing is, Liam, I need help. I need somebody to help me so I’ll get back on track again.”

  “It’s been rough for you.”

  It wasn’t a question, but she nodded, anyway. “I haven’t had the heart to keep the place up. I was thinking today that I really need to change that. You couldn’t have arrived at a better time. But there’s something else.”

  He lifted a brow. “What?”

  “I don’t want to hire a stranger to help me. I wouldn’t be comfortable.”

  “I’m a stranger.”

  “Not really. Chet mentioned you in every letter he wrote.”

  He surprised her with a small smile. “Those paint chips you were always sending?”

  She nodded again. “I wanted his color approval. He’d send back the ones he liked.”

  “Well, I’ll bet he never told you what he did with the ones he didn’t like.”

  “No. What?”

  “We’d shoot them up.”

  She clapped her hand to her mouth, and then helplessly giggled. “Really?”

  “Really. They were small enough to make it a challenge.” He smiled again, and his gaze grew distant. “He sure did like getting those paint chips and fabric samples. We made some jokes, sure, but the truth was he liked them all. He liked being consulted.”

  “I’m glad.” Chet had told her he liked being kept in the loop, but occasionally she had wondered if he was just being nice. She never did any decorating without consulting him, and an awful lot of paint chips, fabric samples and magazine photos had made their way out to him. As much as possible, she’d taken care to ensure he wasn’t left out of any decision.

  Her chest tightened again, but not with the tearing grief she had felt such a short time ago. No, this was the familiar ache she had learned to live with, still painful but endurable. A deep breath eased it a bit and she returned from memory to the present, the very empty present.

  “Okay.” Liam’s quietly spoken word took her by surprise and she looked up at him quizzically.

  “Okay,” he said again. “I’ll try to help you out. But you have to promise me something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If it gets too hard on you, or if you have to corral me too much, you’ll let me know and I’ll move on. At this point, I still don’t know all the things I can’t do anymore. No idea whatsoever. I learn them as I go.”

  “We’ll probably be learning a lot together. There’s a whole bunch of stuff I haven’t even attempted because I don’t know how.”

  He cocked a brow. “I think I asked for a promise?”

  She felt that ache again, and this time it wasn’t for Chet or herself. “Okay,” she said solemnly, “I promise.”

  A promise she had no intention of keeping if there was any way to avoid it.

  She just knew she couldn’t let this man drift on alone to God knew what. No way. She owed Chet more than that.

  “Okay,” he said again, and resumed eating.

  It was settled.

  Chapter Two

>   This far north, evenings were long. Sharon didn’t feel like hunting up some half round to repair the door latch, although Liam seemed to want to get it done right away. Instead, she asked him to settle himself in the guest room, clean up in the hall bath if he liked and rejoin her for more coffee.

  He studied her a moment before taking her directions. “Questions?” he asked.

  “Questions?”

  “About Chet?”

  She paused, choosing her words carefully. “I think it would do us both some good to get a little more acquainted.”

  He frowned faintly, as if the prospect bothered him a little, but after a moment, he left to do as she’d asked. She listened to his footsteps climbing the stairs then walking around upstairs as he oriented himself. It gave her some time to think this through. She had to figure out his limits, had to understand how the injury had affected his temperament so she could deal with him in the best way possible for him.

  She wondered how much he would even be able to tell her. Right now his life was probably a constant journey of discovery, finding his limitations and rediscovering his abilities. She needed to bone up on this whole subject, but not when he was looking over her shoulder. Later, she’d pull up what she could on her computer.

  By the time he came back down, nearly an hour had passed. He’d showered and now was dressed in old uniform pieces: cammie pants, a black T-shirt and desert boots. A lot of soldiers didn’t own much more than they could tuck in a duffel or footlocker, depending on their assignments. Too much hassle when your life left you wearing battle dress ninety-five percent of the time. Chet had left all his civvies here, but Liam obviously didn’t have that choice. No family. Imagine that. Her heart ached for him. He needed someone.

  They settled in the living room with fresh coffee, and he sat waiting, as if he expected an inquisition. Maybe that was what she was doing, and she shifted uncomfortably.