by Sylvie Kurtz
He had to drag Max away. She fought him every step of the way, barking and squirming. "Jamie's going to be all right."
But he didn't believe it. And neither did Max. She kept barking and whining, scratching at the door even after he locked her in the laundry room.
Before long the sound of sirens pierced the air. But even as the shrieks neared, Beth's voice never wavered in her encouragement. She never left her son's side as they loaded the small body into the ambulance. When the emergency technician suggested she follow in her car, she ignored him.
"It's against company policy," the technician insisted, holding her back.
She keened and tried to claw her way past the technician.
"Are you going to sit here and argue with a mother?" Logan said. "Or are you going to take care of that kid?"
"It's comp—"
Logan got in the technician's face. Beth took the opening and lunged into the ambulance. "She's going. Deal with it."
Without another word the technician climbed in and closed the door.
The ambulance's shrieks faded away, but not the dead look of Jamie's face, not the devastation etched in Beth's features. Not the guilt in his own heart.
She shouldn't be alone. But the last person she needed was him.
He couldn't go. He couldn't watch another child die. He couldn't watch another woman turn away from him in blame.
He would call Eve.
* * *
The cloth Beth had thrown on the counter landed next to the stove. A corner brushed the burning gas hissing beneath the pot of stew. The fibers burst into flames, consumed the cloth. Still hungry, the fire latched on to the oven mitt then jumped onto the curtains, licked at the wallpaper and devoured the walls.
Chapter 14
Logan and Eve stood side by side at the end of the drive while the firemen stowed their gear into the truck. The flashing red-and-white lights bled stark shadows into the snow. The stench of fire and smoke filled the air, leaving an acrid taste in his mouth.
After the fire engine growled away, an eerie hush settled over the scene. Stars twinkled through the house's broken silhouette against the frosty evening sky, giving Beth's home a surreal appearance.
Nothing was left but a burnt shell.
A parade of memories trampled through his mind. Beth's smiles. Jamie's laughter. The scent of home. The taste of peace. The warm, woolly feeling of contentment.
All gone now with the house.
He steeled himself against the soft emotions seeping through his guard. If he were to survive, he could not let himself drown in those sticky feelings.
"She wanted me to get Jamie's bear and some books," Eve said. Her bottom lip trembled. Tears shone in her eyes.
Beth probably hadn't even thought of herself when she'd sent Eve on this errand. She'd run out of the house without a coat, without shoes and more than likely hadn't even yet noticed. "She needs shoes and a coat."
"I know."
Jamie hadn't regained consciousness yet as his little body fought the trauma to his brain. The doctors wouldn't promise anything, but expected the best.
Logan reached into his pocket and handed Eve a clean handkerchief. "I didn't see the flames until they were coming out the roof."
Eve dabbed the handkerchief against her eyes. "I'm not blaming you."
"I know." But he was blaming himself. So many things he could have done differently. He closed his eyes against the guilt.
"She needs you."
He shook his head. "I can't."
"You have to."
"I'm leaving." Because he couldn't help himself, he looked at the house once more, felt the tug of regret.
"She's lost everything." Eve slanted him a glance. "Losing you, too, would finish her off."
"She's better off without me." What could he bring her but more pain?
Eve's features crimped. "You're a fool."
"No argument there." He'd been a fool to think he could have a scrap of peace—even for a while. "I hurt her."
"She needs you."
"I put the fence rail back up. If I hadn't—"
"Jamie would have found another way to get into trouble. It's his nature. Why do you think Beth keeps an extra-large tool kit filled with bandages? After Jim died, she could have kept him on a short leash, but she didn't want her fears to affect Jamie's enjoyment of life."
Logan said nothing, just kept staring at the house's blackened frame. At another dream gone up in smoke.
"Do you love her?" Eve asked, her voice softening.
Love? What was love? These jumbled, painful feelings tearing him apart? "I don't know. I'm not sure what love feels like anymore."
"You know or you wouldn't feel so bad." Eve placed a glove-covered hand on his arm and squeezed. "Go to her."
He had no right to go to her, no right to hold her, no right to dry her tears. Not when he'd caused them. He would never forget the devastation in her eyes at the sight of her unmoving son, the image of her clawing her way into that ambulance to be at Jamie's side. Why would she ever want to see him again?
"She'll send me away."
"That's what you want, isn't it?" Eve wheeled on him, eyes glaring. "Then you wouldn't have to face the fact that you love her, that you want to live again. No, you're just too damn busy feeling sorry for yourself to see past your own nose." She scoffed. "Dying for your daughter! What kind of memorial is that?"
"A deserving one." His jaw tensed, and he ground his back teeth in a tight circle. Eve didn't understand. How could she?
"Dying for the dead hasn't worked for anyone else. What makes you think you're so special?"
His fingers curled into fists, but knowing Eve spoke out of her own pain, he bit back his hurtful retort and drew short, sharp breaths to steady himself. The bitter scent of smoke filling his lungs only served to make his anger boil hotter.
"No matter how many times you kill yourself, it's not going to bring your sweet child back."
"You think I don't know that!"
The disappointed look on Eve's face echoed the failure pinging inside him.
"I thought you were a hero, Logan Ward."
He sneered. "A hero? Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Poor judgment, obviously." Heated breath steamed from her mouth. "It's easier to feel guilty than to feel sad, you know."
"That's where you're wrong. There's nothing easy about guilt." Not when it ate at you so slowly, so insidiously. Not when it killed you bit by bit. Not when it shoved your failings in your face and forced you to look at them time and again.
"Then try acting from your heart for a change." She shoved both her hands into his chest. He didn't try to dodge the blow; he just let it rock him on his heels. "Beth wouldn't turn you away, and you know it. She loves you. She needs you. And she can't ask for help any more than you can. If you can't see that, then you're a bigger fool than I thought."
With that Eve strode away, leaving him alone with the moan of the wind sighing through the burnt shell of Beth's home. As he stared at the house, it began to blur.
* * *
Her house was gone. Everything in it.
No, not everything. Beth looked down at her son, so tiny and pale against the hospital sheets. She rubbed his hand to let him know she was there, to keep her connection with him. If she let go, would he just slip away from her?
She tried to imagine life without Jamie, without the memories of Jim that the house had held. She thought of all the joy she'd had within those walls, all the joy she'd planned for the future. She thought of the pictures gone forever. The books. The recipes. Gone. All gone.
"Things," she said. "Just things."
She watched her son's chest rise and fall, breathed with him. He was alive, and the doctors expected him to awaken as soon as the swelling went down. The machine monitoring the pressure in his brain was already showing improvement.
But the waiting... the waiting was killing her.
If she closed her eyes she was back in another
sterile room, ripe with the scent of death, fraught with the clicks and clacks of machinery keeping the body alive while the spirit faded. She was holding another hand, feeling it grow cold.
He was gone.
Jim and all the reminders of him that had kept him alive in her mind were lost forever in the rubble of their home.
But Jamie was alive, and Jamie needed her. So she swallowed her fear, stroked her baby's hair and murmured a litany of sweet nothings so he would know he wasn't alone.
"Here," Eve said as she entered the room juggling cups of coffee and cracker packages from a vending machine.
"I don't want anything, thanks." Her throat was too narrow to swallow spit let alone anything with substance.
"You have to keep your strength up." Eve forced a cup of coffee into her hand. "You won't do Jamie any good passed out on the floor."
Eve ripped open a pack of peanut butter and whole-wheat crackers and handed one to her. "Here."
"I'm not hungry."
"Eat it, anyway. You look like a ghost."
She felt like a paper doll, flat and mindless.
"Go on, eat."
She nibbled at the cracker because it was easier to comply with Eve's request than to fight her. The dry crumbs stuck in her throat, making her choke. Eve thumped on her back and guided the cup of coffee to her lips. The lukewarm coffee washed away the cracker but not the deadness slowly numbing her limbs.
"You need to rest, sweetie." Eve tucked a strand of hair behind her ear—the way her mother used to when Beth was feeling down, and a fresh wave of loss buffeted through her. She needed her mother's soft hands and gentle words. But her mother was gone, too. So she leaned against Eve's hand, accepted the caress and choked back her ready tears.
"I can't rest. What if he wakes up, and I'm not here?"
"Then I'll be here." Eve wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "And if I'm not here, then someone else will be. You're part of a community, Beth. We won't let you go through this alone."
Tears blurred her vision. "I need to stay."
"Okay, then I'll stay with you."
"Thank you."
Eve parked herself in a chair next to Beth and read newspaper articles about the success of the Holiday Fair and tree-lighting ceremony. She cajoled the nurse into providing an extra pillow and blanket for Beth. She carried on a distracting chatter that kept Beth from slipping into self-pity.
"...and when Jamie is ready to come home, you'll stay with me. You two can have the upstairs rooms. I've already asked Gus to move my things to the downstairs room."
"I couldn't impose."
"Nonsense. You're family. Don't you know that by now? I love you as if you were my own daughter. And Jamie is the grandson I'll never have." She leaned forward and whispered, "Why else would they let me stay if I wasn't family?"
Despite everything, Beth smiled. "You are a treasure, Eve."
She let Eve tuck the blanket closer around her. Still holding Jamie's hand, Beth leaned her head against the stiff hospital pillow, careful not to disturb any of the tubes tending to her son. "Why won't you marry Gus?"
"Fear."
"Fear?"
Eve sighed, settled more heavily in the chair and chewed half a cracker. "When you've had two fiancés die on you, it kind of makes you gun-shy. And I really like Gus. I don't want anything to happen to him."
"Two? I thought only one." The steady rhythm of the machinery tending to Jamie lulled her into drowsiness.
"First there was Ethan. He swept me off my feet the very first time I saw him. Oh, he was so handsome. Jet-black hair. Built like a Greek god. And that smile! Why just one look at it would make me dizzy. We had such plans." She covered her frown with a sip of coffee. "He died three days before we were to be married. Car/moose accident while he was driving down from his family's farm in Maine."
Eve sighed and popped the rest of the cracker in her mouth. She aimed her unfocused gaze at the ceiling as if she were viewing a movie on the white surface. "Then there was Stan. Sweet-talking Stan. He was on the fast track to success. He could sell reading glasses to the blind if he put his mind to it. And he had his mind set on selling me the idea of marriage. He was going to take care of me and Mother." Eve drained her coffee cup and stared at the bottom as if more would magically appear. "He was shot by his own brother when he was mistaken for a burglar. He'd come home a day early from a business trip."
"What bad luck you've had."
Eve clucked and shook her head. "Horrible luck. It hardened my heart, that's what it did. You and Jamie, you made the difference. It was after you two came into my life that I allowed myself to love again." She gave Beth a watery smile. "I waited too long. I missed out on so much."
"You're still young." Beth stifled the pang of regret the thought of Logan brought. "Gus loves you."
"You're right. He makes me feel young." Eve laughed. "I just might have to make an honest man out of him. Life really is too short."
And fragile, so fragile. Beth drew Jamie's hand closer and kissed the soft little-boy skin. She was having to learn that lesson much too often.
Just like Eve. Just like Logan.
Frowning, she plucked at a thread dangling from the pillowcase, giving it all her attention. She licked her lips and tried twice to speak before she found her voice. "Has Logan left?"
"Not yet." Eve cleared her throat. "He should be here."
"No." Beth shook her head. "He told me about his daughter. Being here would be watching her die all over again." She couldn't do that to him no matter how much she wanted his arms around her, his shoulder to cry on.
"Call him. Tell him you need him."
"It would just scare him."
"Stubborn fools. The two of you." Eve crumpled the cracker wrapper and stuffed it in the empty cup of coffee. "It would be easier, wouldn't it? If he left? Then you wouldn't have to face the fact you love him."
She pulled on the thread, watched the seam unravel. "Jim—"
"Will always be a part of you. Just like Ethan and Stan are a part of me. It took me too long to understand that." Eve placed a hand on Beth's knee. "Do you want him to leave?"
"No." What had started off as mutual support had turned into something deeper. At least for her. And the descent into that forbidden place had been so fast and so smooth she'd barely noticed. Now it was too late. Clutching Jamie's hand, she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. She didn't want anyone to know how much Logan's departure would hurt.
* * *
Sleep evaded Logan all night. He packed his tools. He stacked boxes. He filled garbage bags. Max dogged him every step of the way, silently watching him with those worried eyes. Blanking his mind and staying busy had done nothing more than keep the ghosts at his heels rather than right in front of him. At dawn he could no longer fight them.
He needed to see Beth one more time before he left.
Nausea billowed as he entered the hospital. His skin grew cold and clammy as he jabbed the elevator button. When the doors opened on Jamie's floor, his body was too tense to move. It wasn't until the doors started closing again that he swallowed and pushed himself forward. He felt like an arthritic old man as he searched for Jamie's room.
Eve was asleep in a chair next to Jamie. A nurse was checking the boy's machinery. His heart started racing as he avoided looking at the small still figure on the bed. He'd expected Beth there, a sentinel guarding her young, but she was nowhere around. Panic thrummed through him. Something was wrong. Where was she?
His fingers dug into the door's frame. "Where's Mrs. Lannigen?"
"Visitors aren't allowed," the nurse said.
"I'm not a visitor. Where's Mrs. Lannigen?"
With a narrowed gaze, the nurse eyed him up and down, then relented. "She went to the chapel."
He rode the elevator to the first floor, then paused at the chapel's door unable to go inside. Taped music reverberated through the room. A chaplain led a hymn he didn't recognize. Half a dozen voices rose to sing, quiet at first, then
growing. A familiar sound drew his gaze.
Beth's voice.
She knelt in the front pew, hands knotted in prayer, eyes closed, singing. The sound was sweet and joyful. How could that be? The sound of her voice wasn't sad at all. After all she'd lost, how could she still have hope?
The service ended. The chapel emptied. Only Beth remained, kneeling in the front pew, head bent in supplication.
"I doesn't work, you know," he said. His voice echoed in the small chamber.
In the heartbeat of silence, her shoulder stiffened, and he flinched as if she'd slapped him.
"What?" Her voice was a strangled whisper, and it wrenched his heart.
"Prayer. He doesn't answer to pleas or bargains." Logan should know. He'd tried often enough to bargain his life for Sam's. None of his implorations had been heard.
"I'm not asking for either."
"Then what?"
She looked at him then, and his chest swelled at the sight of her fortitude. "Strength."
A sudden flash of anger barreled through him—at her for her acceptance, at himself for offering challenge rather than comfort. "Strength? You're just going to wait and take whatever happens?"
"What else can I do?"
"He might die. Don't you care?"
She pitched sideways. He felt like a heel. I'm sorry, Beth, I'm sorry. But the words would not croak through his constricted throat, and his body refused to enter the sanctuary that had repudiated his appeals when he'd prayed for a miracle for his daughter.
"Jamie's not dead yet," she said, the pain in her eyes a knife to his heart. "As long as there's an ounce of life left in him, I'm not going to give up hope."
"Hope," he scoffed. He'd had a mountain of it while he'd sat by Sam's bedside. He'd fed on it every day, for all those weeks. And it was cruelly shattered by the pain on his child's face, until it completely faded away.
Instead of begging for her recovery, like a coward, he'd started pleading for her release.
"What if he dies?" How could Beth endure it? How could she think of going on?
She swayed as she stood and placed her hands on her chest. "Then I'll have to use both hands to hold my heart in and keep it from breaking into a million pieces." Her breath staggered. "And somehow, I'll have to find the courage to go on—for Jamie, for Jim."