Chapter Sixteen #2
Nora sat at the kitchen table, staring down at the package of letters. Earlier, she’d spoken to Eric, but afterward, the silence had tackled her again.
Idly, she rubbed her throbbing wrist. She’d spent an hour in the morning practicing with her crutches, and she was improving. She could go short distances. By the end of the week, she hoped to be out of the damned chair completely.
But the practice hadn’t fulfilled all of its purpose. She couldn’t clear her mind completely. The letters were always there.
She’d tried giving herself a little pep talk. They were just words, she told herself, scribblings on paper, and they were from strangers. Certainly she could find the strength to pick up a pen and fashion some kind of response. A good-bye and a thanks-for-the-good-times, at the very least.
Not true. Every letter she’d attempted began the same: Dear readers.
Sometimes she came up with a sad, pathetic beginning—I’m more sorry than you can know. . . . or How can I begin to say what’s in my heart. . . . or By now you all know who I really am.
But there was never a second sentence. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, she was worried about Ruby.
Her gaze landed on the note she’d found sitting on the kitchen table. Dear Nora—Gone to see Dad.
It looked innocuous enough, but appearances were often deceiving. Ruby wasn’t coming back.
It was Nora’s own fault. She’d pushed her daughter too hard in the past few days, and that was dangerous. Ruby always shoved back; she had from infancy. Unlike Caroline, who smiled coolly and held your hand and stepped aside when reality got too close.
Nora had recognized her mistake the second she saw the good-bye note. Her daughter had had enough.
She slumped forward, dropping her head onto her crossed arms. A good cry would probably help, but she couldn’t find even that easy road to relief. She was wrung dry.
Then she heard a car drive up . . . footsteps on the porch . . .
The door opened, and Rand stepped into the kitchen.
Nora understood instantly: Ruby had sent her father to deliver the bad news.
“Hey, Randall,” she said, pulling her casted leg off the second chair. “Have a seat.”
He glanced around. “I’ve got a better idea.”
Before he’d even finished the sentence, he’d crossed the room and scooped her into his arms. She made a garbled, whooping sound of surprise and put her arms around his neck, hanging on. “What the—”
“Just hang on.”
She clung to him as he carried her over the threshold and out onto the porch. There, he pulled an old mohair blanket off of the rocker and wedged it under his arm. He walked down the steps, across the shaggy lawn, out to the edge of the bank.
Beneath a huge madrona tree, he laid the blanket over the rocky ground, then gingerly set her down. Her bare toes stuck out from the end of her cast, and he leaned over and tucked the fringed end of the blanket around her foot.
He sat down beside her, propped up on his elbows, and stretched out his long legs.
“Still can’t stand to be inside on a sunny day?” she said.
“Some things never change.” He turned to her, his face solemn. “I’m sorry, Nora.”
“About what?”
His gaze shifted to a point just beyond her left shoulder. “I should have said it a long time ago.”
She drew in a breath. Time seemed to hang suspended between them. She felt the hot summer sunlight on her face, smelled the familiar fragrance of the sea at low tide.
He looked at her finally, and in his eyes, she saw the sad reflection of their life together. “I’m sorry,” he said again, knowing that this time she understood.
“Oh” was all she could say.
He leaned closer, touched her face with a gentleness that sapped her strength. “It was my fault. All mine. We both know that. I was young and stupid and cocky. I didn’t know how special we were.”
Nora was surprised by how easy it was suddenly for her to smile.
She’d spent twenty years loving this man, eleven more vaguely missing him, and yet now, with him beside her on an old blanket that held their youth in its rough weave, she finally felt at peace.
Maybe that was all she’d needed, all these years. Just those few, simple words.
She laid her hand against his, and a peacefulness settled around her, as if everything in their lives had led to this moment.
He was her youth, she realized sadly, a youth that was neither well spent nor quite misspent.
Just . . . spent. In his eyes, and his alone, was the woman she’d once been.
“We were both at fault, Rand. We tried. We just didn’t make it. ”
He leaned closer. She thought for a breathless moment that he was going to kiss her.
He wanted to—she could see the desire in his eyes.
But at the last second, he drew back, gave her a smile so soft and tender it was better than a kiss.
“When I look back—and believe me, I try not to—you know what I remember?”
“What?”
“That day you came back. Jesus . . .” He closed his eyes.
“I should have dropped to my knees and begged you to stay. In my heart, I knew it was what I wanted, but I’d heard about you and that guy, and all I could think of was me.
How would it look if I took you back after that?
” He laughed, a bitter, harsh sound. “Me, worrying about that, after the way I’d treated you.
It makes me sick. And I paid for it, Nora.
For eight long years, I went to sleep every night alone. And I missed you.”
Nora wanted to weep at what they’d thrown away. “You should have called. I was alone, too.” She paused, then said, “It’s too bad.”
“Yeah.”
She reached out, brushed the hair from his eyes in a gesture as natural to her as breathing.
“But you’ve gone on now. Married. I’m happy for that.
” She realized how true it was. Those few small words—I’m sorry—had released her, turned Rand into what he truly was: her first love.
Her great love, perhaps, but there would be another one for her someday.
She smiled and arched one eyebrow. “And are you being a good boy, Randall?”
He laughed, easy with her now. “Even a stupid dog doesn’t get hit by the same bus twice.”
“Good. You deserve to be happy.”
“So do you.”
She flinched, unable to help it. “You screwed around on your wife. I abandoned my children. It’s not the same thing.”
He gazed at her. She saw the heavy lines around his mouth and eyes, grooves worn by years in the sun and wind. “I told Ruby the truth.”
“About what?”
“The truth. About us.”
Nora felt sick. “That was a foolish thing to do.”
“I thought you’d be pleased. It’s something I should have done a long time ago.”
“Perhaps, but when you didn’t—when I didn’t—we buried that little piece of family history. You shouldn’t have dug it up. It won’t make a difference now.”
“You deserved it, Nora,” he said. “After all these years, you deserved it.”
“Oh, Rand. She believed in you. This will break her heart.”
“You know what I learned from us, Nora?” He touched her face, smiled tenuously. “Love doesn’t die. Not real love. And that’s what Ruby’s going to discover. She’s always loved you. I just gave her a reason to admit it.”
Nora couldn’t help thinking that, for a grown man, he was incredibly naive.