The Bracelet (Everlasting Love)

by Karen Rose Smith

“No.” Brady’s heart was definitely racing faster now. And he could feel the ache in his chest, the sweat beading on his brow. He felt himself flushing.

  “Brady?”

  “Leave it, Laura. Just leave it.”

  Then he went to the bathroom for a pill that he hoped would take care of more than one kind of pain.

  Chapter 9

  “No!” Brady called out in bed beside Laura.

  She came awake with a jolt, as she had many other nights since his surgery a month ago.

  He was tossing…kicking the covers…mumbling about mortars and Carl and the VC. He would hurt himself if he kept this up. He still had to heal.

  Pushing away the fear of waking him, she grabbed his shoulder. His pajama shirt was damp with sweat.

  In an instinctive response, he grabbed for her arm and gripped it.

  “Brady. Brady, it’s Laura. Laura.”

  His grip loosened. Quickly he heaved himself to the edge of the bed and switched on the lamp. “Did I bruise you?”

  The information they’d received from the hospital had explained that bad dreams might be one of the aftereffects of open-heart surgery. But Brady was having more than bad dreams. Tonight he’d been back in Vietnam. She’d been through this with him before.

  She didn’t even check her arm. “No. I’m fine. Are you?”

  “Just great,” he muttered, not looking at her. “I’m just great.”

  Her mouth went dry. This was her fault.

  She’d caused his heart attack. These dreams were a reminder he couldn’t deny. She was responsible. And he wouldn’t let her help him. He wouldn’t let her in. The past few weeks had almost been packed with as much tension between them as the time after he’d come home from the service. Although he denied it, she knew he blamed her for having to go through this recuperation, the nightmares and the life changes he didn’t want to make.

  Tomorrow he’d have another electrocardiogram. But it wouldn’t really tell the doctors what was going on in his heart.

  “Brady, what can I do?” She had to fix this. Somehow she had to fix them.

  “There’s nothing you can do. You know that. They’ll fade. Eventually.”

  But would the nightmares fade? Pandora’s box had been opened, and this time Laura didn’t believe the lid could be put back on again.

  Pushing himself up off the bed, Brady didn’t even glance at her as he headed for the bathroom.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, holding back tears. If only they could go back—even just to this year’s anniversary. What she wouldn’t give to go back in time merely two months.

  On their thirty-third anniversary, Brady had come home around eight.

  She was in the kitchen, cleaning up pots and pans from cooking his favorite dinner. She’d tried to paste on a smile. “Hi. I just put dinner in the refrigerator.”

  “I didn’t forget what today is.”

  No, he hadn’t forgotten. She could see that. Her smile almost faded away as she said, “I made your favorite—coq au vin. Do you want me to warm it up?”

  “Sure.” He looked away from her, down the hall. “Are the kids upstairs?”

  “They went to the movies. I…” Her voice faltered and she took a deep breath. “I was hoping we’d have the evening to ourselves.”

  When he crossed to her, he stood very near. “I didn’t forget,” he said again.

  “If you didn’t forget today was our anniversary, then I guess you just didn’t want to be here!”

  “I didn’t know you’d cleared the deck for us. I’m not a mind reader. Maybe you should have told me.”

  Those tears were so close. “Maybe I should have.”

  He sighed. “I thought about buying you something. But you have everything. What you could use is a smaller car to run errands. Your van’s getting older. Maybe we can buy one of those yellow Mustangs.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. She took an envelope from a kitchen drawer and handed it to him. The card she’d bought seemed meaningless now. Too much sentiment that could embarrass them both. “I thought you’d like those.”

  He opened the envelope and pulled out the tickets. “An Orioles game. That’s great.”

  “I couldn’t get the home opener. It’s the third game at Camden Yards.”

  “Will you go with me?” he joked.

  “I can. Or maybe Jack would like to go.” She didn’t suggest he take Sean. But that suggestion was there between them, too. She understood why Brady often didn’t come home for dinner. He and Sean didn’t talk. Whenever Brady asked their son questions, he got monosyllabic answers that frustrated him.

  “Thank you,” he said a bit too enthusiastically as he put his arms around her and kissed her. The kiss had some of the old passion in it. At least, she thought it did. She kissed him back with the fervor she felt…with the fervor she’d always felt. They could still salvage the evening.

  When Brady broke off the kiss, she smiled. “I have strawberries and whipped cream for dessert.”

  “The kids will probably be home till I eat.”

  “We could start with dessert first.”

  His brows arched as he caught her meaning. “Yes,” he drawled. “We could. I’ll go get a shower. You bring the strawberries.”

  Then he kissed her briefly again, smiled and left the kitchen.

  They’d fed each other the strawberries and made love. It had felt forced, as though they were both trying too hard. More a ritual than a joining of hearts.

  Somehow, feelings that had once been so strong didn’t awaken desire as they once did.

  That was what she’d thought in March. But now she wondered if Brady’s feelings for her had faded altogether.

  Because now their marriage was falling apart.

  “The test go okay?” Laura asked Brady on Friday afternoon as he climbed into her van.

  Last night, after his nightmare, neither of them had fallen asleep easily. He’d listened for Laura’s breathing to deepen, but it hadn’t for over an hour.

  This morning Pat had dropped him off at Apple Hill Medical Center and Laura was picking him up during her lunch break. He was damn tired of all the tests, probing and questions. He was also tired of being chauffeured.

  “It was just an electrocardiogram,” he answered briefly.

  After his checkup next week, he’d be able to drive himself. Then Laura might stop hovering. There was so much tension between them. He could feel her expectations, her willing him to be well and at peace once more, her desire to assuage her own guilt. Although he’d been told bad dreams might be one of the aftereffects of his surgery, he hadn’t been prepared for the recurring pictures that he’d believed he’d erased from his memory years ago.

  Laura was so patient with him that sometimes he just wanted to shake her. Why couldn’t she see that he needed to be left alone until he recovered…until he felt like a man again? He saw the longing in her eyes for the intimacy they used to share. But he couldn’t wrap her in his arms right now because he knew where it would lead….

  In another week or so they could consider attempting sex.

  Sex.

  He had no idea how his heart would respond even if he could get it up and keep it up. His medication might prevent a normal response. On top of that, the idea of his pulse racing out of control brought back visions of his heart attack.

  Maybe after he started rehab and felt comfortable with the treadmill and his heart going faster…

  Since his heart attack, he’d been reexamining his life, wishing he could do some of it over. When he looked at the whole of his marriage, he could see how much he owed Laura…how much he’d always owed Laura. She’d saved him from hell. That was why he worked so damn hard. She deserved the best of everything. She deserved a lot more. But sometimes he couldn’t give her what she desired most—the connection they’d found on the courthouse steps.

  “That could be your last test for a while. You’ve got to be happy about that.” She was obviously trying
to engage him in conversation.

  “I am.” There didn’t seem to be more to say.

  “Brady, talk to me.”

  “About?” he asked with restrained patience.

  “About what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling. You wanted me to go back to work at Blossoms and I have. But we hardly ever talk.”

  After uncomfortable beats of silence, she added, “I’m wondering if you’re blaming me for all you’re going through—your recuperation and…and the bad dreams you’re having again.”

  “I’ve told you before. The heart attack wasn’t your fault.”

  “I feel it was. Ever since you got home, you’ve been shutting me out.”

  He kept silent.

  “Did you know that after my miscarriages, I thought you might blame me for them?” she asked quietly, as if she’d been reexamining their lives, too.

  “Why would you possibly think that? I never gave you any indication that I did, did I?”

  “No. But I kept losing the babies. I kept worrying about what I was doing wrong. If I shouldn’t have been working. If I should have found another doctor.”

  “Laura, your miscarriages were probably my fault. Because of the defoliant used in Nam. We didn’t know it then, but we know it now. When rumors about Agent Orange began trickling out, we discussed it.”

  Shooting him a quick look, Laura sighed. “Guilt isn’t always rational. I know you wanted lots of kids like I did. And when I was pregnant with Jason—”

  She paused and he knew why. They didn’t talk about Jason because it was just too painful.

  But this time she didn’t stop. “When I was pregnant with Jason, you were there for me every moment…during our worry until I was at eight months and then nine months along. When he was born, you were happier than I’ve ever seen you.”

  Reluctantly Brady recalled that time, too. “My flashbacks had quit. The nightmares were almost nonexistent.” Their son had been the hope who could finally eradicate everything bad that had gone before.

  After silence wedged between them, she sent him a weak smile. “So many good memories. Like Jason’s first Christmas, all the lights you put on the tree, the train set you assembled. You kissed me under the mistletoe and gave me the Christmas-stocking charm that year.”

  He heard the catch in her voice as she faced the wind-shield once more.

  Then her small smile faded and the good memory became one both wished they could forget.

  “After Jason died—” She slowed for a red light and glanced at him. “Afterward…since there was no specific cause to blame with SIDS, I ran what-ifs through my mind over and over again. What if my milk had been more plentiful and I could have breast-fed him? What if I’d put him to bed later? What if I’d put him to bed earlier? What if I’d checked on him more often? If only we’d had a baby monitor. If only I’d gotten up early.” After a few moments, she added, “We haven’t had a smooth road. Your almost dying in front of me has brought a lot of the old times back.”

  Old times. Old memories. Brady vividly recalled rushing into the nursery, finding Laura holding Jason…His son had been three months old when he’d stopped breathing. His throat tight, Brady skipped ahead.

  The day of the funeral—

  He’d stood gazing at the little maple casket. He remembered thinking he’d wanted to be alone with it. He’d wanted to tell his son everything he’d never have a chance to tell him. He’d wanted to imagine Jason going to kindergarten, picking out his first pup, racing a bicycle. Yet he’d known that if he’d actually dwelled on any of that, he might fall apart.

  Laura had held herself together until the last of their friends and relatives had left their house. Then she’d begun crying inconsolably. He’d held her day after day until finally weeks later, she’d begun attending John’s group. He just hadn’t been able to do that. There had been no way he could talk about how he’d felt.

  Laura’s voice now penetrated the reflections and brought him back from a place of sorrow he rarely visited. “Brady?”

  “Sorry. I was thinking. What did you ask me?”

  “Do you remember the night I got home from Blossoms after talking to that customer who’d adopted?”

  “I remember.” That night Laura’s face had been glowing, her eyes bright, and she’d looked like the twenty-year-old he’d fallen in love with.

  “I gave you the business card from the lawyer in Harrisburg.”

  “And told me how your customer had adopted three children and how they were so adorable and that you’d held the two-year-old for a long time. You asked me if we could adopt.”

  He’d known no other child would ever take Jason’s place. But Laura had believed adopting could make them happy again.

  Ever since Brady had come home from the service, he’d been afraid he’d lose Laura. It was as simple as that…and as complex. When she’d gotten pregnant with Jason and the pregnancy had gone to term, he’d felt a little more secure in their happiness. But after they’d lost Jason, he realized that if they didn’t have kids together…and that meant adopting, she might leave. So he’d agreed to fill out the paperwork for the lawyer.

  When Sean had been placed in Laura’s arms a year and a half later, Brady had felt…nothing—no connection to this child he was going to raise as his son. He’d tried his damnedest, but it was easier to work than to be around the baby. It was easier to devise a business plan for the company he intended to build than to watch Sean take his first step, hear him speak his first word, witness the bond between this child and Laura. Because he worked so much and spent so little time with Sean, they’d never established those basic ties to carry them through the years. It was his fault, not Sean’s.

  When they’d adopted Kat, he’d had no trouble taking her quickly into his heart, possibly because she was a girl. His love for his daughter had become another wedge between him and Sean. If anyone asked Brady if he loved his son, he would say he did. And he did. But it was a love of distance, a love of responsibility, a love that had never tied the two of them together.

  Beside him now, Laura softly said, “If we hadn’t adopted Sean and Kat, think of what we’d have missed.”

  Part of him agreed.

  The other part…

  He was glad Laura was turning into their driveway, glad they wouldn’t have more time to reminisce.

  There was a black BMW parked in front of the garage.

  “It’s Jack!” Laura said brightly.

  Brady hadn’t been answering calls. Since he worked in his home office a few hours a day now, he let the machine pick up.

  As they stopped in the driveway, Brady watched Jack get out of his car. His old friend smiled and waved.

  Brady climbed out of the van, leaned in and said to his wife, “Don’t work too hard.”

  She forced a smile and nodded. “I’ll probably be home around seven.”

  He should have kissed her. Just a fast kiss. Nothing would happen with that. But with Jack waiting…

  Laura waved as she backed out of the driveway.

  He went to meet his old friend.

  “You’ve lost weight,” Jack said to him.

  Jack, like many men their age, had added about five pounds a year the past five years. His face was fuller than it used to be, hiding some of the wrinkles. His brown hair was laced with gray, but his hazel eyes were as sharp as ever, and in his yellow polo shirt with brown slacks, he appeared every inch the successful businessman he was. He now owned three shoe stores in the surrounding area.

  Brady’s T-shirt and jeans made his loss of fifteen pounds since the surgery obvious. He’d needed to get lean again and he wanted to stay that way.

  “Want a cup of coffee?” he asked. “It will have to be decaffeinated, though.”

  “Make it strong, and I don’t care.”

  Brady chuckled. Jack had always been practical.

  Inside the house, Brady led Jack to the state-of-the-art kitchen, with its stainless-steel appliances, mahogany cupboards an
d bay-windowed breakfast nook that overlooked the backyard.

  Once the coffee was brewing, Jack said, “I called and left lots of messages.”

  Brady captured two stoneware mugs from one of the cupboards. “I know.”

  “You don’t have to avoid me, Brady. We’ve been friends too long for that.”

  “I’ve been putting most of my energy into my recovery.”

  “No, you’ve been hiding out. Has the flak from that article in the paper blown over?”

  Jack went for the bottom line. “For the most part. I wasn’t in any condition to deal with it when I got home from the hospital. I didn’t turn on the TV, so I didn’t hear local reporters doing a two-minute bite about it, either. No doubt everybody’s forgotten about the story now. It’s old news.”

  After they stared at each other for a long moment, Brady inquired, “Aren’t you going to ask me if it was true?”

  “No, I’m not. You never wanted to talk about Nam and I guess there are good reasons for that. When I saw what Luis did to himself after he came back, I was just so damn grateful I didn’t have to go.”

  A few years after Luis had been discharged, he’d died of a drug overdose. Brady, Laura and Jack had attended the funeral together.

  After filling the mugs, Brady handed one to his lifelong friend. “Reporters wouldn’t stop calling for a while. Laura dealt with most of that and just told them we had nothing to say. There’s a pile of letters, not all of them condemning me. Two of them counted. Those were from servicemen who’d been there.”

  “I think it was rotten the Chamber of Commerce rescinded the Man of the Year Award and gave it to someone else. Why didn’t you fight that?”

  “Fight it? Jeez, Jack. I couldn’t lift over five pounds after I got home. I was having palpitations and didn’t know if my heart would ever function properly again. I couldn’t waste my energy on that.”

  “I guess not,” he conceded. “When are you going back to work?”

  “My secretary’s been faxing me anything I have to okay. I can access files on the computer from here.” After he could resume driving, he’d go into the office part-time until rehab was finished. When he did go back, there would be whispers and stares and lots of speculation. He’d have to let it all roll off his back unless…