She might have been a married woman with children a very long time ago, but that had all changed when Ace and the children died. She had lived the past six years more like a cloistered nun than an experienced woman.
Now, she wanted to be with Ray Darling in every way, and she didn’t have the slightest idea how to express her desire to him without her telling him how she felt outright. Ray’s kisses at the ends of their dates were heaven, but she was beginning to wonder about the next step. Patsy sighed.
She would have to talk to Nancy. Just not right now. She wasn’t quite ready.
Yet.
PATSY AND TRIPOD had become such regular fixtures at the afternoon baseball practices that Ray and the boys had begun to think of Tripod as their unofficial mascot. Ray loved that Patsy had taken the time to learn all the kids’ names and that she cheered them on with the same enthusiasm as their parents. It was a tough job being an air force kid, and Patsy was helping to make it a little easier.
“Run, Davey, run. You can do it,” Patsy cheered from her seat on the grass near the practice field.
Davey seemed to glom onto her voice and picked his little feet up faster and managed to slide into third base before the ball. “Hoo-ah!” Ray cheered. “You did good, my man,” he called to Davey.
Davey beamed as if he’d single-handedly won the final game of the World Series, and Ray couldn’t help feeling as proud as Davey. Lord, he wished he’d been allowed to experience something like that when he was a kid.
But that was then, and this was now. He’d gotten over his childhood of books and studying and tests, and now he was making up for lost time. He couldn’t go back, and when he glanced at Patsy lounging so comfortably there on the sidelines, he was pretty sure he didn’t want to.
The afternoon sun was sinking lower in the sky, casting long shadows across the playing field. Ray squinted into the distance as he noticed the long line of cars clogging the road that wound around the end of the runway. It was quitting time. If the kids hadn’t been making so much noise he might have heard the sound of retreat being played as the flag at the headquarters building was retired for the night.
“Okay, guys,” he said, making his voice businesslike and serious. “It’s quitting time. Tomorrow’s the big game. The Tigers are undefeated right now, but we’re going to change that, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” the boys shouted in unison.
“What’re we gonna do?” Ray challenged.
“Beat the Tigers!”
“Go team,” Patsy cheered. “You can do it.”
Tripod even barked her own version of a peppy cheer, and Ray hurried over to pet the dog. He’d love to kiss her mistress, but a practice field in front of a group of preteen boys was not the place or time.
He’d have to settle for wet doggie kisses from Tripod instead of the real thing. “Are we on for later?”
“Aunt Myrtle is expecting me for a ‘command performance’ tonight,” Patsy said, making a face.
“I’m glad it’s you and not me,” Ray said. He liked Myrtle Carter, but until Patsy was ready to make their relationship public he wasn’t about to give the elderly woman any ideas.
“I just hate it that we won’t be able to get together tonight,” Patsy said, sighing.
“Me, too,” Ray said. “But we’ve got tomorrow night. I want to see that new Merchant and Ivory film. But, if Aunt Myrtle lets you loose early, give me a call on my cell phone. I’ve got a new computer game I want to try out, but I’ll drop that like a hot potato if you call.”
“Don’t put yourself out,” Patsy said, grinning. She started to fold up her picnic blanket, but turned back to Ray. “Wish me luck. You know Aunt Myrtle is going to give me the third degree,” she said.
“About what?”
“My love life. You know. Getting married. Having a happily ever after,” she replied. “I haven’t told her we’re going out yet. I don’t want to give her the satisfaction. If she knew, I’d never hear the end of it. Gloating is not becoming on a woman her age.”
Ray held his hands up in surrender. “She’s your aunt. I guess you know best how to deal with her.” He grinned. “Let me know when you’re ready to release us from the closet.”
Patsy punched him lightly on the arm. Then she laughed, picked up her picnic blanket and bag, looped Tripod’s leash around her wrist and waggled her fingers in a goodbye gesture.
“See ya,” Ray said.
“I’ll call you,” she said, then hurried with Tripod to her car.
“EMERGENCY?” Aunt Myrtle asked when Patsy’s cell phone rang after dinner.
“We’ll see.” Patsy smiled and reached for the phone. No matter how hard she tried to explain the nature of her job at the clinic, Aunt Myrtle always preferred to think that Patsy was so much more indispensable than she really was.
“Hi. This is Patsy.”
It was Ray. Patsy covered the mouthpiece with one hand, turned to Aunt Myrtle, bussed her on the cheek, then said goodbye. “Gotta go, Aunt Myrt. Thanks for dinner. It was great, but it looks like I’m needed.”
As soon as she got out of the house, she spoke back into the phone. “You’re where?” Apparently, Ray was baby-sitting for friends. She listened while he gave her directions, and worried about the panic in his voice. Ray always seemed so in control. But the baby crying lustily in the background sounded anything but under control. Ray hadn’t given her details; he’d said only that he needed her. Desperately.
She’d hoped he would say those words one day in quite a different context. Still, she was curious, and it was an excuse to break away from Aunt Myrtle a little sooner than she would have been unable to do otherwise. Patsy climbed into her compact car and drove to the address that Ray had given her.
RAY WATCHED FOR PATSY’S car and answered the door in a complete panic. He was totally out of his element, and at this point, didn’t care who knew it.
Rich and Jennifer Larsen had promised that Sara would sleep the whole time they were gone, and all he’d have to do was make sure the house didn’t burn down. At the moment, he’d have preferred a fire to this squalling baby. He knew how to deal with that kind of emergency. Nothing in his training as a combat controller had prepared him for this.
His glasses were askew, and he didn’t have a free hand to straighten them. He fumbled to open the door while he balanced the fretful baby in his other arm. As long as he jiggled the unhappy, little bundle of joy she only whimpered, but the instant he stopped, she wailed at the top of her lungs.
“Thank God you’re here,” he said as he closed the door behind Patsy. He had never been so glad to see her as at that moment, and he was usually pretty darn happy to see her. He’d stopped jiggling momentarily and Sara took the opportunity to scream at the top of her lungs. Who knew a baby girl had such lung power?
“What’s wrong?” Patsy asked as soon as she was inside.
Ray jiggled the bundle in his arms, and the volume of Sara’s cries lowered a couple of decibels. “Sara woke up screaming at the top of her lungs and I can’t get her to settle down,” he said, handing the squalling baby over to Patsy, who seemed unexpectedly startled as he thrust the baby into her arms. For a moment, he thought she might not take her.
Patsy’s breath caught and her heart skipped a beat. She wanted to flee as an irrational sensation of panic reared in her chest, but she couldn’t run. Ray needed her. No, this baby needed her. She’d have to push her doubts and insecurities aside and deal with them later. She drew in a deep breath and swallowed. Hard. Anything to force the panic away.
Sara seemed startled by the change, stopped wailing for a second or two, then resumed.
Patsy jiggled and the volume went down. “Whose baby is this and why are you with her?” she asked as she felt the baby’s padded bottom. “Not wet,” she said before Ray could answer.
“She’s Rich and Jennifer Larsen’s. You know Rich. He’s one of the guys in the combat control squadron. I don’t usually sit for babies, but their sitter ca
nceled at the last minute and they had tickets for some show that’s in town only one night. Jennifer promised that she’d sleep right through, but the minute they were out of sight, she started to scream.” He looked at the baby worriedly.
“It’s all right, Sara,” Patsy crooned. She felt inside the baby’s mouth and an expression of recognition came on to her face. “I think she’s teething. See how she drools and keeps sticking her little fist in her mouth?”
“I noticed that the front of her shirt was wet and she was slobbery,” Ray said. “But aren’t all babies? What do we do about it?”
“Show me to her room,” Patsy said, adjusting to the familiar feel of a baby in her arms as Sara gnawed on her finger. “There’s probably some kind of teething ointment there, and something to chew on.”
Ray led the way through the neat little bungalow to the baby’s room. Sure enough, there on the dresser was a tube of teething ointment. Funny, he hadn’t noticed it before, but then, he probably wouldn’t have known what it was for if he had.
Patsy reached for it, still jiggling the baby with one arm, and opened the tube. She squeezed a small amount out on one finger and worked her way into the baby’s mouth. Sara seemed to quiet almost instantly. “See, nothing to it,” Patsy said.
“Now you tell me,” Ray said sourly. “They could have warned me.”
“I doubt they expected it,” Patsy said, wiping at the drool on Sara’s red face.
“But they had the ointment,” Ray protested.
“Ever hear of the Girl Scout motto ‘Be prepared’?” Patsy countered as she laid the baby back into her crib. “Boy Scout, too, I suppose.” Sara fussed a little, but settled down a moment later.
“Never was a Boy Scout,” Ray muttered.
“Most babies start to teethe around six months, and Sara’s about that age. Her mom and dad were probably anticipating it. It was just rotten luck that it happened tonight.”
“I’ll say. I would not have come over if I’d even dreamed that the kid would be awake. I have absolutely zero experience with babies.”
“That is plain to see,” Patsy said, as she motioned for him to come out of the room.
Ray followed her out. “Well, you didn’t have to agree with me,” he grumbled as Patsy quietly shut the door. “You sure handled it like a pro, though. Does that come from your nurse’s training?”
Patsy blanched. If her fair skin could have gone any paler, Ray would have been shocked.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, bewildered at how his innocent question could have upset her so, but it was obvious by her distress that he had.
“Not many people on base know about it,” Patsy finally said after a silence that seemed to stretch for an eon.
Wisely, Ray didn’t speak. After she sat down on the living room sofa, he sat beside her. “Go on.”
“I was married about a zillion years ago. Or at least, it seems that long ago,” she said softly. “We eloped in high school. I was sixteen and he was eighteen. We were so crazy in love that we didn’t want to wait.”
To have sex, Ray concluded, but he didn’t interrupt.
“Ace worked hard and I was happy to stay at home and play at being a housewife. We had two kids right away.”
That was a bombshell that Ray didn’t expect. He guessed that she and her husband had been divorced, but where were the kids?
“That’s how I knew what to do with Sara. My nursing training didn’t come till later.” She looked off into nowhere. “I went back to school and became an R.N. just a couple of years ago,” she said, her voice distant.
Ray wasn’t sure he should question her, but the fact that she had kids was very important. Where the hell were they?
He waited for Patsy to go on, but for the longest time she said nothing. Just as it seemed as though she’d composed herself and was ready to continue, the glow of two headlights lit up the front window. Apparently, Rich and Jennifer were home.
She pushed herself up off the couch and headed for the door. “I’ll just go and let you explain what went on to the Larsens. Come to my place when you’re done.”
With that, she scurried out the door and left Ray with more questions than he’d had to start with.
Chapter Seven
Patsy’s heart pounded so hard as she drove herself back to her duplex a few blocks away, that if she didn’t know better, she would have thought she was having a heart attack. Halfway there, she pulled over to the curb and stopped the car. She had to get herself together. She drew in several deep, cleansing breaths, then feeling a little calmer, continued the rest of the way home.
She pulled into the driveway, flung open the car door, and hurried inside as if she were being pursued by the hounds of hell.
She’d expected that she’d have to tell Ray about Ace and the children sooner or later, but she had expected it later, not sooner. Maybe if she’d had more time to think about it, she would have been better prepared.
Now, she was going to have to tell him the whole story, and she wasn’t sure how Ray was going to feel about her afterward. No matter how she told him, or what she told him, there was no way to whitewash it. Her children and husband were dead. And it was her fault.
She looked around the house as if the answer to her dilemma would be there, but there was nothing different. Tripod, already settled in for the night, looked up from her bed, woofed tiredly in her direction, then settled back to sleep.
She’d have to tell Ray and hope that it wouldn’t change the way he felt about her.
Patsy paced the living room, wringing her hands until she saw the lights of Ray’s car through the crack between the closed drapes. Normally she would have rushed to the door, but tonight she waited. She was in no hurry to start the beginning of what would surely become the end.
He knocked lightly on the door. “Patsy, it’s me. Are you all right?”
Slowly, feeling as if she were wearing magnets on her shoes and the floor were made of iron, she made her way to the door to let him in. “I guess I owe you an explanation,” she said by way of greeting.
“Not if you don’t want to tell me anything,” Ray said, pulling her into his arms.
Patsy turned her face away from his kiss and stepped out of his arms. “No, I think I need to,” she said. She had put it off for too long. She shut the door, gestured toward the couch and then, tucking her feet under her bottom, seated herself in a chair across the room. Ray adjusted his glasses, then leaned forward expectantly.
“All right,” he said carefully, his handsome face showing his concern.
Would he demonstrate his disgust when she told him the truth? Patsy wrung her hands together and tried to come up with the right words. “I’m sure you want to know where the children are,” she began simply. “There’s no easy way to say this. They’re dead.”
Ray felt as though he’d been hit in the gut. He gasped, but he tried to concentrate on what Patsy said. He hadn’t been prepared for this. “H-how?” he finally managed.
“I killed them.”
Again, he was not prepared for that.
“No, I didn’t personally kill them,” Patsy clarified, and Ray breathed a little easier. “But it was my fault. Jesse was two years old, and Alice was just three months. I’d had an awful day. Jesse was going through the ‘terrible two’s,’ and Alice had been fussy and sick, too. So when Ace came home from work, I told him I’d had my fill, I needed a nap and he was in charge.”
So far, it didn’t sound like anything he hadn’t heard from any of the other married guys on the team, Ray thought. But, he decided, it would be better to let Patsy get the whole story out before he interrupted.
“I hadn’t even fixed supper, so Ace and Jesse went off to get a hamburger from a fast-food place. Alice couldn’t eat that stuff, but she always fell asleep in the car, so he took her, too. On the way back, a drunk ran a red light and plowed right into them. His SUV was no match for our small car. The kids died instantly. Ace hung on long enough for me to watch him
die in the hospital.”
Ray wanted to take her in his arms and hold her and tell her that it wasn’t her fault, that she couldn’t have helped it, but she wasn’t finished.
“He asked me if I’d forgive him…” She looked off into space again, then slowly went on. “How could he ask me that when it was clearly my fault?” Her voice broke, her face crumpled, and she wept into her hands. “I told him that there was nothing to forgive. If I hadn’t sent them away, they wouldn’t have died.”
Feeling even more helpless than he had when he’d been dealing with the fussy baby earlier in the evening, Ray did the only thing he could think to do. He went to her.
He knelt on the floor beside her chair, and pulled her up to him. She resisted him at first, but finally she turned and allowed him to take her in his arms, stroke her back and provide what meager comfort he could give.
He sat on the floor in front of the chair with Patsy—so small, so defeated—cradled in his arms and listened to her mourn her children, her husband, her family, until she finally cried herself out.
“PATSY, ARE YOU ASLEEP?”
She wasn’t. She had been lying in Ray’s arms, her head against his chest, listening to his strong, steady heartbeat and wondering why he hadn’t pushed her away and left her alone in her misery. Yet, she was happy that he hadn’t, glad that he’d stayed with her.
“No.”
“Maybe it’s time for you to go to bed,” he said gently, and Patsy knew there was nothing sexual in his suggestion. He was such a caring man, and every additional day that she knew him, she wondered why he was interested in her.
“I don’t think I could sleep,” she said. “And I don’t want to be alone.” Patsy was testing him, she knew. If he left her now, she’d know it was over.
“I’ll stay with you until you fall asleep, and then I’ll go,” Ray said, shifting so that he could get up. He climbed to his feet, then bent and offered her his hand. “Come. You need your rest.”
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