by Anne Calhoun
“Don’t you see?” he asked gently. “I don’t want you to give up anything for me. I want to give you everything I have, everything I am, everything you’ve ever wanted.”
“What are you going to do if I sell and stay?” she challenged.
“Ris. Don’t ask me to bear that. Please.”
The remark stopped her cold, cold enough to feel hot tears spill down her cheeks. He relaxed his arms, and she walked into them, felt him pull her close, hard enough to hurt. One hand cupped her hair as he laid his cheek on the top of her head. They’d never lose the demons, the memories, the what-ifs and could-have-beens and regrets. The regrets weighed more than anything else, and timing really was everything. They stood together in Brookhaven’s great room and looked out the window at the hide-and-seek sun.
His throat worked, then he spoke. “This time I’m staying,” he said.
She drew in a shuddering breath, and finished his sentence. “And I’m leaving.”
22
FOR TWELVE YEARS Adam assumed loneliness equaled emptiness. That’s how he felt when he left Delaney at the airport: empty. Having kissed Marissa good-bye and watched her truck head west for San Diego, he now knew how loneliness felt. It was an ache, ever present at the base of his throat, sometimes sending twinges into his gut. The dragon inside didn’t bother to rumble or huff, a stillness so unusual he wondered if the damn thing needed antidepressants. She was gone. He was here, contemplating a newfound appreciation for those who were left behind when Marines went off to war.
The unexpected knock on his apartment door Sunday afternoon found him in his new apartment, drinking a beer, half watching the football game while he unpacked. When he opened the door a hand reached into his rib cage and fisted around his heart and lungs. Not from joy, but rather from utter shock, because Delaney stood in the hallway. She wore a black jacket over jeans, and her black leather purse hung from the crook of her arm. The vacation tan couldn’t hide the twin spots of color high on her cheekbones.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. He’d never, ever imagined seeing her alone, on his territory, on a random Sunday afternoon, thumb working at the shiny-bright rings on her left hand.
“May I come in?” she asked quietly.
He stepped to the side to let her in. She looked around, taking in the empty, flattened boxes, the neatly arranged furniture. The television sat on a stand across from a recliner and sofa set delivered the previous day, and his laptop sat open and active on the kitchen counter. He didn’t ask her to sit down, but he did pick up the TV remote and mute the sound. The picture flickered behind him, a high-pitched whine signaling when the screen went bright.
“How did you find me?” he asked as he tapped refresh on his e-mail. The only people who knew his new address were his mother, Lucas—who’d stopped by to finally have that beer after police business in Brookings—and a few buddies from the Corps. And Marissa. It took less than a week to finalize the details to sell Brookhaven and pack her few possessions into the bed of her pickup truck. E-mails arrived daily, something he’d expected. The postcards surprised him, postmarked from places like Bozeman and Las Vegas, reducing him to checking the mailbox like it was the twentieth century.
She’d been gone all of a week, taking her time on the way to San Diego. Her absence taught him the meaning of lonely, but slowly, he was learning to stay in the moment with the emotion, let it wash over him, through him, and then recede. He didn’t have to react, or deny, or ignore what he felt, just feel. Simply experiencing emotion, observing it, taking its measure, let him gauge strength and meaning, determine impulse from unshakable, and told him that he was right. He had unfinished business, and until he figured it out and dealt with it, he needed to stay.
Delaney watched him close the laptop lid before she answered. “I heard your mother tell Alana you’d moved into this complex. The building’s lovely,” she said.
“Does Keith know you’re here?”
She adjusted her purse on her arm. “I told him I was exchanging wedding gifts,” she said, the color spreading on her cheekbones. “And I was. But I had to talk to you.”
He’d automatically braced, he realized. Legs spread, weight on the balls of his feet, arms folded. But he didn’t say anything.
“I should have told you a long time ago, but I didn’t have the courage.” She looked around the apartment, as if searching for a distraction, then sighed and met his gaze without flinching. “Keith and I got together before you and I broke up. We started seeing each other about four months into your last deployment.”
He said nothing.
“It didn’t start out as . . . anything inappropriate, at least not for me. Keith was always around in college and grad school. He’d take me out, and we’d talk about you, about our plans for the future. He listened to me, to my . . . concerns. I’d turned thirty. Mom was getting worse, and I didn’t know how much longer . . . I wasn’t married yet, wasn’t a mother, either. He . . . helped me stay strong, told me you were worth it, that what we had together was worth waiting for. But then you volunteered for another deployment, when you said you wouldn’t, and one night . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head. “But it wasn’t just one night.”
“I know,” he said. He handled other people like they were Marines, pushed too far, asked too much, goaded them into giving more than they could handle. His edge, he was slowly learning, was way beyond the norm. But not Marissa. Marissa’s edge snugged up against his just right.
“I thought you might,” she said. “You broke it off so suddenly, but then you said yes when Keith asked you to be best man, so I thought you didn’t, you’d just decided we weren’t right for each other. Then the way you acted when you got back made me wonder. Your speech pretty well confirmed it.”
“If you knew I knew, why are you here?”
“To apologize, and ask for your forgiveness.”
Incredulous, he stared at her, but the word triggered a slow skittering of pebbles down a rocky slope inside. He’d heard the sound a thousand times on patrol, a crumbling of stone, a shifting of the earth under him set off by his boots, by a fellow Marine’s steps. He didn’t have the LT’s ESP, but he slowly developed a sixth sense for the sound that was new, the tumble of pebbles with more velocity, more speed. The hair on his nape would rise slightly, his attention shifting to a point in the wadi, his body’s reaction to something out of the ordinary. Pay attention. This is important.
“Why, Delaney?”
“You promised the fourth deployment would be the last. Then it wasn’t,” she started, then shook her head. “No.” She took a deep breath. “I loved you. You have to believe that. I loved you.”
He’d heard that a lot lately. Loved. Past tense.
“After a while I began to love what you stood for, what you’d made of yourself. I thought that was you. But it isn’t. It wasn’t enough, to love the potential and a shiny surface of a man who was two thousand miles away during a good year and showing no interest in coming home. I wanted someone who was here, now, and ready to be a husband and a father.”
“And did you figure all of this out before you started sleeping with Keith, or was that the pillow talk afterwards?”
At that she did flinch. “Both. I agonized over this, Adam.”
“And never mentioned it to me.” Neither did Keith. Not one word in the e-mails about Delaney’s concerns. He’d played to win.
At that she opened her palm, pleading for understanding. “You don’t know what it’s like to be on the other side. Support the troops, stay loyal, stay true. Put on a front until the front is all you have. I watched my girlfriends get married, get pregnant. I’d been a bridesmaid six times, and I’m godmother to four of my friends’ daughters. They have homes and families, and I had a ring and a promise that kept getting extended another year, another year. I was lonely.” The word so sharply echoed Marissa’s explanation of why she sought out companionship on her terms that Adam startled, but Delaney went on. “And
I was weak.”
“And now you expect me to forgive you for cheating on me with our best friend while I was deployed,” he said.
“I don’t expect anything,” she said simply. “All I can do is apologize, and ask.”
And if she doesn’t apologize, how could he forgive?
More dirt and pebbles twisted and shivered down his spine. He shook it off. “I hope you’ll be happy, Delaney.”
She twisted her wedding ring again, diamonds disappearing under her hand, then reappearing between her ring and pinkie fingers, only to disappear again in a slow circle. “He wants what I want,” she said. “And I think I’ll be good for him.”
He was trying to figure out what that meant, when her right hand delved inside her purse and pulled out his engagement ring, the smaller round diamond set in yellow gold. Without a word she offered it to him.
Etiquette dictated she keep it when he’d broken up with her. Now that the truth was out in the open, she was right to offer it back, but he didn’t want it. “Keep it,” he said.
“I can’t,” she replied.
“Then sell it and buy supplies for the kids at Pine Ridge, because I won’t take it back.”
“All right,” she said, and put it back in an inner pocket of her purse.
He remembered what Keith had said: that Delaney wanted a small life, a home, a job, kids, to spend holidays and vacations with her family. That was all. He’d wanted her to be his defense, his shield, his protection against everything inside him that scared him. But that wasn’t who she was, and in the end, it wasn’t what he really needed. He needed a partner, a guide, a sounding board. He needed someone who knew and loved the man under the brightly polished uniform and sword and the jarhead haircut.
He needed Marissa.
“I am sorry,” Delaney said quietly.
The words registered somewhere in his consciousness, but he was too busy processing awareness, coming bright and sharp and fast as a sword. Forgiveness wasn’t a right, something demanded and expected. It was his duty, made more worthwhile when it was freely offered, and the only thing that would make all of this right for him. Keith and Delaney would always live with the knowledge that their love and marriage began in the sordid muck of infidelity, but he could start over, if he forgave them.
To err is human. To forgive is divine. Neither is Marine Corps policy. The bumper sticker on his car said it all. No mistakes. No forgiveness. It’s a Marine thing, he’d said casually to Marissa. But life didn’t reduce to a bumper sticker, and maybe that was the answer to who he was when he wasn’t this Marine. Not inhumanly perfect, or unable to forgive. Just Adam. Just like everyone else.
She turned to go, her hand on the doorknob, when he spoke. “Delaney. I forgive you.”
There. He’d done it. Three simple, short words. I. Forgive. You. He didn’t feel smaller, or weak, or taken advantage of. He felt . . . light. Strong. Like he could slice through steel. Was this what Marissa knew that he didn’t know? How letting go made you strong?
Tears welled up in Delaney’s eyes as she looked at him. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
He didn’t extend his newfound magnanimity to Keith, and she wisely didn’t ask. Instead she opened the door, then turned to look back at him. He got the sense whatever she was about to say cost her more than telling him she’d gone to another man’s bed. “I thought Marissa would be here. Since Brookhaven’s been sold.”
Speaking of blades to the heart. There was a lifetime of animosity and jealousies and envy washed around in the currents of Walkers Ford, and perhaps Delaney hadn’t been as immune as he’d suspected. “She’s gone,” he said.
“Where?”
The small-town curiosity never died. His mother and Alana weren’t talking. He wouldn’t be the first to reveal Marissa’s whereabouts. “I kept your secret, Delaney. I’ll keep hers, too.”
“I knew you were together when I saw her shoes and that wrap in the kitchen, just like I knew you were together the night you surprised us all.” He neither confirmed nor denied, but something about his expression made Delaney look away. “Is she ever coming back?”
“I don’t know. She says she will. I doubt it.”
Delaney considered him. “You came back.”
“I have unfinished business here.” He’d keep explaining that to people until they got it.
Her calm blue gaze never faltered. “So finish it,” she said simply, and closed the door.
First Marissa. Now Delaney. He didn’t know how many more of these punches to the solar plexus he could take. Was it that simple? Screw up his courage like Delaney had, confess, and ask for absolution?
Why not?
Because what he’d done was unforgivable. Cheating and lying were tiny wrongs compared to causing the stupid, unnecessary, irrevocable death of a beloved son.
Unfinished business, oh yeah. He could stay stuck in the past, shoring up the crumbing walls that held in everything he hated about himself, or he could do the right thing. Face who he was. What he’d done. What he’d become. Deep down, hidden inside behind the structure he’d created to keep himself in line, was the fear of who he would be without that structure. But even if he was no longer this Marine, he was still a Marine, and Marines faced their fears.
Marissa loved him. If she could rebuild Brookhaven, he could do this. If he loved her, wanted a future with her, he had to confront his worst fear. He clicked off the television, shrugged into his jacket, and snagged his keys.
It was time to face the demons that lay behind the white door of 84 Oak Street.
* * *
HE PARKED A couple of houses away, shut off the engine, and sat listening to the engine pop and cool. As the seconds passed, his blood thumping in his ears drowned out the irregular ticks under the hood. He’d been in more firefights than he could count, pinned in ravines by snipers, on choppers taking fire from RPGs, held broken and bleeding bodies while Marines died, but apparently he could still feel fear. His heart raced and his stomach shuddered. Was this what Ris fought outside Mrs. Edmunds’s house, the desire to curl into a tiny little ball on the floorboards from nothing more threatening than the obstacle to your future?
He’d been there for her, stood by her and made that right. Made it possible for her to fly. He’d come home to tie up loose ends with Keith and Delaney, and like the events of that summer night long ago, set off a chain of events he couldn’t control.
Ris was gone, shopping for boats in San Diego. Warm and safe and free. And here he was, in front of 84 Oak Street, back where it all began twelve years ago.
Fall sunshine bathed the quiet street as he strode up the driveway to the front door. A wooden pumpkin hung from a hook that probably held a Christmas wreath, then a snowman, then a Valentine’s Day heart, then something whimsical like tulips for spring. The yard was neatly maintained, the flower bed mulched for the winter. From the outside the family’s loss wasn’t apparent. He rang the doorbell and waited.
When Mrs. Wilmont opened the front door, he thought maybe he should have taken the five minutes to call first, because her blue eyes, just like Josh’s, went wide. “Mrs. Wilmont,” he began, “I’m Adam Collins.”
“I know who you are,” she said clearly, slowly wiping flour-dusted hands on her apron. “Come in.”
In some ways she’d aged terribly, and in others, not at all. Some remote part of his brain did the math, and calculated her age at somewhere close to his mother’s, just over fifty. Silver streaked her chin-length brown hair, and her skin was smooth and pale, but her eyes held infinite pain.
He followed her into the kitchen, where an afternoon talk show played on a small television set on the counter, providing background noise while she made a rhubarb pie. Daily life for a small-town wife. Mr. Wilmont worked at the manufacturing plant south of Walkers Ford. She would have grown the rhubarb in the garden he saw through the family room windows.
He should have called first. He felt big and awkward in her small, clean kitchen. Through
the doorway into the family room he could see Josh’s senior portrait. The photographer had airbrushed away Josh’s acne, leaving a smooth-faced boy with blue eyes and black curls, dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt, and his letter jacket, smiling confidently for the camera. The family pictures around the portrait began with five people, Mr. and Mrs. Wilmont, Josh, his two younger sisters, then shrank to four as the girls aged through high school, into college and beyond.
The absence evident in those pictures clenched hard around his throat.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you, ma’am,” he said hastily.
She poured herself a cup of coffee. “Sit down,” she said.
The chair legs scraped across the linoleum, then he eased into the seat. She looked at him with those clear, expectant eyes.
“Mrs. Wilmont,” he began, then stopped. He cleared his throat, rubbed his thumbnail against his forehead. Looked at Josh’s photograph. Looked at Josh’s mother.
It was as if the last twelve years hadn’t happened, as if he’d never survived boot camp, or five deployments, as if he’d never worn the uniform and carried the dress sword. Faced with blue eyes identical to Josh’s, twelve years disappeared in the blink of an eye and he was seventeen again, scared, boulders of self-loathing grinding against his heart and lungs. Just a bike and an attitude, the cockiness covering a scared boy convinced he’d never amount to shit.
And he wouldn’t, if he didn’t do this.
He cleared his throat again, started again. “Mrs. Wilmont, I’m here to apologize. I’m sorry . . .” Tears filled his eyes. He blinked them back, felt his nasal passages sting anyway. “I am so sorry for what I did.”
She said nothing, just traced the curve of the coffee cup’s handle with her index finger. Pie dough clung to the nail bed.