by Teresa Hill
"Did I tell you I joined the Navy right after I turned twenty?"
She shook her head.
"Which means that, in another couple of months, I'll have twenty years in. I don't like being away from you, Amanda. Grace's husband died, and I thought, that's wrong. The guy was a painter. There's no risk in that. And he was so much younger than I am. No way anybody would ever expect that guy to be gone so soon. You just never know how long you're ever going to have with anybody."
"I know. He was just driving home in his car. Most people are in cars every day. And he's gone."
"They had so little time together. It's been eating at me ever since it happened. Every day away from you feels like a day wasted. I want every day we can have together. I'm thinking about putting in my papers. Retiring."
"What would you do then?"
"I don't know exactly. A lot of guys are getting out and going into private security work, contract stuff. The money's great, but it means being gone, three months, six months. You pick the place and how long you're willing to be there, but it's often the same places I've been lately, the dangerous ones on the other side of the world."
"Is that what you want?" she asked carefully.
"No. Like I said, it feels like every day away from you is one I just threw away. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to be with you."
"I want to be with you, too."
"Remember, back in Djibouti, that motorcycle trip I told you about? Up the California coast into Oregon, Washington state. We could go on into Canada if you wanted. I've always heard British Columbia is gorgeous."
"I remember."
"It's not a fancy trip, but it's beautiful. What do you think? Want to do that?"
"Will, I don't need fancy, and I'll go anywhere with you."
"But do you think you'd like it? A trip like that?"
"Hanging onto you, on the back of a bike with beautiful scenery? Yes."
"I was thinking... what about that trip as a honeymoon?" He finally got the real question out. Kind of.
She went still. "A honeymoon?"
"Yes."
She raised her head enough that she could see his face. "Will, a honeymoon is a trip two people take after they get married."
"Right. That's the way it works." He grinned, not so nervous anymore. "I'm looking for a way that you're legally obligated to spend the rest of your life with me. Granted, I don't know a lot about that, but it's a marriage, right?"
She nodded. "There's something in the marriage vows about that—being together for life."
"Think you could show me how to do that, too? Be married?"
She grinned. "I don't know. I've never been married. I'm not sure I know how to do it."
"Think we could figure it out together?"
"I'm not sure what you're asking," she said, but she couldn't wipe the grin off her face.
"You're right. I need to ask. Want me to get down on one knee here on the balcony?"
"No, I don't want you to move." She had her head on his shoulder, and he was kissing her cheek, whispering into her ear.
"Amanda, I think you're amazing and perfect. I can't believe how happy my life is with you, better than anything I ever imagined it would be, and I would be the luckiest, happiest man in the world if you would marry me. Will you do that? Will you marry me?"
She started crying, her pretty eyes flooding with tears, and she was laughing at the same time, kissing him, too, holding his face to hers. "Yes. Yes, I'll marry you."
The End
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Acknowledgements
So many people and events swirled through my mind in forming this story.
First, retired U.S. Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. When the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, came under attack on Sept. 11, 2012, they were among a number of private security contractors working for the CIA and members of the Joint Special Operations Command who were already in Libya.
Woods was a few minutes away at the CIA safe house in Benghazi, while Doherty was more than six hundred miles away in Tripoli.
It wasn't the job of either man to protect the consulate. Still, when they heard Americans were under attack, Doherty and Woods, who were friends from their days in the SEAL teams, and other fellow security operatives rushed in, without regard to their own safety, to try to help the Americans in danger.
Both men died the next morning in a firefight at the CIA annex while helping fight off the attackers and save the lives of about thirty Americans in Benghazi.
What really brought them to life for me was "A Letter to My Friend Glen Doherty" by Brandon Webb, which is found here: http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/a-letter-to-my-friend-glen-doherty/
Will, my hero, is another guy who rushes toward trouble, not away from it.
U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens also died in the attack on the Consulate in Benghazi. As he introduced himself to the people of Libya in this short video, I was struck by his enthusiasm for and excitement about his job.
http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/video/2012/05/201205145602.html
Obviously, he believed in public service and diplomacy. He gave his life in support of those ideals and of a free and democratic Libya.
My heroine's father, I decided, might be a diplomat, an ambassador who raised her to believe that one person truly can make a difference in the world. I knew that much Amanda, but I needed more.
On Dec. 14, 2012, I realized my heroine was a teacher. That was the horrible day of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
I feel guilty merely acknowledging such a terrible event helped me figure out a fictional character, but she came to life in my head because I was in awe of the courage shown by teachers and school staffers that day.
My editor urged me not to name the specific event, to just say a school shooting. It was so awful a thing, too shocking, too painful. I understood her reasons, but at the same time, we all felt it. Not as strongly as the students, the teachers and the parents in that community, I know, but it affected us all. Especially those of us who have children, and those whose loved ones are teachers.
I tried using another state, another town, the name of a made-up school, but to me that felt like I was putting a horrible target on some other school or place. I couldn't do it.
So, I just said a school in Connecticut. We all know where it was. We all remember that horrible day.
We all think people like Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods are brave. But they're trained to handle horrible, frightening, deadly situations. They signed up for it, knowing the dangers. I don't say that to in any way diminish what they did. Clearly, they are heroes.
But when we see ordinary people showing the courage displayed at the school in Connecticut, it seems so extraordinary. We start to think. Could I do that? Could I be that brave? A friend of mine argued that of course, we could. Children's lives were on the line. We would all do whatever we could to save them. And I argued that we all wish we would be that brave, but we'd never really know unless faced with a situation like that.
The teachers and staff at Sandy Hook don't need to wonder. They know. They put their bodies between their students and that gunman. As horrified as we all were by what happened that day, I think we were all equally in awe of their courage.
The names of the adults who gave their lives that day are principal Dawn Hochsprung, school psychologist Mary Sherlach, teachers Lauren Rousseau and Victoria Soto, and teacher's aides Rachel D'Avino and Anne Marie Murphy.
I won't list the children's names here. It's too painful. But I do want to say to those children's parents that I'm in awe of your courage, too, as you fight in their names to make all our children safer. May you find some peace and a sense of purpose in that fight and still feel your children's loving presence in your hearts.
In the days that followed that awful shooting, I read something that stayed with me, a diary by "bkamr" called "What Would You Do, Mom?" http://www.dailykos.com/
story/2012/12/16/1170637/-What-would-you-do-Mom
The author is a teacher. She came home the day of the Sandy Hook shooting to her teenage son, who was upset and scared for her, and asked what she would do if something like that ever happened in her school.
Her answer was basically that to be a teacher today in America is to have a plan for what you would do if something so terrible ever happened in your school.
She has a detailed plan. She practices her plan. She knows where in her classroom students can hide. She knows all the ways they can get out. She knows what she has in her classroom that she can use to slow a gunman down.
As horrible as that is, that's where we are.
In my book, Amanda's plan was inspired by the plan of this teacher. As Amanda says, sometimes now, the whole world seems scary.
I also want to acknowledge first grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, who survived that day in Sandy Hook with her fifteen students by hiding them in a small bathroom. She talks about her experience here: http://abcnews.go.com/US/newtown-teacher-mission/story?id=18864583
The part that had me in tears was when she explained that while hiding in the bathroom, she told them she loved them, because she thought they were all going to die, and she wanted that to be the last thing they heard. That they were loved.
That's exactly what we'd all want our children to hear in such a moment. It's what I had Amanda say to her students.
I also need to thank writer CJ Hale for her frank and honest piece, "12 Things No One Told Me About Sex after Rape," for helping me better understand Amanda. http://thoughtcatalog.com/cj-hale/2013/06/12-things-no-one-told-me-about-sex-after-rape/
And the brave women of the DK sexual assault survivors' community and a private Facebook group of survivors who talked to me about their experiences. http://www.dailykos.com/blog/Rape%20and%20Domestic%20Violence
I hope this book isn't too dark. It's the first question I asked everyone who read it before publication. I write about life, and sometimes life is really, really hard. But I hope what readers take from my work is how we survive, how we move on, how we still love and trust and depend on each other, because that makes life so much better.
I am blessed to have the love of a very good man and of my two children, John and Laura, who both found wonderful people to marry this year, making Lisa and Nate part of our family; the support and wisdom of my wonderful editor Ali Cunliffe; the publishing and marketing expertise of Nina Paules and everyone at www.epublishingworks.com; insightful writer friends and early readers Pam Baker and Hannah Rowan; and early readers Bretta, Bridget and Jules.
Special thanks to JD, who would tell you he has the best job in the world, that he never really thought he was going to die, and that he is absolutely not a hero.
Thank you all for helping me do what I do and putting up with me while I do it. I whined a lot while writing this book. Will won't talk me. He's so stubborn. The story's really dark. It's too long. It's not working. Do I really want to write a book about a school shooting and a woman who's raped? What is wrong with me? I think I need to try that flash forward/flash back thing I've always been too intimidated to try. Maybe that will fix it. And it's still too long.
You get the idea. It's not easy being friends with a writer.
With love,
Teresa
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TWELVE DAYS
The McRae Series
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Excerpt from
Twelve Days
The McRae Series
Book One
by
Teresa Hill
USA Today Bestselling Author
Sam got upstairs first to clear his things out of the spare bedroom, which they'd need for the three foster children who'd arrived earlier that day.
He was still trying to decide where to put his own things when Rachel came into the hall and caught him standing there with a handful of clothes. Her cheeks flushed, whether with anger or embarrassment, he couldn't tell, and the look she gave him made him feel like a thief, like he'd stolen something from her, something personal and very important, by walking away without a word from the bed they'd always shared. This after nights of making sure he was gone from the house before she woke up in the mornings and didn't go to bed at night until she was already asleep. So they didn't have to say anything about the fact that he slept somewhere else.
"I'll, uhh... I can sleep on the sofa in the family room," he said.
She nodded, keeping her head down, not letting him see anything else that might be in her eyes right now. He understood. He didn't want to have to look Rachel in the eye and talk to her about where he'd be sleeping now or maybe about why he'd started sleeping somewhere else in the first place.
He didn't even want to think about it now. It made him remember how alone he was, even in the same house with his wife. Right now, he felt more alone than ever. Watching her with the children tonight, he couldn't help but think that this was the way things should have been, the way things would never be for him and Rachel.
Instead, he felt like a stranger here, as if he were on the fringes of something he wanted desperately, staring at it from the outside looking in, knowing he'd never have it, the way he'd felt most of his life. But never with Rachel. It was only with her that he'd ever imagined he might belong anywhere.
But not anymore, Sam reminded himself. He slipped downstairs and went back outside to his workshop, then made himself wait until after ten o'clock to go back inside.
There, he found Rachel sitting in the rocker, the Christmas garland that had been around her neck now draped across the back of the chair, the baby in her arms.
"Is the baby okay?" he asked, sitting down on the sofa across the room from her.
"Probably just unsettled by being in a new place," Rachel said, not looking at him, either, her attention focused fully on the baby. "She fussed a bit after Emma put her down, so I brought her down here and rocked her. She went right to sleep, and then... Well, it's not exactly a hardship to hold her."
Grace had caught the tip of Rachel's finger in one tiny fist, holding on tightly, and Rachel was running her thumb over the baby's tiny hand, mesmerized, lost. Sam looked at the garland Zach had given her earlier. He remembered the way she looked, all sparkly and glittery, her hair glowing golden as well. She'd laughed, and he'd been startled by the sound. He didn't remember the last time he heard Rachel laugh, and he missed it. He missed so many things about her.
Sam couldn't help but think of how perfect she looked sitting in her great-grandmother's rocking chair with a baby in her arms.
"I know it's silly," she said, "but today, when Miriam came... It was just like in my dream. The baby dream. I was sitting here all alone, and the doorbell rang, and she walked up to me and handed me Grace. I'd given up on anything like that ever happening."
Because of Sam. He knew it.
They couldn't have any more children. They'd tried adoption twice, only to get their hopes dashed both times, and then they'd gotten Will, which had also turned out bad. Now they had more children, who weren't staying, either.
"Rachel, she's not yours to keep."
"I know." She nuzzled her face against the baby's cheek. "I was just saying... it was so like my dream. I'd given up, totally. I couldn't even hope anymore, because it was too hard. It hurt too much. But I think I was wrong, Sam. How can I just stop hoping?"
He wondered what his wife hoped for these days, but he didn't ask. All he said was, "Just don't forget this baby isn't yours."
"I won't. I promise. But I'm going to enjoy the time I have with her. I'm going to try my best to enjoy this Christmas with these children."
"We can do that, I guess." He didn't like it, but he'd do it for her. Because she'd asked this of him and
it was one thing within his power to give. And then, with his throat thick and tight with regrets stored up over the years, he said, "I never meant for it to turn out this way, Rachel."
"Me, either," she said.
They weren't talking about kids anymore. They were talking about their marriage, about the mess they'd made of it. She'd given up on him, he feared, just as he'd given up on the two of them.
Still, Sam wondered if she missed him, at nights like this when it was just the two of them talking and in their bed. She'd never said a word about him sleeping somewhere else, never asked him to come back, and suddenly it seemed as if it had been forever since he'd touched her.
He didn't want to think that he might never do that again, might never have the right. What would she do if he turned to her now? he wondered. If he took her in his arms and buried himself in the familiar comfort of her warm, soft body?
Sam groaned. He still wanted her, and it had been so long.
All those nights, he thought, he could have been with her.
Twelve Days
The McRae Series
Book One
by
Teresa Hill
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Marry Me Again
Second Chance Love
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