She wondered why he hadn't remarried. He was certainly handsome enough to attract any number of women, but as far as she knew, he didn't date anyone special. Had being married to her somehow soured him on the whole institution? There was a tiny, perverse part of her that hoped so.
It was nearing dusk when she excused herself and went inside to turn off the oven. Although her stomach rumbled in hunger, she was reluctant to call an end to the yarn-spinning. Danny was enjoying the conversation and Sherri didn't want to end his fun.
She turned as the door to the R.V. opened and Luke stepped inside. He smiled at her. "Danny is having a ball. He's fascinated with Barry's stories," he said. "I've never seen him sit so still for so long." He leaned against the counter, far too close to her. She could smell his male scent, feel the heat radiating from his body.
She nodded stiffly, wishing he'd move away. "They're a nice couple," she replied as she busied herself taking the chicken out of the oven.
"I was wondering what you thought of inviting them to eat with us. Is there enough chicken to stretch for two more?"
She looked at him, surprised at his question. The Luke she had been married to wouldn't have bothered to ask her. He would have invited them and let her deal with the problem of coming up with enough food. She frowned, thinking of the chicken, the potato salad she'd made earlier in the day. "Yes…I think there would be enough."
He nodded and turned to go back outside. She stopped him just before he opened the door. "Luke?" She placed a hand on his shoulder. "Thanks for asking."
For a long moment, he stared at her enigmatically. "Sure, no problem." He turned and went outside.
Sherri quickly pulled out plates and silverware, then placed the chicken on a platter and took the potato salad out of the refrigerator.
"Knock, knock," Karen called as she opened the door and joined Sherri. In her hands she held a large bowl of fruit salad and a platter of sliced tomatoes. "I figure if we're going to overstay our welcome, the least I can do is contribute to the cause."
"Oh, you didn't have to do that, and you aren't overstaying your welcome," Sherri exclaimed. "However, I accept your contribution." Sherri took the food from her and placed it on the table. "We can fill our plates in here, then eat outside." Sherri smiled. "Danny loves eating outside in front of a fire."
Karen nodded. "Sounds good to me." She glanced out the window where the men were still seated. "I don't know who is having more fun, your son or Barry."
Sherri smiled. "Danny loves hearing stories about flying."
"And Barry loves to tell them." Karen laughed. "God knows, after fifty years of marriage, I've heard them all at least a hundred times."
"Fifty years?" Sherri looked at her in surprise. "You've been together for fifty years?"
Karen nodded. "We celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary a month ago."
"That's wonderful," Sherri replied.
"Hmm, I'm pretty proud of it myself. Nowadays, there are disposable diapers and containers, but Barry and I refused to have disposable love…although there were times when it would have been much easier to walk away than to deal with the problems. But we made it through the rough times. Anyway, enough about us…I'll call the war heroes in to eat," Karen said.
Dinner was a pleasant affair. Barry and Karen did most of the talking, telling Sherri and Luke of their sprawling ranch home back in Texas, the advertising business Barry had sold when he'd retired five years ago and their travels since that time.
Sherri finally interrupted the conversation as she realized Danny was almost asleep. "Bedtime, my little man," she said.
"Aw, Mom," Danny protested.
"Flying aces have to get their sleep," Sherri replied gently, lifting him off Luke's lap where he had perched after eating.
"Tomorrow night I want to hear all about your helicopter ride," Barry said.
"Okay. Good night, everyone," Danny said as he followed Sherri inside. She helped him change into his pajamas, then tucked him in.
"I like Barry," Danny said sleepily. "He tells good stories."
"I'm glad you enjoyed them," Sherri said, touching the tip of his nose with her finger. "And tomorrow you'll have some flying stories of your own to tell." She kissed him good-night and watched until his eyes closed and his breathing grew regular with sleep.
When she went outside, Luke and Barry had disappeared and Karen sat alone in the semidarkness, her features starkly illuminated by the fire's glow. "What happened to the men?" Sherri asked, joining Karen on one of the lounge chairs.
"Luke talked Barry into a tour of our motor home," Karen answered. She sighed, the contented sigh of a woman well loved. "I'd hate to think what Barry's choice would be if he had to choose between the motor home and me."
"Oh, I have a feeling he'd make the right choice," Sherri said, hoping the envy in her heart wasn't apparent in the tone of her voice. It had been obvious all night that Barry and Karen had the kind of marriage Sherri had always dreamed of having. They'd exchanged warm glances, touched each other often, smiled those special smiles that spoke of love. Fifty years…almost a lifetime together. Oh, yes, how Sherri envied them that.
"I noticed the sign on your R.V.," Karen observed. "The Dream Producers…what exactly does that mean?"
"It's a local charity back home that grants terminally ill children their wishes. They arranged for us to use the van to come here," Sherri explained.
Karen was silent for a moment. "Danny is sick?" she asked softly.
"Danny has leukemia. He's stable right now, but the prognosis isn't good." Sherri was pleased that her voice remained even, not telling of the heartache she carried inside.
Karen released a heavy sigh. "I thought it might be something like that. His hair…"
Sherri nodded. "Chemo is the ultimate barber."
Karen gazed at her, her eyes filled with sympathy. "Have you managed to get past the anger?"
Sherri looked at the older woman in surprise. Most people didn't realize that anger was an emotion that came with the pain and grief.
Sherri laced her hands together in her lap and looked off into the distance. "Yes. At first I was angry. When the doctor first told me, I went through a period of disbelief, then one of incredible anger. I was mad at the doctors and raged at the fates."
Her fingers tightened around one another, a response to the tightness of her chest. "I couldn't understand why this was happening to Danny…to me. What had he done to deserve this? He's just a little boy." Sherri smiled at Karen. "Then suddenly I realized I was wasting all my time and energy being angry, and I still had time left to spend with my little boy. So now we're working to make every day better and brighter than the last…for Danny's sake."
Karen nodded. "That's what you need to do. Make every moment count." Her gaze shifted to the horizon, where the sun was gasping its last breath, painting the sky in deep purples and pinks. "Barry and I lost our son in Vietnam."
She hesitated a moment as if gathering strength and inner courage to continue. "He was eighteen years old…a good boy who had dreams of being a social worker when he got back to the States. God, what a kid." She smiled, the smile fading as tears misted her eyes. "We didn't have a chance to make each moment count with him. We had no idea what the future held. One minute he was alive and well, and the next minute he was gone and all we had was a telegram."
Sherri's heart convulsed in her chest and she reached out for Karen's hand. For a moment, the two simply sat holding hands, silently sharing the bereavement of one mother who had experienced the ultimate loss, and another who would soon experience it.
The fire crackled and hissed, warming the cold night air that surrounded them. Despite the fact that they had only met that afternoon, Sherri felt the bond of motherhood with the older woman.
"It took a long time for me to let go of my anger and bitterness," Karen continued, "and the grief that threatened to destroy everything in my path…including my marriage."
She shifted her gaze fro
m the falling sun back to Sherri. "The best thing you can do is hold tight to that man of yours. Barry and I nearly lost sight of our love for each other beneath the burden of our grief, and that would have been the final tragedy of our life." Karen leaned over and gave Sherri a fierce hug. "You hold onto that handsome husband of yours and you'll be able to survive anything. Trust me, honey. In the end, that love will get you through." Karen stood up and smiled. "And now I'd better get back to that man of mine. We'll see you in the morning."
As Sherri watched her walk away, she realized Karen didn't know that she and Luke were divorced. The older woman had assumed Sherri and Luke were still happily married. And for just a moment, as Sherri leaned back in her chair and relaxed, she allowed herself to indulge in the fantasy that it was so…that she and Luke had never divorced, and when the time came to say goodbye to Danny, she would hold tight to Luke for love and support. They would grieve together and learn to live with their grief through their love.
She narrowed her eyes and stared at the fire, but no matter how hard she tried to focus on the fantasy, reality intruded. She'd already lost Luke, and the thought of losing Danny crashed into her heart and filled her with a frightening void.
The reality was that after this trip, she and Luke would go back to their own separate lives. They were here together only for Danny's sake. Danny had brought them together for this final time. She leaned her head back and squeezed her eyes tightly closed, wondering exactly what was causing tears to burn hot in her eyes…the thought of what might have been, or the thought of what was yet to come.
Chapter Six
"This is the last one," Luke said, handing Sherri a plate he'd carried in from outside. He'd come back from viewing Barry and Karen's motor home just in time to help with the last of the supper dishes.
Sherri took the plate from him and added it to the stack of dirty dishes. "This is quite a surprise," she observed as she placed several glasses in the soapy water and watched as Luke grabbed a dish towel.
"What is?" he asked, taking the clean glass from her and swishing it with the towel.
"I can remember when I didn't think you knew that dishes had to be washed and dried. I never dreamed there would come a time when I'd wash and you'd actually dry."
Luke ducked his head and grinned sheepishly. "It wasn't until our divorce that I realized dishes didn't magically appear clean and in the cabinet following each meal. It didn't take me long to find out there wasn't a fairy who cleaned the dishes overnight. Or ran the vacuum or washed clothes, then hung them neatly in the closet."
Sherri smiled wryly. "That wasn't a fairy, that was your wife."
Luke laughed, a low rumble that seemed to echo pleasantly in the pit of her stomach. "That sounds like the punch line to a very bad joke."
She grinned in response and for a moment they worked in silence, a comfortable silence of unusual camaraderie. Outside, the sounds of night drifted through the walls and mingled with the clink of the dishes and Danny's muffled snoring, all seeming to intensify the cozy aura of the interior of the R.V.
"It was a pleasant evening, wasn't it?" Luke finally said, breaking the relative stillness.
Sherri nodded. "They're a nice couple." She thought of Barry and Karen and smiled once again. "They certainly give new meaning to the term 'young at heart.'"
"They seem to be pretty crazy about each other," he observed.
Sherri hesitated a moment. "They lost a child. A son in Vietnam." Her words hung in the air.
Luke frowned, wiping a plate slowly, thoughtfully. "That's rough."
"And they just celebrated their golden wedding anniversary," Sherri added, trying to lighten the somber mood.
Luke whistled softly. "Whew. Fifty years…it's hard to imagine, isn't it? That's half a century…five decades." He dried a dish slowly, thoughtfully. "It's hard for me to believe that if we'd stayed married, we'd be celebrating our tenth anniversary next month."
Sherri finished washing the last dish, his comment causing a peculiar wistful pang to niggle at her heart. She was surprised he even remembered that next month would be their anniversary. "It is hard to believe," she agreed softly. Ten years…a kind of milestone in a marriage, but one they had never reached.
Luke took the plate from her, dried it and put it into the cabinet. Then he turned and looked at her, his expression impossible for her to read. "Tenth anniversary…what is that? I know silver is twenty-five and gold is fifty. But what is ten?"
"I think it's tin or aluminum," Sherri said as she pulled the drain beneath the soapy dishwater.
Luke handed her the towel to dry her hands and she noticed that a fanciful smile curved the corners of his lips and a softness warmed his gaze. "What?" she asked, wondering what thoughts caused the pleasant expression to play on his features.
"I was just thinking…if we'd stayed married, what would I have bought you as a gift?" The fanciful expression on his face intensified. "Aluminum foil? Muffin tins?" He shook his head. "Somehow, those don't strike me as being very romantic. I think probably I would have brought you a dozen roses…white ones."
He leaned back against the table, his gaze lingering on her. "And probably you would have spent the day cooking a wonderful gourmet meal and served it by flickering candlelight and you'd have had soft romantic music playing in the background and worn some filmy negligee…" The hue of his eyes darkened perceptibly.
His words spun a beautiful fantasy that touched the very core of Sherri's needs and wants. She felt herself leaning toward him, her heart wanting to believe in the image his words evoked. But her head knew differently. Her brain knew it was a false image, one of fanciful visions and desires, painted in the substance of dreams and colored with rose-hued glasses that had nothing to do with reality.
She carefully folded the dish towel and placed it on the counter, then looked at Luke, knowing her eyes held the sadness of truth. "But you know that's probably not what would have happened. In reality, I probably would have cooked a wonderful meal and I might have had romantic music playing on the stereo. Most likely I would be waiting for you to come home from an assignment, and most likely I would have received a phone call from you telling me your plane was delayed or you couldn't get away as expected.
"Eventually, you would have come home late, the dinner would have been ruined and the roses wilted. I would have cried and accused and blown it all out of proportion and we would have gone to bed angry with each other."
She watched as Luke's features hardened and the warm expression in his eyes disappeared behind impenetrable shutters. "You're probably right," he finally said. He raked a hand through his hair, then stood up. "I guess I'll hit the shower and go to bed. If I know Danny, he'll be up before the sun, ready for that helicopter ride."
Sherri nodded and watched as he disappeared down the short hallway and into the bathroom. She sat at the table and stared down at the wood-grain pattern, her thoughts whirling and cascading through her mind.
Had she and Luke been fools? Had they given up too easily? By the time of their divorce, Luke was spending more and more time away from home and when he was home, Sherri had spent most of the time nagging him. Would marriage counselling have helped?
She'd wondered now if she'd ever really fallen out of love with him. Despite their divorce, had there always been a part of her heart intrinsically bound to his?
Regret. For the first time since her divorce, she felt a stir of it in her heart. When Luke had been painting his pretty picture of their tenth-anniversary celebration, she had wanted it to be real. She had wanted it to happen. And not just with any man, but with him…with Luke.
It was crazy, it was insane. She and Luke had been all wrong for each other. Had they stayed together any longer than they had, eventually they would have destroyed each other.
They had become much better people without each other. Divorcing had been the right thing to do. So why did she suddenly feel such regret?
* * *
"Luke, here…tak
e the camera," Sherri yelled above the whopping noise of the whirling helicopter blades as she held the leather camera case out to him.
He shook his head, a deep frown wrinkling his forehead.
"Luke…please." Sherri grabbed his arm and shoved the camera into his hands. "Since I'm not going, I want pictures of Danny on his first helicopter ride."
"Sherri…I don't want to take pictures," Luke protested vehemently. He waved to Danny and the pilot who were already seated in the plane. He turned to Sherri and tried to hand the camera back to her.
"This is important," Sherri pressed. "I want pictures of his face, the things he sees." Anger quickly rose to the surface. "Dammit, Luke, why do you suddenly have an aversion to taking photos? God knows you never did in the past."
His features twisted in anguish and his eyes darkened. "Sherri, I've spent most of my life taking pictures of dying kids all over the world…I just can't take pictures of Danny dying…I can't…." his voice broke and he held the camera away from him as if it were an object of abhorrence.
Sherri stared at him, her anger seeping away as she recognized his pain, felt it wing its way through her. She took his hands and pushed the camera against his heart, feeling the solid strength of his muscular chest and his rapid heartbeat. "Luke…you aren't taking pictures of Danny dying. You're taking pictures of Danny living."
He stared at her. His tormented expression slowly faded and the haunted darkness of his eyes lightened slightly. "Yes…yes, you're right." He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "Thank you," he said softly. Then, still holding the camera, he ran toward the waiting helicopter.
Sherri watched as the craft lifted off, like a huge silver bird against the early-morning sun. Despite the coolness of the air, her cheek still burned with the imprint of Luke's lips and as the helicopter soared toward the canyon, she reached up and touched the skin that he had kissed. It even felt warm to her touch.
She'd never seen Luke as vulnerable as he had just been. In their years of marriage, he'd always been completely in control, as strong as a mighty oak. Luke strong and mighty was very appealing, but Luke vulnerable was devastating.
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