by Susan Wiggs
Kate’s smile faded to worry. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, sure. That’s the thing. See, what happened this summer, my getting sick and all, well, at first it was like the disaster of the century. I figured my life was pretty much over, that everything was going to basically suck from here on out.”
“Callie—” Kate stepped forward but then stopped as though afraid of what would come next. JD wanted to reassure her, but he knew Callie’s next words would do that.
“Anyway,” she said, “it didn’t turn out that way at all. I won’t kid you and say I’m glad I got sick. The truth is, I hate having this disease. I hate having to monitor myself, and eat on a stupid schedule. I hate not having sugar and not being able to eat like a regular kid. I hate aerobic exercise and lifting.” She paused, because her voice cracked. A pained expression shadowed her face as she swallowed. “But here’s the thing. If all that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have you.”
JD knew how hard it was for her to say these things. And how necessary. He suspected Kate and Aaron had given her the same things they’d given him—the sense of what it was like to be a member of a family and a vision that life could be better.
Callie took a deep, unsteady breath. “Anyway, that’s what I wanted to say. That, and…thank you. And don’t get all teary-eyed on me, or it’ll just be weird.”
“Deal with it, then,” Kate said, teary-eyed as she pulled her into a hug. “Ah, Callie. Remember what we talked about? It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”
Though meant for the girl, the words struck JD hard. Yes, he thought. Yes.
Aaron, who had been watching from the doorway, looked a little queasy. “Can we go outside?” he asked.
“I’ll go with you in a sec.” Callie stood back and dried her face. She hugged JD, though they both felt a little ill at ease. “My medical bills were paid by your foundation, weren’t they?”
“That’s what it’s for.” He expected nothing in return from her, but she gave it anyway. A look of gratitude came from her heart, springing up like a flower, lighting her face.
“It doesn’t matter to me, all that stuff about you being America’s hero. You’re my hero.” She went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, then stepped back. “And now I’d better go hang out with Aaron before someone else goes into a diabetic coma from all this sweetness.”
Kate burst into soggy laughter and reached for a Kleenex. After Callie and Aaron were gone, she said, “You have a foundation.”
“Yes.”
“Darn it, JD, don’t you understand that I won’t tolerate this anymore? I don’t want any more evasive one-word replies from you.”
“That wasn’t evasive. It was straightforward. I said yes, I have a foundation.”
“Now you’re being a jerk, willfully.”
“What do you want from me?” he demanded.
“Answers,” she said. “Explanations. Oh, here’s a concept. How about the truth? Or don’t I deserve that?”
“What you deserve, Kate, is so much more than I can give you.” The admission had the bitter taste of truth. There was a cost to the way he had grown up, raising himself without a safety net, and this was it. He simply did not know how to be what a woman like Kate needed, what she deserved.
“Why on earth would you say something like that?”
“Because it’s true. I don’t know how to be anything but a medic. If you’re looking for husband material, you won’t find it here.” The words came out on a wave of panic and uncertainty. He could see the truth hit her like a blow. God, she didn’t get it. How could he explain that he had no idea how a man turned himself into a husband, a father? That he would rather walk away now than hurt her and Aaron? “What happened today on the ferry…it means I need to go away for a while longer. I don’t know what else to do. I just know I can’t live like that.”
She wrapped her arms around her midsection and stepped back. “That’s why you were so horrible to me about Callie’s article.” Hurt drained her face of color. “You thought I would go public with you. You didn’t trust me. That’s why you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I was sick of myself. Sick of being this media creation.”
“You could’ve trusted me.”
“I didn’t trust anybody.”
“But you had no trouble sleeping with me,” she said.
A terrible silence stretched out between them. He had the sensation of watching a wreck in slow motion, with the sound turned down. He had damaged them beyond repair, destroyed them. What lay between them was unsalvageable. And it was, he realized bleakly, just as well for her, though she didn’t realize that yet. “Kate,” he said, trying to offer the explanation she deserved, “I can’t be what you need me to be.”
“How do you know what I need?”
He gestured at the perfect house, the Pleasantville neighborhood visible through the picture window in the front. “My life is crazy. I have no idea where I’ll end up.”
“You act like there’s no way to deal with fame,” she said. “People do it every day. Look at Tiger Woods or John McCain—”
“There’s a big difference between them and me,” he said. “They asked for their fame and recognition. They worked for it and strove for it. I never wanted any of this, and I promise you, Kate, you don’t want it, either.”
“There is only one reason you’re saying these things,” she said. “You’re scared.”
He felt her anger dart into him. He hated this, and he hated the old pain and shame of what his mother was. He needed to get out of here before the media figured out where he’d gone. Maybe there was still a chance Kate could stay anonymous. “I’ll call for a taxi. I can catch a flight to L.A. today rather than waiting until morning.”
“Just like that?” she asked in a low, pained voice.
“I’ll go standby,” he said, then realized what she was asking. Didn’t he want to stay and fight for her? Hell, yes, he did. But what he wanted mattered less than doing the right thing. “I need to talk to Aaron and Callie, and then it’ll be time to go.”
They stood on opposite sides of an unbridgeable gap. He found himself thinking about the day she’d ripped a fishhook out of his thumb. Be quick and I’ll survive, he’d said. She wore the same expression now. A few seconds ticked by. Then he went to find the kids.
“You said you’d never leave me.” Aaron threw the baseball hard. Lacking a glove, JD caught it bare-handed. The leather stung his palm to the bone.
“I meant in the woods that day,” he said, tossing the ball back. Playing a game of catch in the front yard was the only way he could get Aaron to listen. The taxi would be here any minute to take him to the airport and he was running out of time. “I’d never leave you alone in the woods.”
“Big deal. That’s no kind of promise. Anybody would say that to a kid.” He drilled the ball back at JD. Bandit watched with bright-eyed intensity, ready to pounce if the ball came his way.
“Poor choice of words,” JD admitted, making the catch and then flexing his fingers. The kid had some arm. He knew he’d carry the ache of this game of catch around for days. “I should have explained that.”
“It’s dumb that you’re just taking off.”
Probably, thought JD as he threw the ball back. Aaron missed the catch, and the baseball went bouncing along the edge of the fence, both the boy and the dog in hot pursuit.
A green-and-white taxi pulled up to the curb. Aaron straightened up and the beagle trotted off with the baseball. Aaron turned to JD, keeping his eyes steady as he called out, “Mom, he’s leaving.”
Kate and Callie came outside, and JD found himself wishing he knew of a way to stay.
“Take this,” Callie said, handing him a thick envelope. “Some reading for the plane.”
Kate looked at her and frowned, but said nothing. Finally, she told JD, “Have a safe trip.”
They were beautiful to him, all three of them. They were his family this summer, as
close as he’d had to the real thing. At the lake they’d been safe from harm, but here in the world he couldn’t protect them from the paparazzi and prying questions they’d face if he stuck around.
“When are you coming back?” Aaron asked.
“I don’t know.” He briefly hugged each one of them, encountering stiff resistance. It felt awkward. Hell, it was awkward. And even though he said he didn’t know, he did.
Thirty-Four
“You shouldn’t have let him go,” Callie said, coming into Kate’s study in her nightgown.
It was late, and Aaron was asleep, but apparently Callie was as sleepless as Kate. “It wasn’t up to me. He left,” she said.
“You could have stopped him.”
“And then what?”
“Then you’d be together.”
“I can’t see that happening.”
“Why not?”
“I could make you a list of reasons, but only one really matters. He doesn’t want to be with me. Maybe he doesn’t want to be with anyone, I don’t know.”
“That’s bull. He is so in love with you, he can’t even see straight.”
Kate felt a twist of yearning but covered it up. “Very funny, Miss Know-it-all.”
“I know more than you do about his life.”
Kate imagined him telling Callie the truth about himself. They’d undoubtedly had long, searching talks, leaving Kate out of the loop. At the thought of that, she felt something ugly—envy. He’d shared things with Callie and kept the wool pulled over Kate’s eyes.
“Well?” Callie asked, sitting in a swivel chair by the desk, “Aren’t you curious?”
“I suppose if he wanted me to have that information, he would have told me.”
“Get off it, Kate. These things are not secrets.” She leaned forward conspiratorially, drew her knee up to her chest. “I bet you don’t know why he went into the service.”
“I don’t.” Of course she didn’t. It was one of the million things he hadn’t bothered to tell her.
“See, he had this horrible mother—worse than mine, even—and all his life he worked just to survive. He took every odd job he could get his hands on. That’s why he’s so good at fixing things. He saved up as much as he could, and he was going to use it for college. Then his loser mom had to go into rehab, and that used up every penny he’d saved. So he went into the service instead.”
Callie had known all this while Kate had been in the dark. Here she was, sleeping with the guy, and he couldn’t even level with her. Yet he’d told Callie his life story.
Despite the deep resentment she felt, Kate couldn’t help imagining the sort of life Callie described. Before meeting Callie and writing her story, she couldn’t have done it, could not have conceived of a mother putting her child aside for a selfish purpose, and the effect that had on the child. Now she was starting to get it. Starting to understand. With a background like that, JD didn’t know how a family worked. Like Callie, he didn’t think he knew how to get it right. But he wasn’t stupid, she thought. He could learn these things.
“You’re mad,” Callie observed, studying Kate’s face.
“Not at you. He should’ve told me this himself,” Kate said.
Callie scowled. “Yeah, right. You think it’s fun to admit this stuff? The only reason he told me is that I was going off the deep end. I needed to hear that a person can survive a rotten mother. You didn’t.”
Kate managed a thin smile. Deep down, though, she felt shattered. He’d given up on them so easily, she thought. And then it hit her—so had she.
Callie looked over Kate’s shoulder at the computer screen. “Is that an Internet connection?” Callie said.
Kate touched the keyboard to light up the screen. Several browser windows were open. “I was reading up on Jordan Donovan Harris. Check this out.” She clicked on a photo to enlarge it.
Callie found a chair and scooted closer. “God, he was so…”
Hot, thought Kate. That would be the word for it. Her wonder grew as she gazed at picture after picture on the Internet. They even found and watched a video clip of the event that had skyrocketed him to fame.
“So when did you figure it out?” she asked Callie. They gazed at a shot of him in fatigues, a much younger JD with his arm slung around Sam Schroeder. In the background, a place identified as Konar Province loomed like an inhospitable moonscape.
“The first time I went over to work at his place. I came across some celebrity magazine and made the connection. He didn’t even try to deny it. Told me everything right away.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I promised I wouldn’t. I gave him my word.”
And, of course, it wasn’t up to Callie to inform Kate that the man she loved was hiding his identity from her. That was JD’s job, and he hadn’t done it.
She clenched her teeth and continued browsing through the information. Last Christmas Eve, a shocked nation had been informed that the Terror Alert had shot up to red, the highest possible category. The video loop was all over the nightly news, of course, and still photos were blazoned across the front pages of national newspapers. The incident had been meticulously analyzed, frame by frame, by various experts.
Eventually, when the motive behind the attack was discovered, the national sense of terror changed to a peculiar queasy sadness. The attacker was no foreign threat but one of their own. Terence Lee Muldoon was a football all-American in high school. He came from an impoverished family. Assured of a generous enlistment bonus, he had joined the military and received the U.S. Army’s most rigorous, extensive training to turn him into a member of a super-elite top-secret commando.
He should have had a long and distinguished career, defending the defenseless around the world. Instead, he fell victim to one of the Pentagon’s most cruel loopholes. Just a few months shy of his thirty-six-month obligation, Muldoon had been wounded while on assignment in the Middle East, losing a kidney in a vehicle accident, which rendered him permanently disabled. Even as he lay recovering from surgery, he had been informed that, because he’d failed to fulfill the terms of his enlistment, he would have to repay his bonus. His name had already been submitted to a collection agency.
Anyone could understand his fury. But no one could have predicted what he would do about it.
With spectacularly convoluted logic, Muldoon decided that his predicament was the fault of the President of the United States. A top-level operative, Muldoon planned his attack, intending to annihilate the Commander-in-Chief, a wing of the hospital and himself in a matter of seconds.
According to a special report in the Washington Post, he had no trouble getting the deadly plastic explosives by using falsified ordnance procurement papers.
“Narcissistic personality disorder” was what the expert analysts said of his utter confidence in arranging his own transport to Walter Reed on Christmas Eve. His timing was perfect, because, it was later discovered, he had gained access to the schedule and route of the President of the United States. Muldoon had made just one single miscalculation. There was something he had chosen to overlook about Walter Reed Army Medical Center. And that was that people like Jordan Donovan Harris worked there, military personnel as highly trained and dangerous as Muldoon himself.
As she and Callie browsed through the media reports and Web logs, it became clear to Kate why this incident had so captivated the nation. There were no ambiguities here, no mistakes or cover-ups, just a rogue soldier, a medic doing his job and a good outcome. Ultimately, the only blood spilled came from Muldoon and JD, and both men survived their wounds.
People loved it. They loved the pure drama of good triumphing over evil. And when the facts became known, they loved JD even more. His was the rags-to-riches story of American success. Raised in the Baltimore projects by a hardworking single mother—a detail that made Callie grumble with skepticism—he had a distinguished career in the U.S. Army as a medic for the Green Berets. This meant he had all the skills of a Green Bere
t with something more, something that meant the difference between success and failure for his unit—the ability to save lives.
Overnight, the breathless media dubbed him the perfect American hero. Skilled, strong, smart, self-sacrificing and modest. And above all, in the right place at the right time. Across the nation, people subdued their Christmas celebrations, some even observing a moment of silence to pray for the recovery of Sergeant Harris. Some to this day believed the power of prayer had saved him, enabling him to wake from a coma and rise from his hospital bed. Others credited the Herculean efforts of a peerless surgical staff.
“If you’re going to throw yourself on top of a suicide bomber,” a hospital spokesman said in an interview, “you could pick no better place to do that than Walter Reed.”
“Where do these people come from?” Kate murmured.
“Keep reading,” Callie said. While Harris lay in a medically induced coma, the nation sat vigil. Churches and temples across the nation posted words of support and encouragement on their marquees: “God Bless Jordan Donovan.” Yellow ribbons took the place of Christmas ornaments and New Year’s spangles. Kate recalled reading a feature in the paper and feeling profoundly thankful that there were men like this in the world.
She was still thankful. Privileged, even, that she knew him. Yet at the same time filled with an ache of sadness. The very fact that he was a hero had become the wedge that drove them apart.
“It’s weird, seeing all this stuff,” Callie said. “It’s about him, but it’s not him.”
“In the press, you get an impression of the person. Not the person himself.” Kate knew then that it didn’t matter what she had written about Callie. Readers of the article would never know this girl, not really. Maybe that was what JD had been trying to tell her.
“I’m tired,” said Callie. “I’m going to bed. You should keep reading, though. Read about what happened to his mother. Then you’ll see why he didn’t want anyone to know who he was.”