by Naomi Kryske
A rush of excitement spread across her chest. She had stepped from a dark tunnel into a blaze of light, light that spelled the successful conclusion to her plans, light that proclaimed, Victory! Should she use the larger knife? For weeks she had admired its graceful shape, sometimes caressing the blade with the tip of her finger. She would sheathe the knife in her target’s body, a sudden strong thrust to start, others to ensure success. She would not gloat; she need not linger. Her satisfaction would be complete. Her work would be done.
CHAPTER 28
Jenny hated to see Simon’s leave week end. In spite of the interruptions – he had been called away several times, teaching her that no plans were sacrosanct – they had become closer. They’d enjoyed doing simple things, laughing and talking while they walked, throwing the Frisbee, playing catch with Bear, and stopping at the Hampstead Creperie for a savory snack or dessert. The more fun they had together, the harder it was to see him go. She’d felt safe with him beside her, and although she knew that his job called him to protect others, she dreaded his return to full-time duty and her corresponding heightened vulnerability. She’d miss him physically in other ways, too. He had kissed her, caressed her chest, then stopped, his forehead against hers. She had heard his heavy breaths and knew he had heard hers. His fingertips had skimmed her lips, making them tingle. She was in a quandary, not wanting him to stop but relieved when he did.
She resolved to keep busy. She reviewed her Italian, spending some time with the new visual dictionary she’d purchased. Then she set the book aside and found some blank paper. She had decided to call her workbook, Working Through Grief. She intended to encourage her readers to keep a diary as a way of clarifying their thoughts and feelings about the loved one they had lost and then, over time, releasing those feelings. She would begin with a short narrative and then include portions of her lists as examples as well as spaces for the readers to make their own entries. Although she hadn’t realized it at the time, her lists had helped her to mark her progress.
One chapter would cover things people said and did that weren’t helpful and things that were, followed by a contrast between what she had expected the grief experience to be like and what it really was. Another would discuss grief support. Hers had come from individuals rather than groups, but the concept was no less valid. The issue of what to do with your loved one’s possessions should be addressed. Perhaps she should call it, To Discard or Not to Discard. Another chapter could explore what grief and loss had taught her. She had only hoped to get through it, but there had been valuable life lessons along the way.
A new list – Ways to Assert Yourself – could be useful.
1.Give yourself permission to grieve in your own way and at your own pace. Simon had done that for her, understanding that the grief journey had no timetable.
2.Find someone who understands what you’re going through. Colin’s mother, Joanne, had understood. She’d have to tell her about the project.
3.Associate also with people who aren’t grieving, even if they don’t understand. Simon, Beth, and others had distracted her from her grief and kept her connected to the normal world.
4.Keep moving. Her endless hours walking on the Heath had also given her brief respites from grief. They had kept her away from the flat Colin wasn’t coming home to and made the weight of grief less heavy when she returned. On the Heath she had pretended for a time that she hadn’t lost anybody and felt less guilty that her heart was still beating when his wasn’t.
5.Regrets are normal. She hadn’t loved Colin perfectly, but she had done her best.
Thinking of Nick Howard and Bear, she added:
6.Healing may come from unexpected sources.
7.Do your best to keep dates and places from having power over you. She had been captive to the circumstances surrounding Colin’s death. It was more important to give significance to the places he had lived and the special occasions they had shared.
More research would be necessary, however, for the workbook to be complete. Did men grieve differently than women? She wished she had asked Colin more about how he’d dealt with his father’s death. However, both Dr. Knowles and Neil Goodwyn could share information with her. Then she called Colin’s sister, Jillian, to arrange a lunch date. Jillian had lost a parent and a brother. She might have some valuable insights.
Looking for additional paper in Colin’s roll-top desk, she found an old notebook with a list entitled, Things I Learned from Colin’s Mother. She had made the entries after their first meeting, when Joanne had talked about the many adjustments she’d had to make as the wife of a foreign service officer, but some of the items seemed just as relevant now to the grief process. Family matters most. Having friends helps. Be resourceful. Take the long view. Starting over is a part of life and not necessarily a bad thing. Jenny would include them.
C. S. Lewis, she remembered, had written about a spring cleaning of the mind. By the calendar she was well into the summer – July 4 had come and gone, and once again she had missed the annual five-mile walk on the Heath to benefit breast cancer – but she had begun the process already without realizing it. In spring cleaning, people discarded items that weren’t needed and kept the ones that were. Grief was a familiar skin she needed to shed. Her feelings of grief for Colin had been so intense and consuming that they had shut out other feelings. She knew now that letting her grief for him go didn’t mean letting her love for him go, and she understood that if she didn’t let grief go, she wouldn’t be able to let other feelings in. The sorrow of his loss, her fear of a future without him: These were cobwebs she should sweep away. The army of feelings associated with despair had camouflaged her feelings for Simon until recently. Now she wondered what it would be like to wake in the morning with him beside her. To open her eyes and see his chest rising and falling and hear his breathing. Or would he rouse first? Would he want her, and wake her gently, the way Colin had? Of course, if he were in her bed in the morning, he would have been there the night before, too. She sighed. She wanted more than one night and one morning; she wanted a whole succession of them, and that meant a commitment. And commitment, to her, meant expressing love.
CHAPTER 29
On one off-duty weekend, Brian had a cookout for some of the firearms officers, those on Simon’s team and others from a team on which Brian had served previously. Beth was eight months pregnant, but she was a good hostess, holding two-year-old Meg’s hand while introducing Jenny to the men and their significant others. Simon knew all of them, but Jenny had a hard time keeping the names straight, since Brian and Simon referred to them by their nicknames and Beth had used each man’s given name.
Donny Miller was called “Sleepy,” but his date, Kaye, sexy in heels, tight gray jeans, and a lemon yellow belt, kept his eyes wide open. “Moe” – Miles? – invited Brian to compete in a best-of-five arm-wrestling duel, Moe’s well-developed chest and shoulders straining his t-shirt. “The two muscle bosuns,” Simon explained. “Watch Davies play him. He’ll lose the first two to make him complacent, then overwhelm him three straight for the win.” Among the viewers, only Moe’s wife, Laurie, bet on him. While Moe was bald with barely the suggestion of a mustache, Laurie had long wavy brown hair. Where he was hard, she was soft: her figure, the colors she wore, and the voice that was lost in the noisy cheers the others raised for Brian.
When the din subsided, the statuesque Georgina McGill confessed to Jenny that she’d loved her husband Hugh the first time she saw him. “I was attracted first to his dimples, but he was wearing kilts, and when he moved, I saw that he had such beautiful – legs!” she laughed. “And now I’m expecting. Hugh and I both have children from our first marriages, but this will be our first one together.” Jenny waited to feel the familiar pang of regret that she and Colin had been childless, but it didn’t come. Instead she felt relaxed, enjoying being included in Georgina’s confidences.
Nick Howard and Cath were there, Nick greeting her but making no reference to his intervention in h
er life, perhaps as much to maintain his privacy as hers. Both Ed Burleson, a divorced father of two from another team, and the single Aidan Traylor, his hair dark as coffee grounds, flirted with her when Simon stepped away to help Brian with the grill. “I’m single again,” Ed told her, his smile creasing the laceration on his cheek, a jagged line that stopped and started, running across his cheekbone, past his temple, and into his hairline.
“We tossed a coin, and I won,” Aidan added. “If you and Casey don’t make it, I’m next in line. Glad Pilsner didn’t show; we’d have more competition than we could manage.”
“And Dyer,” said Ed. “He’s so chatty, we’d never get a word in.”
Jenny laughed, feeling more comfortable with the easy camaraderie among the officers than she had at Derek and Jillian’s party. Somehow Meg wasn’t intimidated either, running past the throng of heavily-muscled men who crowded the house and finding her father, who was the tallest. Perhaps their regular training gave them a sense of the physical space their bodies occupied, because they all seemed to be both confident and relaxed, and there were no wasted movements. When she mentioned her observations to Simon, he smiled. “We’re confident because we know we’re good at what we do, and we’re relaxed because we don’t have to prove it to anyone. And we don’t do it alone.”
On the drive home she asked him about the wound on Ed’s cheek.
“Training injury,” he said.
She hadn’t known that injuries occurred while they were training. “Did someone shoot him?” she asked, her voice rising. “Do you use real bullets when you train?”
“For some reason we were using frangible ammo that day. It’s made from ceramic,” he explained, “so when it hits a plate, it fragments. Unfortunately someone’s round fragmented and hit his cheek.”
“Not just his cheek – his head! He could have been seriously injured!”
“He wasn’t. He laughed about it later. He’ll tell you himself that it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been where he was supposed to be.”
“Simon, he could have been killed!”
He glanced at her, concerned by her reaction. “Jenny, most training injuries usually amount to nothing more than a sprain or strain from physical activity.”
She didn’t answer. The next time he took a glimpse in her direction, she was looking out the window, and he couldn’t read her expression.
Inside the flat she kissed him once quickly then stepped back. “Simon, I don’t want to see you again. And don’t call me anymore.”
He was stunned. “What’s this about?” he asked.
She wouldn’t face him. She was gripping one hand with the other, her knuckles white.
“Jenny? Did I do something wrong? Or not do something?”
A quick shake of the head.
“Look at me, Jenny. I’ve got a right to know.” He took her by the shoulders and saw that she was on the verge of tears. “Now, Jenny. Tell me!”
“I’d rather end it now than lose you,” she quavered. “I can’t – couldn’t – not again – ”
He understood. Burly’s injury had cycled her. He pulled her to him and held her firmly while she wept into his shoulder. Part of him was encouraged by her fear for his safety. Another part recognised that he needed to help her control this fear or his mission was lost. “Sshh,” he soothed. “Injuries are rare. And serious injuries even more so.”
“But – but – you were hurt not too long ago.”
“A few sutures. Minor, really.” He drew her down beside him on the sofa. “Jenny, listen to me. We live in a dangerous world. It’s far more likely that I’ll be injured in a traffic accident than in training or on the Job. And for that matter, you could be. A Hampstead driver could lose concentration or look away at the wrong moment or hit the accelerator instead of the brake. We know someone is threatening you. Should I break it off with you because something could happen to you?”
Her eyes were wide. “No,” she whispered. “Please don’t do that.”
He hugged her in relief then sat back. “What shall we do about this then?”
She didn’t know. What would Dr. Knowles say? Or Neil Goodwyn? Trust in the future? “Maybe – take one day at a time?”
“Works for me,” he smiled. “When I ring you in the evening, I’ll tell you that I’m all right and you can tell me the same.”
“Simon – if I tell you I’m sorry, will you kiss me?”
He heard another sort of concern in her voice and knew that the crisis was past. “I’ll kiss you with or without,” he said and did. “No worries, Jenny.”
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Simon’s ops weeks passed slowly, and regardless of his reassurance, she worried. Part of her didn’t function until she received his calls in the evening. In addition, photographs of her continued to arrive, unnerving her a little more each time, because the more recent ones hadn’t been taken from a distance. She practiced her mental readiness by repeating the “I can” phrases Simon had given her, but she couldn’t do the physical drills by herself. The stalker knew where she lived, so she couldn’t hide from him, and changing her appearance wouldn’t help. On their walks Bear padded along silently, and she listened for footsteps other than her own. Every sudden noise startled her, even the normal ones: the ring of a cell phone, the rustle as a bird flew from one tree to another. What was safer, sitting on a bench where she could survey her surroundings or keeping on the move? She felt on edge, and the alternating bursts of sunshine and showers didn’t ease her mood. She and the atmosphere were both unsettled. She couldn’t concentrate, so she didn’t refer to the Italian dictionary in her pocket.
She began to sit in the living room by the bay window, because it gave her the best view of the street, to watch the people who passed by. Did the tall man slow his steps when he neared her flat? Was he the one? Why did the stocky man glance toward her door? Sometimes an entire hour elapsed while she scrutinized the sidewalk and the street. Not many cars drove by, but she didn’t think her stalker would come by car. In a personal campaign, he’d be on foot. She didn’t mention her surveillance to Simon when he called, just reported that she’d given the pictures to the two West Hampstead detectives. When she hung up the phone, a sudden gust of wind made the windows shake, and she wondered if her fear had infected the flat, making it tremble with her. She remembered the lines from Shakespeare’s The Tempest and recited them aloud – “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, / Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.” – but she was still afraid.
She missed the way Simon touched her. When they were together, he often rested his hand on her shoulder or waist. They held hands while they walked up and down Hampstead’s small lanes. When she showered, she wished that his hand held the soap. He could cover her scars with the suds. And close his eyes. Sometimes she dreamed that he was kissing her and woke wishing it hadn’t been a dream. Still, she held back. She didn’t want their physical relationship to escalate because of her desire or her fear; she wanted love to be the motivator. She knew she wanted him; but didn’t most things begin with some kind of desire? She had made English literature her major because she wanted to study English writers, particularly the poets. The more she studied, the more she had come to love their ability to paint visual pictures, to put so much meaning into each carefully selected word, to touch her emotions through black print on sterile white pages. Love had followed desire because she had given it time to grow. Given the number of divorces among firearms officers, it must be difficult maintaining relationships, but she thought it was even harder building one. Simon’s schedule was punishing. They spent far more time apart than together. He was attentive when he could be, but if he loved her, why didn’t he say so?
CHAPTER 30
The second week in August, Beth gave birth to a baby boy. At 6 pounds, 12 ounces, Robert William Davies wasn’t a small baby, but when she and Simon visited, Jenny thought he looked tiny in Brian’s arms. “Are you
going to call him Bobby or Billy?” Jenny asked Beth.
“Robbie,” Beth said.
He’ll call himself Rob when he gets older, Jenny thought. She remembered her college boyfriend Rob, killed in a car accident. At the time she had thought she would never get over it, but now she could think of him without tears and be glad that Beth and Brian’s son would have such a good strong name.
“Would you like to hold him?”
“Oh, yes.”
Simon watched an expression of wonder cross Jenny’s face and felt something tug at his heart. He stepped closer to her and put his arm around her. “Isn’t he wonderful?” she whispered. “You both are,” he answered.
Jenny smiled up at him and then gently placed Robbie in his arms.
Beth watched the two of them and wondered how Jenny could question Simon’s love for her and how she could doubt her love for him. The usually-stern Simon smiled when he was with her, and she seemed happier and more relaxed than she’d been in a long time.
“I brought a baby gift for Robbie and a big-girl gift for Meg,” Jenny said. “And a casserole for you to put in your freezer. I’m a little nervous bringing anything I cooked to Brian, but you can eat it as a last resort.”
Simon transferred Robbie to Brian, and he and Jenny left shortly thereafter. She had given Simon the keys to Colin’s car, and on the way home, she snuggled close to him. “I’m so happy for them,” she said.
“Jenny, if you – married again – would you want to have children?”
“I’m not sure I can,” she said. “You know that.”