She did not bellow or scream as her heart demanded. She wept. She could no longer keep her brave public face. She wasn't brave. She never had been. She needed to leave this place and the joy it held. She had no right to dampen Mira's happiness. She needed to go home and gather the comfort of her children into her arms. She needed to work. She needed to keep her hands and mind busy with day to day tasks that would keep her from falling into the depths of her grief and her shame in resenting her sister's happiness.
"Dear God," she whispered. "Take this burden from me. Mira's happiness should have no bearing on my lack of it. Her joy can't make my grief more or less. I've never been jealous of what she is. Envious, yes, but never jealous. Don't let my bitterness color my feelings for her. I couldn't bear to lose her, too."
"Maybe we should talk about it." Mira knelt behind Wynne and stroked her hair. "I've known since you got here that something was very wrong. You're quiet with others, but never with me. I've been waiting for you to open up and it looks like that time has arrived. You don't have to ask God, Wynne. That prayer was answered the day you were born. You'll never lose me, just like I'll never lose you. We're stuck with each other. We're sisters."
Wynne sat up and reached for her sister's hand. "Please don't misunderstand. Please," she begged. "I love you, Mira, I always have. From the first moments I remember, I loved you and wanted to be like you; pretty and outgoing and daring. I think I envied that most of all. Nothing ever stopped you. You were what, twelve when the boys started coming around? Someday that will be me, I thought, but it never was. In Junior High, it seemed like you had a new boyfriend every month and in High School not a weekend went by that you didn't have a date except when you were grounded for staying out too late the weekend before. By then I knew I'd never be like you, but still, I thought someday, someday, but instead of someday, I got the war, and Mom and Daddy were gone, and my life was set.
"I was happy when you found Roark and happy that he was the one to make your dreams come true. I never resented it. Please believe that. You have to believe that."
Mira scooted closer and put her arms around Wynne. She laid her head on Wynne's shoulder. "I do, honey, I do, but there's a 'but' in there somewhere, isn't there?"
Wynne nodded and the tears came afresh. "Why you and not me?" Wynne sobbed. "Why you and not me? I found him, you know. I found the one, or he found me. Like Snow White in her coffin, he kissed me awake. I touched his heart. Me, quiet and frumpy Wynne. I touched his heart, Mira, and he touched mine. And now he's gone and I can't see a future without him and I can't go back to the past. I'm lost, Mira, and I don't think I'll ever be able to find my way."
Mira, bless her, didn't give Wynne the pep talk about how this, too, shall pass. She didn't hand her platitudes or tell her she would fall in love again. She traded shoulders, pressing Wynne's head down against hers and kissed the top of her sister's hair.
"Tell me about him," she said. "You've listened to all my stories. It's time I listened to yours."
"He had eyes that heated my insides with just a look," Wynne sniffed. "He made me laugh. He thought I was beautiful..."
"Because you are. Haven't I always said so? Now tell me the rest."
Wynne sniffed again and tried to sit up. "You don't have time for this. You have guests coming and a ceremony to prepare for."
Mira laughed at her excuses and pulled her head back down. "I have all the time in the world. My sister fell in love and needs to tell me about it. Don't worry about the rest. I have my priorities straight. My kid's going to have a name with or without a ceremony. To hell with it's bad luck to name him without one. With me as his mother and you as his aunt, he's already got it made, and with Roark for a daddy, he'll have every advantage."
"Tor has no money. Had no money," Wynne corrected. Even verb tenses were a reminder.
"Tor, so that's his name. I wasn't talking about money, kiddo. I meant the important things, like loyalty and honor."
"Tor had those things, too. Oh, Mira, I wish you could have met him and his crew."
"I'm about to meet them through you, honey, so let's begin. Where did you meet this Tor?"
Wynne told Mira everything.
~*~
Mira wasn't late for the Naming Ceremony and neither was Wynne. She was glad she came. Unburdening her heart and sharing her love for Tor with Mira had done her good. She still mourned him and always would, but she no longer had to keep her grief bottled up inside.
She laughed when Roark held his son aloft and declared him to be Salvatore, son of Roark of the House of Kronak, and all the rest of it, and the baby bellowed in protest. She thought it was sweet that they'd named the boy after his grandfather and wise of the child to complain about the length of the rest of it.
Cheers and toasts were made and she raised her glass along with them. If her eyes misted over with thoughts of the son she might have given Tor, no one noticed.
Baby Sal continued to bellow as he was passed from hand to hand for each person's blessing. When it was her turn, she held him against her chest and cooed softly, "May you someday find a woman with such love in her eyes that she touches your heart."
Behind her, a deeper voice murmured, "I was lucky enough to find a princess. May you, young Salvatore, find your princess, too."
This wasn't the first time Wynne thought she heard his voice, though usually it was when she first awakened or as she drifted off to sleep. Her mind had played these tricks before, but never when she was fully alert or in a crowded room. She was afraid to turn, afraid she'd find an empty space behind her, or worse, the specter of lost love come to haunt her waking hours as well as her dreams.
"I think I'd better take my little guy back. You're looking a little wobbly." Mira held out her arms for the baby.
"Is he real?" Wynne knew how foolish the whispered question sounded, but she had to know. If this was some figment of her imagination, she had to be prepared for the fresh heartbreak it would bring.
Mira grinned. "Looks pretty solid to me."
"Kushma."
The roughened hand on her shoulder had her spinning in place. "It's you. It's you. Oh, Tor, it's really you." She burst into tears. "Oh God, oh God, Thank you. Thank you." She threw herself into him, arms around his neck, and with enough force that he staggered back.
"As real as it gets," he said once he'd regained his balance, and then he bent to kiss her, and it was as he said, as real as it gets.
The room and the people disappeared. The baby's cries faded. All Wynne felt was Tor's lips on hers, warm and welcoming. Alive and real. She couldn't get close enough to him.
"Easy there," Tor told her, "I'm not quite ready for the rough stuff."
"Yeah, there'll be no four-legged frolickin' for a while yet, so don't get your hopes up. Healers didn't even want him out of bed. I had to steal one of them death carts out of the morgue to sneak him out past that old harpy at the desk."
"You had that old harpy in the storage closet for almost an hour," Tor said with a roll of his eyes.
"Yeah, she got her fancy tickled and I got a big fat nothing. The old bitch wouldn't budge."
Tor laughed and then coughed with his arm wrapped around his middle and in obvious pain. He was so pale and his eyes had dark circles beneath them.
Wynne had been so happy to see him, she hadn't noticed the details, only that he was alive and she was in his arms. She hadn't seen how thin and weak he was. She saw it clearly now, and reached for a chair and when Tor went to take it from her, she slapped his hand.
"I can lift a chair. You can't. Sit," she ordered.
"I'm fine," he said.
"No, you're not. Sit for a minute and then Posy can help me get you up to my room."
"Bossy and stubborn. I keep telling you, but you don't listen."
Once she had Tor firmly seated, Wynne turned to Mohawk. "You keep telling everything to everyone but me," she accused. "You knew."
"Yeah, I knew. That's what I was trying to tell you."
"We didn't know until yesterday that he wasn't. The healers said he was too far gone. We figured why put you through it twice."
"Who's we?"
Mohawk poked his thumb over his shoulder. They were all there; Posy, Ish, Truca, and Chubo and Nix.
"I'm going to kill you, every last one of you," Wynne told them.
"No threat there," Ish snickered. "Have you seen her aim?"
"Hey! I shot a guy in the leg," Wynne protested.
"Holy crapoli." Mira looked at her sister with new eyes. "There's a lot to this story that you left out."
"I'll bet she was aiming at the guy behind him," Truca laughed and then she opened her arms and captured Wynne in a hug. "They wouldn't let us send a message while we were being held for interrogation. Mohawk got the harpy to do it. Roark got us out and his father's going after all those involved. They were processing Yatos when we were being released. Please don't be angry with Mohawk, Wynne. It was all of us together. Even the calls to Roark weren't his fault. Tor told him what to say."
"Good thinking." Posy patted Truca on the back. "Blame the guy who just got back from the dead. She won't be mad at him."
"You knew about the calls?" Wynne asked Tor.
She should be angry. She wanted to be angry, but Posy was right. Tor was alive. There was no room for anger when her heart was overflowing with relief and love.
"Yeah, I knew," he said. His eyes closed and his body listed to the side. Fortunately, Posy was there to catch him. "You need to let me explain."
"It can wait," Wynne said. "You're in no condition to explain anything." She turned to Mira who'd been watching it all with a happy smile. "I'm sorry, but I can't stay. I need to get him into bed."
"Priorities, remember? I get it. Now go take care of those priorities."
Later, warm and happy in the bed that had seemed so cold and miserable for so many lonely nights, Wynne listened as Tor explained.
"I was supposed to make the deal to trade you for the Sky Hawk, but only after Roark's troops got there and they could listen in. The deal was that I would get them the proof they needed as soon as you and the crew were out of the line of fire. Then you got taken and plans changed. They saw us at the rail and thought I was trying to push you over. It wasn't their fault, Princess. It wasn't Mohawk's, either. According to the nurse, the man never left my side. He kept threatening to kill me if I died."
Wynne giggled at the absurdity, so typical of Mohawk's logic.
"He kept saying I swore I'd never hurt you and I was breaking that oath. He said you'd been hurt enough, but he would forgive me if I would only wake up." Tor shrugged and even that small movement caused him pain.
"It's all right now," Wynne reassured him. Nothing mattered now that he was in her arms again.
"No," he argued. "You need to know. To me, it was all part of the nightmare of seeing you fall. I couldn't forgive myself for letting you go. I couldn't open my eyes. I didn't want to open my eyes to a world without you. Something he said must have finally sunk in, because the next thing I knew, I was sitting up in bed telling him I had to find you. He told me what happened. He wanted to bring you to me, but that would have taken too much time. I had to find you. I had to know that it was real. I never meant for you to suffer. They didn't either." He bent to kiss the top of her head. "Forgive us?"
There were worse things in life than suffering under the 'protection' of people who cared. It was part of the process of loving and being loved and these same people had showed her the way to forgiving herself.
"They brought you back to me. They've given us a second chance. I could forgive them anything," Wynne told him before she kissed him.
Chapter 34
Their departure from Mishra was delayed. The healers insisted Tor wasn't ready to make the journey and Wynne was required to give her testimony all over again. More arrests were made, including a few of the peacekeeper interrogators.
For their role in the rescue of the Brides Brigade and the capture of the remaining culprits, Tor and Wynne were rewarded with enough money to legitimately purchase the Sea Goose. There was enough left over to pay for Truca's schooling, and pilot's licensing, the legal kind, for both Posy and Ish.
They brought both ships back to Earth, Sector Three, but Posy and Ish were bored after a week and took Truca with them on the Sky Hawk's first run without Tor. Chubo and Nix stayed behind. They decided to settle in their own little place.
"No slavers here," Chubo told them. "No worries. Chubo and Nix are free." For a Huka, life didn't get any better than that.
Tor's healing took much longer than Wynne would have liked, though she began to wonder if Mason and Ahnyis weren't conspiring to keep him Earthbound for her. Tor didn't seem to mind, and she was grateful for the time he spent getting to know the children. They were cautious at first and this troubled her because they had so readily accepted Mohawk and Roark. Tor wasn't bothered by it.
"They don't trust me," he told her one night after they'd made sweet and gentle love. Her days were so full that this quiet time together to talk and share had become a ritual. "And I don't blame them. They're afraid I'll take you away. Give them time."
And time was what he gave them. He took an interest in what they had to say. He shared what it was like to grow up on Freedom Farm and what it was like for him to lose it. He was one of them, and they felt it. He understood what it was like to lose those you loved. Slowly, they began to thaw.
One day when Tor, Matias, and Royal came home from exploring the nearby countryside, the two boys came charging in, calling Wynne's name in a frenzy. Her heart was in her mouth, thinking something had happened to Tor.
"What do you think about poultry?" Matias shouted.
"They're good to eat. Why are you shouting and what have you done with Tor?"
"Nothing. He can't run yet. He told us whoever got here first could ask."
"About what?"
"About poultry."
"Who's on first," Wynne said, but they didn't get it any more than she got them.
Rashonda had to translate. "Tor calls them fowl. His folks raised them on Freedom Farm. He talks about it all the time. I think he wants to raise them, too. You know, like a family farm only not so big. Did you know that glop comes from a grain? Maybe we could grow that, too."
Wynne shook her head. "No, we definitely won't grow glop." That was one thing she knew Tor would never agree to.
"But fowl?" Tor asked from the doorway. "You wouldn't mind fowl? There's land practically for the taking right on the edge of town. There's a market for meat and eggs and plenty of scrap wood to start off the coops and pen. The boys can help me build."
"And girls," Rashonda added, always ready to fight for her rights. "Girls can build, too. Maybe I'll be a contractor someday."
"I thought you wanted to join the military," Matias said.
"Nah, that was a long time ago. Now she says she wants to be a mechanic like Truca," little Bitsy informed them.
"I thought she wanted to be whatever Ish is." Dorrie called from the kitchen and added, "Heaven forbid."
"She can be a builder," Royal defended his twin.
"She can be anything she wants to be. You all can," Wynne called over the top of the brewing argument. This was her life and she was happy with it. She smiled at Tor. "I don't know anything about poultry."
Tor gathered her in and held her close to his chest. He whispered into her hair. "You didn't know anything about sex, either, but you learned, and learned to do it well."
She smothered her laughter in his chest. "Practice makes perfect." She looked up at him with adoring eyes. "I won't let you give up sailing the skies because you think I'll only be happy if you stay planetside. Your happiness means a lot to me, too."
"Who says we can't do both? I'll have two ships and two pilots. It'll take me some time to find a crew that fits, but once that's done there's no reason I can't...what's that you always te
ll your brother he can't do? Have my cake and eat it, too? We can make this work, Wynne. Together, we can make anything work."
"Chicken shit," Mohawk grumbled to no one in particular. "Who knew I'd end my days shoveling chicken shit. Come on, kids, if I'm going to be a farmer, I need a straw hat. Let's go see if we can find one and if we can't find one, I know who made a new batch of candy this morning." He winked at Tor and Wynne as he herded the children out the door. "You two ain't invited."
Wynne paused for a moment to give thanks for the happily ever after that she was now certain her future would hold. Then she laughed as Tor impatiently tugged her hand to lead her to the bedroom they now shared. This was the man who had touched her heart and there were plenty of memories yet to be made.
###
For my readers,
Thanks for reading Tor from my Women of Earth series. I hope you enjoyed it. If you’d like an advanced announcement of dates for coming books I’ll be happy to add you to our Newsletter list. Just email me at [email protected] or sign up at my website http://www.jacquelinerhoades.com .
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Thanks in advance and, as always, Bless You,
Jackie
About the Author
Jacqueline, known as Jackie to her friends, lives in rural southern Ohio with one lovable husband and two spoiled dogs. She believes coffee is a food group and always has a pot brewing. When not writing, she can usually be found with her nose in someone else's book or working in her garden. She also spends a great deal of time chasing deer and rabbits who apparently also like gardening.
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Tor (Women of Earth Book 2) Page 32