by Cindy Gerard
They were in bed again; he’d reached for her again. Nothing happened. Again.
They’d both tried, but every time, it ended up with one or both of them in tears—him consoling her or her consoling him or both of them consoling each other.
Yet, inexplicably, in the midst of all their pain and confusion, they formed a bond that they’d never shared when they’d been married. Through the trial, through the despair, they recognized and respected each other as survivors. Battered, bruised, and confused, they comforted each other, cried for each other, even laughed at the unrelenting irony of fate getting them this far and then putting on the skids.
They’d found trust. They’d found confidantes. They’d become friends.
And they could now be brutally honest with each other.
That’s why she’d finally put it out there on the table. It wasn’t going to work. She thought she knew the main reason.
They’d talked a lot. Late into the night. Early in the morning. He, in particular, talked a lot about the Afghan woman and what life had been like there. His eyes softened when he spoke of her. His voice became melancholy and sad. And it had finally occurred to her.
“What aren’t you telling me, J.R.?” They sat side-by-side in bed, pillows propped behind their heads, Bear snoring softly at their feet.
“What do you mean?”
“Rabia,” she said gently. “Was she more to you? More than a woman who saved your life?”
He looked down, clenched his jaw.
“Talk to me. Whatever it is, it’s OK. I know you don’t want to hurt me. But I know your heart isn’t here. Amnesia or not. Memories or not. Your heart is never going to be here again, is it? It’s back there. With her.”
He finally looked at her. Tears filled his eyes, and she put her arms around him. “Tell me about her.”
So he did, finally admitting that he’d fallen in love with her. “But it doesn’t matter,” he said dismally. “She won’t leave Afghanistan, and I can’t go back there.”
Jess’s heart went out to him as it never had before. Because she understood. “Come on.” She urged him out of the bed. “I’ll make some hot chocolate. I’ve got something to tell you, too.”
WHILE JESS WAS downstairs handling a customer in the store, J.R. stood in front of the Christmas tree, absently thinking about what she’d told him about her and Ty Brown and looking at the motley collection of ornaments she’d hung along with old-fashioned tinsel and popcorn garland.
“This was from our first tree,” she’d told him, as she lifted a tarnished and scratched silver and blue ball carefully out of a box.
She knew where every decoration had come from and how long she’d had it. It was not one of those designer trees he remembered seeing in fancy department stores. She called it her memory tree, because so many of the decorations were homemade, some from when she was a kid and some, like his Scout craft projects, from pine cones.
She was a very special woman, he thought, as he heard the bell ring downstairs signaling that the customer had left. And Ty Brown was a stand-up man. He still couldn’t get over that Brown had volunteered for his rescue mission. But he did understand why Jess might love him.
Telling her about Rabia had been the right thing to do. The relief they’d both felt after their mutual confessions had actually been the catalyst for a special sort of love between them.
It felt good to have someone like Jess on his side. But he couldn’t hold her life up forever.
He heard her walk up the stairs and turned when she opened the door. “You need to tell him, Jess,” he blurted out. “You need to tell Brown. You need to go to him.”
Her brows drew together. “Where’s this coming from?”
“You love him. It’s that simple.”
She smiled sadly and shook her head. “I think we’ve both figured out that nothing in our lives is simple.” She walked over and sat down on the arm of the sofa. “I hurt him. You can understand that. I can’t expect him to forget that I walked away from him. Look. Don’t worry. If things are supposed to work out with Ty and me, it will. Right now, you’re my priority.”
“I think maybe I might be the fool in this mix.” He limped over and drew her to her feet and into his arms. “Our marriage may be too broken to fix, but I do love you, Jess.”
She hugged him back. “I know. I love you, too. And I’ll always be here for you if you need me.”
They were going to get through this, he thought, actually believing it for the first time. Somehow, they were both going to get through this.
Then Jess’s cell phone rang and turned his world upside down again.
“PUT US ON speaker, Jess,” Mike Brown said after saying hello and asking if Jeff was there. “You both need to hear this.”
“What’s wrong?” Jess glanced nervously at J.R.
“Just put us on speaker, sweetie.”
“It’s Mike Brown,” she told J.R., as she switched the phone to speaker mode.
“Jeff,” Mike said by way of greeting. “Look. I’ve got some bad news.”
J.R. frowned at the phone. “How bad?”
“Word just came down that your story’s been leaked.”
J.R. went pale. Jess touched a hand to his shoulder to steady him.
“How much of the story?” she asked, hoping maybe it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
“More than should have been. Apparently, some genius working in Army’s public relations section ferreted it out, decided it was time a branch of the military other than the SEALs got some glory, and he let it all out.”
“How could that even happen?” Jess asked, as J.R. limped to the sofa and sat down heavily.
“How does any secret get leaked?” Mike said in disgust. “Somebody talked who shouldn’t have, and word spread from there. The only thing that seems to have escaped exposure is the black team’s involvement. The after-action report fudged on our connection and substituted Special Forces.”
“Did they name names?” J.R. wanted to know.
“I’m afraid so, yeah,” Mike said. “It hit the AP wire earlier today. It’s going to hurt, but you’d better turn on the TV. It’s all over the news.”
Jess scrambled toward the TV, turned it on, and switched to a twenty-four-hour news station. She muted the sound and kept one eye on the TV, watching for coverage of the story while Mike talked.
“You’d better be prepared. There’ll be reporters from every local and national outlet clamoring at your door anytime now.”
“Rabia?” J.R. asked, looking ill.
“The press got a hold of her picture, man. I’m sorry. Apparently, they found it in a roster of teachers in her school in Kabul.”
“My God.” Jeff dropped his head into his hands. “She’s dead. Now that the word’s out, the Taliban will find her, and she’s as good as dead.”
“We’re not going to let that happen. Between me and Nate Black, we’ve been on the phone nonstop to the brass at DOD, chewing ass and pointing out the facts. They’re going to have egg all over their collective face if something happens to her and they know it. As news spreads, any American who’s seen and heard about her part in your rescue will call her a national heroine. Hell, if she was a Catholic, she’d be canonized for what she did for one of our own.
“So trust me,” Mike continued emphatically. “Every U.S. asset available in Kabul is currently on the hunt for her. They’ll find her and get her out of the country long before the Taliban can close ranks and get to her. They’ll get her out of there just like we got you out. I want you to believe that, OK? You need to believe that.”
J.R. didn’t look convinced.
Jess sat down beside him and put an arm around his waist. “When will you know something?”
“It doesn’t matter,” J.R. interrupted dismally. “Her father won’t move again, and she won’t go anywhere without him.”
“The old man left before when he thought it would save his daughter’s life, right?” Mike pointed out. �
�As soon as he knows she’s in danger, he’ll agree to go with her. Look, guys, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. The minute I hear something, I’ll call, OK? Hang in there.”
The line went dead.
Jess stared at her phone, then at J.R. “Mike won’t let her down, J.R. He’ll do what he said. He’ll get her out.”
But J.R. had tuned out. He had that look in his eyes. The thousand-mile stare. He’d gone to that place in his head where he went sometimes when life became too difficult to deal with.
Only in this case, he was staring thousands of miles away, where the fate of the woman he loved was in the hands of faceless, nameless strangers.
Chapter 32
Kabul, Afghanistan, mid-December
THE OPEN-AIR MARKET TEEMED WITH life and scents and colors. It was the life that Rabia needed. She had mourned long enough. It was time to renew the process of living again with an open heart and get past the grieving.
She pulled her heavy coat tighter around her to ward off the December chill and, with a small basket handle looped over her arm, browsed through the market. Taking her time, she soaked it all in as she walked among the vendors, searching through racks of dresses and lovely, colorful scarves. She even stopped at the food vendors and bought loaves of fresh-baked bread and tender nut meats. Kabul markets had one hundred times as many vendors as Salawat.
Thoughts of the little village where she had spent time with Jeffery and her father came unbidden, reminding her of what would never be again.
Not only had she lost Jeffery; twenty days ago, she had lost her father.
“It is his heart,” the doctor had said, after her father had collapsed and she had rushed him to a hospital. “His condition has been left untreated for too long. I am sorry. There is nothing we can do but make him more comfortable.”
Two hours later, her father was gone.
Her last link to Salawat had died with him.
So Allah wished it.
As Allah wished for her to go on. Her life was rich here. She could walk freely without covering her face and hands, drive her car without fear of punishment. She could teach. The imminent threat of the Taliban was far away in Kandahar Province.
And here she had family and friends. She had renewed her ties with the Afghan women’s movement and worked to reach out to outlying villages to encourage more fathers to allow their daughters to attend school.
So yes, she must look toward the future now. This she reminded herself daily. For while the past held her heart, the future held her promise.
She added a daily newspaper to her basket, then stopped and stared in disbelief when she saw her own photograph on the front page.
Heart slamming, she looked up and around to see if anyone was watching her if anyone had recognized her as the woman in the news. Then she ducked into a small alcove and quickly scanned the article. Each word accelerated the beating of her heart and added to her sense of doom.
It was all there. How she had harbored Jeffery, alerted the Americans of his existence, and helped them with his rescue and that she now taught school in Kabul.
Panic, huge and breath-altering, stole the blood from her head. Sent it all to her heart, which pounded so hard she felt it in her fingertips. She swayed on her feet and would have fallen had someone not reached out and taken her hand.
“You all right, ma’am?”
Through her racing thoughts, she recognized the voice as that of an American.
She looked up and into his eyes, just as he glanced away and nodded to someone behind her shoulder.
She followed his gaze. Another American. And another. She quickly counted six in all.
“Ma’am,” the first one said, nodding to the photograph of her in the paper. “We’ve been turning this city upside down looking for you.”
IT TOOK A little convincing before Rabia accepted that they had been sent by Nate Black to help her. It took little persuasion, however, to make her realize that her only option was to get out of Kabul.
The next thing she knew, she was in a vehicle. Shortly after that, she was on a plane.
Everyone treated her well and kindly. They provided her with food and a pillow and a blanket and told her it would be a long flight, so she might as well sleep.
She was going to America. Where she would be safe, they assured her. Where she could start a new life. She would not be on her own. She would have help. She would have support.
Yet there were certain truths that could not be ignored. She was a woman, a Muslim, in a foreign land. There was no war in America. Not with guns and bombs. But there was a culture war. She had read of it. Because of the Islamic jihadists, Muslims were often regarded with suspicion and ostracized in the United States. She understood why that would be so. As she understood that no matter what they said, she was alone.
But she was alive. Something she would not be in Afghanistan.
Weary and wary, she did everything she was told by the people who had pulled her off the streets and then boarded the plane with her. They stopped once. To refuel, they told her. Then they were in the air again.
She slept again because she was exhausted. She slept because in sleep, she could avoid the questions that plagued her about where she would go. How she would live. Whom she could trust.
She slept because she could escape from the sadness of knowing she would never see her homeland or her family and friends again.
And she slept because she could then avoid the truth that every worry, every concern, every fear, was attached to the impossible hope that somehow, some way, she would see Jeffery again.
Her selfishness shamed her. Jeffery did not belong to her. He had a wife. And he had a life she had no part in.
Only the grinding of the landing gear woke her. She looked out the window at the snow-covered fields and city below.
“Welcome to America, ma’am,” someone said, as the wheels touched down on the tarmac.
She touched a hand to her abdomen, where the child she and Jeffery had made slept.
“Here it begins,” she whispered, and prayed to Allah that her baby would grow as safe and as strong as the father it would never know.
SHE NOW UNDERSTOOD how Jeffery must have felt to have been totally dependent on and at the mercy of strangers. Upon landing, she was escorted to a car with dark-tinted windows. After they’d ridden almost two hours over winding roads and through gently rolling snow-covered hills, it had grown dark.
Houses dotted the countryside, most of them adorned in brightly colored lights. Many with nativity scenes in the front yards. Most with evergreen trees—the first time she had seen any—draped with more lights. Evergreen wreaths hung everywhere. She had read of the Christian Christmas tradition and had even seen photographs of elaborate light displays. Nothing had prepared her for the grandness of the spectacle that played out on house after house. While she did not fully comprehend the connection of colorful lights and Christianity, she found herself mesmerized by the twinkling lights and the festive mood they created.
Soon, however, there were fewer houses, the traffic became nonexistent, and she noticed tall, industrial-strength fencing bordering either side of the road.
She saw lights ahead—not Christmas lights—and concluded that they were security lights when the vehicle slowed, the driver rolled down his window, and a uniformed guard checked his identification.
“We’ve been expecting you, sir,” the soldier said, and then advised him which building to approach.
Fighting a slight measure of unease, Rabia told herself it would only be expected that she would have to undergo some sort of military questioning to ensure that she was not, in fact, a jihadist. There would also be paperwork, she assumed, authorizing her entry into the country.
So she did as she was politely asked and followed another uniformed soldier into a building and down a long hallway.
“These are your temporary quarters,” the young soldier said. “Someone will be in to see to your needs momentarily. Have a go
od night, ma’am.”
He left her standing in the hallway, watching him walk away. Off-balance and disoriented, she finally looked through the open door, then gingerly stepped inside.
It was a roomy apartment. She stepped immediately into a sitting area with a sofa, chairs, TV, and artwork on the wall. Very uncertainly, she explored the rest of the apartment, which consisted of a small cooking room that opened into the sitting area. There was also a modern bathroom. A single bedroom housed a huge bed with soft pillows and a pristine white bedcover.
For a long moment, she stood there, looking at the bed. Then she walked into the sitting room, wondering what it meant that she had been left here. Was she to go to bed? Was she to find food in the cooking room and prepare a meal? Was she free to go where she pleased?
The open door said so. But where would she go?
Feeling suddenly exposed, she crossed the room and closed the door. Then she walked around, touching things. The fabrics were of fine quality. The wall colors were soft and comforting.
She sat down on the sofa, folded her hands on her lap, and stared at the dark TV. She considered turning it on to fill the emptiness of the room with some noise, but a knock sounded on the door before she could figure out the remote control.
The door was not locked. Whoever was out there could come in at will, so although she was apprehensive, she walked over and opened it.
And there stood Jeffery.
She raised her hands, pressed them to her heart, and stared, not certain she could believe her eyes.
But it was him. He had gained some weight. His hair was short, and his beard was gone. But it was him.
He smiled at her, and her heart rocketed into the clouds.
“How? What? I do not—”
Then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. She did not care that it was wrong; she kissed him back. Not thinking about his wife. Only reacting to the loneliness, the missing him, the fear and the love she would always and forever feel for this man.