The Bracelet (Everlasting Love)

by Karen Rose Smith

  “Laura, can you tell Brady what you’re feeling at this moment?” John encouraged her.

  “I hurt for him.” Her voice broke.

  “Can you look into his eyes and tell him that?”

  She brought her leg up onto the sofa and faced Brady. “I hurt for you. I understand that you believe you did something terrible. But you had to make a two-second decision. You had to think about Carl and the rest of your squad.”

  “I killed them.” His voice was raw and he wasn’t going to let her pour any sugar on this.

  Intervening, John asked, “Do you understand what war is, Brady? It’s both sides fighting to survive. You survived. Are you sorry about that?”

  He took a few moments and examined it. “No.”

  Before he could comprehend what Laura was going to do, she slipped off the sofa, knelt in front of him and held his hands. She gazed into his eyes and he saw nothing hidden, nothing guarded on her face.

  “I love you, Brady.” She stopped for a moment and he imagined she was still thinking about the horrible scene he’d described. With determined certainty, she went on. “I can accept what happened to you.”

  “You mean, what I did.” She had to realize he’d had an active role in what had happened.

  “All right, what you did. I can’t begin to understand all of it. But I don’t think less of you. I still want to be with you. I want a life with you.”

  Brady glanced over her head at John, hardly able to accept what she was saying.

  The therapist gave him a smile and a shrug. “She’s making herself perfectly clear. You’ve got two options. You can believe her and have a long, happy life together. Or you can not believe her and be alone. No matter what happens, you’ve made a breakthrough just in the telling.”

  Standing, Brady pulled Laura to her feet. “I need fresh air. Let’s go.”

  If John was surprised, he didn’t show it. He stood, too, and went behind his desk. “We should make another appointment, and I want you to join a therapy group I’m leading.”

  “No. No more appointments. No more of this.”

  “Brady—” John’s voice held a warning tone.

  “I came to you because Laura pushed me to get help. You’ve helped me put everything into perspective. I’ve got a life to live now.”

  “Do you think the flashbacks are going to stop? Do you think the nightmares won’t trouble you anymore?” the therapist asked, obviously concerned.

  “Of course not,” Brady replied. “But I’ll work through them. I promise if I ever really need you again, I’ll call you.”

  A worried expression crossed Laura’s face, and he squeezed her hand. “Let’s go,” he repeated.

  Once they were outside in Brady’s car, he switched on the ignition, backed out of John’s driveway, went about two blocks and then pulled over to the curb.

  “What are we doing?” Laura asked.

  “I have to know what’s going through your head. I have to know if you meant what you said in there.”

  Her face took on such a tender expression, his chest grew tight.

  “Yes, I meant it.”

  Her eyes were shimmering with love, and although he was still stirred up by the memories, still carried guilt and regret and remorse, a door had been opened in his heart that Laura could walk through. He couldn’t believe everything he’d told her hadn’t affected her. There was only one way to truly find out if they were going to make it. One way for him to tell if she could love him freely, accepting who he was…and what he’d done.

  “Do you want to go to your place, or do you want to come to mine?” he asked, all churned up by the pictures he needed to blot out, yet led by the hope he might have a future with her.

  “Let’s go to your house,” she answered quietly.

  They hadn’t spent much time at the house he’d rented, maybe because inviting her there was symbolic of letting her into his life. “My place it is.”

  He hardly remembered driving there. He was too busy pushing away pictures and sounds that haunted him, focusing his awareness on Laura and the next hour or so that would determine the course of his life.

  Since he was making good money, he’d bought new furniture when he’d rented the house. The sofa and armchair were green plaid, the recliner a solid green. The two end tables were bare except for the lamps, and the coffee table held a few professional magazines. There was no dining room, so a maple table and chairs stood in the kitchen. Although dishes were piled high in the sink and Brady didn’t clean much, the rest of the place was straightened up.

  Why shouldn’t it be? He was never there. Or else he was downstairs in his workroom.

  When he led Laura into the bedroom, the mahogany furniture gleamed in the sunlight pouring through the side window.

  “Do you want me to close the blinds?”

  Laura shook her head. “No, making love in the sun is just what we need.”

  Part of him couldn’t believe this was happening. Part of him expected her to recoil and run away. He was ready to accept that.

  But she didn’t run. She let him undress her.

  When she started on his buttons, he took her hands. “I can do it faster.”

  Stripped and lying in bed beside her, he realized he wanted making love with her today to be different from all the others. He knew they couldn’t get the first time back. That had been all romance and closeness and pure innocence because she’d been a virgin. Their weekend together after basic had been a honeymoon-like dream. Over the past twenty months, when they’d had sex, it had been a release and an escape for him. It had been a way for him to get rid of stress, a way to stay close to Laura, even though they weren’t close.

  Today, he knew he was expecting too much, but he wanted more.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, running her fingers through his chest hair.

  “I need to be here with you, really be here with you. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I think so. Since you got home…I almost felt as if I could have been any girl and it wouldn’t have mattered to you.”

  He wrapped his arms around her. “Oh, Laura, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Brady. Just…make love to me.”

  As Brady kissed Laura, he was gentle at first, maybe expecting hesitancy, maybe expecting her actions not to match her words. But she didn’t hesitate at all and her hands were on him as if she wanted to touch him everywhere. He took his time, prolonged their pleasure, studied her face again and again, searching for regret or revulsion. All he saw was love.

  How could that be?

  The need to possess her tore his control in two. When he entered her, he found not only desire on her face but joy. In that moment he finally understood that it wasn’t what he’d done that had kept them apart, but his refusal to trust Laura’s love. He could still hardly believe she was giving him such a gift.

  His pleasure became hers and hers his. When he cried out, so did she. In that timeless, endless interlude, they were absolutely one.

  As he rolled onto his side, taking her with him to keep them joined, he realized he’d gotten the answer he’d never expected. She loved him! She really loved him.

  The tips of their noses touching, he kissed her softly, then leaned back a bit so he could see her face. “Will you marry me?”

  Her eyes widened and she smiled at him with a radiance that tightened his throat. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

  “Mom and Dad will probably want us to have a big wedding so they can invite everyone they know.”

  “We can have any kind of wedding they want.”

  “I’d prefer sooner rather than later.”

  “Big weddings take time.”

  He groaned. “We’ve wasted enough time already.”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t wasted. We learned an important lesson. Whatever we have to face, we have to face it together.”

  Wrapping his arms around her, he was sure he didn’t deserve this gift she was offering him.
He would give her the moon and stars and the whole world if he could. He would give her absolutely everything she’d ever wanted. Wasn’t that what a husband was supposed to do?

  As he hugged her, desire bit him hard again. There was no doubt in his mind that he could push his demons into the cellar and keep them buried. He and Laura would live happily ever after.

  Now as Brady tried to change position in the single bed in the den, he realized resting on his side was out of the question. He hated lying on his back. He couldn’t sleep that way.

  Maybe he wasn’t as uncomfortable with the position as he was with his thoughts. He couldn’t believe how naive he’d been, thinking happily-ever-after was even a possibility. Throughout the months after he’d proposed, he’d still had nightmares that brought him awake sweating, shaking, sometimes calling out. But he’d let Laura stay with him. If she awakened him, she did it from a distance. They’d bought an old school bell. She’d ring it until she got through to him, until he realized where he was and who she was, and that he was no longer in danger. She was there, by his side, choosing to stay rather than go.

  They’d married in March 1974 because both the church and the Yorktowne Hotel could accommodate them that particular Saturday. Laura’s bridesmaids had stayed with her in her apartment the night before the wedding. Brady’s dad had taken him and his brothers and Jack to a pub, where they’d talked about sports and cars. He hadn’t gotten drunk. He’d had no desire to get drunk. He wanted his full faculties about him when he said, “I do.” Each day he had trouble believing Laura hadn’t walked away. In fact, the morning of the wedding…

  He’d left his house before the first light of day and gone to her apartment.

  When he knocked, she’d answered the door.

  “I’m not supposed to see you until later!” she said seriously.

  “Tradition isn’t as important as our future. Is anybody else awake?”

  Slipping outside, she closed the door behind her, her hair all tousled around her face. She was wearing a pink chenille robe with a wide belt and was barefoot. He simply stared at her, amazed that this woman was going to be his wife in just a few hours and he could look at her every morning like this for the rest of their lives. She wrapped her arms around herself because the March air was cold.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “I’ve been awake since five,” she admitted. “I’m too excited to sleep. We all talked until about one, but I’m so full of energy I don’t think anything’s going to slow me down today. How about you?”

  “Yeah, we got home about one. But I woke up around five, too, and I knew I had to talk to you.”

  Her smile faded, her eyes became worried and her arms dropped to her sides. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just need to make sure you want to get married. The nightmares might never go away. The flashbacks can still happen anytime. I want to give you so much, Laura—”

  The worried look faded and she wrapped her arms around his neck. “When you asked me to marry you, I said yes and I meant yes.”

  “I’m not that boy you met on the courthouse steps.”

  “No, you’re not. I’m not that girl you dragged away from trouble that day. We’ve both changed. I think that’s what being married is all about—growing and changing together.” She leaned back, worried again. “Now, if you’re having doubts…”

  “No doubts. From today on we’re only going to talk about the future—not the past. Agreed?”

  She searched his face, then nodded. “Agreed.”

  He pulled a tiny box wrapped in gold paper out of his pocket. “Here. I wanted to give you this. I know we’ll be exchanging rings later, but I thought you’d like these for your bracelet.”

  After tearing off the bow and paper, she stuffed them in her pocket, then lifted the lid. Inside she found two tiny entwined gold rings to attach to her bracelet. “Oh, thank you, Brady! They’re perfect. Wait right here. I have something for you, too.”

  She was back in an instant, holding a box wrapped in blue paper with a darker blue bow. He tore the wrappings from it and opened the lid. He found gold cuff links and a gold tie bar engraved with the letter M.

  “They were my father’s,” she said softly.

  Embracing her, he settled his cheek against hers and murmured, “I’m honored you gave them to me.”

  After a soul-deep kiss that made him want to forget all the hoopla and take her to a small chapel somewhere, marry her and forget about the crowd that was going to witness their ceremony, he left her standing at her apartment door.

  When they returned from their honeymoon to the Poconos, she’d be moving into his house with him. Then they’d start their real lives and he’d make some serious money. She’d have babies and time would take care of the nightmares and regrets.

  At least, that was what he’d thought. That was what he’d hoped. That’s what he’d prayed. But what he’d envisioned hadn’t happened, and worse yet—

  Suddenly he heard Laura stirring on the sofa across the room. “Brady, are you awake?” she whispered.

  “I’m awake.”

  “Do you need pain medication? Something to drink?”

  “You don’t have to wait on me.”

  She was silent and he knew he shouldn’t have said it in just that way.

  After a few moments, she asked, “Do you want to go back to sleep? Or do you want to talk?”

  Talk. That was Laura’s solution for any problem, but not his. Talking didn’t change the course of events. Talking didn’t change the past. Talking was simply that, hearing yourself go over what was in your head. If he said he wanted to go back to sleep and kept tossing and turning and moving around, she’d hear that. Then she’d know he’d simply tried to shut her out again. Lately, shutting Laura out had become more comfortable than letting her in. Was their marriage unraveling after thirty-three years? He’d tried and tried to be the husband she’d needed. But sometimes he’d felt he was pretending…doing all the right things but not feeling what he should when he did them. Maybe trying wasn’t enough. Maybe love wasn’t enough.

  “Go ahead and turn the light on,” he said. “I’m wired. I can’t seem to shut down. I don’t have enough energy to walk for more than five minutes, but I can’t sleep.”

  The light beside the sofa came on and he blinked at the sudden brightness. Pushing himself up to a sitting position, he tried to ignore the residuals of surgery, the pain from the incision, the tingling in his chest and arm which he’d been told was quite normal.

  She was about to throw off her afghan, when he suggested, “Stay there.” He made his way to the sofa and eased himself down. The afghan she’d covered herself with was between them.

  “Why aren’t you sleeping?” he asked, deciding that if she wanted to talk, they could discuss what was bothering her. Though that might not be any safer than what was bothering him.

  “Because my mind’s probably going as fast as yours.”

  She gave him a smile that was so innately Laura he reached out for her hand. “This hasn’t been easy for you.”

  “Life isn’t easy. We’ll deal with it.”

  He withdrew his hand. “You know, Laura, it’s okay to collapse after you’ve been through an ordeal. That’s normal.” Sometimes her strength wasn’t a virtue but a barrier, and her love a bittersweet gift.

  “If I collapse, then what? I collapsed once and it wasn’t pretty. I don’t ever want it to happen again.”

  Laura’s collapse, as she called it, had been a long time coming. Three miscarriages and the death of a child would do it to anybody. But she hadn’t seen it like that. She’d seen herself as weak. After Jason’s funeral, she’d broken down and cried day and night. He’d called John Markowitz and the psychologist had recommended that both join a group he ran for parents who’d lost children. Laura had attended the sessions. He hadn’t.

  “Do you believe everything happens for a reason?” she asked, gazing at him with expressive brown eyes.

  They
’d had this discussion before in their marriage, but not lately, maybe not for the past five years. “Are we talking about the master-plan theory again?” He couldn’t keep the cynicism from his question.

  “If you don’t want to talk about this, we don’t have to,” she said softly, looking tentative now instead of open.

  He raked his hand through his hair. “I don’t think I’m up to a philosophical discussion about why I had a heart attack. I had it because of genetics. My grandfather died of a heart attack and so did my mother. My dad had a stroke.”

  Her silence was louder than any words could be.

  “Say it,” he said gruffly, his heart pounding a little harder.

  “Say what?”

  “Say what you’re thinking.”

  “You don’t want to hear what I’m thinking.” She stared straight ahead rather than at him, and he felt those degrees of separation again that had crept between them one by one.

  “I can practically read your mind,” he told her. “You’re thinking I brought this on myself by what I eat, by not getting enough exercise, by working too hard. I don’t believe hard work ever killed anyone. And the rest…” He sighed. “I was predisposed to this. Even if I become a vegetarian, it won’t change my genes.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about your diet, Brady. I was thinking maybe this happened so we could all become closer as a family.”

  That logic absolutely escaped him. “Sean will be out on his own soon. Three years and Kat will be off to college, too. They’ll both forget they even have parents.”

  “Maybe.” She didn’t sound happy about it.

  To make her feel better, he suggested, “Daughters seem to stick closer than sons. Even Pat did. She stayed in York and helped Mom after Dad’s stroke. Matt and Ryan went off living their lives.”

  “I want to keep Sean close, too,” she murmured.

  “And you want me to do the same. It might be too late. I wasn’t around enough when he was little and there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “If you’d tell him what happened in Vietnam—”