Tails of Love

by Lori Foster

  “This never stopped being your home, Kathy.”

  She hugged her arms across her chest. “It seemed like it.”

  “It took me a while to understand that.”

  How could he understand what she didn’t? “You can’t—”

  “Accept it?” he interrupted as his fingers curled behind her neck. The calluses dragged across her skin. With steady pressure, he drew her forward. “Accepting how you’re seeing things is where I’m struggling.”

  He was standing on the threshold. One more step and she’d be there, too.

  “Don’t do this, Walt.”

  “Don’t do what?” he asked in that low baritone that always slipped below her defenses. “Don’t touch my wife? Don’t hold her? Don’t kiss her?”

  “Don’t try and make it stop hurting,” she whispered as she took that last step.

  It would never stop hurting and trying just gave her new failures and new guilt.

  With a slow, careful move he pulled her into his embrace. “Then how about I just share the hurt with you?”

  She blinked, staring at the base of his throat. His pulse was beating faster than normal. She was upsetting him. “You can’t.”

  “He was my son, too.”

  The black cloud of grief gathering on the periphery of her awareness, rushed forward. Clenching her hands into fists, she pressed them against his chest. If he didn’t let her go, she was going to break. “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  He didn’t let go. Why didn’t he let go? “It was nobody’s fault. It just happened.”

  That was a lie. She could barely get the words out. “Everything happens for a reason.”

  And that reason was her.

  “Not that, sweetheart.”

  It was wrong to stand there and let him stroke her hair, rest his cheek on her head, comfort her. She didn’t deserve comfort.

  “I should have checked on Danny earlier.” Why hadn’t she checked him earlier?

  “You were tired.”

  She shoved away, stumbling back two steps when he let go. “What kind of mother sleeps while her son is dying?”

  He opened his mouth to answer. Shaking her head, she spun around. She didn’t want to hear it. She’d been running for months so she wouldn’t have to hear him say what she saw in his eyes every time he looked at her. Tears blinded her. Sobs stole her breath. She took a step, misjudged the depth of the stair and fell. Cement rushed to meet her in a wash of gray. Her head hit the garage floor with a thunk that made everything in sight jar out of focus.

  “Kathy!”

  For a moment, she lay stunned, unable to move while everything around her progressed in slow motion. She saw Walt lean over her, saw the anguish in his eyes. Saw him reach for her head, saw his fingers come back red. She was bleeding. Behind him Sebastian jumped down the stairs, taking them both in one leap. Oh, no. He couldn’t jump.

  She looked back. Walt was on his cell phone, giving their address.

  She tried to talk, nothing came out. Sebastian leaned down, whined and placed a sloppy kiss on her cheek. Walt shoved him back. She struggled harder. He couldn’t do that.

  “Don’t.”

  His hand pressed on her chest. “Lie still.”

  She had to make him understand before the darkness rolling toward her took over. “Sebastian. Heartworms. Shot.”

  If Sebastian got too active, the worms in his heart could break off and just like a blood clot, lodge in his lungs and kill him.

  “I’ll take care of him later.” Her chest was shaking. Or was it Walt? Was Walt shaking?

  “Just lie still. The ambulance is coming.”

  There wasn’t time. “Now,” she gasped.

  She couldn’t bear another death on her conscience.

  In the distance a loud wailing sounded. Beside her, Sebastian joined in, his howl echoing ghoulishly in the garage.

  “Damn it, Kathy! You stay with me.”

  She tried, she really did, but the darkness was too pervasive, too thick. And just like before, when it rolled over her, she couldn’t find him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Walt sat beside Kathy’s hospital bed, holding her hand as she lay unconscious. Concussion. They said she had a concussion. He’d known a lot of officers with concussions. They’d always bounced back, but this was Kathy and she was so thin now, so pale from living on nothing but nerves. He didn’t see how she could survive anything, let alone a knock on the head. Daniel’s death had almost destroyed her. Them.

  At the time, he’d been too wrapped up in his own grief to see what was happening to Kathy. He’d overestimated her coping skills, thinking because she went through the motions of their daily life that she was handling her grief better than he. As a result, he’d hidden his own misery, not wanting to burden her. And while he’d been doing that, she’d been building that wall he hadn’t known how to get past. That impenetrable wall that had her always apologizing, always running.

  It’d taken a counselor to identify it for him. Guilt. He should have seen it for himself. His Kathy had always had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, but he’d been too busy at the time blaming himself to see anyone else’s guilt. In his selfishness, he’d thought he had a monopoly on the emotion. “Ah, Kathy, sweet, how did we manage to screw this up?”

  She didn’t move. He smoothed his thumb over her short pink nails. He remembered how happy she’d been when Danny had been born. How she’d cherished every day, her endless patience with him when he’d started teething, the way she’d greeted him each day at the door with something new Danny had done. Mostly he remembered how happy he’d been to come home to her.

  How, when they’d needed each other the most, had they managed to lose the magic of a couple that had made them invincible? “I’m not giving up on us, sweet.”

  She still didn’t move. She looked so lost in the bed, her blond hair in a neat braid over her shoulder. She’d have something to say about that when she woke up. Kathy hated braids. She also hated hospitals, hated to sleep alone. The doctor didn’t like that she was sleeping, but nothing they did could wake her up for more than a few moments in which she snapped at them to leave her be.

  Kathy frowned, shifted, murmured. If they were home, he’d snuggle close, kiss her brow, and watch her drift back off to sleep. She’d always slept well in his arms. She rolled to the other side, her frown growing.

  What the hell. He stood, shucking his shoes. Very gently, he eased her over before lowering the bar and sliding in beside her. Nothing had ever felt so right as when he eased his arm under her head and tucked her against him. She moaned his name, all the longing he felt inside in that one syllable. It gave him hope.

  He cupped his hand behind her head and kissed her brow. “Do you think I don’t know why Sebastian means so much to you? He’s the spitting image of the dog we dreamed someday would be Danny’s best friend.”

  A little piece of the future they’d imagined come to life. Not the biggest part, but a part. “I won’t let him die, sweetheart. He brought you back to me.”

  A miracle in itself.

  Slipping his hand under the end of her braid, he rubbed the ends between his fingers. They were dry. He frowned at the change. Kathy had always taken care of her hair. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for that? How often I drove by that hellhole you moved into and just sat outside watching over you? I almost broke that door down and dragged you home more times than I can count, but the counselor said you had to make the first move.”

  He brushed his lips over her lashes, smiling when her lids fluttered. “You’re so damn stubborn. I was beginning to think you never would.”

  But she finally had, and he was never letting her go again. He settled his head beside hers on the pillow. He could just make out the sweet melon scent of her shampoo. Such a small thing, but the memory of how she smelled had haunted his lonely nights, made his arms ache.

  She stirred again. “Walt?”

  “Right here.”

  S
he yawned and winced. Her hand came up. He caught it before it could reach her head, just holding it in his as her eyes opened, revealing the sky blue irises and the confusion.

  “What happened?”

  “You fell and hit your head.”

  “How cliché.”

  Another thing he’d missed. Her sense of humor. His smile was genuine. “Yeah, it was.”

  He knew the instant she realized where she was. Her eyes widened. “I’m in the hospital?”

  “Just for observation.”

  The tug on her hand let him know other memories had resurfaced also. For a moment, he had the selfish wish she’d lost her memory. He hated the pain that filled her eyes, the immediate emotional withdrawal that put miles between them though their bodies still touched.

  “Sebastian?”

  “Is fine. Jim took the crate out of your car and has him all set up in the living room.”

  Keeping her hand in his, he nudged her bangs off her face with his finger. She let him. When he was done, she said, “You can let go of my hand.”

  “No.” He needed that connection. They needed it. Immediately, her face closed up. He remembered what the counselor had said about that one-syllable answer and the way he used it could shut down communication. He hadn’t believed her. At least when it came to Kathy. Kathy knew him. They’d been together since they were seventeen and sixteen respectively, but seeing its effect on Kathy now, maybe there’d been some truth in the statement. There had to be a reason she’d never come to him.

  “It’s been too long since I’ve held you.”

  Pain flashed over her face, old, pointless, debilitating.

  “Talk to me, Kathy girl.”

  “Don’t you think we’ve said enough?”

  They’d said plenty. None of it relevant. “I don’t think we’ve ever talked about a damn thing that mattered.”

  She jerked back as if he’d struck her. He only let her go so far. “Hell, I’m no good at this Kathy, but I’m willing to try.”

  “Try what?”

  “Talking about what matters. About Danny. About what losing him did to us.”

  She stared at him, her blue eyes defensive under the bandage covering her brow.

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  His first instinct was to argue. His second to withdraw. The third was a small voice in his head courtesy of his counselor. It didn’t always need to be a battle. Words had power. Sometimes they just needed to be said to release it.

  “Maybe not for you but I’m choking on a hell of a lot of things I want to say.”

  This time when she tugged on her hand he let go.

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  Before he’d thought when that particular mask fell over her face that she was shutting him out, blaming him for not being there, but now he could see another possibility.

  “I know, but I’ve been waiting six months to say this to you, and I can’t go another six with it eating at me.”

  “So you’re going to tell me now when I’m stuck in a hospital bed?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Yet the words wouldn’t immediately come. Looking down the barrel of a gun had never left him feeling so exposed. Vulnerable wasn’t a comfortable sensation. He could feel the anger build in reaction, the urge to close up increase. If he hadn’t had the counselor’s warning, hadn’t had so much on the table, he would just have responded instinctively, hiding the weakness and letting the consequences fall where they may. Like he had when he’d gotten the call about Danny. He’d rushed to the hospital, taken one look at the devastation on Kathy’s face, recognized the pain coming, and simply shut down.

  “I loved him, too, you know.”

  She stared at him like he was about to rip out her heart. Like she deserved it.

  “Losing him about killed me. He was our son, part of us, our biggest dream come to life and when he needed me, when you needed me, I wasn’t there.”

  She blinked.

  “I’m sorry for that, Kathy.” He slid out of bed, unable to bear the weight of her silence. “I shouldn’t have taken the overtime, should have been there to help you more. And afterward . . .” He shook his head, ran his finger down her arm. Some failures there was no getting around. “Ah, hell, afterward I should have let you scream at me. Whether I thought I could take it or not.”

  Two blinks this time and a tear he couldn’t bear to watch fell. Shit.

  “Scream at me, Kathy.”

  She shook her head. The tear started its downward slide. His determination was nothing against that tear. He’d let too much time pass, too much pain build. Failed her that one critical time. He caught the tear on the edge of his finger before it could blend into her hair and get lost in the bigger distraction. The way they’d lost each other. He touched his thumb to the corner of her mouth the way he had since the day he’d met her, brushed his fingers over the bandage on her forehead, traced the lines of her frown. So much hurt, old and new. But they’d had love, too. More than enough, and if she needed him to carry her for a bit, he could do that. He could be whatever she needed.

  “You need to find a way, sweetheart. Kick, scream, shout, bring the house down, but find a way to talk to me.”

  “Why?”

  It was a near soundless question. He stopped it with the pad of his thumb. “Because I love you, and I’m not letting us go.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Find a way.

  Kathy lay in the hospital bed after Walt left, staring at the door, her mind whirling. Walt wasn’t a begging man. He was too take-charge for that, but he’d been begging her there in those last minutes. Or as close as he’d ever come. Begging her to yell at him.

  She shook her head. He couldn’t possibly think any of what happened was his fault. He’d been the perfect father, the perfect husband. She’d been the one home. The one he’d trusted. The one who hadn’t noticed her son slipping away in his sleep.

  I’m sorry, Kathy.

  Walt didn’t have anything to apologize for. He hadn’t done anything wrong. But he’d apologized. She couldn’t get past that. People only apologized when they felt guilty. She knew all about that. She’d been apologizing in a hundred different ways every day for the last one hundred and eighty days. Not that it seemed to do any good. Not that she ever felt better.

  She put her hand to her head, pressing against the throb, wincing when the stitches pulled. A nurse came in the room. Her name tag identified her as Patty.

  “You’ve got quite the lump there.”

  “I fell down the stairs.”

  “So that sexy man said when you came in. Raised a few eyebrows for sure.”

  “They thought . . . ?”

  “That he beat you?” Patty checked her IV. “It was a possibility.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  Patty smiled over her shoulder. “So we all decided after looking at the wound and the way he hovered. He loves you very much.”

  He couldn’t. Not anymore. She plucked at a fold in the sheet. “We’ve had problems.”

  “What couple doesn’t?”

  “Not like this.” She plucked harder. “Our son died. It was my fault.”

  The statement hung there in the silence. The nurse paused in checking her IV. “I’m sorry. Car accident?”

  She shook her head. “He passed in his sleep.”

  “Sudden infant death syndrome?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s no one’s fault.”

  “I should have woken up for his three AM feeding but I was so tired when he didn’t cry, I slept right through.” She looked up. “That’s when he died.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I read the coroner’s report.”

  “For heaven’s sake, why?”

  The sheet crushed unresistingly between her fingers. “Because I had to know everything about his death.”

  Just in case there was something she’d missed.

  “Time of death isn’t that accurate.”<
br />
  It didn’t have to be. Just knowing Danny could have died waiting for her to come savaged her inside. “But if I’d woken up, checked on him . . . I might have been able to do CPR, bring him back—”

  Patty took the sheet from her hand. “I’m a nurse. I know all about the futility of coulda-woulda-shoulda.”

  Kathy couldn’t look up. “He depended on me.”

  Patty squeezed her hand. “Wait here.”

  She was back in a minute. In her hand she held a booklet. She laid it on the sheet in Kathy’s line of sight. The words “SIDS: understanding and accepting the sudden loss of a child” jumped out at her.

  She pushed it away. She’d read all there was to read on SIDS. Patty pushed it right back. “You’ve already lost your son. Do you really want to lose your husband, too?”

  “No.” Oh, God. No.

  “Then you might want to keep that. You also might want to attend a meeting. This is a support group for people who’ve been where you are. They’re meeting in a half hour downstairs. You should attend.”

  “Why?”

  “You said you wanted to know everything about your son’s death? Well”—she tapped the page—“this is part of it, too.”

  Kathy crumpled the pamphlet in her hand.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Kathy hesitated at the front door of the house, unsure whether to knock. She knew Walt was home. She’d called the station to check on his shift and his car was in the drive. Still, maybe he wouldn’t want to see her. It’d been two weeks since she’d left the hospital. Two weeks in which she’d refused to see him. Two weeks in which she’d fought with herself. Two weeks in which she’d attended support groups, met with a grief counselor, started working through the pain.

  This never stopped being your home, Kathy.

  The statement wrapped around her with the comfort of a hug. And Walt had never stopped being her husband, yet she’d come so close to pushing him away. Maybe she finally had. The last two weeks had been the hardest of her life, and while she’d ached for him, she hadn’t dared see him until she was sure she had herself under control.

  She entered the house. He wasn’t in the living room or the kitchen. Looking through the patio doors, she didn’t see him in the backyard.