Homefront Holiday

by Jillian Hart

  He really loves Ali. The realization sent tingles down her spine. She knew Mike cared about him, but to see his secret revealed—a father’s love—made her hope all the harder.

  “Good night, buddy.”

  “’Night, Dr. Mike. You gonna call me tomorrow?”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.” He closed the door.

  Hope. It twinkled through her like the tiny lights threaded through the shrubbery. It chased away the darkness like the moon in the sky. She wished to know the shelter of Mike’s arms again, to lay her cheek against his iron-strong chest and hear the reliable rhythm of his heartbeat. She had been without him for so long—without his laughter, without his friendship and without his tenderness. Every fiber of her being ached to fix what was broken between them.

  “Sarah.” Mike said her name without cold gruffness or stoic indifference. No, her name on his lips was a sweet promise. He opened her door and held it for her. “We need to talk.”

  “Yes, we do.” She had much to say to him and a basketful of regrets. As she slid into the seat and he closed her door, she thought she saw regret in his eyes, too.

  It was enough to give her the courage she needed. What she had to say wouldn’t be easy. She started the engine and drove off, leaving him behind in the gathering darkness.

  “Is now a good time?”

  Sarah looked up from her desk at Prairie Springs Elementary School to see Mike standing in her classroom doorway, military straight and soldier strong. Her chicken salad sandwich forgotten, she hopped to her feet. Days had passed without the two of them speaking. Both times he had called Ali, the boy had been waiting by the phone. He had learned to recognize Mike’s number on the caller ID box. She had waited nearby each time, but Ali had hung up the phone after saying goodbye.

  “I had wondered if you’d forgotten.” She yearned for his embrace. She ached to be drawn close in his arms and sigh against his chest. Missing him was like an unhealed wound. But he held back in the doorway.

  This must be hard for him, too. Of course it would be. She thought of all the distance between them, of all the time that had passed.

  “Now is a perfect time.” She took a tentative step toward him. Her low heels tapping on the floor was the only sound as their eyes met.

  As if he had been slapped, he jerked away, took a step into the room and glanced around. He could have been a stranger. “Nice job.”

  “I try.” They both knew how hard she worked on her bulletin boards—always had, always would. The green board with the candy-cane forest and snowman family carrying gifts. The gold-papered board with the Christmas tree-shaped calendar, brightly decorated with paper ornaments and yarn garlands.

  Did Mike remember all the evenings he would sit studying his medical books or journals while she cut and clipped, colored and pasted? She didn’t know how to ask him, and because her knees were shaking, she sat on the edge of her desk. Did he miss the way it used to be?

  “This is your best one yet. Or, at least the best I’ve seen.” He jammed his hands into his pockets. The leather bomber jacket he wore suited him, masculine and casual with a hint of wear.

  “Thanks. You didn’t come all this way to talk about my artwork.”

  “No. I haven’t.” He marched into the room, all business, unreadable. “It’s about Ali.”

  “Oh.” It wasn’t what she expected. It wasn’t the subject that had kept her up late at night with her mind spinning out all the possible ways to tell him—as well as all the possible ways it could go wrong. “Ali had a great time with you on Sunday.”

  “So did I.” Mike stared around the room at the little desks grouped in a circle, at the wide windows offering views of the wind-swept playground and finally at the tiles in front of her shoes.

  But not at her. He kept his gaze shielded from her. His chiseled face was a mask of stone. Mike was, as always, the epitome of self-control. She clasped her hands together and waited. She prayed for guidance to handle whatever he had come to say.

  “The thing is, I need your help.” Mike appeared uncomfortable. Tension gripped his jaw. His shoulders were a rigid, hard line.

  “Of course I’ll help you.” She would move mountains for him. “This is about Ali?”

  “Yep. You have him, Sarah, and that’s the way it ought to be.” He pulled his hands out of his jacket pockets and stared at them. He seemed to be wrestling with something. “Thanks for letting me take Ali on Sunday. I know it wasn’t easy for you. It wasn’t easy for me.”

  “I’m sorry about that.” Her hand shook as she smoothed a wrinkle in her skirt. “I’m sorry about a lot of things.”

  “I wish things had been different, too, but they aren’t.” Was he angry or sad? She couldn’t tell, but he went on talking. “What matters is Ali. It means a lot that I could spend time with him.”

  “Of course you can see him. You saved his life. You’ve been his anchor, a father figure. Your interest has made an enormous difference to his welfare. Mike, you called him twice a week since he left your MASH unit months and months ago. You have been the one steady adult male influence in his life. I hope you don’t pull away from him because of me.”

  Silence was her only answer. Mike always kept his feelings to himself—those few he would allow himself. He was mad at her. She had said too much.

  No, she realized. She had hit on exactly what he had come to do. “You’re going to stop seeing him?”

  “What choice do I have?” His tone was even and steady. “I had it all planned out. First thing I did when I set foot on U.S. soil was to fill out adoption papers.”

  “Adoption papers?” She halted. Had she heard him right?

  “I decided to adopt Ali, but you beat me to it.”

  Adopt Ali? Those two words collided in her brain, and she couldn’t think past them. “What? Oh, Mike, I didn’t know.”

  “I know.” His answer was curt but not harsh. He cleared his throat sounding indifferent, but she knew he wasn’t. “Ali’s better off with you, Sarah. You have more to give him than I ever could.”

  “I don’t know about that. Now that I’ve seen you with him, I—” Her throat closed and she took off toward the window, staring at the blur of the monkey bars through the rain-smeared glass. “I love him. I’ve been afraid something like this would come along and I’d have to g-give him up. That’s what happened to the first child I fostered. I wanted to adopt little Carlos, but he went back to his family. It tore me apart.”

  “Sarah, I don’t want that for you or Ali.” His voice dipped tenderly. His strong, healing hands curved over her shoulders, comforting her just like he used to do. Just for a moment, before he stepped back and away from her. “I can’t think of a better parent for him.”

  “But if you wanted him?”

  “You were here, Sarah. You were here with him. You saw him through his surgery. You made a home for him. Because of you, he has a safe, happy environment in which to recover and grow.” Tenderness warmed his hazel eyes. “You’re what he needs, Sarah. I’m not. I can see that now. I have the army.”

  And there it was, the conflict that had driven them apart. The army came first and foremost to Mike and she believed it always would. Although now she had come to understand something new. “Your commitment to the military is not a bad thing, Mike. It’s a very, very good one.”

  “What? I can’t believe my ears. This, coming from you?” One eyebrow quirked up over pain-shot eyes. “You make it sound like a compliment.”

  “I know, that’s a change for me.”

  “I’ll say.”

  She needed a few feet of distance to find the right words. She had so much to say. The last year had changed her in countless ways. “I’ve had a chance to see the results of the work you do firsthand.”

  “Ali?”

  “Yes, and Whitney Harpswell. She’s back home in part because of you.” Could he see how much she admired him? Was too much showing on her face? “It’s important work, Mike. No one is more committed than
you, and I see now why. You save lives. You save other people’s loved ones. I have a foster son because of your dedication.”

  “It’s not what you think.” He looked in anguish.

  Poor Mike. How many men and women were alive because of him? “You should see Ali as much as you like. He needs you, too.”

  For one brief moment, his gaze met hers. It was as if he could see into her thoughts, as impossible as that was. For one brief moment, tenderness filled his eyes. Hope lurched within her before he tore away.

  “That’s just the thing.” Mike seemed distant again. “I need your help to ease out of his life. He’s more dependent than I thought.”

  Oh. If she hadn’t known him, then she would have missed the grief hugging the deeper tones of his words. “I thought you loved him.”

  “I do.” He didn’t show an ounce of emotion; he didn’t even blink. This was the Mike she knew, stoic, steely and able to keep his distance. He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to hurt the little guy. Will you help me?”

  “How can I? You want to cut him out of your life?” She thought of the man and boy in her backyard kicking the soccer ball around, their laughter punctuating the crisp, wintry air. She thought of how his eyes had darkened when he confessed he had wanted to adopt Ali. “I don’t think it is right for either one of you.”

  “Then do you have a better solution?”

  “Yes.” The answer came to her quietly, like a gentle loving whisper. She searched his face. The squint of tension around his eyes, the tendons tight in his neck made her think there was a deeper reason why this was hard for him.

  Fear quaked through her. She reached out for him and laid her hand flat on his chest. The thump of his heart vibrated against her palm. Like lightning cracking from the sky to the earth, so did the connection from her heart to his. She could feel his anguish. He was hurting, too.

  There was a way for them both to stop hurting, a way for this heartache to end.

  “M-Mike?” His name trembled on her lips and echoed in the chambers of her soul. “I have so very many regrets. I wish I could go back and change what I said to you and how I said it.”

  A muscle twitched in his tight jaw, the only hint that he was feeling something uncontrollable. The corners of his mouth softened, and this was also the Mike she knew, compassionate and tender.

  “I still love you.” She was no longer trembling, for she was speaking the truth. Standing out on a limb, fearing she might fall and praying Mike would catch her. “Say you still love me, too. Please, can you forgive me?”

  Chapter Six

  “Forgive you?” Mike couldn’t believe what his ears were telling him. His heart hardened. He plainly heard the emotion, thin and tremulous in her voice. Her regrets and apologies were echoed on her face. The pain he saw there could bring him to his knees.

  He couldn’t let it. He couldn’t forget what she had done to him. Maybe he didn’t want to. He closed his eyes, hoping she would not see the truth, hoping that she would never know how much she had hurt him. It would make him too vulnerable. Already her hand on his chest was drawing up tender feelings.

  He dug deep for all the anguish he’d been through, all the sleepless nights, all the running from the pain and the agony when he couldn’t run anymore. She thought her fair-weather level of love was all right now? That he could forgive the fourteen years she had been the love of his life?

  He took a deep breath and stepped away from her touch. She hadn’t loved him enough, and he was only doing the right thing in walking away. In letting her know exactly what she had done to him. He sharpened his words, gathered up his verbal weapons and opened his mouth only to find there were none. He couldn’t do it. As bitter as he was, he couldn’t say a single word to hurt her.

  By the looks of things, she was hurting enough. Tears stood pooled in her eyes, vibrant and full of sorrow. She appeared so unhappy, that tore his heart out, too.

  “I’m sorry.” The words came out gently, with the love he used to feel for her. With the tenderness she had once rejected. “You were the one who didn’t want me, remember?”

  “That’s not what I meant, Mike. I’ve always wanted you. I’ve always loved you.” Those tears trembled, ready to fall. She fought them back. “Can’t you see that I was afraid to lose you?”

  “No. You did lose me.”

  “I wanted you to commit to me, Mike, that’s all—”

  “I can’t do this.” Her pain was everywhere, on her face, in his soul and in the very air between them. “It’s over, Sarah. It was over when I learned the truth about you. I never should have trusted you.”

  “Truth? What truth?” She stared up at him wide-eyed, full of confusion and even as the first tear fell, it was her sweetness he saw. She had never meant to hurt him.

  Just as he never meant to hurt her. He grimaced, wishing he knew how to say the right thing, but there was nothing to fix this and even less to heal it. This is what love came to in the end—nothing but pain.

  “Come here, Sarah.”

  She had turned away, trying to hide her heartbreak, bucking up her chin the way she always did, blinking hard, gasping for air trying to stall the oncoming sobs. That broke him, too.

  He couldn’t feel the hurt or the tenderness as he caught her by the curve of her shoulder to turn her toward him. He’d been right. One lone tear tracked down her porcelain cheek. He rubbed it away with the pad of his thumb, refusing to feel the warm silk of her skin and the tearing of his soul.

  “We can’t go back.” He hated it. “Maybe you and I were never meant to be. Could be that’s why it never worked out between us.”

  “You can’t believe that.”

  He could see that she didn’t. He sure hoped the defenses would hold, because he hated seeing her like this, hurting, when there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. “All we can do is go forward. You and I have to do what’s right for that little boy in your care.”

  “That’s what I’m doing.”

  “I know.” He could see she was becoming defensive. Of course he could see that. “No one could be better for Ali than you.”

  “I don’t know about that. What about you?”

  “No, not me.” He’d wanted the job of raising the kid, but he’d lost out on that. “I want Ali to have the best, and that’s you.”

  “If that’s what you think, then why can’t we—”

  “No. We can’t. Don’t go there, Sarah.” He didn’t know what she had been about to say, but he didn’t like the “we” part. Wherever it had been going, it would only bring more agony to both of them. He took a step away, putting distance between them, drawing back his caring and shoring up his defenses. It wasn’t easy to walk away from a dream, because that’s what Sarah was to him. Always had been, would always be.

  “All right.” She turned away from him to stare back out the window. The first round of lunch must be over, because there were little kids outside running around squealing and climbing on the bars. Her shoulders were set straight and strong, but vulnerability clung to her.

  Maybe it was just his wishful thinking. Maybe it was the tear still damp on his thumb. Either way, Mike couldn’t let himself think of her crying after he stepped foot out the door. He had to be cool and rational and do the best thing for the boy and for Sarah, too.

  “I’ll do as you ask.” Her words sounded hollow, as if she were putting up her defenses, too. “You’re right. We have to make this adjustment as easy as we can for Ali.”

  “Thanks, Sarah. That’s a big relief. I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “I know.” She swallowed hard and crossed her arms around her middle. “This is going to be hard for him. He’s lost everyone else.”

  “I know, but he has you.” He made it sound like a compliment.

  She wasn’t fooled. Mike had never felt that way about her, not truly. Or at least it was easier to believe he hadn’t. Otherwise how could she hold herself together as she listened to the strike of his boots on the tile
floor? How could she keep the tears at bay as he paused near the doorway? She could picture him, turning toward her one last time, the apology on his handsome face and the shadows in his eyes.

  She would never know what happened to him over there. She would never know a lot of things, and she hated that she still loved him as he broke the silence between them.

  “Goodbye, Sarah. Take care of yourself.”

  “You, too, Mike.” The words came out rough, and she wished she was strong enough to keep the tears out of her voice. She wasn’t.

  She listened to the knell of his gait heading down the hall, growing distant until she could no longer hear him. Goodbye hovered on her lips, unspoken. She could not say the word. It made it easier to set her chin, gather her dignity and head back to her desk, even as her vision blurred.

  “Sarah, are you all right?”

  She looked up, realizing she was walking out of the school building on autopilot, and walking by one of her best friends. Sally Winthrop, first-grade teacher and fellow church member, looked concerned as she stood holding the door open to the crisp, breezy outdoors.

  “I’ll be all right.” That was the truth. And as long as she didn’t think about Mike or say his name, she could stay numb enough to hold it together. Why had she thought that he would love her enough now? He loved the army. While she no longer blamed him for it, it still hurt. Badly.

  “Did I see Mike walking down the hall during lunch?”

  Sarah did her best not to wince at the sound of Mike’s name. She could handle this. She could. “Y-yes. He dropped by to talk about Ali.”

  “That has to be a sticky situation, with the two of them being close.” All kind sympathy, that was Sally. “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m holding.” That was the truth, too. She had to handle this. She couldn’t fall apart. Ali needed her to handle this the right way. So did Mike. She had seen the anguish on his face when she had told him she still loved him. Anguish, when she had suspected he might still love her, too. How could she have been so wrong? “It’s tough seeing Mike again, but Ali is worth it.”