If I'd Never Known Your Love

by Georgia Bockoven

  "Since you ask, things were going great for me tonight, too. Right up to the part where Julia—" Pearl tilted her head to the other side. "Yes, I'm talking about your Julia.

  Like I said, things were going great—right up to the minute where it all went to hell.

  Now Julia has every reason not to trust me, anymore than—well, any more than you do."

  Julia tapped on the door frame before coming inside. He glanced up, acknowledging her presence. "I don't know why they can't make antibiotics that taste like these vitamins. She does fine with this stuff."

  "I trust you," she said, ignoring his offer of a neutral opening. "You didn't owe me anything you didn't want to tell me."

  David took a towel off the counter and wiped his hands. "I let you think I was someone I'm not."

  "So does this mean the real you wouldn't sleep on a couch six inches too short in order to make a homeless dog feel safe? Or maybe the real you would never listen to the ramblings of a woman frozen in sorrow and indecision. Or could it be that the real you doesn't—"

  He held up his hand. "Enough." "Why did you come to my place tonight? I told you Michael was an English professor. You must have realized he—"

  Knowing it would be a mistake to give her the real answer-—that he'd begun looking for any reasonable excuse to be with her—he said, "It's been so long since I had a book out that I thought I was safe. People have short memories." He shrugged. "Hope springs eternal?" He picked up Pearl's bowl and stared at Julia. "There are a hundred cliches that fit. You interested in hearing more?"

  "Do you really not understand how important

  you were to our generation? How those who weren't caught up in the 'me' thing in the eighties looked to you to say what no one else was saying back then?"

  "How could I not know that, Julia?" he said in a flash of frustration."I heard it so often I almost started believing it myself." He reached for the pills and handed them to her.

  "Just because it's hard for you to hear doesn't mean it's not true."

  "Let it go," he warned. "There isn't anything you can say that I haven't heard. I don't want to hear it again. Especially not from you."

  She recoiled. " Especially me? What's that supposed to mean?"

  He shook his head and moved to step around her. "Nothing."

  "Oh, no, you don't." She followed him."I thought we were friends. Friends don't say things like that and walk away."

  He put the bowl on the coffee table and turned on her."Can you really be this dense?

  Has losing Evan made you so myopic that you can't see what other people around you are feeling?"

  "You're going to have to be a little less obtuse, David. I really don't know what you're talking about."

  He was on the verge of making a huge mistake. She wasn't ready to hear how he felt about her. "If you're really my friend, you'll let it go."

  Conflicted, she backed off. "All right. If that's what you want."

  "It is." He motioned toward Pearl. "You first."

  Julia took a pill and slipped it into Pearl's mouth, then spent a minute talking to her.

  David handed her the bowl of food and she and the dog disappeared into his bedroom.

  When she returned, she hesitated, obviously wanting to say something more but unsure how to say it. "There's coffee and lemon pie...but I don't suppose you're interested."

  "Not tonight," he said.

  "Tomorrow?"

  "Probably not."

  "I understand." She started to leave.

  "Julia?"

  "Yes?"

  "Would you—" He was torn between protecting himself and making her a part of the problem. Her sister and Michael could go home and tell a thousand people that they'd seen him and it likely wouldn't matter. But if just one of those people had a connection to someone who had a connection to someone who did care, his freedom and isolation would be over. "Never mind."

  "Are you sure?"

  He nodded. "It's nothing."

  "They won't tell anyone they saw you, David," she said, guessing what he was going to ask. "I'm going to talk to them about it before they leave."

  "I'm sorry I put you in that position."

  "You didn't put me anywhere I didn't want to be." She placed her hands on his shoulders, stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. "It's what friends do for each other."

  He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her. "Then thank you for being my friend."

  "You're welcome." She moved to leave, but instead stopped and gazed at David for a long time. "Evan loved Flying on Clipped Wings. You two would have been great friends. You have a lot in common."

  More than she would ever realize. "Julia?"

  "Yes?"

  He held out his hand. She hesitated for several seconds before slipping her hand into his. Hebrew her to him, waiting for her to resist, ready to admit it was too soon. But she didn't. She came willingly, tilting her chin up when he brought her against his chest, parting her lips in sweet anticipation when he kissed her.

  It was everything he could do to hold back, knowing the depth of his need, the breadth of his growing love, would scare her. She put her arms around his neck and held him, deepening the kiss almost to the point of commitment, giving him reason to hope.

  And then it was over.

  Julia's arms slid from his neck. She touched his cheek and looked into his eyes. "I wish..." She choked back a sob. "Oh, David, there's no way for me to tell you how much I wish this could be."

  He took her hands in his. "Yeah, me, too."

  "I'm sorry."There were tears in her eyes.

  He believed her.

  Four Years Missing

  I considered waiting until you were home to tell you this—which is a good indication of how strongly I believe you can hear my thoughts as I write them— but I figured you might as well know now. I bought an artificial Christmas tree.

  Are you groaning? Screaming in protest?

  It's beautiful, Evan. They're making them so much more realistic now. And, best of all, they come with the lights already attached. It took me and the kids half the time to put up the tree this year. I told everyone there were lots of reasons I made the change, but the truth is that it just wasn't the same picking out a tree without you.

  And I did such a bad job of securing last year's tree in the stand that it fell over in the middle of the night. I thought someone had broken in the house and I called 9-1-1.

  The cops were really nice about the false alarm, but Jason is still annoyed that I refused to let him check out the house before I contacted them. He's going through another superhero stage and thinks he's invincible. I swear I've never told him that he's the "man of the family" with you away. You know I don't believe in things like that. Well, it appears it doesn't matter. Jason feels protecting me and Shelly is something you would want him to do. How can I argue with that?

  Shelly's changing so fast lately that I tell one girl good-night and wake up to find another one in her place. In less than a year she's gone from being a pretty little girl to knocking on the door of being a full- fledged beautiful woman. That fourteen-year-old- hormone-influenced mind that's trapped inside a Victoria's Secret body terrifies me at times. Ninety percent of her conversations with her girlfriends is about boys and the other ten percent is about cell phones and iPods.

  Were there iPods before you were kidnapped? I can't remember for sure. As much as you love listening to music when you're working in the garden, you're going to love all the new technology. You can go online and buy almost any song for less than a dollar.

  What fun it will be for the three of us to bring you up-to-date and teach you how to operate all the new gadgets.

  Have I told you lately how much I love to watch you with our kids? There's a secret that women have had forever that either men don't know or choose to ignore. We think men who are good with children are incredibly sexy. It's such a turn-on to see a father nurturing his son or daughter. Give us a guy who isn't afraid t
o hold a baby or roll around on the grass with a giggling three-year-old or walk to school holding hands with his kindergartner and we're butter in a hot pan, melting and sizzling at the same time. So there you have it, my magnificent stud muffin, the secret to your power over me. Just thinking about you with Shelly and Jason turns me to mush.

  Of course it doesn't hurt that you're tall, dark and handsome, but when I look back at memories we share with the kids, I feel such fierce longing for you that I can hardly breathe.

  How is it that your shoulders never gave out at parades with one of them and then the other perched there for hours? And how did your arms hold up carrying them back from one of our walks in the mountains when they grew too tired or sleepy to make it on their own? How much sleep did you get when you crawled into bed with one of them after they'd had a bad dream? Did you ever regret not being a better golfer because you gave up your weekends with the guys to coach Shelly's and then Jason's soccer teams?

  Do you see your little brother, Shawn, in them? Are you memorializing him by doing for your own children what you couldn't do for him? We should have named Jason after Shawn, but I was too young to think of something that seems so obvious now. And I'm sorry I didn't ask you about him more. I was always afraid it would bring up sad memories.

  Since you've been gone, I've learned I was wrong to worry about that. Memories are our connections. When they are of people we love, they are the wheat that makes the bread that sustains us.

  I was thinking the other day that when you're home again, we should plant a garden for Shawn, one filled with all his favorite colors. Do you remember what they were?

  Was he old enough to have favorite colors before he died? I guess what I'm really asking is, did he have colorful things to play with? When I think of the place you lived with him and your mother, all I see is gray and black and white.

  I even have the location picked out for Shawn's garden. It's where we buried your mouse, underneath the peppermint-candy crepe myrtle. I didn't tell you about the mouse before because I didn't want to write anything sad. Are you laughing at that? He hung around for almost three years. According to something I read, that's an incredibly long time for a wild mouse. He must have been a young teenager when he wound up in Shelly's room. I found him one morning under the feeder, tucked into a sleeping position on top of a leaf. I cried. But then, I cry pretty easily these days.

  Jason insisted on a funeral—your mouse had become a pretty regular part of our lives, fearlessly feasting on the birdseed that dropped from the feeder. He would even come out when we were there, paying us no more mind than he would a pill bug. Shelly attended the ceremony, reluctantly, grumbling the whole time and never getting closer than ten feet. Later, when she thought she was alone, I saw her putting flowers on the grave. She was wiping her eyes when she left.

  C H A P T E R 1 3

  Six Weeks Later

  Julia sat on the railing that surrounded her porch I and watched for David. He'd taken Francis and Josi on a long walk to wear them out, hoping they would sleep on the flight to Sacramento. There they had a three-hour layover and a planned playtime to wear them out again for the direct, five-hour flight to New York, all carefully worked out to put him on the only airline that would let him have both dogs in the passenger compartment.

  Somehow, from somewhere, David had found the answers he'd come there seeking, and had packed away the computer weeks ago, content, at last, with not writing. He claimed he'd let go without guilt or regret, but not without a certain sadness. When Julia expressed disappointment, he'd pointed out that he'd packed his laptop, not tossed it.

  He was going home to sell his apartment and rid himself of the trappings he'd let accumulate over the years. Then would come a motor home just big enough for him and the "kids." Stealing a page from John Steinbeck's book Travels With Charley, he was going to reintroduce himself to a country and its people he'd only known by its coasts for the past twenty years.

  He'd promised to keep in touch, because Julia had said she wanted him to. He even told her he would visit if he ever found himself in her neighborhood. After all, she'd put so much time into helping raise Pearl's pups it was only fair that she got to see the magnificent dogs they were sure to become.

  It would take DNA to convince an outsider that Pearl was related in any way to the two wildly gregarious puppies that had consumed David's house and life. She'd obviously crossed paths with one of the breeds of short-haired pointers, because they looked like pet-quality examples of their father and nothing like her.

  Over the past four weeks, as Pearl had weaned her pups she had moved in with Julia, first by minutes, then by hours and finally completely, leaving Francis and Josi to David. She let Julia give her a bath and luxuriated in the one-on-one time that came with her daily brushing. All the attention, regular meals and freedom from stress left her looking like a dog that had never known anything but a loving home.

  Julia had never felt such a strong, empathetic connection to an animal before Pearl. It was as if their life experiences had created an understanding that went deeper than the words that usually formed a friendship this deep. When Pearl lay beside Julia's chair on the porch, her head on her paws, staring into the forest, Julia felt her sorrow and longing as readily as she felt her own and knew without question that there had been more puppies Pearl hadn't been able to save. When Julia was caught up in thinking about what should have been, invariably Pearl wound up at her side.

  Drawn by Julia's thoughts, Pearl got up, crossed the porch and nosed Julia's hand. She looked down into expressive, questioning eyes."I'm going to miss David," she admitted.

  "I know it's time for him to go and I know it's right, but that doesn't make it any easier."

  She held Pearl's muzzle and locked gazes."And I'm going to miss Francis and Josi, too. Oh, Pearl, what are we going to do with ourselves without the three of them around here?"

  Pearl responded with a throaty whine.

  A familiar sound drew their attention as the pups came crashing through the trees, attacking each other, fighting and knocking each other over, tumbling and getting up to do it all over again. Seconds later David followed them, shaking his head.

  Julia laughed. "I see you managed to wear them out. They certainly appear exhausted."

  "And here I thought it was just my imagination."

  "What did you feed them this morning?"

  "Steroids and uppers, from the looks of it." The instant they spotted Pearl, the pups made a dash for her, taking the porch steps two at a time, missing almost as often as not with nosedives into the runners, gaining their balance and lunging forward again. Pearl issued a guttural warning, which they completely ignored, one jumping up to grab her good ear, the other tackling her tail.

  "It's their way of telling her they love her," David supplied, climbing the steps after them.

  Pearl let out another growl.

  "Which I'm sure just means that she loves them, too," Julia said.

  He sat beside her. "I wonder if she'll miss them."

  "Yes," Julia said with absolute conviction. Just as she would miss David, more than she wanted to admit—to him or to herself. But by mutual agreement and understanding, certain things were left unspoken between them.

  "It's been a good summer," he said simply.

  "For me, too," she said.

  "I got up this morning and tried to decide what was important enough to say to you before I leave. I've been going over them all day, but, basically, there's just one that matters." He took her hand."I came here looking for the man I used to be. You helped me see that letting him go is my road to freedom. Thanks to you, for the first time in longer than I can remember I'm looking forward instead of back."

  "I hesitate telling you this, but my mother insists we didn't meet by accident this summer. She's convinced some cosmic force brought us together—" She gave him a self-conscious smile. "Are you ready for this?"

  He returned her smile. "Lay it on me."

  "To
heal each other's souls."

  "And you don't believe her?"

  She was surprised to see that he wasn't teasing her; he really wanted to know. "It's hard for me to listen when she starts in. All my life she's insisted nothing happens by chance and that all I have to do is pay attention and I'll see the hidden meanings in everything from the ordinary to the bizarre. It sounds mean, but I finally reached the point where I just tune her out."

  "I don't know about cosmic forces," he said. "But if you think about the series of circumstances it took to bring us together at this time and this place, you have to wonder if there wasn't something going on."

  David had never believed in premonitions or signs or omens, either, but he believed in coincidence even less. If there was some mystical force that brought them together, it could have worked a little harder on some of the more important details. Or was loving Julia and knowing she would never love him in return the coin he had to pay for his newfound peace of mind?

  "I have a feeling there's another time and place where you'll find the right woman waiting for you, David."

  A flash of anger shot through him at the pat sentiment. How could she dismiss his feelings so casually? But then he saw that they weren't just words; she actually believed what she'd said.

  She smiled. "Wrong thing to say?"

  "Am I so transparent?"

  "At times."

  "I'll get over you, Julia." He meant it to reassure her, a promise between friends.

  "I know." She squeezed his hand.

  He glanced at his watch. He'd hired one of the vet assistants to drive him to the airport in Redding because he owned a van big enough to hold two dog carriers and luggage. He was due to arrive in ten minutes."I'd better get going. I want to get the 'kids'

  loaded and settled before we take off."

  "One more minute," she said. "I have something for you."

  She went inside, brought out a package and handed it to him. Seeing how it was wrapped, in discarded manuscript pages that she'd unfolded and taped together, he shot her a questioning look.

  "I stole them from your trash," she admitted.