Oh, Lord, what have I walked into? Part of her didn’t want to know. Yet part of her needed to know what was going on.
She took a cautious step into the room.
“Have you ever been in the abyss, Jenn?” he said, lifting his eyes to her for the first time. There were tears filling his eyes. He moved his jaw and drew in a slow breath as if he was trying to hold them back.
“Abyss?”
“Yeah, you know, that place you go when the pain is so strong from remembering?”
She swallowed. She did know. But this wasn’t about her tonight. It wasn’t about them. There was something that had Tom by the throat tonight, and it was strangling the life out of him.
Jenna knew she shouldn’t have come, but instead of turning away, she found herself drawn deeper into the room by the pleading look on his face.
“What is so painful for you to remember, Tom?”
“You and Brian. You remind me of what I lost. Every time I’m with you, it’s like a gift, and then when I come home, I feel so empty.”
Her throat constricted with emotion, and she found it hard to find words. The little girl on the television laughed as the wind blew her hair into her face, and then she pleaded with the man with Tom’s voice not to stop the merry-go-round.
“Then maybe it’s better if we don’t see each other anymore.” As soon as the words escaped her lips, she felt a pain deep in her gut and she wanted to take them back. But if she and Brian were truly causing Tom pain, how could they continue?
“Are you sure about that, Jenna?”
“I care a great deal about you, Tom. In the short time we’ve known each other…”
“We’ve become close,” he said, finishing for her when she fought to find words that would really express what she felt. And then he looked at her, and the room seemed to spin and widen and come alive with just that one look. “I like that. But it hurts.”
His eyes turned to the television as the little girl with long blond curls held on tight to the playground merry-go-round and called to her father to push again.
“That’s Crystal,” he said, his voice breaking.
Jenna turned and glanced at the television screen. “She’s beautiful. Who is she?”
“She was my daughter.”
Chapter Ten
A cold chill crept through Jenna’s veins. The past tense Tom had used when he spoke of Crystal didn’t escape her, and suddenly the scene laid out before her took on a tragic clarity.
Jenna didn’t want to ask about Crystal. Not because she didn’t want to know about her, but because every fear she’d had since Brian was born was sure to be found in what Tom would answer. And yet she did, anyway—not for her, but for him.
Please, Lord, help me be strong enough to handle this right. Help me be Tom’s friend and not allow my own fears to make me run from him.
“Tell me about her,” Jenna said cautiously. She wanted to put her arms around him and help him let go of whatever pain was gripping him, but she kept her distance in case Tom wanted it that way.
Her anger now banished, she walked into the center of the room and sat down on the end chair opposite Tom. She waited as he brushed a hand over his face and looked up at the ceiling.
“She was killed. It’s been nearly two years now, but to me…”
It was like yesterday. She thought the words, knew that was exactly what Tom was about to say and couldn’t. If it were her…
Does the pain of losing a child ever go away? Jenna didn’t want to ever find out. It had been a nightmare ever since Brian had been diagnosed with his illness as a baby, and yet God had spared her the pain Tom felt right now. But every day the possibility that she would be sitting right where he was seemed all too real to her.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts. This wasn’t about her and Brian. Someone had died. Someone Tom had loved dearly. His precious daughter.
Tom’s eyes glassed over as he looked at the beautiful girl on the television, laughing as she was being pushed on the merry-go-round at the park.
“When you’re in the military, they send you away to some foreign place where you get to be a hero. You fight in a land that is harsh with conditions you wouldn’t want your worst enemy to live in. All the time you’re there, you’re thinking, ‘Hey, thank God my family isn’t here. Thank God, they’re safe in the good ole United States of America.’”
He sighed, dropping his hands from the picture frame, letting it fall to his lap. Another tear trickled down his cheek as he reached for the bottled water on the table and took a quick drink, then picked up a framed picture of Crystal.
He took a deep breath. “And then you come home and find out all the time you were wishing you could hold them, they were already dead, killed in a car accident.”
“Oh, Tom. I’m so sorry.” She lifted herself out of the chair and started toward him. But he was waving her off, looking away. He wanted distance. She’d give it to him. She stood there and looked down at the coffee table and knew he had spent months living her worst nightmare.
“Today when Brian was sitting in the front seat of the plane, it reminded me so much of Crystal. When she was younger, I’d take her flying and she always said she wanted to fly through the clouds to heaven. Suddenly, that’s where I was again, and it hurt so bad that I just wanted to shut it all down and not feel it.”
He swiped the wetness from his cheek before going on. “The abyss is good sometimes. Not all the time, mind you. You’d be dead inside soon enough yourself if you let yourself go there too often. But sometimes it helps. And sometimes it even lets you forget the rank stench of the prison with dirt floors and damp, cracked walls that let the sewage from the city seep in. It lets you forget how you lay on a cold, bare mattress with no blanket and shivered until you thought your teeth were going to crack from chattering, wondering if you were going to be a prisoner of war for the rest of your life.”
He put the picture of Crystal down on the table and picked up another. “These pictures got me through that. Every time I heard the guards talking about death and slaughter, laughing about what kind of sick games they’d play on us again, all I thought about was this face, this smile and how I’d give anything to come home to her again.
“Every night I prayed until I was sure God Himself was standing in that hole of a prison with me. I bargained with the Lord that if I made it through that nightmare in Afghanistan, I was going to go home and make things right with Nancy. I’d hold my child in my arms and not have to look at the tears in her eyes when I had to leave again. I’d finally hold my wife and find out if there was anything left between us worth saving. And if there was, then I was going to do everything in my power to make it work.”
Jenna’s eyes filled with unshed tears. She wanted to cry for him, wanted to hold him, but she knew there was nothing she could do to lessen his loss.
She looked at the strewn-about pictures on the coffee table until her eyes landed on a newspaper. It was folded but still revealed the news that the president was going to bestow the Medal of Honor on several soldiers, including one who’d been imprisoned after saving the lives of children targeted by rebel forces. She remembered reading about the soldier’s heroics and his return to the United States nearly a year ago. She’d felt such sympathy for the man for all he’d gone through, only to lose his family while he was…
She saw the picture of the soldier wearing his dress whites on the page of the newspaper, and that suddenly enabled her to put it all together. The letter from the Department of Defense she’d seen on his kitchen table the first time they’d had dinner together now took on a whole new meaning.
She didn’t mean to gasp, but she did. And when Tom’s face lifted, Jenna saw the recognition in his eyes that she knew.
“This is you?” she asked.
“You heard.” He nodded and shrugged, not waiting for an answer. “Of course you heard. It was in the papers at the time, and I’m sure CNN was all over it, from the rescue of those children
to my escape against all odds.” His voice was bitter. “I’m sure they even had a nice little commentary about what a tragedy it was for me to come home to a dead family.”
Everything he said was true and more. His story had dominated the news for weeks, until another tragic event happened overseas that caught the media’s attention.
“I don’t remember all the details of what happened, but I do know you and your team saved those children before your own capture,” she said, crouching down so they’d be eye to eye. She got on her knees and reached for the hand that was holding the picture of Crystal. And Tom let her.
His gaze lifted to her. “I couldn’t save my own child. I wasn’t here to keep her safe.”
“Even if you were home, it might have happened. People get into car accidents all the time. Even the most simple tasks can end up being tragic. You can’t control it. Don’t do this to yourself. The what-ifs will drive you mad if you let them.”
“They were going to the base because they’d heard I’d been captured. I can’t even imagine what my wife, Nancy, was feeling when she heard. It had always been her biggest fear. She blamed me for taking off and playing the hero again when I reenlisted. I deserved her anger. And Crystal… If I’d never gone. If I’d listened to Nancy’s argument just once.”
“You were doing what you thought was right. You were a marine and an Army Ranger. You wanted to help people, and Afghanistan was where they needed help. She had to have known that. All the military wives and husbands who are left behind know this. We accept it as part of our lives.”
He shook his head, clearly not willing to let himself off the hook so easily. “I didn’t have to keep reenlisting. In fact, Nancy had begged me not to. I could have put my family first. But I didn’t. I loved the military. It was my career. And my family died without me because of it. And now the people who I chose to follow want to give me a medal for abandoning my family.”
He lowered his head so his eyes were out of her view, and his shoulders began to shake. His sobs were soft at first and then grew. She went to him, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and just let him cry. There were nights she wished for someone to just hold her like this until her fears faded.
After a few moments Tom pulled away, looking disgusted with himself. “Some hero, huh?”
“Even heroes cry sometimes, Tom.”
“Why did you come here?” he asked, his eyes red rimmed and swollen.
Her reasons for coming seemed mighty insignificant now. But he was looking at her, probing her. She wouldn’t lie to him.
“I thought you were angry with me.”
“Angry? What for?”
She shrugged, embarrassed for even thinking the way she had. “Because of what happened between us. We kissed and…I was confused. You were fine this morning and I thought everything was okay and then you were different when it was time to fly home. You were so distant, and then you snapped at Brian. He was upset and…”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t angry at you or at Brian. I was angry at myself. I didn’t want to think about Nancy and Crystal. It hurts too much. But the more time I spend with you, the more I remember and the more I feel guilty for feeling what I do.”
“I shouldn’t have kissed you last night. If I’d known…”
His eyes widened in challenge. “You wouldn’t have done it? That’s just it. I would have. In fact, if my memory is correct, I kissed you.”
His admission surprised her more than she wanted to admit, even to herself.
“That’s what I mean,” he said, reading the expression on her face. “You don’t need someone like me, Jenna. Things have a way of becoming way too complicated around me, and you don’t need that.”
It went both ways. Her life was complicated enough already. That didn’t mean they couldn’t help each other.
“I do need your friendship. That much I know. It’s meant the world to me, even though it’s only been a short time. But if you don’t want to be a part of our lives, I’ll understand.”
“I don’t know what I want. I just know I don’t want to think about it. It hurts too much.”
“You loved your family very much. And on some level, it will probably hurt for the rest of your life. I know. Even though things weren’t the greatest with Kent, I still feel the pain of losing him when I look at his picture.”
Jenna handed him a picture of Crystal and Nancy. “You can’t escape it. And the people you love don’t belong in a box somewhere, locked away, Tom. Missing them doesn’t mean you have to shut them away from your memory. You don’t have to forget them or feel guilty because you lived and they died.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Celebrate their lives. I’m sure Nancy would have wanted you to move on.”
He glanced at the newspaper on the coffee table. “How can I move on if every time I turn around, something or someone wants to make me remember?”
“You need to stop blaming yourself. Nancy wouldn’t want that.”
“Maybe she would. You would, too.”
“No.”
“I see it in the way you talk about Kent. I hear it in the things you won’t say. You’re still angry with him for not being here for you. Truth of it is, I was no different. I let my family down just as much as Kent did.”
“Maybe so, but while you may regret not being there for them you can’t bear the guilt for their deaths. You didn’t take their lives, Tom. Only God has that power.”
“Every moment I was locked up in that forsaken prison, I thought of them. I thought of every time Nancy had stayed awake all night alone while Crystal had a fever. I thought of the resentment on her face when I would leave on a mission and couldn’t tell her anything about where I was going or when I’d be home.”
Jenna swallowed and paused just long enough to keep the bitterness from her voice. “Military life has a way of doing that to some marriages. She knew what she was getting into when you married. She knew what military life was like.”
“That didn’t make it easier. Not for her, then. Or for me, now. I wasn’t there. I’d made a promise to God. But He gave me heartache instead.”
Jenna touched his arm to comfort him and felt him flinch. Did he not think he was worthy of love? Did he really believe God was punishing him for not being there for his family?
“You can’t guess what is in God’s plan any more than I can answer why Brian was born with a potentially deadly disease.” Keeping her distance, she leaned back on the sofa beside Tom. “I wonder ever day why, but I know I’ll never get the answers. It’s not for us to know why our loved ones have been taken from us. Why they get sick or why we must endure heartache sometimes. We just have to have faith and offer up to God whatever burdens we can’t handle.”
“Is that what you do when Brian is sick?”
“I try. I’ll be honest, it doesn’t always work. You’ve seen for yourself how much I fall short of holding myself together. But I remind myself that every day with him is a blessing, and that all I can do is take care of him as best I can.”
She bit her bottom lip, thinking of the tears in Brian’s eyes earlier tonight. The same tears that had sent her into a mad fury and had had her racing over here tonight.
She went on. “Tomorrow is the church festival, and from the way he went on about it today, I’m sure you know that Brian wants so badly to play ball and run with the kids. But the danger of him getting dehydrated from overexerting himself in this heat is too great. It breaks my heart my baby can’t just be a normal child like all the others.”
“He’s alive. You can still hold him and love him.”
She hadn’t meant to minimize his loss by comparing Brian to Crystal. “Yes, I can. And I’ll take that for as long as God allows. Even the days like today, when he’s difficult to deal with.”
Tom drew in a slow breath. “I’ll talk to him. I shouldn’t have snapped at Brian the way I did.”
She looked down at her hands; her irritation at this afternoon’s ex
change was completely gone. None of it mattered now.
“He can be relentless sometimes.”
“It wasn’t anything he did. The combination of getting recognized in Valentine, the memories of Crystal on the plane and then feeling uncomfortable with my own feelings made me snap. That wasn’t fair to either one of you.”
“Someone recognized you? From what? The newspaper?”
“Apparently. The awards ceremony is in three weeks. My CO is trying his best to get me there.”
“It’s quite an honor.”
“It’s a medal.”
“You don’t want to go?”
“Heroes get medals. I’m not a hero, Jenna.”
“If you’re not a hero, I don’t know who is.”
His face pulled with fatigue, and she decided not to push him anymore tonight. She reached up and brushed the sweated-matted hair on his forehead away from his eyes.
“You can talk to Brian whenever you’d like. Just drop by the house. If you don’t want to bring us to Valentine on Monday, I’ll understand. I don’t want our time together to be something you dread.”
He sighed and leaned back on the sofa.
“Why don’t you go to bed? You’ll sleep better there than on this sofa.”
“I hate that bed. Not just because it’s big and empty. It’s…lumpy.”
She chuckled. “Maybe it’s time to get a new mattress the next time you go to Valentine.”
He smiled then and started to stretch out on the sofa, his feet slipping behind her. As she moved to stand, he caught her arm.
“Stay for a bit. I won’t fall asleep for quite a while. I like it when you’re with me. It…quiets me.”
She couldn’t deny the burst of pleasure she felt at his request. But was Tom really reaching for her? Or was he reaching for comfort out of the pain of losing another woman? She didn’t want to be jealous. It had no place here. What Tom needed tonight was a friend and nothing more. But was she wrong to hope for a future with this man that went beyond friendship?
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