Secret Agent Sam

Chapter 14

He was losing her.

What she was asking of him was too much. He couldn’t do it. If he talked about it, he’d have to remember. And if he did, the memories would overtake him like an oncoming freight train. They would surely crush him. He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t.

If he didn’t, he was going to lose her.

The pounding is only in your head, Pearse. You know that. It’s a nightmare. Nightmares can’t kill you.

Except…he knew they could. Nightmares could kill, and they could destroy.

And by God, he wasn’t going to let it happen to him.

Sweating, teeth clenched, Cory lifted a shaking hand and drove his fingers into his hair, pressed them against his skull as if doing so could keep it from cracking under the pressure of the din inside. A din so loud he couldn’t hear his own voice call out her name.

But he did call, and she heard. He saw her pause. The noise in his head subsided to a muted thumping, and this time he heard himself hoarsely croak, “Sam-wait.”

She turned halfway, one hand still on the doorknob. Waiting.

“My father killed my mother,” he heard himself say in a voice carefully stripped of all emotion. “He shot her. Then he turned the gun on himself.”

At the first words her head jerked the rest of the way around, and she stared at him, her eyes nearly black in a face bleached white with shock.

He went on in the same relentless, expressionless voice. “That’s what happened. That’s what I was told.” And then, gently, cruelly, “Are you happy now?”

“My God…” And he could hear the soft, sticky sound of her swallow.

He couldn’t take pleasure in how shaken she was. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, contrite and emotionally drained, and put an arm across his eyes. “You wanted to know.”

He felt her come closer, creeping uncertainly toward him as if he were a wounded animal, or some unknown and possibly unstable substance. Both of which he supposed he was, at the moment.

She cleared her throat. “Where were you when it happened? Were you there? Did you see it?”

“I don’t remember.” He moved his arm and looked at her, eyes aching with exhaustion, and the unaccustomed strain of functioning without glasses. “Really, Sam. I don’t remember. The newspaper accounts said the children-the little ones and I-were in the house at the time. But I have no memory of it. Sorry.”

“Do they know why it happened?” She was frowning intently at him and trying to sound totally unemotional, the way she did when she was trying to hide how emotionally touched…shaken…hurt she really was.

Encased in his own shell of numbness, and thoroughly regretting, now, that he’d done this to her, he shrugged and said gently, “Classic posttraumatic stress, probably. He’d been in Vietnam. I’m guessing he had a violent flashback, attacked my mother, someone called the police and when they arrived, he shot her, then himself.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “But…he didn’t hurt you or the other children?”

“No.” The pounding had started up again. He wanted to put his hands over his ears to block it out, but he knew it wouldn’t help. Nothing did. He rubbed his eyes instead. “Evidently not.”

“You were there…and you were how old? Ten? Twelve?”

“Eleven,” he said woodenly. He could feel the fear creeping up on him, like icy fog.

Her voice was disbelieving. “Pearse…Cory. Surely, you must remember something.”

He felt the bed dip with her weight, and then a soothing coolness with a little bit of sandpaper roughness to it touched his face, stroked his hair back from his forehead. He’d never known Sam’s hands could be so gentle.

Emotion, a devastating mix of love and despair, shivered through him. He caught her wrist and heard her gasp as he said in a voice tight with pain, “Maybe I don’t want to remember. Did you ever think of that?”

She sat for a long time without speaking, just looking at him with her wounded eyes, and that dauntless and defensive lift to her chin. Then her gaze shifted past him to the IV bag hanging above his bed, and he saw her throat working.

“You know,” she said in a flat voice with a huskiness in it she didn’t bother to clear, “during my training for…this job, they covered PTSD pretty well…the causes and effects, symptoms, prevention…treatment. All of it. I guess they do that, now. Anyway, one of the things they told us is that PTSD can take lots of different forms. Violent flashbacks like your father had, or nightmares and depression, flirting with suicide-the things my dad had to deal with after Iraq-those aren’t the only symptoms. When you can’t-or won’t-let yourself remember, when you shut yourself off from people emotionally…that’s PTSD, too. And you’re not going to get over it, Cory. Not unless you talk about it.”

Her eyes came back to his, and he was shocked to see them brimming with tears. One sat shimmering suspensefully on her lower lash, then tumbled over. Devastated, he lifted his hand and brushed it with his thumb…cradled her head with his palm, fingers sliding through her hair to touch the tender spot behind her ear. The moisture from the tear felt warm and soft, and he watched in awe as his thumb smoothed it like oil across her cheek.

Maybe, he thought. Maybe…

He held his breath…the door in his mind he’d kept barricaded for most of his life creaked open…just a hair. And he heard the noises…the pounding. Boom…boom…boom… A voice…thundering. “Open up this door, Cory! I’m gonna break it down!” Terrible sounds…cracking, splintering, screaming…the little ones crying. “Mama!”

Terror overwhelmed him. The door slammed shut.

“Don’t ask me to do this,” he whispered brokenly. “I can’t. Not now.”

For a long minute more she looked into his eyes. Then she jerked her gaze away and swiped recklessly at her tears. She caught his hand in both of hers to pull it away from her face as she rose. “I have to go,” she said, breathless and rushed.

And then, impulsively, she bent down and kissed him, one quick hard brush of her lips, and to him that was worse than nothing at all. Pain knifed through him. It felt as though his heart was being ripped out of his chest.

She crossed the room in her long, tomboy’s stride, then paused at the door and said without turning, “I’ll be going home to Georgia to see Mama and Daddy after I’m done in Washington. When you’re ready to talk, that’s where I’ll be.”

She opened the door, and was gone.

Sam sat in one of the old creaky white-painted rocking chairs on Grandma Betty’s wide front porch. Her eyes were closed and the sleeping baby on her chest made a small puddle of warmth as she rocked them both gently in the hazy heat of a Georgia July morning. The humid air was heavy on her shoulders, and scented with the roses that sprawled across the porch roof and the lighter, softer fragrance of the baby’s down-covered scalp just below her chin. Birds and insects sang them a lazy lullaby, and Sam’s mind drifted on meandering rivers of memory.

The scent of roses, and Cory’s finger stroking a velvety petal in the garden at the White House…and I tell him I’m worried about my dad, because he won’t talk about what happened to him in Iraq. “You talk about it,” I tell him, and he replies, “I’d much rather write about it. Writing is what helps me. Everybody’s different. Your dad has to find what works for him…”

Then…I talk about Vietnam, about how some who went there never did find their way home…and he looks at me with his gentle eyes and smiles his gentle smile, so full of compassion and understanding, and because I’m young and selfish and wrapped up in my own trials at the moment, I don’t see the pain that’s in them, too.

He sees inside my soul, and all I see is myself reflected back in his eyes. I don’t see him at all.

Oh, God, Pearse…I’m so sorry.

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.

When you’re ready to talk, Pearse…

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.” There. No sense in avoiding it, pretending it all hadn’t happened.

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 now, okay? Actually, you might not believe this, but I used to be crazy about little babies when I was a kid. I don’t know, maybe it was because I always wanted brothers and sisters…”

“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. I shouldn’t have dropped it on her like this. “Is there someplace we can go? Where is everybody?”

“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.

The cane toppled onto the braided rug and lay there, unneeded and forgotten. His arms tightened around her as she kissed him, but only for a moment; there was too much urgency, too much hunger in him. His hands wandered, shaking, over her back and shoulders, her nape and the silky dampness of her hair…followed the taut ribbons of muscle along her spine to the firm and modest swell of her behind…relearning the shape and feel and texture of her. He felt dazed all over again at the miracle of her, astonished and humble and exalted at the same time.

Oh, but the kiss…he didn’t think she’d ever kissed him quite that way before. With exuberance and fierceness and fire and passion, yes-that was only Sam, the only way she could be. But not with this wildness. And something else, something deeper…something he didn’t dare hope for or give a name to. Something that felt…irreversible.

She kissed him hard and deep, holding nothing back, and he tasted blood and hoped it wasn’t hers. By the time she came up for air his lips were swollen and hot already, pulses thumped in his belly and loins, and his breaths were ragged gasps. With his focus narrowing, his goal and purpose suddenly urgent and clear and the word bed uppermost in his mind, he dragged his mouth from hers and croaked, “Don’t you want to-”

Misunderstanding his intent, she growled, “Shut up, Pearse,” and reclaimed his mouth like a hungry lioness. Her hands tugged at his shirt, his belt buckle.

Caught off guard and off balance, he staggered back against the door frame. She gasped and clutched at him, then burst into helpless laughter, which she instantly tried to smother against his shoulder. “Oh, God, Pearse, I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat, lifted her head, shook back her hair and gazed at him, eyes glowing with a fierce, wild light. “I didn’t even ask. How is your leg?”

“Healing,” he told her absently, as his hands worked their way along her shoulders to the sides of her neck. Cradling her head between them like a precious treasure, stroking her cheeks with his thumbs, he tilted her head back, lowered his mouth to her throat. She smelled poignantly of baby powder. When she moaned softly he moved his mouth to hers and kissed her, slowly and with infinite tenderness, in direct and deliberate contrast with the way they’d kissed before. And when at last he lifted his head and gazed down at her, her eyes were still closed.

“I wanna see it,” she mumbled drunkenly.

“What, my leg? Sam…it isn’t pretty.”

“Like I care.” She swayed forward, and her mouth was hot and humid on his throat…her tongue measured his hammering pulse.

He closed his eyes and said weakly, “Right here? Right now?”

“Nuh-uh…” Working her way up to his mouth in determined nibbles, she backed him across the hall and through another doorway. “This is better. It’s my room…”

She drew back from him, then, and placed her palms on his chest. She lifted her eyes to his and there was no trace of laughter or wildness in them. Instead they looked bruised and wounded. “Please, Pearse,” she whispered. “Let me see.”

Slowly, he began to unbutton his shirt. Slowly, he pulled it free, and his hands moved on to his belt buckle…then the zipper of his slacks.

She didn’t help him, didn’t hurry him, simply clung to his eyes as if they were the only thing in the universe, and he felt suddenly that this was the most intimate thing they’d ever done together, even more intimate than all the times they’d made love. It frightened him a little…more than a little…because he knew this wasn’t about sex, it was much more important than sex, more binding than sex…more permanent.

Her hands slipped lightly down his hips and thighs, following his slacks as they slid to the floor, and she sank onto the edge of the bed without a sound…heavily, as though her legs wouldn’t hold her any longer.

He held himself relaxed, trusting her completely, and she looked a long, silent time, her hands almost absently stroking the outsides of his legs. Then she leaned forward and carefully touched her lips to the ragged half-healed scar on the inner part of his thigh. His breath hissed between his teeth, but he didn’t move, and let his hands lie easily on her shoulders as she moved her mouth over him, lightly as breath, and the ends of her hair grazed his fevered skin, soft and cool as tears.

Then suddenly he couldn’t be still any longer. His hands slid upward along her neck…gathered her hair in greedy handfuls as he tipped her head back and bent down to kiss her. But instead of claiming her mouth as he’d meant to do, he paused and looked down into her fierce bright eyes, and his heart seemed to stop and the earth beneath him quake at what he saw there.

“Sam,” he whispered. “My Samantha…”

A radiant smile broke over her face, at the same moment tears seemed to burst from her eyes. Tears and laughter…like rain and sunshine. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.

He kissed her then, reverently…adoringly, bearing her slowly backward onto the tulip quilt that haphazardly covered the bed, and when he would have followed her down, she put her hands on his chest and held him away, still laughing through tears while she squirmed and tugged at her clothes. Then he was helping her skin off her shorts and T-shirt, and shoes and various articles of clothing were sailing into unknown corners of the room, until at last he brought his body and hers together with a profound and grateful sense of homecoming.

He held her close…so close he felt the shape of her ribs and the heart beating madly beneath them. Her woman’s scent and quivering warmth overwhelmed him, and yet he felt famished, as though he’d never be able to get enough of it. He felt her strong, capable hands on his back, and the tiny flaws and imperfections her occupation had given them, and it seemed the most erotic, the most exquisite pleasure he’d ever known.

He wanted to stroke her…explore every inch of her body with his hands…worship her with his mouth…feast on her with his eyes. But she was already moving beneath him, shifting in the small adjusting ways that would bring her body into perfect and intimate alignment with his, and who was he to resist? There would be time enough…a lifetime, he hoped…for the feasting.

And so her body welcomed his, and their coming together was different than at any time before…quieter, perhaps, but at the same time infinitely more intense. Though his jaws ached and his body shivered with the pressure of building emotions and passion thundered in his blood, he felt no sense of masculine triumph, no sense of coming into, of entering her body, nor even of a mutual giving and taking. Instead it seemed to him a gentle merging of mind and body, complete and irreversible…like two quiet rivers coming together, then flowing on as one…

And flow on they did, faster and faster, navigating giddily over rocks and rills, clinging together through wild rapids and crying out in terror and exhilaration as they tumbled over thundering falls…to drift at last into quiet pools, all their turbulence, for the moment, spent.

Afterward, it was Sam who spoke first. “Okay, Pearse,” she said in a gruff and crusty voice that was classically, typically Sam, as if trying to deny the emotional white water they’d just come safely through. “What the heck was that?”

He smiled down at her, framing her face with his hand, wiping the sheen of sweat and tears from her flushed cheeks. “Don’t you know?” he asked, amused and tender.

She gazed at him in silence for a moment, her eyes growing bright again, like stars. “Yeah,” she finally whispered, “I think I do. This is us from now on, isn’t it, Pearse?”

“You bet it is,” he said softly, lying back and drawing her against him, dazed, still, at this happiness that had somehow found him when he’d never expected it to happen at all.

She popped up again almost at once, restless as a child fighting nap time, to place a hand on his chest and gaze down at him, her face earnest and grave. “I meant what I said, though. You don’t have to talk about your past if you don’t want to. It was a dumb thing to do, giving you an ultimatum like that. I’m really sorry-”

“Shh…” He laid a finger gently across her lips. “It was an ultimatum I needed to hear, I think. It made me realize-something did, anyway-that I’ve spent my whole life being afraid of something that can’t possibly harm me. Memories, Sam. Just memories. How can those change who I am, or where my life is now? The answer is, they can’t. I’ve survived a lot, and by some miracle I have you…”

She kissed him, then asked carefully, “Have you remembered, then? What happened when your parents died?”

He shook his head and closed his eyes. “I’ve tried, Sam. I truly have. All I get are bits and pieces.”

“What kind of pieces? Maybe if you told me about them, it would help you remember.”

He opened his eyes and gazed up at her, memorizing the shape of her forehead as he lifted his hand and idly stroked back her hair. “Sounds, mostly,” he said, smiling a little. “Just sounds. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get any pictures. I don’t know why, but there just aren’t any.”

“Maybe that’s why,” she said, blinking at him in a solemn way that made him think of owls. “Maybe you can’t remember pictures because there aren’t any.”

He stared at her, a faint little buzz of wonderment beginning deep in his chest. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “What time of day did it happen? Probably night, right? Maybe you were hiding. Maybe it was dark where you were. So, the only thing you would remember is sounds.”

“My God.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes and began to laugh, weakly and helplessly. “My God, Sam…trust you to cut through all the crap and solve the mystery of my life in one fell swoop.”

She snuggled down beside him with a pleased, almost smug little smile. “So-what noises do you remember? Tell me.”

Any urge to laugh vanished. He swallowed and closed his eyes. “Pounding,” he said thickly. “That’s always the first thing. Someone-my father-banging on the door. Banging…pounding…with his fists, feet, I don’t know. Trying to break it down.”

“And…where are you?”

“I’m in a bedroom, I think. I don’t remember which one. I have the little ones with me. It’s my job to look after them when my father is having one of his…spells. I have to keep them out of his way. Keep them safe. I’ve taken them into the bedroom and I’ve locked the door, except…I don’t trust the lock, so I’ve wedged a chair under the handle, like my mom showed me. Only…now I’m afraid…terrified even that won’t be enough. I can hear the wood splintering…breaking. I know it will only take a few more blows and he’ll be through. My mother is screaming…crying. I hold on to the little ones…I have my arms around them, and they’re all trembling. The twins, the little girls are sobbing and crying, ‘Mama, Mama…’ but the boys just cry quietly.

“I hear sirens…more sirens, getting louder and louder until it seems they’re coming right into the room, and there’s lots of people shouting…and all of a sudden the pounding stops. There’s a moment…several minutes…when all I hear is the little ones whimpering…and then, there’s a loud bang-so loud we-the children and I-all jump. We hold each other even tighter, and there’s another bang, and we flinch again, and then there’s just confusion…voices shouting…footsteps running…glass breaking…the little ones crying…and I think I might be crying too…”

“Oh, God…Cory-it’s all right…it’s all right…I love you…I’ve got you…”

He discovered he was crying, but he knew that was all right. He was all right. Sam was holding him tightly, cradling his head against her, and her hands were gentle as they wiped the tears from his face.

Lizzy-Beth’s crying woke them. Cory groaned in protest when Sam slipped away from his side. She threw him a dark look as she tugged on her underpants. “Better get used to it. That’s what you’re asking for, you know.”

“I can’t wait,” he murmured. She felt his eyes following her as she moved around the room mostly naked, gathering up her scattered clothes.

“Yeah? That’s definitely one of those ‘be careful what you wish for’ things, Pearse.” But she was smiling as she left him and went to pick up the howling baby, liking the look of him all relaxed and tousled and sleepy in her bed. Liking the way she felt, too-feminine and powerful, gentle and strong, proud to have been gifted with the wisdom of women, passed down from the caves and campfires through uncounted ages.

Later, after Lizzy-Beth had been fed and changed, they put her in the infant carrier-which Cory insisted on strapping on himself-and went for a walk down the lane that arrowed past the house, through the hay fields and down to the woods and the creek beyond.

“My father wasn’t a monster,” he said quietly as they strolled slowly, the uneven crunch of their footsteps and the scrape of Cory’s cane the only other sounds. “I have good memories of him, from before he went to Vietnam. He was a kind and gentle man, he liked to read books, and he told the best stories, stories he’d make up himself. But…” He hitched in a breath and looked away, across the fields. “He went to Vietnam, and he died over there. As surely as if they’d sent him home in a body bag. The person that came home to my mother and me was someone else…a stranger.

“I’ve often thought that’s why I became interested in covering wars…because I wanted to find out what happened to my dad, wanted to understand what it was that destroyed him.” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “My only question now is, why wars don’t destroy more of the people who fight in them. Funny thing is, you know-they screen people before they let them become policemen…firemen, but they take ordinary people out of their everyday lives-family men, loving husbands, fathers-put them through a little bit of training, then send them out to kill. Some people can handle it, I guess. Others-like my father-can’t. He had too much empathy, I think.”

“Like you,” Sam said softly.

It was a hot and muggy Fourth of July evening, but she was remembering a day of soft May sunshine, and Cory’s very first visit here, and walking with him down this very lane, side by side but not quite touching…knowing she was probably about to fall in love.

It was harder to recall the girl she’d been back then. The woman she was now couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit ashamed of her arrogance and carelessness, the giddy and selfish way she’d plunged into Cory’s life, too full of herself to really see him, too naive to recognize the shadows behind his quiet, compassionate eyes.

Still…she could forgive herself for being young, she supposed, and there had been a kind of innocence about that time: the newness of the feelings, delicious excitement, the roller-coaster ride between euphoria and despair, the awe and the fear. And she knew it didn’t begin to compare with what she felt now for the man walking beside her…the love she felt for him, and the awesome challenge and responsibility of having his heart and soul entrusted to her keeping. Forever after. It was humbling…thrilling. And terrifying, too.

But Sammi June Bauer’s mama hadn’t raised her to be a coward.

“Pearse,” she said without looking at him, watching her feet as they strolled along. “That question you asked me four years ago…is it still on the table?”

She felt his fingers tighten around hers, though he didn’t reply right away, and in his silence she could feel him weighing her words, making sure he understood. Then he said softly, “You know it is.”

“Well then,” she said, “the answer is yes.”

He stopped walking and turned toward her, taking both of her hands in his. His shadowed eyes gazed at her solemnly over the baby’s bright, uncurious eyes and bobbing head, as he uttered one word: “When?”

Her breathing hitched, and she tried to smile. “As soon as possible, I think.”

He leaned carefully past the baby and kissed her. “I want that, too,” he said in a husky, breaking voice. “But there’s something I have to do first.”

She closed her eyes, leaned her forehead against his shoulder and said with a tremulous sigh, “I know.”

“I’m going to find them, Sam. My brothers and sisters. I have to find them.”

She felt warm moisture seep between her lashes. “Of course you do.” She lifted her head and took his face between her hands and smiled fiercely at him through her tears. “But not first-after. Marry me, and we’ll find them together.”

Wordless for once, he hooked his arm around her shoulders and buried his face in her hair.

Slipping her arm around his waist, she turned her face against his neck, breathing in his scent, his warmth, his goodness. “We’ll find them, Pearse,” she whispered. “I promise you we will.”