by Cindy Gerard
Bear wagged his tail.
J.R. looked up at her with a hint of a light in his eyes. “Bear says it’s time.”
“Then we have a plan. First I feed you. Then we do a makeover.”
And for the first time since she’d heard the news that her husband was alive, Jess’s smile wasn’t forced. For an instant, a very brief instant, she’d seen a glimpse of the old J.R. That half-smile, that silly sense of humor, and it made her heart glad.
Chapter 30
J.R. WATCHED JESS FROM HIS recliner as she hauled boxes of Christmas decorations out of the hall closet, even though it was only the first week in December.
“Business drops off drastically in late autumn,” she told him, chattering away as she always did. It wasn’t that she annoyed him. He understood. She was simply attempting to fill him in on her life, which was now his life.
She really was a very attractive woman. Kind. Attentive. He wished he was attracted to her. It would make it so much easier for both of them.
He appreciated that she didn’t try to smother him. It would have been easy to do, since she was a nurse, but she kept it in check, asked necessary questions, and otherwise assumed he’d let her know if he had a problem.
“I cut store hours from November first to April thirtieth, opening at eight A.M. and closing at five. I also close up on Sundays,” she explained, then stopped and had to put some muscle into dragging down a heavy box. “During the summer, I have part-time help, and believe me, I need it.”
She didn’t hear him come up behind her and jumped when he reached above and around her to help.
“Thanks,” she said with a surprised smile.
“Where do you want this?”
“Over there on the table with the rest of them.”
Again, he appreciated that she didn’t make a big deal out of the fact that he actually did something other than take up space.
“This time of year, though,” she continued, smiling at him, “running the store is a one-woman show.”
The fact was, she often spent the better part of the day upstairs in the apartment and only headed down when the bell above the door alerted her that she had a customer.
“Go ahead,” she said, when she caught him eyeing the boxes. “Open them up. I’ve kept everything over the years. There are some decorations in there you made when you were in Boy Scouts.” She laughed. “I’m sure you’ll figure out which ones they are.”
Because he was up and because she seemed to want him to, he opened the first box. Garland, lights, glittering glass balls… and at the bottom of the box, another smaller box. Inside were three old pine cones sparkling with glitter; old-fashioned gold curling ribbon had been glued onto the stems, then looped so they could be hung on a tree. A picture of a boy who looked to be about eight years old had been taped to the middle of a bell that had been sloppily cut out of red construction paper. Another length of gold curling ribbon had been threaded through a hole made by a paper punch, then tied, making a loop to fit over a tree branch.
She walked up beside him, smelling clean and healthy and like a little bit of the maple syrup she’d served with his pancakes this morning.
“Guess I found my decorations.”
She smiled. “I always loved that picture of you.”
He studied the boy in the photo, wishing he could conjure up some connection. “He looks like an ornery little twerp.”
She laughed this time. “You were hell on wheels. You had this old bike you used to ride on the roads all around the lake. Cars would come up behind you, and you wouldn’t get out of their way—just to tick them off.”
“Sounds like I was a candidate for juvie hall.”
“Nah. You were never mean-spirited. Besides, Brad never let you get too far out of line.”
“What happened to my mother?” he asked abruptly.
She looked at him sharply. “You… you remember about your mother?”
He lifted a shoulder, then pulled a kitchen chair out and sat down. “I know she wasn’t around. That’s the one thing that came to me over there. That I hadn’t had a mother.”
She touched a hand to his shoulder, and for once, he didn’t feel like shrugging it off.
“She left. I won’t defend her, but your father was an alcoholic. I guess she couldn’t take it. Why she left you boys with him, I’ll never know.”
“How old was I?”
“When she left? You were five, I think. Brad was ten. Your dad tucked into the bottle even deeper then. You were fifteen when he wrapped his truck around a tree one night.”
“So Brad…” He let the thought trail off.
“Pretty much raised you.”
They talked then for the better part of an hour about his high school days, sports, and dating, and for once, he asked the questions instead of relying on her to offer information.
“What are you going to do with all this stuff?” he asked when he’d absorbed as much as he could about the boy who had become the man he didn’t remember.
“Hang it on the tree… as soon as I get one.”
He glanced out a window. The sky was brilliant blue, but the indoor/outdoor thermometer by the sink said it was twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit outside.
“Do you want to go with me?” she asked, with a hesitance he completely understood. He’d been back three weeks, and he hadn’t once left the apartment. “There’s a tree farm between here and the Falls. I usually go cut my own.”
She’d been trying so hard. His brother had been trying so hard. Maybe it was time he tried. “Maybe we should call Brad,” he said. “See if he wants to go with us.”
Her smile was too happy, too bright, for such a small concession on his part. “Great idea. We’ll go as soon as I close the store at five.”
“I DON’T HAVE a wife.”
A fist hit him in the gut, doubling him over. Another slammed into his kidney. His knees buckled, and he fell on the dirt floor, covered in mud from the water they threw on him to revive him. Mud mixed with his blood.
Every day for longer than he could remember, they had dragged him in here, threatened him, and beat him, and when they were through with him, they dumped him back into the box. Four feet by four feet by six feet. Too many marks on the earth walls.
“Tell us her name. Tell us her name so we can find her and tell her what a hero you are.”
“I don’t have a wife.” Through the pain, he felt himself being hoisted by pulleys attached to the ropes that were tied around his bleeding wrists.
“Tell us what Americans were doing in Pakistan.”
“We got lost.”
Pain exploded through his jaw, and his knees buckled again. Only the ropes held him upright. He couldn’t see out of his right eye. Blood burned his pupil and dripped onto the dirt.
“Tell us about the Americans’ latest weapons system.”
“Rock… slingshot.”
Another blow to his head.
Another round of questions.
Over and over and over.
“What is your wife’s name? Tell us, and we will stop. We will feed you. You don’t have to hurt anymore.”
“I don’t have a wife. I don’t have a wife!”…
“I don’t have a wife!”
“J.R. Wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”
“I don’t have a wife!” he yelled again, as hands held him down.
He reared up swinging… connected with flesh… heard a cry.
Not his.
A woman’s.
“Rabia? Oh, God, Rabia.”
He frantically looked around. He wasn’t in an interrogation shed. He wasn’t in a box.
He wasn’t on a roof under an Afghan moon.
Rabia.
He was in a room. With soft light. A soft bed.
A dog whined and scratched at the door from the other side.
Another muffled cry.
Not a dream.
Jess.
“Oh, God. Jess.”
&nbs
p; “I’m OK,” she whispered from the far side of the bed.
“Did I hit you?”
“It’s OK. I’m OK. I’ll… I’ll be right back.”
The door opened, and she hurried out.
And all he could do was sit there in the bed, his hands braced behind him, his heart pounding wildly… and relive the nightmare that had been his life in captivity.
JESS RUSHED INTO the bathroom, flipped on the light switch, and walked directly to the vanity. One look at her mouth, and she turned on the cold-water faucet. Blood pooled between her teeth and her split lower lip and trickled down her chin.
She groped for a washcloth with a shaking hand, wet it under the stream of water, then winced when she pressed it to her swollen lip.
Oh, God. She breathed deep to steady herself.
“Jess.”
Her head snapped up. She met J.R.’s eyes in the mirror.
He stood in the doorway behind her, his eyes filled with anguish.
“It’s OK,” she reassured him.
“It’s not OK. You’re bleeding.”
“It looks worse than it is.”
“I hit you. I hurt you.” If pain was a sound, it came out in his voice.
She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have woken you like that. But you were having a nightmare. I… I don’t know. I wanted to wake you. To get you away from wherever you were.”
It all crashed down on her then. From hearing the news that he was alive. To telling Ty good-bye. To seeing J.R. in the hospital, broken and defeated. To bringing him home and trying so hard to give him his space and hoping so, so hard that he would remember…
A sob wrenched out unbidden, and then the floodgates broke.
She sank to the floor, helpless to pull herself together. All the years without him, all the pain of adjusting, and now, less than a month with him, and she’d hit the wall.
She’d thought she could help him.
She’d thought she could heal him.
She’d thought they could begin again.
For him, she needed to begin again.
But it was never going to happen. She couldn’t reach him. She couldn’t have Ty. She couldn’t stop crying. Couldn’t catch her breath. Her chest hurt. And still she cried, her tears mixing with her blood and her helplessness and her shame.
She felt his hands grip her shoulders. Felt him lift her, wrap her in his arms, and hold her as she unraveled.
After several long minutes, he walked her into the living room. He sat down with her on the sofa and wrapped them together in a big soft comforter, with Bear anxious and confused at their feet, the soft lights from their new Christmas tree gently twinkling.
And despair crowded around them like darkness crowded in on dusk.
Chapter 31
SUNDAY MORNING, JESS WOKE UP on the sofa, the comforter still tucked around her, her head on J.R.’s lap. Bear, curled up in a tight ball, slept soundly at her feet.
Her head hurt. Her eyes and throat burned from crying, and her lip felt as if it had swollen to the size of a basketball.
Then J.R. finally started talking, and none of that mattered anymore.
“During the beatings,” he said hesitantly, “they used to tell me they would find my family and kill them if I didn’t talk.”
She didn’t speak. She couldn’t speak.
“So I told them I didn’t have a family. I told them I didn’t have a wife.”
She sat up slowly and found him looking at her.
“I didn’t remember… until last night. Maybe… maybe that’s why I don’t remember you… maybe I said it so often to protect you my mind made it true.”
She hadn’t thought there were any more tears left inside her. “I am so, so sorry for what they did to you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.” His brows furrowed, and he took her hand. “Was I a good husband, Jess?”
“You were a good man, J.R. You’re still a good man.”
He grunted. “Tell that to your lip. And do not say that you’re OK one more time.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Was I a good husband?” he persisted.
She stretched to cover her discomfort over broaching this subject, then got up and walked to the kitchen to make coffee, put on water for his tea, and figure out what she was going to say.
He was still on the sofa when she came back. And he was still waiting for an answer.
“You were as good as you were capable of being.” She sat down beside him again and gathered the quilt over her, tucking it around her bare feet.
“What does that mean?”
They’d gone past the point of whitewashing and tiptoeing around each other’s feelings last night. When the dam had broken on her tears, so had her ability to cushion the truth. “It means we were kids when we started dating. It means we fell in love and became a couple before we figured out what it was like to be friends. It means,” she went on gently, “that when you enlisted, I suddenly had competition. You loved me, but you loved the Army more. Everything about it. Were you good to me? Yes. But the Army came first. I knew that when I married you. I figured at some point… I don’t know… I guess I figured you’d eventually decide you’d had enough, and then we could be one of those couples who came first in each other’s life.”
“Sounds like I was a jerk.”
“No. Not a jerk. A very principled man with a very big passion and sense of patriotism.”
“At your expense.”
“Nothing’s ever perfect.”
He stared straight ahead for a long moment. “Did you ever think of leaving me?”
“Yes,” she said honestly. “Right before your last deployment. I begged you to promise me it would be your last, that you’d put in for an instructor position here in the States. We fought about it. You left without saying good-bye.” The next word she’d heard was of his death.
He looked sideways at her. “Would you have left? If I’d come back then, would you have left?”
“I honestly don’t know. I loved you. But the deployments, the danger, being alone all the time… it wasn’t easy for me.” She pressed a palm to her forehead. “God, that sounded horrible. All you’ve been through, and I’m complaining because I had it bad.”
She got up suddenly and headed back to the kitchen to check on the coffee. When she returned with her mug and tea for him, she decided to risk asking him a question.
“Is Rabia the woman who helped you?”
He stopped with his tea halfway to his mouth.
“You said her name. Last night. When you woke up from the nightmare.”
He exhaled heavily. “Yes. Rabia and her father. He was the village malik. The liaison between the people and the jurga, the religious and governmental council.”
She hesitated only briefly. “Can I ask how you ended up with them?”
At first, she thought he wasn’t going to respond. But then he started talking. About the mission. The attack. His captivity. His escape. How Rabia had found him.
While he’d been reluctant at first, the longer he talked, the more she could tell he’d needed to get this all off his chest.
He told her about how ill and helpless he’d been, about the opiate addiction, hiding under the floor from the Taliban, and how he constantly worried that he was placing Rabia and her father in danger. How he would have left if he could, but he could barely walk.
He talked through a pot of coffee and several cups of tea and honey and breakfast and continued talking after lunch until he was finally exhausted. For that matter, so was she.
It was all so horrific. So terrifying. That he was alive was a testament to what a strong man he was. And to the bravery of two very special people.
She felt closer to him now than she ever had. He was open and unguarded. It felt like the time to break another barrier they’d both been avoiding.
“Let’s… let’s go to bed,” she said hesitantly. “We could both use a nap.”
He l
ooked at her, and she could see both anxiety and indecision in his eyes. Her heartbeat quickened.
Finally, he rose, took her hand, and led her toward the bedroom.
CLOSE TOGETHER, UNDER the covers, Jeff held this sweet, kind woman who was his wife in his arms. Her heart beat rapidly against his. She was nervous. Hell, so was he.
But he owed her this. She wanted a husband, not a houseguest. So when she turned her face to his, he pushed back thoughts of another woman’s face, another lifetime ago.
It was not unpleasant kissing her, taking care for her poor split lip, taking pains to be gentle and responsive when she tentatively kissed him back.
She turned fully in to him, warm and petite and covered only in her soft flannel gown.
She touched his face and deepened the kiss. He touched her hip and drew her closer.
And he couldn’t.
He couldn’t do this. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“I’m sorry.” He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling.
Beside him, she lay achingly still. He’d disappointed her. He’d humiliated her.
“It’s not you, Jess. You’re…”
“Still a stranger. It’s OK.” She sounded childlike and fragile and, though it might have been wishful thinking on his part, a little relieved. “Just sleep, OK? We both need to sleep.”
ONLY JESS DIDN’T sleep. She lay beside her husband in the quiet afternoon light, afraid that she could never do this. She’d tried. She’d even initiated. But it hadn’t felt right. It had felt like a lie. How could she ever be a wife to him again? Not the kind of wife he needed her to be. Even if they finally breached this barrier and made love, it would be a lie.
The tears came again. Soft and silent.
She cried for all he’d lost. For all she’d lost.
She cried for Ty and let the ache of missing him finally take over.
She turned away, had to get out of the bed, but J.R. stopped her with a gentle hand on her arm.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and pulled her against him again, then held her while she wept.
“THIS ISN’T GOING to work, is it?” Jess asked two weeks later, after several more dismal attempts to be intimate.
