The Widow of Conard County

by Rachel Lee

  She needed this. Oh, how she needed this. She was flying now, higher and higher, even as the throbbing within her approached a painful crescendo.

  All of a sudden, everything inside her exploded. For an instant, her brain emptied of everything but the acute awareness of a satisfaction that was almost excruciating in its intensity. Then, like a spent firework, she shattered in blazing embers of completion.

  Chapter Nine

  Liam held her close. She could hear his ragged breathing in her ear, and she supposed hers was every bit as ragged. Her heart pounded its way slowly to a calmer rhythm. The throbbing of her body eased slowly, almost reluctantly, as if it were ready to start again.

  She heard him draw a long, shaky breath, felt a tremor pass through him. Time had ceased to have meaning, and she didn’t know how long it was before he spoke.

  “I think I said a taste.”

  It was certainly more than a taste, she thought hazily. She leaned into him, enjoying his arms around her, enjoying the closeness she had missed for so long.

  There was no understanding of how important it was to be this close to another human, to be wrapped in strong arms, unless you had gone without it forever. It felt like forever since last someone had held her this way.

  Not that she would have wanted just anyone to hold her this way. No, it mattered that it was Liam, and that realization niggled at her mercilessly. Then she shoved it away, refusing to cede this time and these feelings to the harsh light of reflection. That could come later.

  “Wow,” he murmured into her ear. “Just wow.”

  “Wow,” she agreed, burying her nose in his neck, inhaling his particular musky scent mixed with soap and shampoo. He smelled so good to her.

  He ran his palms over her back, then surprised her by lifting her and holding her close.

  “My legs feel like rubber bands,” he said. “You drained me, woman.”

  The comment elicited a quiet laugh from her as the world spun and he headed for the living room. A half minute later they were settled on the sofa, she straddling his lap, all without separating an inch.

  She leaned against him, enjoying the way he rubbed her back. She’d have been happy to stay like this forever. For a while, it seemed he would, too.

  Companionable silence, human closeness. It couldn’t get much better.

  But then her stomach growled noisily. He laughed quietly. “You need to eat.”

  “I need to make dinner,” she admitted.

  “I don’t suppose there’s a pizza delivery service out here.”

  “Dream on.” She laughed reluctantly and sat up even more reluctantly. “I need to cook.”

  “Maybe we can scrounge something from the fridge. Or find something easy.”

  “I planned on easy for tonight. I hope the gas grill still works, but I figured I’d make some hamburgers.”

  “That sounds really good. What can I do?”

  “Pull the grill away from the house and take the cover off it. I hate dealing with that.”

  She eased off his lap, feeling as if she were making a big sacrifice. It wasn’t easy, but she supposed it was necessary, especially as a hunger pang struck her. Her lunch salad hadn’t stuck around for very long.

  Or maybe, she thought impishly, Liam had helped her work up an appetite.

  * * *

  Standing near the kitchen window, she quickly made hamburger patties for them, then started slicing tomatoes and onion, and washing a few lettuce leaves. He had no trouble pulling the grill out to the place she’d indicated, but when it came to dealing with the heavy, waterproof cover, he seemed at a loss once he’d pulled it off.

  She paused in her preparations and waited while he studied the cover. He probably felt he should fold it, but couldn’t figure out how. She hoped he wasn’t getting frustrated.

  Just as she was about to drop her knife and go out to help him, something must have clicked for him. He began folding the material, although far from neatly. Maybe he’d decided that any old fold would do for now. It certainly would. In fact, he hadn’t needed to fold it at all.

  Watching him was a thrill, though, because it called to mind the minutes just past when he had held her in those incredibly strong arms and had showed her that a very essential part of her was alive and well after being repressed for so long.

  Man, that had been delicious. But even as remembered sensations began to flood her anew with warmth and a desire for more, warning flags started popping up.

  It was all well and good to acknowledge that she’d been trying to avoid pain for a long time now, that she’d pulled out of much of life because she feared close connections and the devastation that could follow when they were lost. It was entirely another to try to delude herself into thinking that didn’t matter.

  Of course it mattered. Any reasonable adult would know that. To risk such pain again, the reward would have to be great, indeed, and Liam had been quite frank about not being able to promise her anything. He was justified in that. Hell, he hadn’t sorted himself out yet, and she, apparently, hadn’t sorted herself out, either.

  They were both on a dangerous transitional cusp here: he was working his way into a new life, and she was coming out of a long period of grief. In short, they were easy pickings for an easy answer to it all.

  She sighed, arranging the lettuce, onion and tomatoes on a plate. Okay, no easy answers, no heedless slip into a relationship that could wound one or both of them. Neither one of them merited the pain if only one of them should become deeply involved. And given their current situations, it might be too damn easy to get involved, for comfort and companionship, if nothing else.

  God, she thought, life had been so much easier when she had fallen in love with Chet. None of these daunting questions, just an easy tumble into the most wonderful ocean of human emotions. No knotty questions, just a growing surety.

  Life had taken that ease and certainty away from her by teaching her that love could be painful, too. Every bit as powerfully painful as it was wonderful. If that was wisdom, she wished she’d never had to learn it.

  She cooked the burgers on the grill, taking her time because Liam seemed interested in how to light it.

  “I never had a gas grill,” he announced. “When I was a kid it was always charcoal.”

  “We went with this because it’s useful when the power goes out in the winter. If the wind isn’t too strong and you can stand the chill, there’s a lot you can cook rather than burning the house propane, which we need for heat.”

  “Does it go out often?”

  “The power? Often enough. At least once a winter it’ll go out for long enough that I’ll be carting food outside to keep it cold.”

  She glanced at him. “I bet you got used to living without any power at all.”

  “Sometimes. We had generators at some of our forward bases so it would depend on where we were and what we were doing.”

  “Rugged living.”

  “No more rugged for us than the people who live there.”

  “That’s a good point. I guess I’m pampered.”

  He didn’t answer, and when she looked up he was staring into space. Oh, God, had she just sent him back to Afghanistan? But then he seemed to shake himself, and the next thing she knew he was smiling at her.

  He didn’t answer her comment though, and she let it lie.

  They let a lot of things lie that evening. The intimacy had dispelled, and the distance was back. They ate at opposite sides of the table, they watched a comedy on DVD, which didn’t seem to interest him a whole lot, and when bedtime approached he went up alone.

  The barriers were back in place, leaving her feeling bereft. Later, in her own room, she tossed and turned until finally she gave up and went to sit by her window.

  Seated in a valley,
the ranch didn’t give the longest views as the mountains seemed to rise quickly to the night sky. The moon silvered everything and seemed to invite memory to intrude.

  She had spent more nights sitting alone at this window than she could count. Chet had been gone for most of their marriage, and this little easy chair had been a lonely haven for a long time.

  Although she had been used to long bouts of solitude, the loss of Chet had been no less painful. Purpose had left her life, and along with it the familiar and much cherished task of writing him every single day about some little thing. She knew from his responses that he often went without mail for a long time, then would receive a whole packet of her letters. He called those times his “real payday.”

  Planning had deserted her, too, along with dreams for the future. She’d begun running like an automaton, the color leached from her life as surely as the night leached it from the day.

  Now she felt the color seeping back into its place, dreams were stirring, however small, and the memory of her lovemaking with Liam, however limited it had been, curled up in her heart with warmth.

  If he called that a “taste”....

  She almost shivered at the memory of how much he had aroused her and satisfied her with so little contact. She ought to feel guilty, but no guilt arose in her.

  But there would be pain, she thought. It seemed impossible to her that waking the woman in her after all this time could have no price.

  Then another thought occurred to her, and that was when the pain pierced her. She had known what she was getting into when she married Chet. In all their years as husband and wife, she had enjoyed only a few months of time with him. Yes, duty called him, and sometimes she suspected that he went right back when he could have taken a tour stateside.

  It was never discussed; she didn’t know if her suspicions were true. They probably weren’t, but their very existence told her something. In her heart she believed that Chet had valued his duty over her. The whole time he was home, talking with her about their future together, still far down the road, she knew he was worrying about his buddies. It had slipped out at times, and while she considered it a mark of the good man he had been, she had sometimes resented it.

  Oh, God! When he was home, part of him had still been over there. Had she ever really had his full devotion? She tried to argue the ugly question away. Of course she had. As much as any person had the right to expect from another.

  But it remained that their marriage, if counted in actual time living as husband and wife, had been very short. It hadn’t seemed so bad when she had been looking forward to when he got out of the army, but looking back... Looking back, she had been cheated. They had both been cheated. Hell, Liam and Chet had spent more time together by far.

  Anger burst in her, flooding her with its acid. They’d never had a normal married life, only the pretense of one. Really. A honeymoon once every year, and gaping holes filled in by letters and Skype. She’d lived with it at the time because Chet would have retired at twenty years, and by the time he had died there had only been about six years left. Or maybe the war would end and he’d come home.

  Only he hadn’t made it home and she felt furious and cheated and even a little deluded. It had been more fantasy than reality.

  Jumping up, she climbed into jeans and a sweatshirt. She hurried downstairs, pulled on her boots and a warm jacket, and hurried out the back door, wanting to run, but smart enough even in her anger to realize the dangers of tearing across uneven ground.

  “Cheated.” She said the word aloud as she stomped her way through the chilly night, across grasses that were already yellowing despite the rain they’d had not long ago.

  “Cheated.” She said it again, as pain began to intertwine with fury into an agonizing knot. Thank God she hadn’t had a child. Chet would have missed the first tooth, the first step, the first word. He’d have missed it all, been a stranger to his own child.

  In some ways a stranger to his own wife.

  “Damn it!” She swore. She swore for all the other spouses, thousands of them, who had gone through this. For all the sacrifices made to feed the maw of war. For all the pain and loneliness, loss and suffering. And for what?

  God, she wished she had a good answer. With a price so high, shouldn’t there be an answer?

  Ripped by shattering anger and pain, she fell to her knees and pounded the cold ground with her fists. Each hammering blow felt good, releasing the unvoiced anger and perhaps some of the pain.

  Then, out of nowhere, she felt a heavy hand begin to rub her back. She gasped, jerking upright and saw Liam kneeling beside her.

  “I know,” he said. Then before she could ask what he knew, he sat cross-legged and lifted her onto his lap as if she weighed nothing.

  “Why?” she gasped as heavy tears began to fall. “Why?”

  He wrapped his arms around her and began to rock them both gently. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “Just cry all you need to.”

  “But why?”

  “It was our duty.”

  “That’s not good enough!”

  “Sometimes that’s all you have.”

  She turned her face into his shoulder and wept hard and long. She didn’t ask again, just let the last of the grief work its way through her. Somewhere deep inside she knew she was letting go of something, and the letting go felt like tearing her heart out by the roots.

  Ages later, exhaustion began to dry her tears, and the pain and anger began to ease.

  He began to talk quietly. “We had a duty. We believed in our mission, to help the local people. Sometimes it wasn’t easy, but we believed in it, anyway. Sometimes the world seemed to go mad, but we kept right on believing. If you know nothing else about Chet, know this. He never once stopped believing that we were trying to make the world a better place. Some people sneer at that, but they don’t matter. We believed, and we tried.”

  “Yes.” Her voice emerged raw and thick after all the sobbing.

  “If we were misused or misled, history will decide. But we believed.”

  “But look at the price!”

  “There’s always a price. We knew that. So did you.”

  His words sank into her heart like a stone. Yes, she had known that, but foolishly had believed that she and Chet wouldn’t pay it. She’d lived in denial, a fantasy world.

  “All we had,” she said brokenly, “all we had out of seven years were a few months together. We weren’t even together long enough to have a good fight.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know. At least you don’t have any bad memories of him.”

  That much was true, but she had memories of the aching loneliness when he was away. The dissatisfaction that she always tamped down. The need for a fuller marriage, never acknowledged.

  “I needed more.”

  “I suspect he did, too.”

  “I don’t think I even really knew him.”

  “You knew the man who loved Sharon. That part was for you and you alone.”

  A shudder passed through her, and the last of the tension inside her slipped away. She melted within the circle of Liam’s arms, exhausted.

  * * *

  A long time passed. The chilly air was beginning to penetrate him, and Liam wanted to get her back to the house. He didn’t want to disturb whatever she was working through, though.

  God, it hurt to see her like this. He knew the holes in his own heart, the loss of too many buddies, Chet foremost among them, but he couldn’t plumb the depths of loss she must feel. Or the anger.

  “We never had a real marriage.”

  The words stunned him. He had absolutely no idea how to respond.

  She struggled a bit against him and he let her go, watching her rise. He remained seated as she paced in circles in front of him. “It was a dream, Liam. I
t was a fantasy, castles in the air. We kept right on building them, all of them tagged with someday. Someday we’ll do this or that. When I retire, we’ll do that. Over and over again, we built those castles, cherished them, believed in them and the time never came, Liam. It never came!”

  “No.” It was the most he dared say, spoken only to let her know he was listening. His chest had grown tight, and he’d have given anything to make her feel better. But he couldn’t do that. She had to do it for herself. For once he didn’t feel savage frustration because he couldn’t do something. All he felt was sorrow.

  His arms felt empty without her. He rose, waiting patiently for whatever would come next. Life had taught him how to wait.

  “I feel cheated.” Her words shook him, but again he said nothing. He could well understand why she felt that way.

  Then she pivoted sharply to look at him. “I must sound like a whiner. I talk about being cheated, but look at what you’ve lost. You’ve been cheated, too.”

  “It happens.”

  “Yeah, it happens. And I’m not the only widow to come out of this mess. Tens of thousands around the world right now.”

  “The problem,” he said carefully, “is that each experience is individual, and it isn’t any easier because you can point to so many others who’ve had the same losses.”

  “God, Liam, I’m so angry! I’m not even sure I’m being fair about this.”

  “Fair?”

  “To myself or Chet. To what we had. But I know one damn thing for sure. If I ever marry again, I want a real, full-time marriage. I want someone who’s there every morning when I wake up, and every night when I go to bed. No more castles in the air.”

  She started walking toward the house and he followed along.

  He spoke. “All the castles we build are in the air.”

  She stopped short and faced him. “Really? Really?” Then the hiccup of a sob escaped her.