The Bracelet (Everlasting Love)

by Karen Rose Smith

  The younger reporter, obviously tired of waiting, replied curtly, “Well, you should have something to say. Stories are buzzing about your husband and his service record. We hear he had a heart attack. Was it really a heart attack, or did he try to commit suicide?”

  She was so shocked that she couldn’t find a word to say. Then suddenly she could. “Get off our property.”

  “Mrs. Malone, I’m just trying to let the public know the truth. I have every right—”

  “We have a right to privacy,” she reminded him.

  Neither man moved away, and she was about to shut the door, when Bob Westcott said quietly, “We’re not cut of the same cloth, Mr. Norris and I.”

  “Don’t believe a word he says,” Norris protested. “He’s a reporter just as I am.”

  “I told you to leave, Mr. Norris, unless you want me to call the police.”

  “Can I just have three minutes?” Westcott asked her.

  Why she was even considering talking to him she didn’t know. But she didn’t feel threatened by him or invaded.

  Making an impulsive decision, she opened the door a little wider and let the man slip inside. To Norris, she repeated, “Get off our property.”

  After she closed the door, she wondered if she’d made a huge mistake.

  “I’m here, Mom.” Sean’s voice came from the doorway to the dining room.

  “It’s okay. I’m going to talk to this gentleman for a few minutes. If I yell, call 911.”

  Westcott gave her a wry grin and shook his head. “We really do get a bum rap these days.”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  “The fault doesn’t belong to all of us, Mrs. Malone.”

  This time instead of his ID, he took a business card from his pocket. “I suspect that when your husband recovers from his bypass surgery, he’ll want to tell his side of what happened.”

  Astonished, Laura asked, “How did you know he had coronary bypass surgery?” They’d all been careful not to give out any information. And with privacy policies these days, the hospital didn’t tell anyone anything.

  “I have my sources.” He handed her his business card. “I was in Vietnam. I know what it was all about. If Mr. Malone feels he needs to be heard, tell him to call me. I sell to all the local papers and I’m sure that on this, they’d certainly buy the story.”

  In spite of herself, she was interested in his work. “What kinds of stories do you write?”

  “Do you recall the piece about a year ago about a casino possibly coming to Gettysburg? I wrote that one.”

  She had read the story, although she hadn’t paid any attention to the byline. It had actually been well balanced, giving both points of view. Would Brady consider talking to this man when he was well?

  “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll give my husband your card.”

  “I figured this whole thing is probably causing a lot of turmoil for all of you. I’m not here to harass you, but with what your husband might have to face from the public when he’s out and about again, he might want to do something about it. I’d like first shot, that’s all. Okay?”

  Now, instead of interest, she saw understanding in his eyes, and she didn’t believe it was feigned.

  “All right.”

  Westcott nodded, then went to the door and opened it. “I’ll think good thoughts for your husband.” And he was gone.

  When she returned to the living room, Brady studied her curiously. “Who was that?”

  The kids seemed to sense she wanted to talk to Brady alone. Sean said, “I’ll be upstairs.”

  Kat followed him up the steps.

  Laura went to the recliner where Brady sat. “It was a reporter. He’s a freelancer. He said he was in Vietnam, and if you ever want to tell him your side, he’ll listen and write up a fair article.”

  “Everyone has an angle,” Brady muttered.

  “He didn’t seem to. I think he really wants to help.”

  “He wants the byline.”

  “Brady—” She stopped. That night of Brady’s heart attack she’d started the argument. She’d pushed. She wasn’t going to push now. Brady’s health came before anything else.

  Yet she was afraid that if he didn’t lay the ghosts from the past to rest, he’d never be really healthy again.

  Sean and Kat stood in the gallery window at the front of the house, watching another news van roll up to the curb. A woman in a suit climbed out and hurried up to the front door.

  The doorbell rang.

  Shielding his eyes against the glare of the April sun, Sean spotted his mother on the front walk. One sign of trouble and he’d be down there. The thing was—he just didn’t think his dad would appreciate his interference right now. And Sean didn’t want to do anything to upset him. He didn’t want him having another heart attack. He sure didn’t want to be the cause.

  It still bothered him that his parents had been arguing about him when his dad collapsed. On one of his visits to his father in the hospital after surgery, his dad had thanked him for doing CPR. But it had been a duty thanks. He’d also told him his heart attack had had nothing to do with Sean.

  Those were words…only words. He and his dad just didn’t get along that well. They never had. They never would. That was why he still felt responsible for his dad’s collapse. If his mom and dad hadn’t been arguing about him—

  He could still hear his dad say, He needs to learn how to handle life on his own.

  “What do they want to know?” Kat asked anxiously beside Sean as she peeked out the window.

  They hadn’t talked about anything that had happened. Maybe because neither of them knew what to say or do or believe. “Didn’t you read the article in the paper?” Sometimes his sister lived on another planet.

  “Yeah. I read it. But I don’t believe it.”

  The article was folded in his wallet. He didn’t know why it had seemed important to keep it. It just had. He’d read it at least fifty times, wanting to understand. But he didn’t understand and his sister surely didn’t, either.

  “It’s probably the truth, Kat. How could they print it if it wasn’t? And if the reporter’s not lying, it means Dad was a son of a bitch who never owned up to what he did.”

  “Don’t say that.” Tears shone in Kat’s eyes. “Don’t say that about Daddy.”

  With that parting protest, she ran to her room and slammed the door.

  Blowing out a sigh, Sean knew Kat might have some unpleasant truths to face, and some fast growing up to do.

  He’d wait a few minutes, then he’d go out to the toolshed where he’d hidden the bottles Boyd’s brother had given him. Having a few swigs of a minibar’s liquid samples was the best way to deal with what was going on. If he was numb, he wouldn’t care about any of it. If he was numb, maybe he could eventually tell his parents he didn’t want to go to the college he’d been accepted to…maybe he wouldn’t feel he was always on the outside looking in.

  Chapter 7

  The pitch-blackness of his den surrounded Brady as he lay on his back in a single bed from one of the spare rooms, staring up at the ceiling. Every once in a while, he could hear Laura shift on the sofa. She’d insisted on sleeping down here with him in case he needed anything. It wasn’t going to be long until he climbed those damn stairs, got to the second floor on his own steam and stopped feeling like an invalid.

  You are an invalid…at least for a little while.

  He swore, keeping the epithet silent so Laura wouldn’t hear.

  If he had to put into words what he was feeling tonight, he couldn’t do it any more than he could have done it the night he’d come home from the service. Just as then, he felt he’d been out of touch with the world as everyone knew it, but now had been thrown back in and he was supposed to live in it again as if nothing had happened. Kat had been the only one tonight he could relate to normally, but then, Kat never pretended something she wasn’t feeling.

  Sean, on the other hand…

  Their rela
tionship had so many knots he didn’t know where to begin untying them. Maybe he and his son could relate over the gym, putting it together, exercising. But as soon as he was feeling better, he’d be getting back to work. Work, where he had complete control, where the adrenaline rush of winning contracts and creating innovative designs kept other emotions buried.

  Like the past. He wasn’t going to dig it up. He wasn’t going to talk to Sean about it, and he wasn’t going to talk to a reporter about it. No talking about the past. That had been his vow from the moment he’d gotten home from Vietnam.

  That night, he’d climbed out of the truck and Laura had run to him. He’d seen in her eyes what she’d wanted, and he’d realized he couldn’t give it to her. Over the months he’d been stationed at Fort Lewis, he’d thought about ending their relationship, setting her free. But he’d so hoped that once he was discharged, he could believe in a life with Laura again. The memory of her smile had gotten him through long dark nights in Nam. The echo of her sweet voice had kept him sane.

  Those first few days at home after his discharge he’d holed up in his room as much as he could. He’d had trouble having normal conversations because nothing was normal for him anymore. He couldn’t begin to explain how protecting his fellow infantrymen and how being willing to die for a buddy paired up with killing the enemy. The dichotomy tore a man’s soul apart.

  How could he have slipped that into normal conversation?

  His parents had wanted to discuss jobs, interviews, résumés and where he was headed next. His brothers had wanted to talk about sports and girls and next year’s classes. It was as if they’d all been speaking a foreign language. Thank God Pat had gone back to Atlantic City, where she’d been working for the summer. She wouldn’t have respected his privacy, wouldn’t have left him alone when he closed his bedroom door. After a few days, he’d phoned a friend who had been through some of it with him. Carl had gone home to Illinois. But in the here and now rather than in the trenches, everything had been different. They hadn’t been able to talk about anything that had mattered. Their words had been surface, the silences long, their goodbyes terse.

  By the fifth day, all Brady had thought about was how loyally Laura had written to him. She’d poured her heart out. She’d said she wanted to be with him now. She wouldn’t want to be with him once she realized what was going on with him. He didn’t sleep at night. If he did doze off, he had nightmares. She wouldn’t want to be with him because the way he needed her was too damn fierce, too damn raw, too damn scary. At twenty-two, she’d thought she was mature and could handle anything. But he’d known in his gut that she’d turn and walk away as soon as she glimpsed the garbage inside of him.

  Still, she’d seemed to be the one person he’d wanted to reach out to…wanted to try to connect with again.

  When he hadn’t been closeted in his bedroom, he’d gone for long walks, needing the physical activity. Sometimes he’d driven to the track at the nearby high school and just run. He’d stopped running that Friday night after a game of basketball—one-on-one with Ryan. They hadn’t talked, simply played as hard as they could. Afterward he’d showered, picked up his car keys and told his parents he didn’t know when he’d be home.

  They’d cast worried looks at each other, then his mother had asked, “Are you going to see Laura?”

  “Yes,” he’d replied. In Laura’s letters, she’d told him she worked full-time at his mother’s shop and part-time at Montgomery Ward’s at the mall.

  “She’ll be working till nine,” his mother had reminded him.

  “I’ll go over to her place and wait for her.”

  That was what he’d done.

  Settling on the wooden stairs at her apartment, he’d let the night breeze blow his hair as he’d blanked his mind to wait. The end-of-the-day heat dissipating from the asphalt, the petunias and marigolds planted in Laura’s window box, were conflicting scents.

  On alert when Laura’s car drove into the parking lot, he finally heard her car door slam and her footsteps on the sidewalk.

  When Laura saw him, she jumped, startled, and put her hand over her heart. “Brady, you scared me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why didn’t you go inside?”

  “It’s been a long time, Laura. I didn’t know if you would want me to.”

  As he stood, he felt like a stranger to her. How could that be? They’d dated for almost three months, made love in a consuming way that had shaken him to his core, yet had wrapped them in a bond he’d decided would never be severed. They’d written to each other for the past two years. Still, he was painfully aware that feelings just were and there wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do about them.

  “I probably shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  From the light of the porch lamp he could see color stain her cheeks. “If you don’t want to be here, you should go.”

  Damn it! He was doing a terrific job of pushing her away. One part of him screamed at him to take her into his arms. The other part knew he should warn her to run, run as far as she could away from him.

  The quiet of the night was almost eerie with the main street only about forty feet away. But there wasn’t a sound.

  He didn’t move and neither did she. The fact that he was still there must have convinced her to say, “Come on in.”

  When she brushed past him on the landing, the touch of her arm against his was electric. He was aroused and didn’t want to be. Her perfume wafted behind her. He sucked in a breath because he remembered it so well.

  Once inside her apartment, he concentrated on noticing differences—furniture she’d added, curtains that were new, a watercolor on the wall. It was a home for her now, not just a place she might stay for a little while.

  He didn’t feel as if he had a home. He was living in his parents’ house, but he’d outgrown it. Before he could rent a place of his own, though, he needed a job. Next week he’d work up his résumé. Next week he’d start looking. Next week he’d take back control of his life. If he could only slip into a routine that fit, maybe the agitation and restlessness would ease up.

  “Something to drink?” Laura asked brightly—too brightly—as if she was on the verge of tears.

  “Sure.”

  “Root beer? You used to like root beer so I bought some.”

  “Root beer’s fine.”

  They took their sodas to the sofa, sat and had nothing to say. The awkwardness became so unbearable he set his drink on the coffee table. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come.”

  She laid her hand over his. “But you did. Because you didn’t have anywhere else to go? Or because you wanted to be with me?”

  He’d forgotten the clarity in her brown eyes, her honesty, so he answered honestly, too. “Both.”

  “Your letters changed.”

  It wasn’t an accusation. It was a statement, and a “why?” was behind it or coming next. “I wrote what I could when I could.”

  Her eyes were shiny now. “You don’t want to talk, do you?”

  “No.”

  “We don’t have to talk, Brady. There are other ways of communicating.”

  Blond strands in her light brown hair shone like gold under the floor lamp. Her skin was tanned, as if she’d been in the sun recently…and it looked so soft. Her lips…They were the lips he’d dreamed about kissing again for two long years.

  “I’m not afraid of you kissing me, Brady. I would never be afraid of that.”

  She’d obviously remembered what he’d said the night of the party, the night he’d warned her that everything was different. Her invitation was almost a dare and it was a dare he couldn’t resist. He needed something to ease the ache inside him. Alcohol didn’t do it. Pot didn’t do it. Running didn’t do it. Maybe Laura could pour some sweetness on the acid that felt as though it was burning a hole through him.

  Their kiss wasn’t like any other they’d ever experienced. He could tell from her intake of breath. He could tell by the degree of h
is hunger for her. Furiously desperate, searching for the old and the new, their tongues tangled, their lips clung, their hands explored. She was unbuttoning his shirt as he unzipped her dress. The heat they generated seemed to melt their clothes away.

  He wanted Laura for so many reasons. She was innocence and purity and life before hell. She was sweetness and woman and softness and home. The sofa became too confining. They kissed and touched and caressed on the braided rug on the floor, their bodies slick with desire that became almost too explosive. He was still afraid having sex with her was all wrong. But he didn’t know which way to turn, and Laura was pulling him toward her.

  When he entered her, he wasn’t thinking about consequences or the future or commitment or vows. He was responding to pure need—the need to feel alive and be alive, the need to forget about guilt and regret and pain so fierce it would never go away. As he thrust into her, she lifted her hips higher, as if sensing he needed deep and consuming and fast. She reached for her orgasm first, wrapped her legs around him and cried out his name.

  He came in a hot heavy surge that left him spent.

  After Laura kissed his neck, he rolled to his side, taking her with him, and held her tight. Then, right there on her living-room floor, he fell into a deeper sleep than he’d experienced in two long years.

  A few hours later, when he felt the touch on his shoulder, he was back in mud and grit and foliage so thick it could swallow him up. He responded reflexively as months of experience had taught him. He grabbed for the knife on his belt but didn’t have it. Before he was even consciously awake, he’d pinned down his attacker.

  “Brady! Brady! It’s me! It’s Laura.”

  Her name penetrated, and he froze. When he opened his eyes, she was beneath him, looking scared. Thank God he hadn’t wedged his arm across her throat. Thank God he hadn’t hurt her. Had he?

  Hastening to his feet, he saw that he was still naked and so was she. Making love with her rushed back.

  He sank to his knees beside her. “Are you okay? Damn it, Laura, I’m sorry.”