Troubleshooters 03 Over The Edge

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “She put on that ring,” Helga told him, “and put us on the fishing boat. I remember watching as she hurried away, as she slipped into the woods to rush back to Copenhagen. I knew she hoped to see Hershel one last time, to kiss him once more, to hold him as he left this world.”

  Helga shook her head. “I never knew. Did she tell you? Did she make it in time?”

  Stanley had to clear his throat. “Yes,” he said. “She did.” He reached for her hand and held it. He had nice hands, strong and warm. “She told me that she was with him at the end. She said the doctors gave him morphine, that he wasn’t in pain. That he slipped into sleep as she held him. That he went quietly.”

  Helga closed her eyes and said a prayer of thanks.

  “I have her ring,” Stanley said.

  Helga looked at him. “I’m sorry?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I never understood why Aunt Anna gave it to me instead of my sister. But if it went from mother to son . . . She wrote me a note—it was part of her will. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but it was something like, ‘If I’d had a son, I would have been proud if he’d been like you,’ or something. It makes sense now. I have it here—the ring. It’s kind of funny, actually. My father came a week or so ago, and he brought it with him. He kind of got it into his head that, I don’t know, that I might want it.”

  “You were going to give it to your young lady,” Helga realized.

  “Well.” Stanley cleared his throat. He moved carefully, up and out of bed. He held on to the bed railing and moved painfully to the cabinet. “Yeah, I, um, hadn’t really got that far. I think it still might be too soon. And besides, it seems only fair that the ring goes back to you. To your family.”

  There was a drawer that was secured with a combination lock. He opened it with a few quick turns, took a deep blue jeweler’s box from inside, and shuffled back to her.

  And then Helga was holding it in her hands. Her mother’s diamond ring. Annebet’s ring. Annebet had worn it all her life.

  It was as beautiful as she remembered. Beautiful in its elegant simplicity.

  “Annebet was my family,” Helga told him. “She was my brother’s wife.” She closed the box, handed it to Stanley, who’d settled himself carefully back in bed. “She gave it in turn to her sister’s son—someone I should like to think of as being part of my family, too.”

  She wrote in her notepad. Stanley has Annebet’s diamond ring. “I had a note here,” she said. “I wanted to ask you a question. I don’t remember this, and it’s possible it never happened, but didn’t you say something to me once about Annebet selling an heirloom, a ring, for passage to America?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That was her mother’s ring. It was quite old. My mother was angry with her for selling it because it had been in the family since the time of the Vikings, I think.” He grinned. “Or at least that’s what my mother liked to believe.”

  “Tell me about Marte,” Helga said. “And forgive me if I’ve asked this before. Was she happy?”

  “She said she was,” Stanley told her. “She first met my father when she was very young, when she and Anna first arrived in Chicago. She met him again when she was eighteen. He was on leave from the Navy. He had three weeks before he had to go back, and it took him only five days to convince her to marry him. She said she never regretted it.”

  Helga had to smile. “I, too, married my husband a very short time after we met. I think maybe we both learned a thing or two from watching Hershel and Annebet. We learned never to waste a single moment when it comes to love.”

  She sighed as she looked around the room. “Where’s your young lady?”

  “She had some business to attend to,” Stanley told her with a patience that told her she’d asked that question before. “I expect her back sometime this afternoon.”

  “Is that when you plan to give her Annebet’s ring?”

  “Um,” he said.

  “Stanley,” she scolded. “What would your mother say?”

  He laughed. “She would say, What are you waiting for? A sign from God?”

  “What are you waiting for?” Helga said. “A sign from God?”

  “I just . . .” He shook his head and laughed again. “You remind me so much of her.”

  “So what would you say to her?” Helga asked. “You’d say, Mother . . . what?”

  “I’d say, Ma,” Stanley said, “I’m afraid Teri doesn’t know what it’s really like to be married to a man like me, like Dad. I’m afraid that being with me will make her unhappy in the long run.”

  “Shame on you,” Helga said. “Who are you to decide what is or isn’t going to make this young lady happy? Don’t you think enough of her to allow her to make that decision for herself?”

  Stanley laughed. “Well, yeah, but—”

  “But, but, but! There’s always a but to be found if you want one. Here’s your sign from God,” Helga said, holding out her hands. “I am your sign from God. God is telling you to listen to your aunt Helga and learn from Hershel and Annebet. Seize the day, young Stanley. In matters of love, seize the day!”

  The ring box was burning a hole in Stan’s pocket.

  It was amazing, though, how ever since Teri had returned to London, he’d had exactly zero time alone with her.

  Back in London, whenever he’d thought they finally had some time to themselves, some nurse had come in with some pain in the ass final test. His blood pressure, for God’s sake. How many times did they need to take it to know that yes, he was alive? His temperature, for crying out loud.

  Then they needed a urine sample.

  Yeah, that one really set the appropriate romantic mood.

  It was the same thing on the plane. Nurses checking his pulse. It had been easiest just to close his eyes and go to sleep.

  And now he and Teri were being driven to his house from the airport by Mike Muldoon. Yeah, that would be just about perfect. He should ask Teri to marry him in front of Mike Muldoon.

  “Need help getting out?” Muldoon asked.

  Stan gave him his death glare.

  “Right,” Muldoon said.

  Teri was carrying his seabag and her own little overnight duffel. She stood back and let him get out by himself. Let him walk up his own goddamn stairs on his own goddamn feet.

  Christ, he needed to sit down.

  She unlocked the door, but didn’t open it. “Don’t freak,” she said. “If I overstepped the bounds, it can all go back.”

  She swung the door open.

  And his house had furniture. Holy shit, it was filled with original Stickley pieces. It was gorgeous, and it had to cost at least . . .

  Now he really had to sit down. And damn, if there wasn’t a turn of the century sofa right there, four steps away.

  He sat on it.

  He had to ask. “Where did you get the money?”

  “I had some left over from my inheritance,” she told him. “You know, from Lenny? I’ve been investing. I had a couple of good years and . . .”

  “I’ll say. Christ, Teri. This furniture’s almost worth more than the house.”

  Teri set his seabag down. Tried to make a joke. “I figured as long as I was planning to spend a lot of time over here . . .”

  He tried to make a joke out of it, too. “For that kind of money, you better be planning to stay forever.”

  “Well,” she said. “Yeah. Actually forever sounds about right.” She looked him in the eye, squared her shoulders, and he realized suddenly that she was forcing herself to confront him. She didn’t realize . . .

  “I’m giving you another day or two,” she told him staunchly. “But that’s all you’re going to get. After that, I’m just going to go ahead and ask you. You know. To marry me.”

  Stan laughed. This must be what Dr. Frankenstein had felt like. Like, holy God, look at this beautiful monster he’d helped create.

  His laughter threw her and she looked around the room. “You were right about this furniture,” she told him.
“It’s really beautiful. It turns this house into a real home.”

  “The furniture’s great,” he said. “Have I said thank you yet?”

  Silently she shook her head.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’ve never been given a gift like this before.”

  “You really like it?”

  He reached for her. Tugged her down so that she was sitting next to him. “I love it,” he said. “But what I really love is you. You make this house a real home. Please, will you stay forever?”

  He put the ring box into her hands.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “You already got me a ring?”

  “Will you marry me, Teresa?” Stan asked. “I can’t promise you that it’s going to be a constant ball of fun being a senior chief’s wife, but I can promise that I’ll love you and be faithful to you until the end of time.”

  Teri was looking at him with so much love in her eyes, he thought he might be the one who was going to start to cry here. “Yes,” she breathed. “I’ll marry you.”

  She kissed him and he kissed her, and they both pretended he wasn’t crying.

  And then she opened the ring box. Stan told her Hershel and Annebet’s story in between long, slow kisses, and she didn’t bother to pretend not to cry.

  And their kisses got longer. Slower. And he pulled her shirt free from her pants. She drew in a long breath as he touched her. “Did the doctor say you could . . . ?”

  Stan smiled at her. “The doctor said I should listen to my body. My body says oh yeah.”

  Teri smiled back at him. “In that case, I have something else to show you.”

  She slid out of his arms, unbuttoning her shirt and kicking off her boots. Her pants, underwear, and socks followed in record time.

  “Very nice,” Stan said. “I’ve noticed that about you. You’re very good at getting naked. I think that’s an excellent skill for a wife to have.”

  She laughed. “This isn’t what I want to show you.”

  He laughed, too. “Bad plan, then, because I’m completely unable to look at anything but you. Damn, you’re beautiful.”

  “Follow me,” she said.

  He stood up. “Is there any doubt in your mind that I won’t?”

  She laughed as she disappeared into . . . the kitchen?

  “Bedroom’s upstairs,” he called. “I was kind of hoping what you wanted to show me was my beautiful new Stickley bed frame. . . .”

  God damn, as he got to the kitchen, Teri opened the back door and walked outside. Naked.

  He was moving slowly, but he was definitely moving. He pushed open the back screen and . . .

  There was a hot tub in his backyard.

  Teri’d put up very tall wooden fences on the two sides of his property, providing privacy from his neighbors. The view out to the ocean, however, was still wide open.

  “We can probably be seen by someone on the bridge with a telescope,” she told him from her perch on the side of the tub. “I figure if they go to that much trouble, they deserve to see us naked.”

  Stan lowered himself into one of the new lounge chairs that had appeared on his patio, courtesy of his fiancée—who clearly had had more than a few good years with her investments. “My body’s telling me no hot tub for me—not yet. But I’m going to sit here and enjoy watching you.”

  And he did.

  And it wasn’t too much longer before someone—provided they managed to stop their car on the bridge and set up a telescope—would’ve gotten quite an eyeful as the senior chief of SEAL Team Sixteen’s Troubleshooters Squad and his bride-to-be seized the day.

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