Take Me Back (Paradise, Idaho Book 4)

by Rosalind James

Vicki glanced at Jim, then said, “I’ll be in the truck,” and took off.

  “It’s cold out here,” Hallie told him when it was just the two of them. “You should go before they freeze in the truck.”

  “I’m going to drop them off,” he said, “then do one more errand, and then I’d like to come back. To talk to you,” he added when she looked alarmed. “I can’t stay anyway. I have to get Mac from Anthea’s by eight thirty. But I want to come out for half an hour first.”

  She wasn’t exactly looking welcoming. “I’m not supposed to open the garage door for two days after it’s painted, though. We can’t even put your truck inside.”

  “Half an hour. That’s it. We can finish that bottle of wine.”

  “There’s only about one more glass.”

  “That’s OK. We had enough last night.” He gave in, then, put his hands on her shoulders, bent his head, and brushed his lips over hers. His body tried to fall into her softness, and he had to force himself to step back and say, “Yeah. Be back here by seven thirty or so. Half an hour, that’s all. Just because I need to.”

  “Because you need to what?” Her arms were wrapped around herself, and she was shivering. It was too cold out here.

  “Because I need to talk to you. And I need to kiss you goodnight.”

  When he pulled up forty-five minutes later, she was outside waiting for him, looking cold again.

  “Really,” she said when he hopped down from the truck. “It’s not a good idea for you—”

  He shouldn’t feel this way, and he knew it, but the anger was bubbling up in spite of himself.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s not a good idea. I can’t park in your driveway for twenty minutes and talk to you about the crime that’s just happened at your house because somebody will report that I’m in there banging your brains out. Would it help if I came in uniform? Or doesn’t that work, either? If I brought DeMarco, would that be an orgy?”

  “Jim.” That was all she said. It was enough.

  He took a breath, ran his hand over the back of his neck, looked up at the cold, pale sliver of moon, then exhaled and dropped his hand. “Sorry. Out of line. You’re right, I’m frustrated. And you’re allowed to say that you don’t want to see me. I didn’t give you the chance before, did I?” He tried to smile. “Never mind. I know I didn’t. Guess I’ll do it now.”

  She said, “I want to see you. And even if somebody saw your truck—I guess you’re right. It’s half an hour, and you were out here today with a whole bunch of chaperones. But thank you for noticing.”

  “Noticing what?”

  “That you didn’t give me the chance to say no.”

  “Oh. Yeah. That. It’s been a while since I’ve been with somebody who won’t let me get away with being the boss.”

  “You mentioned that. I guess you’d better come in.”

  They sat on the couch with Cletus curled up in the corner of the room, and she poured the last two half glasses of wine and said, “We’ve got quite the habit going here.”

  “We can go back on the wagon tomorrow.”

  “So,” she said. “I’m thinking there’s a reason you’re here. That you were so . . . insistent. And it’s not because you want to jump my bones.”

  “Nah. I want to jump your bones. But I know we can’t. I wanted to tell you how the rest of it went, and I wanted to tell you in person. And maybe to make sure you’re all right,” he admitted. “Because I hate leaving you out here alone.”

  “Ah.” It was a soft breath. She was sitting against the arm of the couch, her legs, in a clean, faded pair of jeans, curled up under her. She’d taken a shower and changed while he’d been gone. She looked pretty, she smelled like flowers again, and she was distracting. “Let me guess,” she said. “You paid Cole’s friend a surprise visit. You put the fear of God in him, and into his parents, too.”

  “His mom. And did I mention that you were a witch?”

  “So how did it go?”

  “All right. Cocky little ba—twerp. Tried to tell me it wasn’t him. That lasted about five minutes. Then, when he was trying not to show that he was shaking and his mom was starting to cry—and, no, I didn’t enjoy that part—I told him you were deciding whether to press charges. That got him going good. My advice? Take a few days to decide.”

  “I don’t need a few days.”

  He sighed. “I know you don’t. But take a few days to tell me you’ve decided. Make him sweat it. Although I have to tell you, he wouldn’t be hurt by a trip to a courtroom.”

  “I believe you. But I can’t do that without Cole being dragged into it, too, and it’s just . . .” She shook her head. “Too ugly. My aunt and uncle knowing, and everything. Faye saying something even more poisonous to your mom. Cole feeling like everybody saw him as a delinquent. If he’d done something more than this, if he needed a trip to a courtroom, it’d be different. But I don’t think so. I think he’s . . . teetering. When seeing your mom cry made him cry . . . that was good. I bet—what’s the other boy’s name again?”

  “Tom Ingeborg.”

  “I bet Tom didn’t cry when his mom cried.”

  “No. But teenage boys without dads . . . they can be all kinds of screwed up. That’s no news flash.”

  “Fortunately,” she said, “lots of them turn out all right all the same, especially once they get a little help. Some of them turn out just fine.”

  “With a lot of help.”

  “And Cole’s got a lot of help. He may not have a dad, but he’s got you. And you’re something special.”

  Approval. That was what women did that killed you. No, not women. One woman. The right woman. When she looked at you like that, let you know she thought that much of you . . . that was the one you couldn’t fight.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she said.

  “You know you can.”

  She waited a second, and he had no idea what to expect. And then she asked, “Could you . . . would you tell me about your wife? About when she died?”

  It was a U-turn for sure. It wasn’t anywhere he wanted to go tonight.

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she said. “But I’d like to know. It’s so much a part of you, and of Mac. I know I don’t have a right to ask, but I—”

  “No.” He took a sip of wine just to do something. “You can ask. But I would’ve thought Anthea would have told you.”

  “I didn’t want her to. She knew that. We never talked about you. All I know is that you were back here and that Maya died of breast cancer. And that the baby died, too.”

  WITH HER LIFE

  He was still reacting to that when she said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that. You don’t owe me any explanations. What we did—I know it’s not a relationship, and it doesn’t obligate you.” She’d swung around to sit up straight, all her earlier ease gone. “It’s just this day. It’s just . . . family, and seeing you with Mac, and—”

  He couldn’t stand seeing her working herself up like that. “It’s a relationship,” he said. “Some kind of one, anyway. And I can tell you.”

  “I don’t want to make you feel worse, making you talk about it.”

  His mouth twisted, but it wasn’t a smile this time. “Ah, yeah. People say that. What they don’t realize is, you live with it every day. Every minute, at the beginning. It’s not like they’re bringing it up. It’s already there. And there’s no way it could feel worse.”

  She’d sunk back against the arm of the couch again, still watching him warily, and he turned the glass in his hands, looked down at the ruby-red liquid, dark and rich as blood, and said, “So—yeah. All right, here we go. It was almost three years ago. I got home from a pretty rough deployment and found out that Maya was four months pregnant. Must’ve happened right before I left, and she hadn’t told me while I was gone, because she didn’t want to distract me, or she wanted to surprise me, or both. And I was just . . .” He sighed. “Thrilled. I mean, thrilled. Mac was nine, and we�
�d kind of given up hope of another baby. Funny, because Mac was an accident, you know, but we’d been trying for a few years, and had never been able to make it happen on purpose. Until then.”

  “And then . . .” Hallie said softly.

  The words came slowly. “I went to the next doctor’s visit with her. Man, I was excited about that. I’d missed the whole thing with Mac, like I told you. Didn’t get to be there to see her born or anything. But this time—we were going to get the sonogram. I was going to see my baby’s heart beating on the screen, the way you do.” He took a deep breath, let it out. “I couldn’t wait. And then we got into the room, and it wasn’t like that at all.”

  They’d been shown into the doctor’s private office instead of an exam room, and the doctor, a tired-looking woman, had greeted them without smiling, and had said, once they sat down, “I’m afraid we have some bad news.”

  “What?” Maya’s hand went instantly to her barely there bump. “The baby—”

  “It’s not the baby,” the doctor said. “Or it is, in part.” She folded her hands on the desk, and Jim remembered looking at those clasped hands. At the engagement band she turned endlessly with a finger, back and forth, back and forth. He looked at her hands, because he couldn’t stand to look at her face. He’d clocked more missions than he could count by then, but he couldn’t look at her face. “The biopsy we did of your breast,” she told Maya. “The news isn’t good.”

  “What biopsy?” Jim got out.

  Maya looked at him, her pixie face stricken. “I had a lump in my breast. I didn’t tell you, because I knew it was nothing. I knew it had to be nothing.”

  “I’m sorry,” the doctor said again, and then she gave them the details, and none of them were good.

  “I’ll be referring you to an oncologist, of course,” she said. “But this type of tumor is aggressive, especially in premenopausal women. Which means that the only way to combat it is aggressively.”

  “Let’s do that, then,” Jim said with relief. “We can fight it, you mean. Let’s do it.”

  “In order to do that,” the doctor said, “we’ll need to terminate the pregnancy.”

  “No,” Maya said.

  Jim said nothing. He waited.

  “Otherwise,” the doctor went on, “all we can do is a mastectomy, which isn’t enough. You won’t be able to begin radiation or chemotherapy until after the baby is delivered, and even if we take it early . . .” She shook her head. “Four months’ delay could be a very long time.”

  Maya said, “What if I do . . . delay, though? The baby would be OK, right?”

  The doctor hesitated. “There are no guarantees.”

  “But I could get treated then?”

  “Yes. If it were soon enough. I know this is a difficult decision,” she went on. “I realize you’ll need time to think. But I must tell you that terminating the pregnancy offers you your best chance at survival.”

  Survival. It had hit Jim exactly like that bullet in the side. Hit him hard, and spun him around. He was supposed to be the one in danger. Not Maya. Not their baby. He’d kept thinking, This isn’t how it’s supposed to work. It can’t be this way. But it was.

  He told Hallie the bare bones of it, but it was enough. He’d noticed that her eyes seemed to change color according to her mood. Right now, they were a mossy gray-green. “What . . .” she asked. “What did you do?”

  “It wasn’t what I did. It was what Maya did. She made them show her the baby, first of all. What they’d been going to do that day, the reason we went in there. The doctor said, ‘If you’re going to terminate the pregnancy, it’s better not to see,’ and Maya turned on her like a wildcat and said, ‘It’s my baby. It’s mine, and it’s Jim’s. We need to see it before we decide.’ And there I was, doing that thing I’d thought about so much. Holding her hand, seeing the tears roll down her cheeks, watching these shadows on the screen with her. Having the tech say, ‘That’s the heart. See that white pulse?’ His arms were all close to his body, like he was hugging himself, and his legs were kicking. A boy. Our son.”

  Hallie was crying now. Just a few silent tears, exactly the way Maya had done that day. “And I knew,” Jim said, “looking at that white pulse? I knew Maya wouldn’t do it, even before she told me. She was such a good mom. All light and . . . fun, but fierce as a tiger, too. Once, I was taking Mac to kindergarten with her, and this jerk pulls up and double-parks to let his kid off, and the kid starts walking behind the car, and the guy starts backing up. And before I can get there, because she’s closer, Maya’s behind his car, pounding on the trunk. Like she’s going to stop it with her body. She didn’t even think. She was just there. I think that was about the most scared I’d ever been. But that day we found out . . . that was so much worse.”

  “But you don’t have a son. It didn’t work.” Her face was gentle, so much compassion in it. And still, the words hurt.

  “No. I don’t have a son.” It can’t feel worse, he’d said. But it could still cut him to the bone. “I got a compassionate discharge, left Fort Benning, and took Maya back home to Paradise, which I guess you knew. Where my mom could help take care of her and Mac. I got the job here, and I did the job, because I didn’t have a choice. And she kept saying, ‘It’s going to be all right, babe. You’ll see.’ But it wasn’t. She got to thirty weeks, and that was all. Not even seven months. And then she was too . . .” He took a breath. “Too sick. They said they had to take the baby. He wasn’t doing . . . great.”

  “And they couldn’t do it in time?”

  “No. They took him. I was in the room with her, holding her hand. Her body couldn’t take the strain. She died right there on the table. The last thing she said to me was . . .” He had to stop and breathe again. “‘Take care of our babies.’ She died thinking he would live. She gave her life so he would live. And he didn’t.”

  “I’m glad she didn’t know,” Hallie said.

  “So am I.”

  He’d buried their son in her arms. The tiny, fragile little body, his head much too big for his skeletal limbs, dressed in one of the preemie outfits Maya had ordered online, because she’d been too sick to shop. The little blue hat atop his wizened, old-man’s face. Jim had had them put the baby on her chest, her arms wrapped around him, so she’d be holding him forever, the same way she’d done all along. Protecting him all the way to the end. With her life.

  “And I kept thinking,” he told Hallie. “When I was standing there with Mac, holding her hand, watching the casket go into the ground. I kept thinking, why didn’t I try harder to get her to have the abortion? Why didn’t I keep hammering until she gave in? Because God help me, I’d have made that trade. I knew it then. I knew it all along.”

  “Because you couldn’t have,” Hallie said. “Because you could never have changed her mind.”

  “I tried hard, but not hard enough. She said, ‘There’s no choice. Maybe I can get rid of my baby, and I’ll survive. Maybe. Probably not, and you know it as well as I do. And I know it wouldn’t be a wrong thing for somebody else, but it’s wrong for me, and I can’t make it right. If I got rid of my baby just for a better shot at saving myself, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

  “If she was sure,” Hallie said, “then it was right for her. But oh, Jim. I’m so sorry.”

  She’d moved, somehow. She was in his arms, holding him the same way he’d wanted to hold her earlier that day, to tell her it would be all right, that he’d keep her safe. But now, she was the one doing it. And her arms around him felt so good, in a completely different way than they had the night before. He held her, and it was better.

  Finally, she moved back. “That wasn’t the right thing to bring up when you had half an hour,” she said. “And I did it anyway.”

  “Chalk it up to a raw day. A rough day. And you thinking about family. The family you had, and the one you wished for.”

  Saying it made something twist hard in his chest, but it wasn’t the raw pain it had been at the beginn
ing. It hurt, and it always would, but it was pain he knew how to live with.

  “You don’t get over things like that,” she said, echoing his thoughts. “Not really. You just move through.”

  “You’re right.” He left the rest of the wine, stood up, and said, “And I do have to get Mac. I wish I could stay, but seems like we’ve always got reasons we can’t be together.”

  “Yes,” she said. “We do.”

  Hallie stood in the driveway for the third time that evening, watching Jim’s taillights receding down the hill. He turned onto the main road and disappeared from view, and she looked at Cletus. He looked back at her, his tail gently waving, and she said, “Yeah. You’re right. Sometimes you have to know.”

  Back inside, she rinsed out the wine glasses and put them in the dishwasher. It was almost eight thirty, and tomorrow she’d be up at five thirty to go running before school. She moved around the house mechanically, packing up, getting ready for the day. The same routine of a thousand other nights. Done alone. Always alone.

  When she was finished, she pulled her nightgown out of the closet, but she didn’t get undressed. She sank down on the edge of the bed, clutched the white fabric to her, and tried to hold the sorrow back, but it refused to be contained. It rose like a hot red tide, just that strong, just that insistent. The tears came despite everything, and they overtook her until she sobbed. She was rocking back and forth on the bed, crying until her chest hurt. Her chest and her heart. Until she was hollowed out.

  Still holding her nightgown. Still alone.

  She didn’t even know who she was crying for most. For Jim, who’d had to bury his wife and his baby. For Mac, who would never feel her mother’s touch again or hear her voice. Or maybe, shamefully, for herself, because she’d never had anybody she could love that hard, anybody whose loss would have torn her apart like that. And because she was afraid she never would.

  The bitter truth was—asking Jim about it hadn’t been for him. She’d put him through that pain just to . . . to inoculate herself. To remind herself of what he’d had, and what he’d lost, and what he missed. And to remind herself, above all, that the woman he still loved, the mother of his children, the woman who’d risked everything, who’d been so strong and so brave . . . that woman hadn’t been one single bit like Hallie Cavanaugh.