Her time with Austin had been short, but there was a powerful connection. So much of it was in the way he was a father to Jake, supporting him, protecting him, and although he was moody, he made up for that in kindness. Sometimes, when his temper was short, he made up for that with tenderness, and when he had no words to say, he made up for that by the touch of his lips.
And then there was her GI Joe, the man she had promised her life to. He was the man who made her laugh when she wanted to cry, the man she believed she would have children with. He had always been the cure to her pain, until now.
***
After Mimi spoke to her parents about everything from the English weather to what mischief her cat had been causing, her mother cut to the chase to ask the question that was the elephant in the room.
“You haven’t asked about Joel,” she said, her lips pursed together.
“I know,” Mimi whispered.
Her father rose from his chair and let out a loud yawn, stretching his arms out wide.
“Oooh…jetlag is catching up with me. Think I need to get some caffeine in my system. You want anything, love?” He gestured to Kanchana by placing his hand loosely on her shoulder. He knew when the girls talked, it was his time to leave the room.
“I’m fine,” she answered curtly.
Without saying another word, he disappeared out of the room.
“Are you going to tell me what is going on, Mimi? I know you so well, and I know you are hiding something. How do I know?”
“Because I can’t look you in the eye,” Mimi whispered.
“Exactly. Now, I don’t care if you’re five or fifty-five. It’s my job to fix you. Mimi, I can’t tell you how your father and I felt when we got that call. It felt like our whole world was about to end. You and your sister mean everything to us.”
“I know that, Mama,” Mimi said, lowering her head and avoiding her mother’s gaze once more.
“I know, my darling. Oh, do I know, love. I’ve loved your stupid father for over two decades.” She gave a playful laugh, but then her face turned serious again. “I know the love I have for him and the love that I have for you and Larna. And that love wouldn’t suddenly fade after weeks if, God forbid, I should lose one of you. You are so much like me. There is so much love in your heart. I saw how crushed you were the day that we were told Joel had been killed. It’s a day that I’ll never forget.”
She took a deep breath and tightly held her daughter’s hand. She lifted her chin into the curve of her fingertips. “So, Mimi, why is your heart not with Joel?”
“Because I found out things,” Mimi said, her voice beginning to tremble, “that he has a son.”
Kanchana covered her mouth in an effort to hide her displeasure and shock.
“And there’s something else,” Mimi continued.
“Go on…”
“I think I’ve fallen in love with his brother.”
Saying the words out loud sounded so different to how they sounded locked up in her head and in her heart.
“I don’t understand. You’ve only known him for five minutes, and Joel is your husband.”
“Mama, I know.”
“Are you even thinking straight? You’ve had such a shock. Maybe you are just confused.”
“I’m confused, I know, in every sense of the word, but, Mum, as much as my head is spinning, I can’t deny what I am feeling. I mean, is it even possible to love two people?”
“I don’t know.” Kanchana shook her head. “I’ve only loved your father.”
There was a short silence and then the sound of a chirpy whistle belonging to Simon. He was holding two steaming cups of coffee in plastic cups. He lifted the cup up to his lips and blew the steam that gently rose. He raised his eyes, stopping suddenly before he entered the room as he caught Mimi’s gaze.
She looked at him with wide eyes, a warning to her father he had walked in at a bad moment. There had been hundreds of awkward moments over the years. Being a father of two daughters, Simon had always joked that he was used to girl talk and the sudden silences. The fact that Mimi was no longer a little girl but a woman didn’t mean any of the family dynamics had changed. There were just some things Mimi could only share with her mother. This was one of those things.
“I’m hungry. You hungry?”
“No,” both women said together.
“Right then. I’ll just go and make myself scarce.” He left the room once again and started wandering down the maze of corridors.
After a moment, Mimi continued. “I can’t believe he’s alive. I can’t believe I’m alive. That has to mean something. It must mean that we are destined to be together, right?”
“Are you asking me?” Kanchana said gently.
“Yes. I need your guidance because every decision I seem to make is the wrong one. I’m so lost, Mum. I’m so torn.” She began to cry.
Kanchana learned forward and put her arms around her daughter. They had a bond so strong. Over the years, they had gone from being mother and daughter to the best of friends. Mimi regretted not calling her mother sooner and confiding in her. Since she didn’t understand what she was going through, she hadn’t expected anybody else to understand the tangled mess going on in her own head either.
There were thoughts that made no sense. Nor could she see clearly. Mimi had always been the rock amongst her friends, the one they called when a relationship was in trouble, the one who didn’t just mop tears away, but gave good, sound advice. Over the years, those close to her said she should become a psychiatrist and now here she was, living in her own drama, unable to calm the storm inside her.
She needed a saving grace from all of this, a hiding place to think things over. Kanchana had been liaising with the Embassy regarding Joel’s current medical condition, which she had candidly shared with Mimi. She needed to know the truth. He was due to be in Texas in two weeks, maybe less.
The doctors said that Mimi could be out of the hospital in ten days if she continued to steadily progress, but on strict orders that she was not allowed to fly. She could either stay in a hotel with her parents, now that they were here, or stick to the original plan and go back to the ranch. There she would reunite with her husband, and there she would be grateful to be back in his arms again.
She told her mother the whole story, right from the very start. The fears that she had when Joel left for Afghanistan, right to the moment she found Jake’s birth certificate and when she tried to drown her sorrows at the bar. She admitted her feelings for Austin could have been born from somewhere inside her that had been devastated by Joel. Yet, out of a dark place, she had seen the light that existed through Austin and most certainly around Jake.
Kanchana said very little; she just listened. Simon eventually crept back into the room. He pulled out a chair and took a seat next to his wife. He rubbed his eyes and smothered a yawn. The jetlag was slowly creeping up on both of her parent’s faces. From the time they had got the early morning call about Mimi’s accident, they had been awake for a solid forty-eight hours. Neither of them had slept on the plane. They had been too consumed by worry. They had powered through fatigue by pure adrenaline alone.
They watched Mimi’s eyes begin to grow heavy. She took a deep breath before her eyelids gave way and closed, the thin white bed sheet sitting gently across her protruding collarbone.
“I spoke to the doctor. She said Mimi is doing well, but she will need to be closely monitored. Even when she gets back to the UK. I’ve given them our GP details,” Simon whispered.
Kanchana nodded. “Did you give them all her insurance details? I know that she has coverage through her bank. At least she used to.”
“Her bills to date have all been paid for.”
“How?” she said, her voice rising.
“Austin. Sounds like a good bloke, considering he and Joel haven’t spoken in years.”
Kanchana took a deep breath. “I think there is a lot this family doesn’t know.”
Chapter 22
Austin put Jake to bed. As he pulled the covers over his small body to tuck him in, he took a moment to look at the little boy he loved so much. There would always be a tug at his heart knowing no matter what he gave Jake or how much he was there for him, he would never be his real father, and it killed him. He felt like a hypocrite.
Joel kept Jake a secret from Mimi, and he had cursed him a thousand times over, and yet he was doing the same thing. He told himself that it was because Jake was so little. He didn’t have the understanding yet, and it could confuse and damage him at such a young age.
After he kissed his son’s forehead, he told him he loved him and left to retreat to a hot shower, to wash the day away, to feel a brief moment of comfort. As he stepped under the hot, powerful jet stream, he let the water tumble over his tired body. He massaged soap into his strained muscles.
When he got out, he wrapped a towel tightly around his waist and rubbed the condensation of thick steam off the mirror. The first thing that he saw was the angry scar across his chest. It’d always be a reminder of that day. He wished he could forget it. He wished that it never happened. The scar would always have an ugly memory attached to it—the start of the feud between him and his older brother. He had told Mimi how it happened, out in the barn, a fight over Sara…
Deep in thought, Austin wandered into his bedroom and lay on the bed, letting his eyes close. Slowly, he allowed his mind to go to a place he usually forbade himself to go—the day he lost his father, the day everything changed.
He’d always claimed that he didn’t have many memories of his father, but he hadn’t been honest about that either. John Marcus was the glue that had held the family together. When he died, the light had turned to dark. His mother had tried to keep the family moving forward—she had tried to be both Mom and Dad—but eventually the strain of it all made her ill and cancer spread through her body.
Austin believed the cancer had been a direct result of the sadness of losing her husband. The family had secrets. Joel had his, but Austin had carried the burden of something so much greater.
His father’s life had been lost because of him.
He allowed the painful memory in. Reaching into the depths of his mind, remembering his father’s death, always knotted his insides up. He tortured himself with a hundred questions that all started with, what if? Over the years, he had suppressed so much, yet he easily recalled the small details of that day.
It was a Saturday that had started off like any other. The heat bounced off the ranching equipment and caused a mirage of wavering images. The family dog loped by, his tongue hanging out so far it was touching the ground in an effort to keep cool. The sun beat down like a furnace with no breeze to lighten its fiery breath. Austin told his mother he had found his father by the tractor and that he was already still and lifeless.
Joel was always their father’s sidekick. It was never Austin. But, on that particular Saturday, Joel was in his room, unwell. Austin had volunteered to help his father in Joel’s place.
He recalled his father lying on the floor, next to the tractor. He’d screamed at him to get help, but Austin hadn’t moved; he couldn’t move. All these years, he had been drowning in guilt. Those few precious moments Austin had to seek help, he used to stand over his father’s body, his clothes torn and soaked with his father’s blood.
At the day of his father’s funeral, as the coffin glided down the aisle of the church, people from all over the town had gathered to pay their respects and bid their final farewell to John Marcus, a man loved by so many. The spray of flower arrangements perfumed the air. The service was a blur, with only the sound of Father Frances’s voice giving a heartfelt sermon and a few sniffs from close family and friends.
Their mother had been crestfallen. She had worn a smart black dress and tried to act like she was holding it together for the sake of her children. She hadn’t fooled anybody around her.
At the cemetery, Joel didn’t take his burning gaze away from Austin. He knew his little brother’s secret, but he had never said anything. It was the heavy fog of silence that had stayed between them until they were teenagers and Joel finally let his vengeance erupt.
Austin knew his father loved him, but he always felt he loved Joel a little bit more. It was in the way that he always encouraged him, cheered him on, but mostly how he would pull Joel in for a man hug often, in a that’s-my-boy gesture, something he had never done with Austin.
Their mother had noticed it too. She did all she could to make up for it by giving Austin an overwhelming amount of love. Up until her final days, she was still compensating.
Austin had a few casual relationships over the years. Never a woman special enough for him to introduce to Jake. He didn’t date much, and it wasn’t because he was short on offers.
He’d only need to go out into town for the women to be furiously flirting with him, their heads poised to the sides, doe eyes, the flutter of eyelashes and low tops to reveal just enough cleavage, but it had never been about that for him.
In Mimi, there was depth. He could tell from the moment he first met her that she was a woman with drive and determination, and although he’d seen her tears more than he’d seen her smile, he knew she wasn’t a victim.
He hesitated on whether to visit her again in the hospital. As he lay in bed in the stillness of the moonlight, he came up with ten good reasons why he shouldn’t. Yet, there was one reason that overrode them all. He couldn’t let her go.
She’d asked for distance. He knew she had every right to ask that of him. And then there was Joel. The distance between them over the years had grown wider and stronger until they had become nothing but strangers, yet they would always be connected through blood and now the love of one woman.
She would make her choice, and when she did, the bad blood would thicken. His mind was array with different possibilities. All this thinking gave him a headache, and finally, at almost two in the morning, he got under the covers and forced himself to fall into a dreamless sleep.
***
Mimi was sitting up in the hospital chair, feeling physically better. When she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror earlier that morning, she had turned away in horror. Her face was puffy and swollen. The bruises had faded, but makeup wouldn’t be able to hide the ordeal she had been though. The injuries on her face, however, were nothing to what her soul had been through.
She wondered if emotions had a colour. If they did, what colour would she be? Grey, she thought, the colour of uncertainty; a grey area, a colour of neither here, nor there. A grey day, bleak, unsure.
She thought about Joel. When she closed her eyes, she remembered his smile, and she could almost hear his laugh. It all seemed so long ago, but what was months in a timespan of a long marriage?
On their wedding night, they had spoken of the future, his strong arms wrapped around her, two people so intertwined that they felt like one. They had discussed faraway lands where they would travel, how they would document every place with a photo, how they would keep every ticket, every tacky souvenir. Yet their dreams were always tarnished by Joel’s deployment hanging over them like a thick fog, threatening to destroy all their dreams.
Mimi was always afraid of the war he would be fighting, but she had understood it. Many of her well-meaning colleagues shared their points of view on the war in the Middle East. It was as if they were voicing their opinions through her, as if she could change it.
She’d listened. She respected their opinions. In the end, the military would still fight, people would still die, and families would be torn apart, and for the lucky few, their loved ones would come home to them. They’d get normal jobs, live normal lives, and share war stories with their friends over beers on a Friday night.
Mimi should be one of those lucky few. And then Austin happened. She hadn’t planned it, and she certainly had not meant it, but her feelings had overtaken her in ways that she couldn’t understand. The thing that had perhaps shocke
d her the most was how easy it was to have feelings for him when she was grieving her husband and still coming to grips with her new title as a widow.
Her mother’s words had echoed in her mind: I know the love I have for him and the love that I have for you and Larna. And that love wouldn’t suddenly fade after weeks if, God forbid, I should lose one of you. So, why had she let herself give into her feelings? Why did she have these feelings at all?
“I know you asked me to give you space, Mimi,” Austin said.
Mimi pulled herself out of her chair. She smiled and began to lean forward when she realised she was too weak to do so.
There was a beat of silence.
“I’m glad you are here,” she said, and she meant it.
“Actually, I’m here because I have some news for you.”
He paused for a second and cleared his throat. She noticed he had recently shaved but still left some stubble so his face wasn’t baby smooth. She inhaled his scent, which now felt like home to her. As he dragged another chair across the floor, she quickly tried to straighten out her hair with her fingers.
Austin cleared his throat, but he kept his eyes fixed on hers. “I got a call this morning. Joel is going to be on a flight to Texas on Sunday. He still needs a little more rest time before he is allowed to fly, but they are pretty confident that Sunday will be the day.”
Her heart skipped a beat. This was real. Joel was coming home.
“Does he know?” she asked.
“About us?” Austin answered, a little too high-pitched.
“About my accident, and that I’m in the hospital.”
Austin suddenly felt foolish for his stupid assumption.
Till Death Us Do Part Page 16