Tears made warm puddles under her lashes, and for once she let them stay. The grief and regret lay lightly on her, now, a poignant ache that, like the sleeping infant, the humid air, the scent of roses, seemed only a natural part of this particular morning. Tomorrow, she would leave all this again. The day after the July fourth holiday, she’d be back in Washington, and after that, off to only God knew where. It had been over a month since she’d left Cory in that Mindanao hospital…nearly three weeks that she’d been here in Grandma Betty’s house, waiting for him. Three weeks and he hadn’t come.
She had to accept that maybe he never would be.
The crunch of tires on gravel wasn’t loud, but it destroyed the mood of the morning nonetheless, the way even a twig dropped onto the smooth surface of a pond shivers the mirror image.
Sam hastily dashed the tears from her eyes and brought the rocker upright, careful not to disturb the sleeping baby as she looked across to where an unfamiliar car was just pulling to a stop under the huge oak trees on the edge of the yard. She stopped breathing and her heart thumped beneath the baby’s warmth as she waited for the driver to emerge.
The car door opened, and there was a long suspenseful pause before someone appeared, unfolding awkwardly to stand with a hand braced on the roof of the car while he tugged at something still inside. Then the tall figure was moving toward her across the lawn, limping, leaning heavily on a cane.
She watched him come, rippling inside, and waited until he’d reached the steps before she said, “Hey, Pearse.” And dipped her head to hide her trembling smile against the baby’s downy head.
He paused with one foot on the step, one hand on the newel post, and his smile grew wry. “I must say, in my wildest dreams, this isn’t how I expected to find you.”
“What? Oh.” Of course everything she was feeling must surely show, and he would know it already, but to protect herself a little while longer, she kept her eyes on the baby’s open mouth and fat velvety cheeks, impossibly delicate lashes. “I’m babysitting. This is Lizzy-Beth-well, actually, it’s Elizabeth Ashley Starr-she’s my cousin J.J.’s- Jimmy Joe and Mirabella’s first grandbaby. Isn’t she sweet?”
“How old is she?”
Her breath caught as she heard the top step creak, and then his uneven footsteps cross the wooden porch floor. She lifted her head and shook back her hair, and began to rock gently as she watched him. “Five weeks yesterday. She was born while I-while we were in the Philippines.”
A few feet away from her he stopped and leaned his backside and the cane against the porch railing. His face seemed even more angular than she remembered…the interesting lines and hollows hinting at even deeper secrets. And he was wearing new glasses, she noticed. Very stylish, with narrow, trendy lenses. She decided they looked good on him. Behind them his eyes rested on her with compassion, as all-seeing as ever, but with something different, now, too. Something she’d never seen before. Something she couldn’t quite name.
After a moment he shook his head, and once again she saw his smile slip. “Don’t take this the wrong way-I have to say it, Sam. She looks good on you.”
She snorted. “Hey-I never said I didn’t want one of these, eventually. Just not right
“Sam-”
Ignoring the interruption, she dipped her lips once again to the baby’s head, ignoring, too, the tear-glaze that had come to fog up her vision. She drew a quivering breath. “God…I’d forgotten how good they smell…I remember the first time Jimmy Joe brought Mirabella here. And her baby, Amy Jo-he’d delivered her himself, you know, in the sleeper of his truck, on Christmas Eve. He fell in love with her then, but Mirabella was too stubborn to believe it. So one day, Jimmy Joe just went and got her. He drove up to the house with her and the baby in his big blue truck. Mama and J.J. and I all ran out to see what the fuss was, and there was Amy Jo sitting in the middle of the front walk in her car seat. We all just fell in love with her, right then and there. J.J. and I fought, I remember, over who’d get to hold her first.” She twitched her gaze up to Cory, and her smile felt brittle and false. “Amy Jo’s in college, now. Scary…”
“What is?” His voice was gentle.
“How fast the time goes.” She lifted her head and suddenly tears were streaming down her face and for once she didn’t care. “You think I don’t know how much you want this-all of this? The thing is, you know, I want it, too. I do. Eventually. But I’m only twenty-eight. Can’t I have a couple more years?”
“I think I’d give you the moon, if you asked me,” he said softly. “If it meant we’d be together.” But he wasn’t looking at her. His head was turned away from her and his haunted eyes were fixed on one swaying tendril of the climbing rose, thick with red-pink blossoms.
Sam closed her eyes. She could feel her heart tearing in two. “Oh, God, Pearse…”
He jerked as if he’d struck her, and she could see he’d misunderstood her tears. “Sam-what we talked about in Mindanao…”
“Wait-” she rushed to interrupt him, to get it said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I was unfair. I did ask too much. I had no right. If you’re not ready-”
He was shaking his head. “No-you didn’t ask too much. It was time. Past time.” He dragged a hand over his face, then said grimly, “I don’t know if I’m ready or not, but I’ve been trying to remember what happened. Letting myself, I guess would be a better way to put it.”
She waited, heart thumping, slowly wiping away her tears. She knew, now, what it was she’d seen in his eyes. The horrors of his memories, lurking like monsters in the dark.
“I don’t think I can do it by myself, Sam. And…if I’m going to talk to anybody, I…the truth is, the only person I trust to see me through this is you.”
She could only stare at him…and go on holding the baby, rocking gently, heart pounding…She felt both humble and proud at the same time, overwhelmed and exhilarated, as if she was standing on the edge of a volcano, something awesome and beautiful beyond imagining, but terrifying, too.
Cory shifted with the new restlessness that seemed to have become a part of him now. Hell, she’s in shock, he thought as he watched her face drain of color.
“Um…” She cleared her throat and said unsteadily, “They’ve all gone to the lake house for the holiday-fireworks are legal in South Carolina. I volunteered to babysit.”
“You didn’t want to go?”
She shook her head and a smile flickered briefly. “That place has too many memories.”
He snorted. “You can say that again. I almost drowned there.”
“And,” she said softly, “you kissed me for the first time there.”
He gazed at her until his eyes burned, and the silence filled up with the rocking chair’s slow creaking…bees humming in the rose bush…a cardinal calling…a squirrel scolding…
“I know she’s beautiful and sweet and all that,” he finally said, nodding at the baby in Sam’s arms and trying his best to smile, “but is there someplace you can put her down for a bit? I’d really like to kiss you now. That peck you planted on me in Davao City-”
“Hold that thought.” She stopped rocking suddenly and rose, supporting the baby’s head as naturally as if she’d spent a lifetime doing that rather than flying World War Two airplanes and hunting down terrorists and rescuing journalists and hostages from Philippine jungles. Looking at once distracted and purposeful, she swept past him and into the house.
By the time he’d collected his wits and his cane and followed her, she was already halfway up the stairs. He paused at the bottom to wait for her, thinking she meant to come back down so they could talk, but she threw him a look over one shoulder and said, “Coming?” in a breathless and impatient way, like a child with a secret to share.
So he made his way up the stairs as rapidly as his healing thigh muscle would allow, feeling thoroughly bemused, and his heart pounding with more than just physical exertion.
He found her in a spare bedroom, bending over a portable crib. She straightened and turned when she heard him, then crossed to him in a flurry of motion, her arms already lifting around his neck, and her body came against him in a rush that knocked the breath from his lungs and every lucid thought from his mind.
