How could he not be happy? “Sometimes I think about them,” he admitted to her for the first time.
“Who...your parents?”
“Yes, them, too. They would have liked you and Abby, but I’m talking about my men. Only three of us survived. I think about all the men who died that day when I didn’t.”
She passed her eyes over his face, zeroing in on his scars. “You lived because you were supposed to, because God wanted you to.”
“Why me and not them?” It was a question he had found himself asking a lot lately. Now that he had Georgia and Abby. Now that he had a home to go to every night and all the comforts he could stand. “There were better men than me. Nicer men. More honorable men. Why did they die?”
“I don’t know, sugar.” She sighed and brushed her lips against his forehead. “I’m glad you didn’t die. I was really mad at God for a long time. I used to think why me and not somebody else, but then I met you. And you became my friend when I had nobody else. And you took my daughter in and loved her like your own. I needed to meet you, honey. Abby needs you. And if you’re thinking about leaving me here alone to raise this baby while you go off to fight some damn war, you’re not going to have to worry about getting blown up. I’m going to beat you up. I don’t care if you’re seven feet tall. I’m going to climb up there and kick your behind.”
He laughed at her bravado and pulled her face up to kiss her. “I missed the sassy girl I met in the hospital. I hate that you feel grateful to me,” he admitted to her. “I hate that you go out of your way to try to please me. I just want you to be you.”
“I am being me. I’m being your wife. I’m taking care of you, dummy.”
“This is not how my mother took care of my father. In fact, my father took care of her. I can take care of you, but you won’t let me. You don’t let me help you around here.”
She shook her head. “You do help out. You do too much for a man who not a month ago was laid up in a hospital. You want to do everything. You want to fight a war and take care of a wife and daughter and fix this house all by yourself. You say you want to be partners, but you don’t. You have this crazy need to serve. Serve me and Abby and your country all at the same time. You won’t let anybody do anything for you. It’s as if you feel as though you don’t deserve to be loved.”
Maybe he didn’t.
“It’s my job to take care of you. I got you fired. It’s my job to raise Abby because you’re my wife. It was my job to get my men out of there safely because I was their leader, and I failed at that. I failed to get my parents from the airport that day and they died because of it. I failed to protect Miko from my friends and she ended up pregnant and alone.”
“It’s not your fault that your parents died. It’s not your fault that a bomb hit your unit. It’s not your fault your friends did that to that girl. Don’t you know you couldn’t control any of that? It’s as if you keep trying to redeem yourself. You don’t need to redeem yourself. You need to—”
“No Da! No Ma!”
Georgia turned away from him, walked to the kitchen counter and rested her hands on the surface.
“We shouldn’t argue in front of her. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me, too. I’m going to talk her to the park. We’ll be back later.”
* * *
Georgia peered out the window for the fifth time since Christian and Abby left. They had been gone for over an hour, and while she trusted Christian with Abby, she was worried. He’d been angry when he’d left. With her. With the world. With God.
She couldn’t blame him. She had been there. Half the time she still was there. But she had Abby to keep her grounded, to keep her going. And now Christian had her, too. It was hard for her to give half her child away. It was hard for her every time Abby reached for Christian instead of her. It was hard for her to let Christian feed and dress her in the mornings, but she had stepped aside because he needed her love.
He was thinking about going back. He hadn’t said anything directly to her, but she knew he wanted to go.
Part of her thought that the right thing to do was to let him go, but it wasn’t. She knew he was restless. She knew he was used to working, but he needed a family. He was running from it, from her. Christian was wounded, but not just physically. He needed to be loved, because for so long nobody had. Nobody told him that he was good, that he was needed.
She cooked and cleaned and cared for him because that was what she did. She was a mother and a nurse. She had chosen a career that would allow her to care for others. She had grown up the oldest girl in her family. All she did was care for her family, and she hadn’t hated one moment of that part of her life. Caring for them made her happy. Caring for Christian made her happy.
The phone rang, causing her to jump. She left the window, rushing to answer it, thinking it might be her husband. They’d had their first fight as a married couple. And it had gone unfinished. He had left seething, and while she was upset with him for thinking his life was less worthy than others, she didn’t want them to stop talking.
“Hello?”
“Georgia.”
The phone slipped from her hand and bounced on the kitchen counter. She recognized the voice. She knew it like she knew her own, and yet hearing it was a shock to her. She never thought she would hear it again. She never wanted to hear it again. But there he was, calling her after she made a new life despite him. He had tried to take her dignity away, but she had never let it go completely. She wouldn’t shy away from him now. She had no reason to.
“Hello, Father.”
“Is your mother there?”
“What? Is Mama gone?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, Georgia. Is your mother at your house?”
“No, sir.” Her stomach turned over. Sweat started to form on her palms. “She’s not here.”
“Don’t lie to me again, girl. Is she there? You let me speak to her right this moment!”
“I’m not a liar.” She kept her voice low, calm, even though she wanted to rage at him. “I never was a liar. You just choose to believe a stranger over me. Mama is not here, but if she was, I wouldn’t let her go back to you.”
“I’ve been nothing but a good husband to her. She’s got no right to leave me.”
“You can be a good husband by being a good father, and you were not a good father to me.”
“You’ve got them all turning against me. My sons won’t talk to me. None of my children will come to my church all because of your lie. Why have you done this to me? I provided you with a good home. I taught you God’s word. I followed it myself. You have forsaken me and you have turned a good man into a suspect with your deceit.”
“He raped me!” She screamed it at him. She had never raised her voice to him before. She had never dared to, but she couldn’t take the accusation. Not now. Not after all this time.
“He was a good boy. He was like my son. He wouldn’t have done that to me.”
“He’s not Abel. He’s not a replacement for Abel. He hurt me.”
The phone was snatched out of her hand. Christian was there. He was there with Abby and a ferocious look was on his face. “This is Georgia’s husband. I don’t give a shit if you claim to be a man of God—if you call here again and upset my wife I will track you down and kill you. You understand me?”
He hung up the phone and slammed it on the counter so hard that it broke.
She was shaking. Violently. She hated herself for doing it. She hated that her father had the power to unravel her. Christian grabbed her and wrapped her in his body so tightly that he nearly crushed her. But it was what she needed in that moment. She wasn’t alone anymore. Because of him she wasn’t alone anymore.
* * *
That night Christian waited in bed for Georgia to come out of the bathroom. It was their nightly ritual. E
ach night he would wait for her, his arms folded behind his head as she bathed and got ready for bed. He wished this ritual would end. He wished that she wouldn’t hide her body from him, that she would dress and undress in front of him. But he guessed that was just part of her upbringing.
Her life had been so sheltered with her overbearing father and timid mother. He was glad he was in the house when the phone rang. He had just gotten back from his trip to the park with Abby. He was putting Abby in her crib for her nap when he heard Georgia scream.
He raped me.
Those words played over and over in his head all evening. His wife had been raped. He’d known this for a long time, but the reminder of it today triggered something inside of him. That man. That weak son of a bitch was still walking around. Free. Unpunished. Undeserving of life. He had cost Georgia. Her family. Her security. Her trust in people.
In an odd way, the man who had hurt her had brought them together. If it hadn’t been for him, if it hadn’t been for the bomb that had killed Christian’s unit, they wouldn’t be together now.
It was funny how the thought of ending the life of the man who’d hurt Georgia planted itself in his head and wouldn’t go out. He had told her he would kill for her before, but today he could imagine doing it. Beating the man till he couldn’t move, and then going after her father.
He’d had the nerve to call her. To call their house. He’d had the nerve to be demanding. To upset Georgia. He hadn’t protected her. That was a father’s job. To protect his children.
He thought about Abby. About how she turned to him when she was scared or needed something. He may not feel as though he was contributing enough to the world, but he was enough for Abby.
Georgia was his wife, and friend and lover, but he would move mountains for Abby. He had been thinking about going back. He had been thinking about it all day, but then he thought about Abby. How he would miss her growing up. How he wouldn’t be able to protect her if he was thousands of miles away.
How could he serve his country and his daughter the way he wanted to? He had to give his all. He couldn’t do either halfway.
The phone rang, breaking him from his thoughts. He was glad for the interruption. He’d always been troubled by his thoughts after having left the marines. Before he got here in his life, he could turn off such thinking and focus on his job, his next mission, but since then, nothing he did seemed to stop the flood.
“Hello?”
“Captain Howard?” He heard Tobias’s unsure voice.
“I think you should call me Christian now.”
“I like calling you captain. Oh, Captain, my captain, and all that shit.”
He grinned at Tobias’s statement, glad he had called. He hadn’t realized how much he actually missed the kid. “Suit yourself. How are you?”
“I’m going crazy, sir. I hate to ask you this, but do you think you could come and get me so we could hang out? My Mama... I love her, but the woman is treating me as if I’m a baby. She even checks on me when I’m in the bathroom. I swear she would wipe my bottom if I let her.”
“I didn’t need to hear that.”
“I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I need some man time. My dad took off when I was seven, so it’s just me and my mama and my grandmama and my sister.”
He was going to ask Tobias where the friends his age were. Where were the men he served with? But he stopped himself. Nobody understood a wounded soldier like another wounded soldier. “We could go fishing. There’s a place not too far from here. We could go for a couple of days. How’s Thursday? I’ll ask the general, too.”
“Sounds awesome! I can’t wait to get out of here. I need to get out of here, sir. You don’t know how much.”
“I do, son. I’ll see you soon.”
“Thank you, sir. Good night.”
They disconnected just as Georgia walked out of the bathroom. Her hair was still damp and she had a jar of her lightly scented lotion in hand. “Who was calling?”
“Tobias.”
She sat on the side of the bed and began to lotion her limbs. He just watched her for a moment. She had never done so in front of him before. “Oh. I’m glad he called. How is his vision?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Of course you didn’t ask. You’re such men.”
“I’m going to take him fishing on Thursday for a couple of days if that’s okay with you.”
“Of course it’s okay. He looks up to you. I think it’s good that you spend time with him.”
“I like him, Georgia.” He reached for her as soon as she put the top back on her jar. “I want to help him. He says his mother is treating him like a baby. He needs his own job and his own place. He needs to learn how to live with his blindness and not have his family treat him like a victim because of it.”
“Were the men in your unit young like Tobias?”
“Some of them were.” He nodded. “The youngest was twenty. He was a computer whiz, recruited right out of high school. Four of them were under twenty-five.”
“You liked those young men the best, didn’t you? You liked to shape them. You liked to teach them how to be men.”
He didn’t answer immediately, but it was true. He liked the younger ones the best. He saw the potential in them. He saw what they could be. He wanted to make sure that none of the men in his unit were like his so-called friends. He only wanted men of character, and if they had none, he tried his hardest to build it in them. “The general looked out for me when I was young. I had nobody else.”
“I think you could still help those young men. The ones like Tobias. The ones who don’t have a place after the war. I don’t know how, but I think you could do something.”
His parents had done so much charity work when he was a child through their company. They campaigned for paying a living wage to employees, and growing food without chemicals and preservatives. But after they died, that work went away. It ended up being their legacy.
He couldn’t do what they did, but he could have his own legacy. It wouldn’t be charity. It would just be giving back to the people who gave for their country.
He just didn’t know what or how he could do it.
He kissed Georgia’s forehead and she burrowed into him, seeking warmth or comfort, he wasn’t sure which. “How are you feeling?” Her face was paler than usual. Her mouth slightly downturned. There was a slight heaviness that seemed to hang over her. “I want to talk about you.”
“Carolina thinks that Mama went to Florida to stay with her sister. I believe that she did. Mama always loved Florida. Said she wanted to move there when Daddy retired. But I’m still worried. I just can’t believe she would leave Daddy, especially now, after all this time. She called me. Did I tell you that? It happened when I was sick. But she called me to ask if I was happy.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I couldn’t say that I was. I just told her to come live with me, that I could take care of her.”
“You take care of her? She should have taken care of you. She’s your mother. She shouldn’t have let your father do that to you.”
“I know. But she’s my mother, and even though she hurt me, I still wish I could have her in my life.”
“What about your father? Could you forgive him?”
“After the rape, I told my father that I didn’t want to be around Robert anymore. I didn’t tell him what happened. I was too afraid to, but I told him that Robert bothered me. My father told me I was being foolish. He invited him over for dinner that night. He made him sit next to me in church on Sunday. He said Robert was like family, that I needed to get over our quarrel. Robert taunted me. He would look at me as if he could see through my clothes and smile at me. As if he was triumphant. I wanted to die then, Christian. I thought about dying, about ending it all, and then I found out I was
pregnant.”
“Stop.” He put his fingers over her lips when she started to get upset.
“Tell me where he is, Georgia. I’ll find him for you. I’ll make him pay for what he did to you.”
“Christian...”
“Tell me where to find him. Is he still in Oakdale? I’ll go tomorrow.”
“No,” she said firmly.
“Your father, then. I’ll make him realize what he’s done.”
“If he hadn’t kicked me out, I wouldn’t be married to you.”
“Exactly.”
She frowned at him. “I should thank him.” She lifted her lips to his. “I will thank him. My life is better than it ever would have been.” She shut her eyes and buried her face into his chest. He felt her gratitude again and it made him uncomfortable.
He wanted her love. He wanted to hear her say the words. He didn’t want her gratitude. He didn’t deserve it.
“Will you make love to me slowly tonight?” she asked. “Just like on our wedding night?”
“You don’t come when we have sex that way.”
“What?” She blinked at him.
He wished he hadn’t blurted out those words. But it was the truth and it had been gnawing at him for weeks. “You don’t have an orgasm when I’m inside you, when we make love like that.” He felt as though he failed to arouse her.
“Oh.” Disappointment crossed her face. “I like the kissing and the touching and the closeness. I like the other way, too, but I don’t need that tonight. I just need you to hold me.”
“We don’t have to have sex for me to do that, Georgia.” He wrapped his arms around her and held her as close as he could manage. “We can sleep tonight.” He kissed her forehead. “We can sleep just like this.”
CHAPTER 21
Georgia pressed a kiss to the smooth side of Christian’s face the next morning. He stirred but he didn’t open his eyes. So she kissed him again. On his other cheek. Then his chin. She moved her lips down his neck to his chest.
Jericho (A Redemption Novel) Page 23