Sanctuary (Murrells Inlet Miracles Book 1)

by Larsen, Laurie

  For the next two hours, they cared for Maggie. They spread out the blankets and pads that Shaw had brought, and camped out inside the stall. Shaw freshened the horse’s bedding and discarded soiled straw. Nora continued watering the patient, and they both petted her and kept her calm.

  She and Shaw worked well together. Their closeness in the stall almost made her forget the important conversation they needed to have once things settled down. She loved having him close by. She loved that they were helping Maggie together, as a team. She loved his scent of soap and sunscreen that floated to her awareness in the closed stall.

  By five thirty, it appeared that the horse had passed the danger zone. Her cervix dilation had decreased. Her fever was down, and her contractions had stopped. Shaw felt comfortable leaving her to catch up on her rest without supervision.

  They filled her bins with fresh oats and water, packed up all their supplies and pulled them out of the stall. They turned the lights off and bid their good-byes to the brave mom. Nora helped him get everything back into his truck.

  He turned to her but Nora noticed with a bit of disappointment that he didn’t touch her. No fingertips caressing her cheek, no pushing her hair behind an ear, and certainly no kissing. This unspoken question between them had created a chasm. They’d never be able to get back to the comfortableness that used to exist between them until they talked about it.

  So, he had a daughter. Most people his age had had a child who was now an adult. She didn’t have a problem with the fact that his daughter existed. What she wondered was, why hadn’t he talked about his daughter? And if she didn’t know such an important thing as this, what else didn’t she know about him?

  He cleared his throat. “Your call was perfectly timed. If you had waited any longer, we may not have been able to pull off what we did tonight.”

  “I guess getting a call at 3 in the morning is okay if it results in saving a life.”

  “Absolutely.” He stood at the open driver’s door of his truck and took his time looking at her. “I owe you a breakfast, but not this morning. I’m bushed and I need to get a few hours of sleep before I start my work day.”

  She frowned. He was leaving, without having the conversation that had been weighing on her for the last two hours. Could she let him leave without addressing the elephant in the room?

  “Shaw, I’ll let you go, but I do have to ask. A woman answered your phone when I called and then called you Dad. Was that your daughter?”

  “It was. Sadie. Great gal. You’d really like her.”

  She wasn’t sure where to go from here. He thought she’d really like her? And yet not only had he never introduced her, but never mentioned the existence of her? Something seemed odd.

  “Shaw, we’ve been getting to know each other, and we’ve shared our feelings for each other. And yet, you’ve never mentioned that you have a daughter. In fact, I realize I know very little about your personal life at all. Your family, your past.”

  He nodded. He took in a breath like he was going to speak, and then he settled for, “Yeah.”

  Nora watched him for a moment and it was apparent he wasn’t going to say more. “Okay, well, maybe we’ll make a date to have a long talk soon? About your daughter and whatever else you think I need to know.”

  She should probably just end it there. But she didn’t. Maybe it was her exhaustion, maybe it was being caught by surprise. “I’ll be honest, Shaw, when I heard someone call you Dad over the phone, and you hadn’t even told me you had a child, it really caught me by surprise. I guess I thought if we were growing important to each other, you would’ve told me that.”

  He nodded, dipped his head, lifted a knuckle and wiped his eyes. He sniffed and looked at her. “I do have more to tell you. Much more. But now’s not the time. I need to be rested.”

  His tone was like a knife through her heart. An alarm went off in her head: Danger! Danger!

  They may have missed most of a night’s sleep, but if she let him leave on that note, there wasn’t a chance in the world that she would sleep. She said, “You’re scaring me, Shaw. Don’t tell me you’re a serial killer or anything.” She laughed awkwardly in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  He looked sad, shook his head. “No. That’s not it. It’s just not an easy story to tell.”

  She watched his face, his eyes clouding, his head determinedly bowed to avoid looking at her. She reached up and put her finger on his chin. He met eyes with her.

  “Nora, I’m married.”

  She stared at him so intensely that his face started to swim in her gaze. A sudden stab of dizziness had her grabbing hold of something to prevent her from dropping. Her arms flailed and it was his strong grip that held her and kept her on her feet.

  In his arms, everything felt right. Felt normal. But this moment was far from normal. He couldn’t have said what she thought he’d said.

  “What?” she murmured.

  “Let’s go inside. I can tell neither of us are going to get any sleep until we talk this one through.”

  She nodded and turned, heading for the barn where they could go sit at her table in the apartment. Thankfully, he didn’t let go of her arm. He held on.

  “Mind if I make some coffee?” he asked in the kitchen. “I imagine we’re both going to need some.”

  She waved a hand without speaking. She couldn’t concentrate for the life of her. Shaw was married. He was … what? He was married?

  Why on earth would he have kissed her if he was married? Why would he be coming over here on a regular basis? Why would he have told her that he was growing fond of her, and wanted her to move here?

  It didn’t make any sense.

  One thing she thought she could trust was, Shaw was a good man. A solid man. A man with ethics and faith. She looked up to him.

  And yet, she couldn’t correlate the good, solid man with ethics, with this man, who she was falling in love with, who was married to another.

  She must’ve slid into a chair at the table, and several minutes must’ve passed because Shaw pushed a cup of steaming coffee in front of her. She needed to get a grip. She’d faced worse than this. She needed to get control of her mind.

  “So,” she started, bringing her eyes to his face. “You’re married. You don’t mean divorced, do you?”

  “No, unfortunately I don’t.”

  A girl could try. “So, I guess my first question is, why? Why have we been forming a relationship together when you have a wife at home?” She’d tried to present the question in a professional way, the way a prosecutor would present a question in a courtroom. What she didn’t count on was the sob at the end which revealed her true feelings on the matter.

  He’d betrayed her. He’d lied to her. For that matter, he’d done the same to his wife.

  “You’re cheating on your wife?” And with that, the tears let loose and streamed unfettered down her cheeks.

  His distress at her tears brought him to his feet, searching for a tissue box, and bringing them over to her. “Please. Let me explain. After it’s all told, it doesn’t change anything. The fact is, I’m falling in love with you while I’m still bound by marriage to another woman. But at least you’ll know the truth. Will you give me that chance?”

  She shrugged, and nodded. Drawing a deep breath, she waited.

  “Melanie and I met in our late twenties. I had finished vet school and had gotten my first job at a veterinarian office in Myrtle Beach. Pretty big practice. Five vets, about a dozen support staff. Melanie was one of them. She worked at the front desk. One of the other employees set us up, took us out on a double date. We hit it off pretty well.

  “We didn’t date very long. I had never fallen head over heels in love before. I spent every moment I could with her – saw her all day at work – I couldn’t get enough. We got married quickly.

  “Things were good for a couple years. We were young, in love, no responsibilities other than going to work every day. We went out a lot, had a great social life, l
ots of friends. She was always planning something. It was fun. For a while.”

  He sniffed and took a long drag on his coffee. “But eventually, I wanted more. I wanted to buy a house and have a family. I wanted to be an adult. But she was resistant. She was afraid that if we settled down, and especially if we had children, that we would become a boring old couple. She didn’t want that to happen.

  “Five years later, we had Sadie. I’d been ready a long time, but Melanie never adjusted to the idea. When she told me she was pregnant, I was ecstatic. She was shocked.

  “So, Sadie was born, and at first I think Melanie tried. She tried to adjust to being a mom, probably even tried to be a good one. But babies are demanding, and it can be hard when you’re used to just taking care of yourself. I would drop Sadie off at my mom’s to watch while we were at work, then I would take care of her all evening and through the night. Melanie didn’t want to stop seeing her friends. She was resentful whenever I needed her to stay home with Sadie on an evening I had to work, or had other plans.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out. “We went on like that, and our marriage deteriorated. Melanie was spending way more time with her social group than with her family, and my whole world revolved around Sadie. I knew Melanie was drinking too much. It was obvious when she got home late at night, her voice loud, laughing, singing along to the radio. I should’ve done more to make her face up to what I believe had become an alcohol addiction. Make her fight it. Make her beat it. Or at least try to.

  “But, I had so much on my plate. I felt like if I brought it up, it would just start a fight. And she was already unhappy with our living situation. I cowardly avoided the subject. And that turned out to be the worst mistake of my life.”

  Fatigue showed in the droop of eyes, the pallidness of his skin. Shaw dropped his face into his hands and rubbed his forehead, his cheeks and under his eyes. He straightened again, shook his head and continued. “When Sadie was ten, Melanie was going to a class reunion about three towns over. She told me she wasn’t sure if she’d be home, or just spend the night at the hotel. It depended on how much she had to drink. I asked her if she was driving, and she said yes. I asked her to get a ride so she wouldn’t be tempted to drink and drive. She brushed off my concerns and told me not to worry about it. I tried again and begged her not to drive herself. I even offered to put Sadie in the car and come pick her up if she needed me to. She laughed it off.”

  Nora watched him, and the toll the story was having, on his face, on his posture. Despite her hesitance, she reached over and placed her hand over his. His eyes darted to hers, then rested there momentarily to acknowledge the gesture.

  “She ended up driving drunk that night. And she had a terrible accident. The only thing positive was she didn’t injure anyone else. She was alone in the car, and she lost total control and slammed full-speed into the interior of a cement overpass.”

  Nora gasped.

  “The doctors have no idea how she survived the crash. By rights, she should’ve died that night. But she held on. I got a call with the news. I had to call my mom, get her to stay with Sadie before I could drive over there, about thirty miles away. When I got to the hospital, the sight was brutal. Melanie had broken, what was it, 45 bones in her body. Hips, arms, legs, elbows, facial. You name it. They were just wheeling her into surgery when I arrived. She was unconscious, and would actually stay that way for almost a month.”

  “Coma?” Nora asked.

  “Yes. Twenty seven days, she was in a coma, and they focused on fixing all her skeletal problems first. They had so many pins and screws to insert, in all parts of her body, they ended up doing multiple surgeries. With casts covering every joint of her body, bruises covering every bit of skin that showed, and her eyes closed, I had a hard time convincing myself that this was my wife. It just didn’t feel right. By the time she finally aroused from the coma, most of her broken bones had healed. The human body is a miracle.”

  “Sure is,” Nora murmured. She tried to imagine a Shaw dealing with this tragedy, while caring for his young daughter. A man with a huge heart, for sure he was.

  “I happened to be sitting by her hospital bed when she woke. I’ll never forget it. After close to four weeks with her eyes closed, all of a sudden, she opened them. She blinked, looked around and asked for water. I jumped to my feet and started screaming, ‘Melanie! Melanie, you’re back!’ But she wasn’t. Not really. What the doctors never verified until after she came out of the coma was that she had severe brain trauma too, in addition to all the skeletal trauma. She was not the same Melanie as before.”

  He stood, turned and ran a hand over his lower back. Exhaustion coated every move but now, he had to finish the story.

  “She didn’t know my name. She didn’t know her own name. She could talk … but she didn’t know anything. I pushed the call button and when the nurses came in, I told them to get the doctors. That started weeks of neurological testing. The trauma had caused severe damage that would never reverse.”

  Nora wiped away tears from her own eyes. “Oh Shaw, I’m sorry.”

  He held up his hand. “No. Like I said, I could’ve prevented this. I knew she was drinking. I knew she was excited about her class reunion, seeing all her old friends. I should’ve put two and two together. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to set her off. I guess I just wanted a pleasant evening with me and Sadie. I was a coward, Nora. Think, just think, if I hadn’t been. If I’d done my wife the service of confronting her about her drinking. Helped her stop it. Sent her through rehab. All this could’ve been avoided.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe not, Shaw. You can’t control this stuff. It’s not that simple. Sometimes people are in terrible accidents and they haven’t had a drop of alcohol. You just never know.”

  “But she’d had a drop. She’d had drop after drop after drop. She had no business being behind the wheel of a car. And I had no business turning a blind eye to it.

  “Long story short, she came home eventually, and I had to hire a nurse to stay with her during the day. She could get around physically, but she couldn’t take care of herself. It wouldn’t be safe to leave her home alone all day. The tests showed that she had the brain level of a four year old. There’s no way she could’ve gotten a job or made a living, so she was considered permanently disabled from the brain trauma.

  “At night, me and Sadie took care of her. It got to be pleasant enough in the house. I mean, she never comprehended that I was her husband, and Sadie was her daughter. But for the most part, once we had met all her needs, she was friendly enough. She would sit and watch TV. She had her favorite shows, and they made her happy. She needed a routine. As long as everything was the same night after night, she was pretty calm and stable.

  “But then, her condition worsened. Whether caused by the trauma, or not related to the trauma, it’s unclear, but she developed dementia. Now, on top of having the brain power of a young child, she had a deteriorating brain. She didn’t know people – me, Sadie, her nurse – and that stressed her out. She was agitated and her mind was always spinning. She couldn’t remember things we’d tell her and she’d ask the same questions over and over again.

  “It got to the point where we couldn’t take care of her anymore. It was heartbreaking for Sadie to see her mom get worse and worse. The day nurse convinced me that Melanie would be better off in an assisted living facility, where they deal with dementia and Alzheimers every day. I moved her there about five years ago.”

  It was the most tragic, most depressing story she’d ever heard. And to think this was Shaw … “her” Shaw who was so capable, strong, handsome; the one who always knew exactly what to do. The strong man of faith who led by example, and depended on God for guidance. To think that this tragedy is what he came home to every night.

  “Sadie visited her every day. She didn’t want to give up on her mama, even though they’d never really been close, in a true mother/daughter way. I was proud of her for being so loyal and determined. She�
�d visit her every day after school, bring her flowers or pictures, tell her about her classes, ask her about her day. Melanie couldn’t really respond. She’d mostly just ask questions. Where’s the cafeteria? Why is the heat on? Where’s that man?” He shrugged his eyebrows at her. “I was always, that man. She lost my name, and she’d long ago lost our relationship.

  “I stopped going to visit other than on her birthday and holidays. I feel bad about that, but I couldn’t continue the façade after she left home. We weren’t husband and wife … but we were. Legally. We weren’t in love … but a small part of me still loves her, or at least, loves the woman I fell in love with all those years ago.”

  Still holding hands on the table, he patted hers, pulled his away and dragged himself to his feet. “That’s probably enough for one morning. I really do need to try to get some sleep now.” He walked to the door and by the time he reached it, she’d followed him and reached it at the same time. He stroked her cheek with his index finger and the gesture both made her heart glad, and break.

  “It’s way too early to ask if you can forgive me. I know I handled this all wrong, and I’m sorry for that. I just wanted to paint you a picture of what my marriage is like, what my home life is like. I also want you to know that I’ve never, ever pursued a relationship with a woman other than you. This isn’t something I do.” He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something else, then he stopped. “Good night, Nora.”

  He was gone before she could even say good night.

  “Oh my gosh, Nora, that’s the most heartbreaking story I’ve ever heard.”

  It was mid-morning. Nora had tried to go back to bed, but after two hours of tossing and turning, she’d gotten up, waited for a decent hour, then called Patty.

  “I know. It’s unbelievable. I feel bad for him. Such a great guy having such a tragic family life.” Nora sniffed.

  “Yeah. But where does that put you?”

  Nora stretched her achy joints. “Where do you think? There are no options. I’m out.”