Jack sighed. “Thanks, Ben.”
“Sure.”
“You know,” Jack began cautiously, awkwardly, “that you’re as much my brother as she is my sister?”
Ben messed with the package for another few moments, then finally turned to him, his eyes serious. “Yes,” he said. Then he pushed his hands against his knees and stood. “That must be why you stole my girl and took me on that delightful trip to sunny, southern Texas, where I drove half the night, was almost shot and got a terminal intestinal disturbance from a bad tamale.”
Jack stood, too. “You insisted on coming. And you bought the tamale. I can’t watch you every minute. Quit complaining.”
“Okay.” Ben left the box on the coffee table. “Keep that safe tonight. Grady’s coming for it in the morning.”
As they started toward the door, Jack caught a glimpse of something pale blue out of the corner of his eye. He turned to see a large bouquet of dried hydrangea in the fireplace. Sarah. Something inside him melted.
There was a light rap on the door and Jack moved to answer it. Corie stood there in her skinny jeans and the red sweater he recognized as the one Sarah loved from his mother’s closet. She smiled. “Your mom sent me to get you, Jack. She said you shouldn’t sleep here tonight, that your dad worked on the heater back here while you were gone and it’s still not working. You should come to the house and sleep in the recliner. She also said you should show me what you’ve done in here.”
He gestured her past him and down the small corridor. She stopped abruptly at the sight of Ben. “Hi,” she said stiffly. “Your mother sent me.”
“I heard.” He handed her the empty fabric purse. Then turning to Jack, he said, “I’ll leave you to show off your talents,” then skinned past Corie, who flattened herself against the wall to let him by.
When the door closed behind Ben, Jack led Corie into the kitchen, telling her about his plans to put in tin ceiling tiles and stain the cupboards a golden oak.
“That’s beautiful,” she said. “I love that shade of green on the walls.”
“My mother picked out the colors.”
He walked her through the living room, showing off the new French doors, the fireplace mantel and the new light fixture, then into the bathroom, which was now pristine with improvements. When they returned to the living room, he noticed the mirror his mother had brought home still leaning in a corner.
“Sarah seems nice,” Corie said, putting a fingertip to the flowers he told her she’d dried. “Your whole family is very kind. You got really lucky, Jack.”
“I did. And no one realizes that more than I do. Aren’t you glad I bullied you into coming?”
She thought a moment, then smiled reluctantly. “I am, sort of.”
“Why sort of?”
They walked toward the doorway and she looked away. “Because...it’s nice here, but it’s not the kind of place where I fit in.”
“You mean you’re not comfortable here?”
She sighed, seeming frustrated that he didn’t understand. “No. Everyone’s gone above and beyond to make me welcome. I mean that I don’t belong.”
“Why?”
She gave him a dark look. “You know why.”
She started for the door. He caught her arm to stop her. “You mean—” he shook his head “—your criminal tendencies?”
She wasn’t amused. Tears stood in her eyes. “They’re not tendencies, Jack, they’re skills. I’ve used them for a long time and they’re now a part of me. I don’t fit in with cops and nurses and professional people. I was a gutter rat as a kid, and though I’ve learned how to survive since then, I’ll always be what our childhood—what our mother and my stepmother—made me.”
“No!” he said vehemently, then repeated the word with deliberate calm. “No. I’ve lived my entire life trying to get over our childhood, too. I had all those same insecurities—never good enough or smart enough. Then I realized it wasn’t that I didn’t measure up, it was that I was afraid I wouldn’t measure up. You’ve got everything it takes. Just don’t be afraid.”
She indicated his elegant surroundings. “Easy for you to say.”
“No,” he said. “It’s not. Love erases the fear. You’ll have to stick around here long enough to feel it.”
She opened the door. A fragrant fall wind raced inside. “Teresa can’t do without me that long. I’m one of those people love doesn’t recognize, anyway. Good night, Jack.”
* * *
JACK HELD THE door open to call Corie back, but saw Sarah passing her as she came toward the carriage house. She wore a bright smile that dimmed as she looked into Corie’s face.
They stopped in the middle of the walk illuminated by the light from the house’s kitchen window. They spoke quietly, Corie suddenly more animated than she’d been with him. She must have said something to alleviate Sarah’s concern; they hugged briefly, then each kept going.
His worry about Corie slipped behind the sight of Sarah’s incandescent smile. He held the door wider; she marched in past him and didn’t wait for him to close the door before flying into his arms.
He couldn’t imagine what had brought that on, but he simply went with it, responding in kind.
“How many children do you want?” she asked, nibbling on his ear.
His brain had disengaged. He needed a number. But he came back with an answer, anyway. “An SUV full. With room for you, of course.”
“How many is that? Six? Five? Sometimes the middle seat only holds two.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned her cheek against his shoulder. For a second, their hearts beat in unison.
“We’ll renegotiate after five,” he laughed. “What happened? You’ve done a 360-degree turn.”
She sighed. “I just couldn’t imagine us being able to have a life together when I was refusing to have children, which you wanted so much. Then I saw you with Corie, and Corie with the kids at Teresa’s, and I realized the simple truth that’s escaped me all this time.” She met his gaze and finished. “Life is risky. Everybody hurts sometime. And everybody goes on.”
He crushed her to him. After a long moment she leaned back to look into his eyes, hers soft with dreams realized. “Will you marry me?” she whispered. “I can finally love you without depriving you of what you want out of life.”
“Yes! All I want is you. Children are a bonus.”
She was beginning to tremble. He pushed the door closed. He kissed her again and said on a laugh, “This really did just happen, didn’t it? You proposed to me? Offered to have my children?”
“I did. And you said yes.”
“I did. Dreams coming true all around.”
“One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“I was just invited by Dr. James Weston to meet the board of the River Rose Retirement Village about a job,” she said.
That was the last thing he’d expected. “Wow. Is that good? I thought you felt burned out with nursing.”
“This would be as the administrator.”
“Sarah!”
“I know. It shocked me, too. They just want to meet me. I’d have to do some preparatory things to get licensed, but the place doesn’t open until early in the summer. The doctor said I was their first choice.”
“You’ve done a lot of hard things. Maybe you deserve a rest.”
She looked into his eyes, her gaze softening further with love for him. “You’ve been to war, but you’re not resting. You’re restarting your dad’s business. You’re trying to reclaim Corie as family and looking for Cassidy. You’re willing to love me and start your own family. That’s very brave.”
He caught her hands, overwhelmed. He had a lifetime to make his love worthy of her. “I’m going to so love being married to you. I want you to
do what will make you happy.”
“I absolutely don’t want to go back to pediatric nursing, but I love working with seniors, and I think this could be my answer to work that’s important but a little less hard on the soul.”
He felt compelled to say, “But, you’ll be losing your senior friends from time to time. That’s kind of the nature of that work, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “It is. I’m not dismissing them lightly, but often they’re ready to go by the time they reach that place in their lives, so losing them is not quite as hard as a life unlived. My job will be to make them comfortable, keep them engaged and interested and happy as long as possible.”
“All right. You’re going to be pretty busy.”
“The board hasn’t even met me yet. They might not share the doctor’s enthusiasm.”
“They’ll love you when they meet you.”
“We’ll see.”
He leaned down to kiss her, unashamedly joyful in the newness of their relationship.
She reached up to wrap her arms around his neck, her lips clinging to his. She pulled back slightly to whisper, “I love you, Jack.”
He put his lips to her ear. “I love you, too. And I can’t wait until there’s time to show you how much.”
They walked back to the house hand in hand. She kissed him good-night.
“I like Corie a lot,” she said. “I promised her I’d find her a nightgown. She sleeps in socks and T-shirts at home. So I have to go.” She blew him a kiss and hurried to the stairs.
* * *
JACK WENT BACK to the carriage house to put the contents of his bag away, laundry in the hamper, jacket on a hanger. Then, exhausted but still on an emotional high, he walked through the place, planning projects for tomorrow.
By the time he went back to the main house, it was quiet and dark. Ben lay on his stomach on the living-room sofa, one arm hanging off, his hand on the floor. Jack fell into the recliner across the room and tipped back, covering himself with the nubby throw always folded over the arm. Thankfully, he told himself as he began to drift off, he was too tired to dream.
His subconscious, unfortunately, was unaware of that.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HE STOOD ON the turret, the wind blowing the woman’s white hijab as she came toward him. This time he knew she was his mother and he was determined to keep her away. He aimed his sidearm at her.
“Stay away!” he warned. “You’re not getting up here. You’re not getting my weapon.”
The air rang with his warning, but she climbed up the Humvee with the strength and agility that always surprised him.
Okay, but she wasn’t getting on the turret.
He put a foot out to kick her off when she reached the turret, but he missed somehow. He didn’t understand how he could have, but he did. She stood beside him.
Okay, but she wasn’t getting his weapon.
“Jackie,” she said, that soft, scratchy voice reaching inside him. “Get away from me, Jackie!”
Jack, the observer, felt fresh pain at the sound of her last words to him. Jack, the subject of the dream, morphed from the adult he was to the child he’d been the last time he’d seen her. They were no longer on the Humvee, but in the living room of the house in Beggar’s Bay. He saw the old flowered sofa, toys all over the floor, a tricycle and a clear push toy that played music while marbles bubbled inside. He saw his mother without the hijab in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, her curly hair in disarray. A man’s voice shouted angrily in the background.
She reached for the weapon Jack held.
He was puzzled. It wasn’t the M4 he’d carried in Iraq, but a fat-handled, skinny-barreled Luger. While he dealt with that inconsistency, she continued to try to get it from him. He didn’t want to give it to her. The angry male voice grew closer.
Her grip was so strong.
His observer self didn’t understand it. He’d fought off big men with these hands, but he had been a child then.
She peeled his fingers off the gun. Still, he held on.
“Jackie,” she said again. “Get away from me.”
She gave one last vicious pull.
The shouting voice grew closer.
The gun fired, startling him.
He heard himself cry out, saw his mother on the floor, bruised and bloody. He stood over her. She had that look in her eyes that paralyzed him. That look he’d always hoped to see and never had. The look that said she recognized him as her son, that she knew he loved her, that she loved him. Then her eyes closed.
“Mom!” His voice was high with desperation. “Mom!”
“Jack.”
“Jack!”
He heard sobbing, high voices, shouts of alarm as arms came around him, crying his name.
He awoke to find himself on his feet, a small crowd around him in his parents’ living room. He stood near the sofa Ben had been dozing on, Ben holding his arm as though to steady him. Sarah wept against him, his parents stood apart, watching worriedly, his mother crying. Corie had both hands over her mouth, her eyes huge and terrified. She looked just as she had the night his mother killed—
Wait.
The whole world seemed to jerk to a sudden stop.
He put a hand to his head. There were pictures there, fragments of the dream that had changed location from Iraq to the old house in town, like a jigsaw puzzle spread out on the table, random, misshapen pieces of memory without connection.
“Jack,” Sarah said, putting a hand to his cheek. “Sit down, Jack. Ben, make him sit down.”
Ben pressed lightly on his shoulder but Jack resisted. “No,” he said. “This time we were at the house in town. I had a Luger instead of an M4.” His voice was agitated, disbelieving. “She fought me for it and I thought she was going to shoot me, but...” He hesitated, uncertain. “The gun went off. She was on the floor, bruised and covered in blood. What is going on in my brain? What does that mean?” He turned to Sarah.
“I don’t know, Jack,” she said, tightening her grip on him. “I wish I could tell you and end all this.”
Jack turned to Corie. He didn’t want her to have to remember, but he needed relief from his dreams or he would go insane. “Do you remember that night, Corie?”
She nodded and lowered her hands from her mouth. “Yes,” she whispered. Images flashed in his head, passing too quickly to sort or even see very well. He tried to recount the story for himself, to slow down the images.
Ben pushed him forcefully onto the sofa and beckoned Corie to sit next to him. Sarah sat on his other side.
“Mom shot Brauer,” Jack said, “and when I tried to take the gun away from her, she told me to get away.” He turned to Corie for corroboration.
Tears ran down her cheeks. She looked miserable. “Jack...” she said.
“That’s what happened, right?”
She stared at him and he saw the denial she was trying so hard not to say out loud.
“What, then?” he asked. Had his memory been wrong all these years? That was impossible, wasn’t it? “What do you remember?”
It was easy to see that she didn’t want to say anything. He caught her hand. “Please. I know it’s horrible to remember, but I have to know.”
She shook her head, unwilling to speak. He heard the clock ticking, his adoptive mother crying softly, the sound of the old oil furnace roaring in the basement. Time stretched, pinning him to this painful moment.
Ben knelt beside Corie. “Tell him what you remember,” he said gently. “Say the truth. Please. It’s the only way the nightmares will stop for him.”
She looked from Ben to Jack and then sucked in a breath that seemed to make her shudder.
“I woke up and heard the screaming,” she began. “I wanted to stay in my room but I heard you run
out, Jack, so I followed you.” She closed her eyes and took another breath. “When I got to the living room, Mom was on the floor and he was punching her. He was kneeling over her, and there was blood everywhere.” She looked up at him and her face crumpled. “Then...”
“Tell me, Corie.”
“You had his gun, Jackie,” she blurted. “You told him to stop, and when he didn’t...” She burst into sobs and blurted, “You shot him!”
The images stopped flying by his face and came into sudden, sharp focus. He relived them aloud.
“I remember Brauer astride Mom’s waist, punching her with one fist, then the other. Oh, God.” His heart was thumping. “I did have his gun. I pointed it like...like Ben and I used to practice after watching 21 Jump Street. I screamed at him to stop hitting her or I’d shoot him!
“He didn’t stop.” Jack saw himself pull the trigger.
“Mom screamed when Brauer fell on top of her. It took her a minute to react. Corie was screaming but I was quiet, the gun still aimed at the spot where he’d stood. I remember being glad I’d stopped him.
“Mom pushed him off her and got up. She was bruised and bleeding, and holding her side.
“You ran to her,” he said to Corie, who nodded as she wept. “But she held up a hand to keep you back. She said, ‘Get away from me.’” He had to strain to pull the sound of his mother’s voice from his memory. “‘You can’t have blood on you,’ she said. ‘Go back to bed and make believe you’re asleep.’”
Jack saw his eight-year-old self look up at the sound of sirens. “We heard the police coming. She told me to give her the gun. She said, ‘Careful, don’t get blood on you.’ I handed it over. She wiped it off with the hem of her bathrobe and pointed to my bedroom. ‘Get away from me, Jackie. Pretend you’re asleep and don’t tell anyone, ever, what happened. Promise?’ She looked like a loving mother, a look I was always trying to see in her and couldn’t find.”
He repeated those last words she’d said to him that had haunted him all his life. She hadn’t meant them the way he’d thought. He couldn’t breathe.
“I promised her I wouldn’t say anything. Then she said, ‘Good. Go to bed, Jack.’”
In My Dreams Page 21