The Marine (Semper Fi; Marine)

by Cheryl Reavis

  Table of Contents

  Praise for Cheryl Reavis...

  Other Books by Cheryl Reavis

  The Marine

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Please visit these websites for more information about Cheryl Reavis

  Author Bio

  Praise for Cheryl Reavis...

  “ . . . delicately crafted, eminently satisfying romantic fiction . . . Reavis works magic.”

  —Publishers Weekly of PROMISE ME A RAINBOW

  “If you like intelligent stories about characters who are adults with believable pasts and problems and potential, who are driven by emotional needs as much as sexual desire, I highly recommend PROMISE ME A RAINBOW.”

  —Just Janga Blog

  One of the best historical novels I found was THE PRISONER by Cheryl Reavis.

  If you ever find a copy . . . I recommend you grab it.”

  —New York Times bestselling author, Diana Gabaldon

  BLACKBERRY WINTER by Cheryl Reavis is by turns heartbreaking, inspiring, puzzling and thought-provoking. Complex, sympathetic characters tell a wonderful story while working to make sense of their lives.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Ms. Reavis’s non-traditional heroine adds powerful emotional layers to this poignant romance about forgiveness, second chances and the power of true love.”

  —RT Book Reviews on THE LONG WAY HOME

  Other Books by Cheryl Reavis

  Promise Me a Rainbow

  The First Boy I Loved

  The Marine

  by

  Cheryl Reavis

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-737-3

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-716-8

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2016 by Cheryl Reavis

  Published in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites

  BelleBooks.com

  BellBridgeBooks.com

  ImaJinnBooks.com

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover design: Deborah Smith

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo/Art credits:

  USMC Uniform © Elswarro | Dreamstime.com

  Sunset on beach © Anna Omelchenko | Dreamstime.com

  Mature Couple on Beach © Epicstock | Dreamstime.com

  :Mmnj:01:

  Dedication

  In memory of Rosemary

  1953-2014

  Prologue

  THE WOMAN WASN’T going to let him touch the manila folder. It lay on the table between them, but she kept both hands on it, as if she thought he might try to grab it and run for the door. He kept waiting for her to say something, but this particular representative of the Department of Social Services was no more inclined to talk to him than she was to give him the file.

  The room was small and stuffy. Apparently, the low-bid central air conditioning didn’t quite reach the backside of the building. He couldn’t see outside. The one window had been partially covered over with faded black poster paper to keep the afternoon sun out and the minimal coolness in.

  He had been hopeful initially, because the woman had gone to the trouble of bringing him into a cramped conference room instead of dismissing him at the front desk. But his expectations were rapidly fading, and it occurred to him that this might be the room they used when they were unsure of how a person on a quest might react to disappointment.

  He reached into his shirt pocket and took out his pen and a small spiral notebook, as if he expected to need it. He didn’t actually. It was clear to him that this woman didn’t approve of sharing adoption files—no matter what the circumstances were or who had approved it—and that she wasn’t about to give him any information he didn’t already have.

  He could hear the not-so-muted voices of people milling around outside in the hallway, all of them in some degree of crisis because a want or a need had been thwarted by someone or something. Children who wouldn’t behave. A broken copier. A missed cross-town bus. From time to time, he could hear a roll of thunder added to the commotion in the building.

  There was a storm coming, he thought. In more ways than one.

  A weak but noticeably cooler flow of air suddenly erupted from the air conditioning duct in the wall above the woman’s head, and he realized she was wearing baby powder instead of perfume.

  Insult to injury. The last thing he needed was a reminder that his mother hadn’t wanted him.

  “I have a notarized copy of the birth certificate,” he said, leaning forward slightly and holding it where she could see it in an attempt to force her to give him her attention. “It has my mother’s name and address—but not much else. I checked it out, but nobody there knew anything about her. Is there any other information in the file you can give me?”

  She gave the birth certificate a cursory glance. “There isn’t much here. Apparently we started a record based on only one visit. We didn’t actually complete the adoption.”

  “Does it say why not?”

  “Since she obviously didn’t change her mind, I assume the adoption was handled privately.”

  “Ma’am, could you at least look?” he asked. “Compare the addresses?”

  She made no attempt to do so.

  “Could you just tell me the name of the caseworker who opened the file. If I can locate her, she might remember.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

  He took a quiet breath. “Is there anything . . . personal in the file? They told me sometimes the birth mother will leave a note or a letter.”

  She stared at him across the table, then flipped open the folder. She had been telling the truth. There wasn’t much in it. She began to thumb through the few pages.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Is that a photograph?” he asked abruptly, catching a glimpse of something paper-clipped to the last page.

  She hesitated, then looked up at him. “Yes.”

  “Can I see it?”

  It took her a moment to decide. He held out his hand, realizing as he did so that his fingers trembled slightly.

  The woman handed over the photograph. It was a fuzzy black and white snapshot. It had once been a pict
ure of at least two people, but it had been closely cropped so that only a dark-haired girl with someone’s arm around her shoulders remained. She smiled directly into the camera. Somehow he hadn’t thought of her looking like this. Mischievous. Happy. She didn’t look like someone desperate enough to give away her baby.

  “This is . . . her?” he asked.

  “I assume so,” the woman said.

  She looked so young, he thought. According to his birth certificate, she had been sixteen when he was born, but she looked younger than that. He wondered when the picture had been taken and why it was in the file.

  He realized suddenly that the woman was holding out her hand for the photograph.

  “I’m going to keep this,” he said quietly. It was not his intention to challenge her authority. It was merely a statement of fact.

  “I’m sorry, but—”

  “I’m going to keep this,” he said again. “It’s not important now to anybody but me.”

  He stood and put the photograph into his shirt pocket. “Thank you for your . . . help, ma’am.”

  He stepped out in the hallway, half expecting her to come flying after him, to yell for security, to pummel him over the head with the manila folder until he gave back the picture he had essentially stolen.

  But she didn’t. He walked briskly out of the building and into a hard summer rain, running the distance to his truck with his hand over his pocket to protect the photograph.

  When he was inside the truck, he took it out again and stared at the girl’s face. A flash of lightning illuminated everything around him. The rain beat down on the roof. He didn’t know if it was the sudden exertion or the unsettling emotions he was feeling that left him so shaky.

  Mother.

  Mama.

  Complete stranger.

  The arm around her shoulders had some kind of tattoo, something military, he thought. An . . . eagle, maybe.

  He turned the photograph over, working hard to suppress the unacceptable urge to cry. There was something written on the back, but the ink had smeared. He leaned toward the truck window, trying to see it more clearly.

  After a moment, he could just make out the words.

  Lizzie gone bad.

  Chapter One

  GRACE JAMES STOOD staring at the old beach house. The wind was blowing hard off the ocean, and after a moment, she had to turn her face away. It was as if she had never been here before, never belonged here. The feeling of peace and contentment her Aunt Barbara’s weather-beaten cottage had always given her was completely gone.

  Empty, she thought, not knowing whether she meant the cottage or herself.

  It was unsettling to think that she couldn’t seem to hang on to things that mattered to her, regardless of how big or small they were—her parents, when she’d still been in elementary school, a red leather wallet containing her brand new driver’s license when she was sixteen, her husband of more than two decades when she was forty-five. She could barely remember her parents’ faces; she had never found the red wallet. As for her husband . . .

  In the strictest terms, she was a widow. Trent had died suddenly in a single car accident on a dry stretch of US 17 one hot summer afternoon nearly two years ago. It had been a terrible time for her and for their two daughters. She had finally stopped crying herself to sleep at night, but she couldn’t ignore the very real possibility that if he had lived, they would have been divorced by now.

  Sometimes she liked to fantasize that, if the accident had never happened, they might have been able to fix whatever had suddenly gone wrong between them, that at some point she might have been brave enough to confront the situation and demand that he tell her why he was avoiding her, and when he couldn’t stay out of her way, why he was so distant and preoccupied. The closest she had come was to ask him—offhandedly—if things were going all right at work. He had barely answered, and after that, she had done what she always did—leave well enough alone.

  It was a good thing, she supposed, that she had finally stopped pretending that she had avoided the issue because she had wanted to protect her daughters. The truth was that she was hoping that the problem—whatever or whoever it was—would eventually go away. She regretted that now. She should have done something—anything. Most likely, she would have come out of a divorce with her identity intact, but she had learned far too young that change could be a terrible thing. She had only recently begun to understand how much she needed to hang on to the status quo. When everything was said and done, she had no doubt that she would have continued to be the same old ploddingly dependable Grace, pretending everything was fine until Trent forced her hand.

  Opportunity, her Aunt Barbara used to say, always came in disguise at the worst of times. But in the months since Trent had died, Grace hadn’t run across anything she considered even remotely opportune. She certainly had no intention of accepting any of the several offers she’d received from Trent’s friends to buy the beach property—whether it still met her emotional needs or not. It was the past, her past, and she needed it. She had sought refuge at the cottage most of her life, even before her parents had died. The property had been the only thing of any value in her Aunt Barbara’s meager estate, and she’d left it to her own daughter, Sandra Kay. Grace, in a fit of nostalgia that bordered on desperation, had persuaded Trent to make an offer to buy it from Sandra Kay, something he had regretted once he realized that Grace had no intention of ever selling it. She couldn’t sell it. It was the only tangible thing she had left of her family, and she had clung to it accordingly.

  Her Aunt Barbara, her mother’s only sister, had saved her from foster care after her parents died. It couldn’t have been easy for her. She’d been a divorced single parent already trying to raise a daughter on her own, but she’d done it, and Grace had loved her dearly for it. But the gratitude she felt had done little to take away her constant fear of losing her place in Aunt Barbara’s home. Neither did her relationship with her cousin, Sandra Kay. Sandra Kay had been a year older, and for a time, Grace had hoped the two of them could be friends as well as cousins. But Sandra Kay had had no time for childhood friendships. At twelve, she’d had breasts and hips, and she knew how to make good use of them, taking off halfway through her senior year, leaving a wake of sins and ineffectual punishments behind her. She did leave a note, a vague assertion that she “had plans” and there was no reason to worry. It had clearly been an afterthought, since she’d also casually mentioned that she’d helped herself to the emergency cash in the antique Brown Betty teapot on the topmost shelf in the kitchen cabinet. And she had stayed gone, never calling or coming back to visit—unless she needed more money. The best she could do was a hastily scrawled postcard now and then or usually belated Christmas greetings, both with ever-changing postmarks. Grace hadn’t seen Sandra Kay since Aunt Barbara’s funeral nearly five years ago. Sandra Kay had followed up her brief memorial service appearance with a telephone call purely for the purpose of asking Trent to verify the dollar and cents value of her inheritance. With Grace, she had been distant to the point of hostility; with Trent she’d been amusing enough to make him laugh. But, in the end, Sandra Kay had been only too happy to let go of the beach property—something that still surprised Grace. Not that Sandra Kay would sell it, but that she would sell it to her rather than holding out for a better offer. Sandra Kay had never cared about going to the cottage—it was located too far from the beaches that the Marines from Lejeune frequented. She had never cared about accommodating her orphaned cousin Grace, either, and Grace could only surmise that she must have caught Sandra Kay in a moment of genuine financial necessity. Whatever the reason, Grace was grateful for the tiny, four-room rectangle with a screened-in front porch and nothing but the fading memory of a coat of white paint. It was situated in what was essentially a yet-to-be-gobbled-up strip of land between resorts. There was a generous three-block walk to the beach an
d at least six blocks to the bus line. Fortunately, the no-frills fishermen who rented the place on a regular basis didn’t seem to mind.

  Grace had come to the cottage this afternoon to do the necessary housekeeping before she advertised its availability again. Both her daughters were supposed to meet her here after school to help—if they could keep from squabbling long enough. It was as if they had been storing up their mutual animosity all their lives and neither of them could contain it any longer. She had plenty of things she could blame it on—Trent’s death, teenage moodiness, the phases of the moon. Whatever the cause, they needed their father, and there was nothing she could do about that.

  Grace gave a quiet sigh. Trent had loved his daughters. For a time, he had loved her, too. How could he have become such a stranger? She was right there when his metamorphosis took place, but she hadn’t seen it coming, even though she’d spent most of her life always expecting some kind of shattering change. She knew firsthand what it was like to suddenly become a charity case, and she had never wanted to be in that kind of situation again. And yet, in the last months of her marriage, she had been. Or it had felt that way. She supposed that it still did, and she didn’t like it. All the childhood fears she’d thought she had escaped were back again. She was trying so hard not to let her sense of failure affect her girls—Lisa, who was the oldest and the most mindful of what other people thought, and Allison. Grace had no idea what her irrepressible and impatient younger daughter was thinking these days. Allison’s true feelings were painfully glossed over by a layer of well-intentioned cheerfulness Grace suspected she didn’t feel.

  Grace suddenly remembered an incident in Allison’s childhood, a time when she’d gotten a terrible attack of stage fright at her third-year piano recital. It had been less than two weeks before Christmas. Trent had brought work home from the office so that he could babysit Lisa, who had the sniffles. Allison was supposed to play “Little Drummer Boy,” a piece she had practiced endlessly and knew well.