True to You

by Becky Wade

  When John didn’t reply, she asked, “Do you have questions for me?”

  “Just one. I have an eye condition called Malattia Leventinese. Do any of your family members have it?”

  She regarded him seriously. “I’m sorry to hear that you have Malattia Leventinese.”

  He gave a nod.

  “I didn’t inherit it,” she told him. “But my father had it. So did his grandmother. And one of my brothers. And four of my nieces and nephews.”

  Her words were the answer to one of the primary questions that had sent him searching for his birth mother in the first place. He only wished the answers he’d collected hadn’t come at such a high price. “In that case, there’s a lot more I’d like to know. I’m hoping to put together a medical history for myself.”

  “Ask away, John. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  She’d done it. Nora had managed to give John five days of privacy. They’d been five rotten days, but she’d survived them (barely) and was now about to send him a text message. She couldn’t bear to wait any longer.

  She anxiously paced her back porch, phone in one hand, the thumb of her other hand clamped between her teeth.

  Ever since she’d filled her sisters in on her ill-fated non-lunch with John and Sherry, Willow and Britt had been working to prevent her from overdosing on tea and heartache. One or both of them had kept her company each evening after work. Britt had made steady deliveries of chocolate, and Willow had gifted her with expensive bubble bath and a new pair of shoes. They kept telling her that all would be well and that John would come around, that a separation of five days wouldn’t break a relationship as solid as her relationship with John.

  But only Nora had seen what he’d looked like when he’d discovered the identity of his father. Only she knew how uncharacteristic it was for him to stalk out of a restaurant, then send a text hours later asking for distance. Only she knew the struggle he’d gone through simply to come to a place where, because of his diagnosis, he’d allowed himself to let her in at all.

  And only she knew how much she loved John.

  His absence had focused a spotlight on the depth and breadth and tenacity of her feelings for him. It had clarified for her exactly what she felt for him.

  Love. Love was what she felt.

  The factual nature of that was exhilarating and terrifying.

  She’d filled the past five days with a great deal of research salted with prayer. Since sleep had served her divorce papers without her consent, she’d read late into the night each evening. She’d finished four books written by relationship experts on the topic of overcoming conflict. She even reread Uncommon Courage to hunt for insights into John she may have missed the first time.

  Dutifully, she’d prayed each morning. She’d asked God to forgive her for wanting John so badly when she knew very well she ought to be finding completeness in God alone.

  She’d also asked God to forgive her for reacting to Sherry’s revelation the way that she had because—yes—for a moment there she’d been horrified by the identity of John’s father and by John himself. Worse, John had been able to tell.

  Her reaction had been thoughtless and selfish. God offered her grace at every turn, yet as soon as she’d had the chance to offer John grace, she’d failed.

  Nora stopped pacing, screwed her eyes shut, and sent the simple text message she’d composed to John. How are you? I miss you, and I’d really like to see you.

  She waited one hour. Then two. Six.

  She collected a matched set of twenty-four heartbroken hours. And still, he did not respond.

  Facebook message from Duncan to Nora:

  Duncan: I haven’t heard from you lately, Librarian Extraordinaire. How are things between yourself and the Navy SEAL? Still continuing along a blissful course?

  Nora: I’m afraid we’ve hit a bit of a rough patch.

  Duncan: That’s a shame. Sorry to hear it.

  Nora: Never fear! I have the situation in hand. I’ll fix it.

  Duncan: Why don’t you come see me and take your mind off of him? London is glorious this time of year. I’ll squire you around to all the touristy spots. We can drink tea and see shows. With any luck, you may even be able to join me on the set.

  Nora: That’s a very kind offer. Thank you! For now, though, I’m completely focused on getting myself and John back onto our “blissful course,” as you so aptly put it.

  Duncan: And if things don’t work out . . . ?

  Nora: I’m not yet willing to contemplate that possibility.

  Letter from Irene to her deceased husband, Charlie:

  Sweetheart,

  You always managed to see optimism in me. But even when I was a girl, I think a part of me was already old and pessimistic. Well, this old, pessimistic woman got to see a miracle yesterday.

  A son. Of Brian’s. A miracle son. And he’s good. When I told Patti Jo his name, she went to her bookshelf and pulled out a book that must have cost thirty-five dollars. Charlie, the book’s about him. Brian’s boy, John. He’s a veteran.

  I now understand why God kept me alive, even though I didn’t much want to go on living after you died. It was so I could meet this boy who’s now a man. Through all these years, despite my sins and Brian’s sins, God was at work. God had mercy on me, and yesterday, He let me see how He’s been working.

  I only wish that you’d been with me to see him, too.

  I love you, Charlie. Always.

  —Irene

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-three

  When a full day had come and gone since Nora had sent her unanswered text message to John, she sent another. Are you okay, John? I’m worried about you.

  An hour passed without a reply. Nora spent that hour at her desk in her office at the Library on the Green trying and failing to accomplish work. She assumed there were plenty of girlfriends across America who were experiencing relationship problems and still managing to get an iota of work accomplished.

  Alas, she was not in that group.

  She dialed John’s number. His phone rang four times then went to voicemail. “This is John Lawson. I’m sorry, I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message.”

  Nora hung up halfway through the beep. The sound of his voice was so sexy and familiar that stupid tears rushed to her eyes.

  She was closing down her computer—no sense sitting here doing nothing of value—when her phone dinged. A text from John.

  You don’t need to worry about me, he’d typed. I just need more time.

  Not a single one of the books on conflict had recommended the silent treatment. None! The silent treatment was death to a relationship. All the experts advocated deep, respectful, face-to-face conversations in which both partners communicated their feelings openly. She and John required a deep, respectful, face-to-face conversation! We need to talk. I’m coming over, she wrote.

  No need.

  She blinked with dismay at his words.

  John was shutting her out. She’d been sticking up for him in her own mind, rationalizing his silence as best she could. She’d reacted to his withdrawal from her with six days of scared, hoping-for-the-best quiet. Now he was asking for even more time. More time wouldn’t help.

  They had to address what he was going through and deal with it together. They simply . . . had to. You’ve been warned, she replied to him via text. I’m coming over.

  On the drive to Shore Pine, Nora battled her frustration and fear. The experts recommended that couples converse when both parties were calm. Calm would be good.

  She decided that she’d lead with an apology for how she’d treated him that day at The Grapevine. Then she’d ask him to share his heart with her. Then she’d share hers. Then they’d discuss their issues, and they’d kiss and maybe cry and everything would be all right. These were the bright hours at the end of a beautiful waning day at the end of a beautiful waning summer that they should be enjoying together, she and John.

  Turning off t
he main road onto his private driveway, Nora braced herself for the sight of him. He’d likely be waiting for her on his front lawn with his arms crossed.

  However, when she pulled up, she saw no sign of him. She tamped down her jittery nerves, lifted her chin, walked to his door, and rang his doorbell.

  He didn’t answer.

  She knocked with three composed knocks.

  A full minute went by. His front door remained smoothly indifferent to her presence. She didn’t want to believe that their relationship had deteriorated to the point that he wasn’t going to open his door to her. Perhaps he wasn’t at home? Perhaps he was working late?

  But she’d told him she was coming. If he’d been at work during their exchange of text messages, he should have said so.

  She tried the knob. Locked. She rang the doorbell and knocked again. Nothing.

  She walked around the side of his house, hunting for unlatched windows she could tug open and crawl through. Who locked all their windows on a summer evening when they could instead be enjoying breezes off the lake? John, apparently.

  She’d be able to get in via his back deck. He kept the doors there open almost all of the time. When she reached the back of his house, though, she found it as shuttered as everything else. She couldn’t spot a single interior light. Facing the lake, she shaded her eyes. His boat was moored at the dock. No John.

  She continued around the far side of the house, stopping only when she spotted a rock that looked as though it was begging to be thrown. She was usually a mild-mannered librarian, but nothing about this situation or her love for John was usual. Since the experts would definitely, definitely frown at her for throwing a rock through John’s window, she opted to send him one last text message. Her fingers trembled as she typed. I’m not going anywhere until I talk to you.

  She stomped along the small path that ran parallel to the side of his house, head down, mouth set in a belligerent line. If he didn’t answer her text, she’d be forced to reconsider rock throwing. John might be the former SEAL, but she was the one who was about to dig in and fight—

  “Nora.”

  Her face jerked up.

  He stood ten yards or so in front of her with deep-green pine trees at his back. His feet were bare. He had on black basketball shorts and a slightly wrinkled gray T-shirt with the SEAL trident imprinted on it over his heart. A short beard covered cheeks that had hollowed since the last time she’d seen him. His hair was in disarray.

  He didn’t look like her John. He looked like the toughened, proven, intimidating man she’d first seen at Lawson Training.

  She could see at a glance that he wasn’t doing well, which caused her indignation to crack and compassion to flood into her like water into a ruptured boat. The girl who loved to be helpful desperately wanted to help him. But she could only do that if he’d let her. Her instinct was to go to him and bend her fingers into his hair and plead, Let me help you. But his expression warned her, when she’d advanced to within a few yards of him, to come no farther.

  Say you’re sorry, Nora. Lead with that. Then ask him to share what’s on his heart. Remember? Except . . . memories of him were crowding into her head and his distress was confusing her heart. “I . . . haven’t seen that T-shirt before,” she said.

  ———

  John drew his eyebrows together. Seeing Nora again was pure torture. He felt like he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs, and her first words to him had been about his T-shirt?

  “I might have been able to see that shirt if you’d invited me over at some point during the past six days,” she said mildly.

  He remained silent.

  “But you didn’t. Invite me over.”

  “No.” The word came out raspy.

  She took a step toward him, and he took a step back. Instantly, she stopped.

  The thin straps of her white sundress ran over the smooth skin of her shoulders. She wore her hair down, and she had on tiny gold sandals. She looked healthy and clean, and she made him feel worse and dirty and if she came any closer, he didn’t know what he’d do. Wrap her in his arms? Ruin the separation between them with hard, deep kisses? Beg her to look past his faults?

  He hadn’t known what to do about Nora since receiving her text message yesterday and her messages today. He didn’t see how they could be together, but he wanted to drink a bottle of whiskey every time he thought about breaking up with her.

  Since she’d rung his doorbell, he’d been sitting in his media room with his head in his hands, fingertips digging into his scalp, caught between wanting back what they’d had and knowing there was no going back. “Are you here to break up with me?” he asked.

  Her face went smooth with shock. “No.” She started to speak. Appeared to think better of it. Started again. “There are . . . a hundred reasons why I wouldn’t want to break up with you, John. I stayed away these past six days because you asked me to and because I was honoring your request. I didn’t stay away because I wanted to. I’m here because I couldn’t go another hour without seeing you. Without apologizing to you.”

  He stiffened. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

  “Yes, I do. I reacted badly when Sherry told us about Brian, and I’m really sorry.”

  “Your reaction was normal, Nora.”

  “No, it wasn’t. We both know that I reacted badly. It took me longer than it should have to get my mind right after Sherry told us about Brian.”

  “I don’t expect you to ever get your mind right about it.”

  “John,” she said firmly. “Stop talking like that and listen to me. Hear me. I’m sorry for how I looked at you. For how I jerked away from you. I want you to know that that wasn’t my true reaction.”

  He scowled at her in confusion.

  “That was only my first reaction,” she said. “Not my truest.”

  Many of the articles John had read about Brian Raymond had included pictures of Nora’s mother. Robin looked the way murder victims always look in pictures. Young and sweet and tragic. Nora resembled her. They had the same forehead, and Nora’s face was shaped just like her mother’s.

  His heart and his body ached with love for Nora. But this situation was messed up, because looking at Nora filled his mind with thoughts of Robin and how she’d been murdered and by whom. He felt bad enough as it was. He didn’t want to be reminded that he was the son of a murderer every time he looked at Nora.

  “John?” Nora asked.

  “Every time you look at me from now on you’ll see Brian Raymond,” he said.

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “I see you when I look at you, John. And you’re wonderful.”

  “Then I’m the one who’s screwed up, because I do see Brian Raymond when I look at myself, and I see your mother when I look at you.”

  “You’re going to have to choose not to see them.”

  “I did choose not to see them. But they’re there anyway.”

  They stared at each other, the air snapping with invisible sparks.

  Just days ago he’d had the right to touch her, to hold her, kiss her. Now it felt as though a wall of glass separated them, as thick and real as the glass panels that separated his living room from his deck.

  She straightened tall, her fingers curling into fists. “You’re not responsible for what Brian did. What happened a generation ago has nothing to do with you or me.”

  “No? What about the Scripture verse that says that children will be punished to the third and fourth generation for the sins of their parents? That would explain why I’m losing my sight, wouldn’t it?”

  Her mouth came open. “No! John . . . Let’s go inside. We can talk through all of this, okay? I think that’s what might help—”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t”—he gestured back and forth between them—“do this.”

  “Yes, you can.” Her voice wobbled, and he hated himself for upsetting her.

  “No, I can’t. I do
n’t know who I am,” he confessed to her with painful honesty. “I need to figure it out before I can think. Before I can see you or myself clearly.”

  “I can help you figure it out,” she whispered, taking a step toward him.

  He lifted a staying hand.

  Her movement cut to a halt.

  “I need to be alone,” he said more harshly than he’d intended. None of this was her fault. He knew it wasn’t, and he didn’t want to hurt her. Ever. But her goodness was making him sick with his own darkness. Her mother’s face, looking out at him from her eyes, was damning him. “I just . . . I need to be alone. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  Time unwound, one second pulling into the next, before he turned, walked into his house, and locked his door. He stood in his foyer, arms crossed, trying to hold himself together while a storm howled within. He willed Nora to leave, because he couldn’t take it if she knocked again or said anything more or looked at him with that shattered expression.

  When he heard her car start, he closed his eyes. Not with relief. With crushing loss.

  He knew a thing or two about killing, and he wished he could kill Brian himself. He envisioned doing it. He thought in detail about exactly how he’d do it.

  But the reality was that he’d been born too late to rescue Sherry or Robin or to kill Brian. Brian had taken his own life and was now just as dead as Nora’s mother.

  Nora drove to the Bookish Cottage like a carrier pigeon flying instinctively home for protection and safety.

  Her throat throbbed with unshed tears, and her pulse beat a depressing cadence in her ears. Keep it together, she kept telling herself. Keep it together, Nora.

  She parked, made her way around the side of her house, and tossed her purse and keys onto her Adirondack chairs as she passed her deck. She kept walking until she reached the place where the grass and moss of her hill gave way to the strip of wet, rocky earth that rimmed the Hood Canal.

  “I don’t know who I am,” John had said to her, and he’d looked and sounded anguished when he’d said it. He’d had no idea how appealing he was to her with his rugged body and his past glories and his vulnerabilities and his honor.