The Bracelet
Karen Rose Smith

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Prologue

“You’ve got to tell Sean and Kat what happened over there!” Laura Malone couldn’t keep her voice calm, couldn’t keep fear from beating against her chest, couldn’t alleviate the turmoil in her husband’s eyes.

After yanking off his tie, Brady tossed it on top of his desk. “Sean’s going to believe what he wants anyway. He doesn’t listen to anything I say. He hasn’t for years.”

Eighteen now, Sean admired his father. Yet in a way, that was the reason they disagreed as often as they did. Sean felt he couldn’t live up to his dad’s expectations. Kat? Kat adored her dad and would listen to any explanation he gave.

“If you don’t talk to them, they’ll hear the reporters spin the story. It might even make the eleven o’clock news. Sean could hear about it at baseball practice. Kat’s been upstairs with her headphones on since she got home from school and is oblivious for the moment. But as soon as she comes down, she’ll see the news vans and have questions.” At fourteen, their daughter was always full of questions.

Anxiety and worry had arrived on the Malone doorstep with the evening paper. Laura couldn’t believe the local reporter had dug into Brady’s service records and then snooped until he’d found someone to talk to him. She couldn’t believe he’d unearthed the details of what had happened to her husband thirty-seven years ago. Just because Brady would soon be honored with the York, Pennsylvania, Millennium Club’s Man of the Year Award….

He was such a tall man, such a strong man, usually so full of energy, his blue eyes so intense and clear. As she studied her husband of thirty-three years, she realized he’d taken control of his emotions as he always had. He’d withdrawn and was hiding them from her.

He looked so tired. When he’d returned home from the office, he’d found the news vans outside and the newspaper article he didn’t want to deal with.

Their phone rang insistently. More reporters. Probably Brady’s sister. They’d had Easter dinner with her like a normal family yesterday. Today…

“The reporters can do what they want, say what they want, spin what they want.” Apparently Brady wasn’t able to check all of his anger. It edged every word. “The past is in the past.”

That had been her husband’s mantra for years. She’d never agreed. But she’d gone along because she loved him…because she wanted their marriage to be solid…because she understood why he wouldn’t want to dig the past up. “I’m afraid that with all this Sean will start drinking again. We think he’s stopped. But do we really know?”

Brady’s angular face was tight with strain as he ran his hand through his black hair. “Sean’s ready to live his own life. You worry too much about him.”

Her voice rose in spite of her efforts to keep calm. “Maybe you don’t worry enough! You think grounding him when he gets out of hand is all the attention he needs.”

She hated fighting with Brady. Arguments during their marriage had been rare. But lately, they were at odds more often, especially over the kids.

“Sean needs to learn how to handle life on his own,” Brady protested. “Once he goes to college—”

“Then you won’t have to deal with him. Maybe if you did…if you faced the kids learning about what happened in Vietnam—”

As Brady turned away from her, she thought he was putting up his guard again. She thought he was going to shut down, walk away and—

Brady’s palm went to his chest. One shoulder sagged and he collapsed onto the carpet.

“Brady! Brady,” she called as if she expected him to lever himself off the floor and be fine. Then reality struck. She ran to him and fell on her knees beside him, shouting for their daughter.

But it wasn’t Kat who appeared at the door. It was Sean, in his baseball uniform. His face was almost as pale as Brady’s.

He rushed to his dad. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I think he’s having a heart attack.” Shaking off her panic, Laura felt light-headed. This man was her love…her life. She couldn’t lose him. She couldn’t.

Brady’s face turned gray as sweat beaded his brow.

Strands of light brown hair escaped Laura’s ponytail and brushed her cheeks as she laid her hand on her husband’s chest. “Brady? Brady! Can you hear me?”

He wasn’t breathing.

She almost panicked. Then she knew what she had to do. She directed Sean, “Help me—you know CPR.”

She tilted Brady’s head back and listened, desperate to hear breaths. She heard none. Checking for a pulse, she found none.

“I’ve never worked on a real person.” Her son’s voice shook.

Pinching Brady’s nose, she covered his mouth with hers and blew until his chest rose, then checked for a pulse again. She still didn’t feel one. “Start the compressions.”

Sean knelt beside his father and did what he’d learned in a summer safety class.

After Laura administered two breaths, she stared at Brady, hoping for signs of life. Tears burned in her eyes as she thought about their argument.

“What’s going on? I heard you yell—” Kat froze as she saw her father collapsed in front of the bookshelves.

“Call 911,” Sean shouted at her. “Dad’s having a heart attack. Call them now!”

She stood immobilized.

Watching Brady’s chest rise and fall, monitoring Sean’s compressions, ready to give measured breaths again, Laura fought for calm and said, “Kat, pick up the phone and call 911.”

As Kat crossed to the desk, Laura breathed into her husband, knowing she loved him as much as life itself. She would do anything in her power to save him.

Chapter 1

Brady’s heart attack was her fault. Her fault.

As guilt ate at Laura, she knew she had to be strong for Sean and Kat. She couldn’t cry. But her abhorrence of hospitals had her trembling inside. This waiting room for the cardiac intensive care unit was supposed to be an oasis in the midst of mayhem. Outside of its walls there were shiny tile floors, glass cubicles, nurses clad in scrubs and patients the staff couldn’t save.

Her first encounter with York General Hospital had come when she was twelve. Her parents had suffered a terrible automobile accident and they’d been brought here. They’d both died a few days apart. Early in her marriage to Brady, three miscarriages had been confirmed here. Their child who’d died of SIDS had been autopsied here.

She’d thought she’d learned to steel herself when she walked into the bright atrium lobby, trying to wrap a protective layer around herself—some kind of barrier that would remove her from everything that was going on behind the doors, on upper floors, in operating rooms. But even as recently as last year, when she’d brought Kat to the E.R. after a skateboarding accident, she’d known she could never protect herself from what happened in this building. It had only taken her fifty-eight years to learn that.

Worried sick about Brady, waiting to hear from the cardiologist, she glanced at Sean and Kat, who were seated on the long sofa, still in shock and silent.

A white-coated doctor finally strode into the room. “Mrs. Malone?”

She realized so many of the doctors she saw in this time of her life were younger than she was. This one appeared to be in his forties. His brown hair, parted to one side, dipped boyishly over his brow. However, when she looked into his gray eyes, she saw the maturity he needed to do what he did.

“Yes, I’m Laura Malone.” She extended her arm to Kat and Sean. “These are my children. Brady’s children.” She and Brady had gone to great lengths to make sure Sean and Kat never felt adopted, always understood they’d been specially chosen. Kat had believed them. Sean…

“Why don’t we sit down,” the doctor suggested as he extended his hand to her. “I’m your husband’s cardiologist, Dominic Gregano.”

Laura gave his hand a quick shake, then followed him to the love seat perpendicular to the sofa.

He waited until she was seated, then lowered himself on the cushion next to her. “Your husband had a myocardial infarction—a heart attack. We’re going to do a catheterization at 7:00 a.m.”

“To find out if there’s blockage?”

His brow furrowed. “And how much damage. The cath will tell us.”

He was watching her, and she wondered if he thought she might collapse. She couldn’t with two children to think of, not with Brady and her kids depending on her.

There was only one thing she was concerned about now. “Is he conscious?”

“Your husband is on meds, but he’s probably conscious enough to realize you’re present when you talk to him.”

“I want to see him.”

“I know you do.” His face reddened. “I mean, I imagine that you do. But I’m going to monitor him another half hour or so before you come in.”

With Sean and Kat right beside her, she had to be careful with what she said and how she said it. “What if something happens in the meantime?”

“If it does, our staff needs to be with him, rather than you.”

Regrets pushed at her. “I have to tell him I love him. I have to let him know we’re here.”

“It’s amazing what our patients know without our telling them. Were you with him when this happened?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then I’m sure he knows you’re here. A half hour seems like forever right now, but I’ll be back for you as soon as I can.” The kindness in this lean, tall doctor was evident, and she was grateful for it.

He was no sooner out the door than Kat turned to her mother and questions tumbled out. “Why did Daddy have a heart attack? And why were those vans in front of our house? I didn’t see them until you yelled and I ran downstairs.”

Laura was attempting to find the right words, when Sean responded first. “There was an article about him in the newspaper.”

Kat focused on her mother again for an explanation.

How could she say she had caused Brady’s heart attack? How could she explain the impetus behind their argument and the stress that had caught up to her husband after all these years?

“A reporter wrote an article about something that happened when your dad was in the service,” Laura replied carefully.

“It said he killed people.” Sean ran his hand through his spiked brown hair, looking miserable. “Women. And maybe even kids.”

So Sean had read the article already. She couldn’t talk about this without Brady. She simply couldn’t. “We’re not going to discuss the article or your dad’s experiences now.”

“Is it true?” Sean persisted in spite of what she’d said.

When she didn’t answer immediately, deciding what to tell him, Sean asked, “Have you known all these years?”

She took a steadying breath. “I knew about what happened. But that article isn’t the whole story.”

That didn’t seem to matter to Sean. He looked at her as if he didn’t know her…as if she was some type of co-conspirator. Oh, to be eighteen again. To be full of idealism and passion and to be able to separate black from white. Yet she noticed something else on her son’s face. Fear? Was he afraid his dad would die?

That was on Kat’s mind, too. “Will Daddy be okay?”

Kat was beautiful, with her curly chestnut hair, her blue eyes, her heart-shaped face. There had never been any doubt that she was daddy’s girl and would always be.

“This is a good hospital, with good doctors. We have to believe he’ll be fine.” Laura’s fingers went to the charm bracelet on her arm, which she rarely removed. It represented her life and Brady’s. It represented years of happiness as well as heartache.

Suddenly Kat jumped up from the sofa, as if she had too much energy trapped inside. “I can’t stay sitting in here just waiting. I’m going to go get something to drink.”

“This is a big place, Kat—”

“Mom, I’m fourteen, not four. I won’t get lost. There are signs everywhere.”

“We don’t need to worry about where you are,” Sean argued.

Kat went to the door anyway and said over her shoulder, “Then don’t,” and was gone.

A heavy silence settled over the room until Sean asked, “Do you want me to go with her?”

Her daughter was independent. Yet she was intelligent and usually acted with some degree of common sense. “She’ll be okay. She has to let off a little steam. She doesn’t understand everything that’s going on.”

“Neither do I,” Sean mumbled.

“The article is something your dad has to discuss with you. If something happens to him—” She’d never intended to say that. It had just spilled out.

“If something happens to Dad, it’ll be my fault. I heard you arguing about me.”

How could he have—Then she remembered. He’d run in as soon as Brady collapsed. He must have returned home after baseball practice, seen the vans and heard them arguing. The most important thing was that he didn’t blame himself. She knew what guilt did. Brady had taught her.

She moved closer to her son. “You are not to blame. The argument wasn’t about you no matter what you think you heard. It was about the newspaper article. If anyone’s to blame, I am. Vietnam is a touchy subject and I should have—” She stopped, not sure exactly what she should have done.

After a deep breath, she continued. “Sean, your dad had a medical condition we apparently didn’t know about. That’s what caused his heart attack. Okay?” If she repeated that often enough, maybe she’d believe it, too.

He stared back at her for a long time, then finally agreed, “Okay.”

“The important thing now is to let the doctors do their job, then listen when they tell us what we can do.”

She always felt better when there was something she could do. She’d always been like that.

Her fingers went to the bracelet again. She was the one at fault. She and Brady had made an agreement the day of their wedding not to talk about the past again. Yet when that past stood up and socked you in the face…Guilt gnawed at her anew. Why had she pushed so hard, when dealing with the article was her husband’s decision to make?

Because the past still cast a shadow over him no matter how much he denied it.

Sean noticed her absently fingering a charm. Since he obviously preferred to change the subject, she let him when he remarked, “You’ve got a lot of charms on there. When did Dad buy you the last one?”

Her children knew the gold charms made her happier than any other gift. But they’d never shown much interest in their meaning.

She singled out a tiny ski. “The last one Dad gave me was two Valentine’s Days ago. It was supposed to bring back all the memories from our winter trip to Vermont.”

“The vacation I wanted to ditch?”

She nodded. It had been the vacation she’d proposed so they’d all have time to spend together as a family.

At first Brady had insisted, “I can’t take a vacation now.” As CEO of his own robotics firm, he could work twenty hours a day, get four hours of sleep and be perfectly happy. And more often than not, that was what he tried to do. But Sean had been having trouble in school because of his dyslexia. He’d become rebellious and needed reinforcement that they were a family. Kat had been entering her teenage years and Laura had known that soon Kat wouldn’t want to spend time with her parents, either. Then to Laura’s surprise, one day that January, Brady had come home early to celebrate winning a government contract and agreed they all deserved to get away for a few days.

She and Brady had slipped back to the chalet while the kids were taking a skiing lesson and made love in front of the fire.

“Which charm’s the first one he ever gave you?” her son asked now.

Smiling, she pointed to two charms, both rife with symbolism of everything she and Brady had shared from the beginning. “He gave me the bracelet with the heart and the daisy before he went to basic training.”

“You met Dad when he was home from college on spring break, didn’t you?”

That had been their story all these years. And it was true. But it was a very small part of how they’d met. They’d never gone into it with the kids because their first encounter was connected to the memories Brady had of Vietnam. So they’d always kept their story simple. But now simple might not be enough. With Brady lying in intensive care, maybe it was time to break down barriers, even if she had to do it alone. Maybe it was time to let their children realize who she and Brady had been and possibly understand who they were now. They would only be able to do that with the truth.

Laura slipped back in time so easily that she could almost touch the daisy in her hair. Flower power at its finest. She could practically feel the wind whipping her long skirt around her knees as she’d stood with the antiwar protest line in front of the courthouse in York, in early April 1969—girls in everything from miniskirts and beads to guys with ponytails and beards taking advantage of their right to make their opinion count. Even more than that, they were rebelling against institutions they no longer believed in. All that passion paired with rebellion was scary, and Laura had shivered in spite of the warm day.

Although much of the protest against the war had originated on college campuses—she’d gone to business school for two years, then started working full-time—everyone seemed to have an opinion. That day she’d worked until four at the Bon Ton department store, then had walked to the courthouse.

The underground newspapers at the coffeehouse along with the antiwar lyrics strummed on a guitar had touched deep chords inside her. Throwing off her fear of getting involved, she’d decided another voice might make a difference. This was her first demonstration and she was jittery about it. But she had high-school friends who were in Vietnam and she wanted them home. Why should they be fighting a war the U.S. could never win? Maybe didn’t even know how to win.

She’d arrived at the courthouse steps, where about twenty-five other young people were gathered, holding signs, many wearing peace symbols. She had on a silver one on a leather thong around her neck. As she lifted her sign—it had taken hours to design it the night before, with its big blue peace letters and flowers around the borders in fluorescent shades of orange and green—someone started strumming a guitar, singing the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” The song brought tears to her eyes. There was something rousing and deep-down wrenching about raising her sign, singing along, wishing and hoping she’d see friends again who hadn’t been able to get college deferments and had gone to fight a war they didn’t understand.

When she turned away from the musician toward the sidewalk at the base of the steps, she noticed him. She was on one of the lower steps, her gauzy sleeves laced with ribbons flapping around the handle of her sign. He was standing across the sidewalk, seemingly removed from all of it, observing, a bystander rather than a protester. Their gazes met. She felt a ripple of awareness dance through her.

His eyes were blue, his shaggy hair coal black and wavy. Her heart lurched. Her breath came faster. He stood a little straighter, gave her a wry smile as if to say, It’s a shame you’re over there and I’m over here. His stance was so optimally male. His gaze held hers as the protesters began chanting. Remembering why she was there, she joined in. Still he stood watching as she turned to face the courthouse. She listened to one of the protesters spout his views of the war, but she was still distracted by him.

When she slanted toward the street again, she’d half expected the man—and he did look like a man rather than a boy—to be gone. But he was still there, interested in all of it, with his focus returning to her.

She’d dated in high school. She’d attended her senior prom. She’d gone out a few times with guys from business school. But losing her parents and living with an aunt who pretended Laura didn’t exist had made her yearn for self-sufficiency. In an era of girls learning that sex was fun, she wasn’t so sure. Before she gave herself to anyone, she had to be certain they’d have more than one night, one date, one groping session to build on. Besides, she was Catholic and the teachings of her parochial-school days had stuck whether she liked it or not. Deep down, she’d believed in the idea of saving herself for the man she’d spend her life with.

Yet, one look at this man, one fall into his eyes and she felt all trembly.

The police had surrounded the gathering now, watching just as the wavy-haired man was watching.

Suddenly an old bus rattled to the curb. The front and back doors opened simultaneously and twenty-five to thirty more protesters filed out. The bus’s arrival surprised everyone, including the police. The officers spread out. Laura heard one patrolman encouraging the new protesters to get back on the bus. But they were on a mission, even if they were late.

They shouted in unison, “Bring our boys home now!”

Then all at once, nothing was peaceful anymore.

As bedlam erupted, someone caught Laura’s wrist. When she turned, she was standing toe-to-toe with…him.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” he said, “or you’ll be arrested. Or worse.”

From demonstrations that had gone before at colleges and in other towns, she knew anything could happen.

He tugged on her arm. “This way.”

Without a second thought, she followed him across the street as he somehow kept her safe from a station wagon that almost mowed them down. As they ran up the block, Mr. Blue-eyes slipped the sign from her hands and dumped it in an office doorway. They kept up their fast pace until he guided her around the corner where the public library stood.

Breathless, they stopped.

“Are you okay?” he asked, placing his hand protectively on her back, peering into her face.

“I guess.” Her voice was shaky from everything that had happened—from running…from being so close to him. Yet underneath it all, she felt indignant. “We could have demonstrated peacefully.” She added angrily, “If only everyone had just kept their cool.”

“Have you demonstrated before?”

She shook her head. “No. That was my first.”

“And your last?” His eyes looked a bit amused now.

“No! Absolutely not. I don’t want to see anyone else sent over there.”

“I’m going to be going over there.”

She stared at him, dumbstruck.

He was six inches taller than she was, at least six-two. His shoulders were so broad. He was a stranger and she shouldn’t have just followed him like that, but no one could tell her now what she should or shouldn’t do. She was twenty and becoming liberated day by day.

Eager to know more about him, she asked, “When are you going?”

“I’ll be called up as soon as I graduate.”

“Graduate from where?”

“Lehigh Valley. I’m just home on break.” He extended his hand to her. “Brady. Brady Malone.”

His fingers felt so wonderfully warm engulfing hers. He didn’t exactly shake her hand, but rather just held it.

“Laura. Laura Martinelli.”

Ten more buses could have stopped at the curb and expelled demonstrators, but they wouldn’t have noticed.

“I have a car,” he said. “It’s parked in the public lot. Would you like to go for a burger and shake?”

“That depends,” she decided. “Will I be safe with you?”

“You’ll be as safe as you want to be.”

This Brady Malone was obviously a lot more experienced than she was. But instinct told her she had nothing to fear from him.

Nothing at all.

As Laura finished recounting the first time she’d met Brady, Sean studied her and asked thoughtfully, “So you just went off with him without knowing him?” His voice didn’t hold reproach, rather surprise.

“Yes. But don’t tell your sister. It’s not something I ever want her to do.”

“Don’t want me to do what?” Kat asked, suddenly standing in the waiting room, a soda in her hand.

“I was telling Sean how I met your dad. It was at an antiwar protest.”

Kat’s eyes grew big.

But before her daughter could ask questions, Dr. Gregano appeared, a serious expression on his face.

Chapter 2

When Laura opened the glass door into Brady’s CICU cubicle a few minutes later, she drew in a huge, bolstering breath. She felt so responsible for what was happening now…the condition he was in. The last thing she ever wanted was to hurt him.

Brady was hooked up to monitors, IVs, oxygen and a blood pressure cuff. The leads on his chest were producing the green lines—the hills and peaks on the largest monitor. He was so white, so lifeless, that she feared she’d lost him already. She was paralyzed for a moment, afraid to go forward. She’d been afraid so many times with Brady. But she’d covered it, and in acting strong she’d discovered strength—when he’d returned home from the army, when she’d tried to get pregnant, after they’d adopted Sean. Although when their baby had died of SIDS, Brady had been the strong one.

She only had ten minutes with him, so she dragged the orange vinyl chair to the bed. Nurses bustled in and out constantly. To have a few seconds alone with her husband, she’d have to talk to him now. Who knew what could happen next?

She covered his hand, the one without the IV line, with hers. He was cool to the touch, not at all like the man who always emanated heat. He could be hot in the dead of winter, when her hands and nose were usually cold.

“Brady,” she whispered.

When there was no response, she cleared her throat and said his name again, louder.

His eyes fluttered but didn’t open.

“Brady, it’s Laura. I’m so sorry. I never should have pushed you—” Her voice broke. Regaining her composure, she said, “I love you. You have to fight. You can’t let anything happen now. I want to be married to you for another thirty-three years.”

She kept talking. “Soon the doctors will determine exactly what’s wrong. You have to cooperate with them. You have to fight to get well. Kat and Sean and I need you.”

“Sean,” Brady mumbled, then drifted off again.

“Brady?”

He appeared oblivious to her presence. She understood his body needed rest, but she needed all the time with him she could get. With a lump in her throat, she stroked back her husband’s hair. Although it had silvered at the temples over the years, it hadn’t gotten any thinner. She loved running her fingers through it. She’d loved him from the moment she’d met him. Definitely from that first night when they’d gone to dinner and talked.

After Brady had rescued her from the protest demonstration, they’d walked to the public lot where his car had been parked. The blue Camaro was shiny and new.

“Wow!” she’d said, impressed. “Nice car.”

“I just got it last week. The old one broke down when I was driving home from school.”

He was dressed in bell-bottom jeans and a knit shirt, but from the way Brady Malone spoke and acted, she’d expected he’d come from a middle-class home. Now she knew he was probably upper middle class. “Did you buy the car yourself?”

“I work summers on my dad’s construction sites. But I have to admit, he helped with this. Bottom line is, he and Mom don’t want to drive me back and forth to school. And I’ll need a car eventually. It’ll sit in the garage when I’m away, but I think my dad wanted something tangible of mine that he could take care of. Sort of like he’s doing something for me.”

She hated the fact that this man was leaving the U.S. to risk his life in a war everyone was confused about, a war that took up so much of the news and caused controversy. “You might not go. More troops could be pulled out. You could get a medical deferment.”

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he told her over the hood of the car.

She saw the truth of it in his eyes. Her heart pounded every time she looked at him. How could that be when she’d known him such a short time?

“Where do you live?” he asked.

Now she went on alert. “Why do you need to know?”

“We could get something to eat near wherever you live, then I could drop you off at home.” Studying her face, his gaze lingering on the daisy over her temple, he suggested almost casually, “On the other hand, if you’re afraid to ride in the car with me, if you think I’m going to take advantage of you, I can walk you to the bus stop.”

He seemed annoyed that she would even consider he wasn’t a man with a fine reputation. That bit of arrogance wasn’t unattractive. “Where do you live?” she asked.

“So you can seek vengeance if I don’t behave?” Now he grinned and the annoyance was gone.

That smile. With it, he could become president of the United States. Or join a rock band. “I’m keeping my options open.”

He laughed. “I live behind the hospital.”

Those were nice homes, and reinforced her feeling that this man might be out of her league. “I live in Elmwood—Third Avenue. Half a house.” She wanted to make it clear she didn’t come from one of the large homes on the boulevard or even in the nicer single-family dwellings on Fourth Avenue.

“We can go to the Sportsman Diner.”

The restaurant was close to Third Avenue. “They have more than burgers and fries.”

He gave her another one of those long appraisals. “I think you could use more than burgers and fries.”

“Hey, if you don’t like the way I look—”

“I didn’t say that.” His voice had a sensual I’m interested quality to it.

She was skinny and her legs were long. That was why she preferred skirts that fell below her calves. Her tummy tumbled as her gaze met his again. What was she doing?

Suddenly he came around to her side of the car and opened the door. The gesture was his personal invitation. She couldn’t resist it. She couldn’t resist him. She slid into the low, blue vinyl bucket seat, and when he closed her door, a happy feeling warmed her.

Over the next hour, they’d eaten and gotten to know each other. They’d stayed away from discussing the demonstration and the war, sensing they were on opposite sides, if not by belief then by circumstance. She loved listening to Brady’s deep voice. She liked studying his interesting face with the slight bump on his nose, the scar along the right side of his mouth, the beard line growing darker on his jaw.

It distracted her so. She yearned to touch it. Instead she tried to focus her mind on the conversation.

“So your parents were killed when you were twelve?” he asked, finishing a slice of coconut cake.

When she nodded, an old weight filled her heart. The deep cavern of missing would never have a bottom no matter how many years passed. “Yes, and my aunt Marcia took me in. It wasn’t a free choice. She was my only relative. She let me live with her because she knew I wouldn’t give her any trouble.”

“That’s not a reason to take in a child who’s lost her parents.”

“It’s been okay. I’m hoping by next year to be promoted to department manager. When I get that jump in salary, I can rent my own apartment.”

He reached across the table, and she thought he was going to take her hand. But he backed off. “You’ve been through some tough times. I can’t imagine only having an aunt for family. I have two younger brothers and a younger sister. I always have family around. Holidays at our house are wild.”

“Holidays at my aunt’s are quiet. In fact, she went away over Christmas and I spent it with a friend.” Laura mentioned it as if it was no big deal. The truth was, she’d had a great time with her best high-school friend and her mother, better than she would have had with her aunt. But she longed for a family of her own. More than anything, she wanted to be a mother. But she couldn’t tell Brady that. Not yet. Maybe someday.

They talked until the restaurant emptied, asking for refills on coffee to occupy the waitress. They had so much to say. All the while Brady had gazed at her with a focus she’d never felt from a man. They listened to much of the same music, and after dinner when “Aquarius” played on the car radio as he drove through Elmwood, they sang along—“Let the sunshine in.”

Laura loved the unselfconscious way she felt around Brady. It was as if she’d known him for years instead of hours. Her sixth sense told her he wasn’t leading her on.

After he drove down her street and she pointed out her house, he parked at the curb, then came around to the passenger side and opened the door for her. She was terrifically aware of him as they walked up the path to the three concrete steps.

“Is your aunt strict?” he asked. “I mean, does she expect you home at a certain time?”

Laura checked her watch. “My aunt spends Saturday nights with friends. She won’t be home for a while.”

A corner of his lips quirked up. “Does that mean you’re going to invite me in?”

“I shouldn’t.”

“You shouldn’t have been involved in an antiwar demonstration that could have landed you in jail,” he muttered, obviously disappointed with her answer.

“I stand up for what I believe in,” she replied quietly. He’d better understand that about her.

The porch light her aunt had left on backlit him. After a thoughtful pause and a frown, he stared into her eyes. “Do you believe we should get to know each other better?”

She was feeling too much already and realized she should be smart. “If you’re going into the service, is there any point?”

Moving closer to her then—just a step, yet it seemed to cover a mile—he enveloped her hands with his. “It would be nice to have someone to write to, someone who mattered.”

“You don’t have anyone who matters?”

“I have my parents, sister and brothers. But family is one thing—a pretty girl with a flower in her hair another.”

Laura had nosy neighbors. An older couple sat on a porch a few doors down, and who knew how many other neighbors had noticed them.

Pulling one hand from Brady’s, she took a key from her pocket. Still holding his hand, she tugged him up the steps onto the porch and to the door. Then she unlocked the door and pushed it open.

The living room was unremarkable, and Brady would probably consider it plain. The low-pile carpet and flowered upholstered furniture were ordinary.

But Brady didn’t seem to care. He put his arms around her and drew her toward him. “Do you believe in free love?”

The heat and hunger in his eyes sparked a like response in her. But she wasn’t going to be foolish. “Love isn’t free.”

Her conclusion made his brows raise. “You’ve learned that already?”

She nodded. “I have a friend who sleeps with every guy who asks her out. She’s not happy. I have another friend who’s saving herself for marriage. And she’s not happy, either. Neither is her boyfriend.”

A slow smile slipped across Brady’s lips. “So what’s your philosophy?”

“I don’t have one. I just know I have to be careful, I have to be cautious and I have to be sure that whatever I do is right for me.”

“Of all the girls I could have found at the demonstration, I had to choose one with common sense.”

Although she smiled, she asked, “Is that why you were there? To find a date?”

His expression sobered. “No. I’m not sure why I was there. I guess I had to get a feel for both sides. I wanted to know that going to fight over there was the right thing for me to do.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. My dad said he has a friend who could pull strings so I don’t get sent to Nam. That’s what my mother wants. But I can’t let him do that. I have a classmate who came back without his leg. I have to help finish what the guys before us started.” His sober expression changed. “But in the meantime—”

He was waiting for some sign from her that they should take whatever was happening between them further, that she wouldn’t back away.

She pictured him in uniform, imagined him leaving, thought about him fighting in a war he felt he had a duty to fight. In spite of the warning voice in her head, she let her fingers follow her heart. She lifted her hand and traced a line down the side of Brady’s face. She felt his jaw tense and his body go taut.

Her caress was obviously the sign he’d wanted. He kissed her until she was dizzy.

Eventually he murmured, “I’d better go. When can I see you again? I’m going back to school tomorrow night, but I can pick you up after church and you can meet my family.”

“Won’t they mind if I barge in?”

“They won’t mind. You can stay for dinner. Mom cooks enough for an army.”

“Oh, Brady, I don’t know. You’re just going to take me home—?”

“Yeah, I am, unless you’d rather not meet everyone.”

All day this man had projected confidence and self-assurance, but now he seemed uncertain. “Unless you’d rather I just go back to college and forget today ever happened.”

“No! I want to see you again. And I’d like to meet your family. But I don’t want to feel like an intruder.”

“You won’t.” He removed the daisy from her hair. “I think you might need to replace this tomorrow. This one looks as though it’s had a long day.”

She laughed and it felt so good.

He laughed, too, hugged her and then kissed her again.

With effort, Brady opened his eyes and became aware of his surroundings in CICU. Laura was stroking his hair. She loved to touch. She’d always loved to touch.

Laura.

She’d stood by him through everything. And now she’d probably saved his life. More that he owed her.

An oxygen tube was at his nose. He moistened his dry lips. “What happens next?”

“Brady. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you—”

Pushed him to tell the kids. To tell Kat, whom he’d never had a problem loving. But most of all to explain to Sean. Laura had loved their son from the moment he’d been settled in her arms by the caseworker. His own lack of response to his adopted son had made her especially protective of the child she’d loved instantly.

“It’s okay,” he managed to say hoarsely. His mouth was so dry. “Did you do CPR? I thought I heard a medic say you did.”

“Sean and I did.”

“I guess I might not make that Orioles game,” he said, trying to joke. She’d gotten him tickets for the Orioles third home game for their anniversary.

“Maybe not that game. But another one soon.”

Laura’s forced optimism wasn’t going to do either of them much good if he didn’t pull through this. “You were right,” he murmured.

“About what?”

Right about driving himself too hard, working too much, caring little about his health as long as he’d gotten everything done in a day that he’d planned. “I should have signed up for that gym membership you suggested.” He attempted to give her a smile but didn’t quite pull it off.

She looked surprised, as if that wasn’t what she’d expected.

Keep it on the surface, he warned himself. Don’t make matters worse. “What happens next?” he asked again.

“You have a catheterization in the morning. Till then, you need to rest. Don’t think about anything you shouldn’t.”

Like reporters in their front yard? Like the condemnation he’d surely see in Sean’s eyes after his son read the article?

Don’t think about it. Bury it. Like the past.

As Brady floated in a fuzzy haze, he knew he wasn’t going to dig everything up again. It didn’t matter what anybody thought, including his son. As he’d told Laura, Sean would prefer to believe the worst. If they just let everything die down—

Today’s news was tomorrow’s garbage. Vietnam was old news. He was not going to unearth memories better off left buried, unearth feelings so claustrophobic they choked him.

His heart was beating harder. Laura wasn’t quite in focus….

The sliding glass door opened and a nurse hurried in. “Ten minutes are up,” she said kindly. “But you can return in an hour.”

“Our son or daughter will be visiting then.”

Brady squeezed her hand. “You come back.”

“It’s important the kids see you.”

“Kat,” he agreed.

“Sean, too. It’ll be okay, Brady. I promise.”

Okay? He didn’t believe that for a minute.

Laura leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips.

He was almost relieved when she left. Closing his eyes, he willed his heart not to hurt any more than it already did.

Chapter 3

When his mom entered the waiting room, Sean stopped pacing. “What’s going on?” he asked, anxious to know his dad was still alive. No matter what his mom said, his dad’s collapse was his fault.

She mustered up a little smile. “Your father opened his eyes a couple of times and he even talked to me. We have to believe he’s strong enough to pull through. He’s going to need our support and—”

“Aunt Pat!” Kat jumped up from the sofa where she’d been paging through a magazine and ran to her aunt. “Did you hear? Dad had a heart attack!”

In the doorway Pat put her arms around her niece and gave her a long hug. At the same time, she glanced at Laura. “Has anything changed since you called me? I just got your message.”

Aunt Pat, his dad’s sister, was a real estate agent. Divorced, she’d never had kids, but she was nice enough, even if she did have silicone boobs and sprayed hair. She was supernice to Kat, had even invited her on a shopping trip to New York last summer. She’d given him a hundred dollars his last birthday, and that was way cool.

“He’s scheduled for a catheterization at 7:00 a.m.,” his mother responded.

“Can anyone visit him?”

“Ten minutes on the hour.”

“I won’t take that time away from you. He’ll know I’m pulling for him. I always have.”

Sean wondered what that meant. The realization dawned that he really didn’t know a lot about his parents—not really. Apparently they had secrets.

“If you’re going to be here through the night, I can drive the kids back to your place and stay with them until morning if you’d like,” his aunt offered.

Sean didn’t have to be told that a heart cath was serious stuff. “I’m not leaving. I’ll stay here.”

Aunt Pat studied him as if he were a kid. “There’s nothing you can do here.”

“I’m staying.” When he checked with his mother, he saw she understood.

She understood a lot of things his dad didn’t. But even his mom couldn’t imagine everything he kept inside. He was a disappointment to his parents. He’d never lived up to their expectations. Until he’d been diagnosed with dyslexia, his dad had thought he was lazy, that he didn’t care, that he didn’t try. After all, he wasn’t their real son. Their real son had died, and his father would never forget that. When he looked at him, Sean always felt small, as if he’d never measure up. Maybe he wouldn’t.

After all, his biological mother had given him away. He’d had the guts to finally ask questions when he was around ten. He’d learned she couldn’t care for him, and she hadn’t even known who his father was! He had no desire to find her or meet her. He had a mother. He didn’t need another one. And since his father’s identity was a mystery…Brady Malone was his dad and they were stuck with each other.

“Mom, should I go with Aunt Pat?” Kat asked.

“That’s up to you, honey. You’ll only be five to ten minutes away. I can call if anything happens.”

“What do you mean if anything happens?” Kat sounded afraid. “Dad’s not going to die. He’ll be all right, won’t he? You said he will.”

Laura went to Kat now, too, and draped an arm around her shoulders. “We have to believe he will.”

Sean felt as if he were standing in the middle of nowhere, all alone, the way he always was.

Kat’s eyes were wet now and tears dripped down her face. “I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to smell these awful smells and see all these sick people.”

Usually he tolerated his sister. But sometimes…“You’re such a spoiled brat,” Sean muttered before he could help himself.

Kat’s “I am not” protest and Laura’s warning “Sean” hit the air at the same time.

Aunt Pat held her hand up like a referee. “Whoa, everyone. Take a deep breath. Kat, it’s okay if you don’t like the hospital. I don’t, either. If you come home with me, we’ll gather some things for your dad, your mom and Sean. Was this about the article?” she asked, staring at his mom as if what had appeared in the paper was no secret to her.

“Yes,” his mother said softly. “Don’t answer the phone if it rings. I’ll sort through the messages eventually.”

Aunt Pat gave a knowing nod, clasped Kat by the elbow and led her down the hall.

After a few seconds of silence, his mom suggested, “Try to be a little understanding with your sister right now. She’s only fourteen.”

“And most of the time she acts like ten.”

His mom’s face was drawn as she told him, “We all have our own way of coping. Yours and Kat’s are different.”

His way of coping started with shots from those bottles in the toolshed. “How do you cope, Mom? How have you coped all these years knowing what Dad did? How have you lived with that?”

He hadn’t meant to bring the matter up again now, but the questions were doing a slow burn in his stomach. Gary had shown him the article in the paper at baseball practice. Maybe his dad’s heart attack was really about the article being published. But what did he have to do with that?

“Was that article in the paper true or was it a lie? Did he kill women and kids?”

For once in her life his mother was at an absolute loss for words. Finally she answered him. “I know you need to talk about this. I know you have questions. But there are two sides to every story and you have to hear your father’s.”

Maybe a part of him was glad this had happened. Maybe a part of him wanted to kick the pedestal out from under his dad’s feet. But another part…

Sean suddenly realized Kat wouldn’t be here and he’d have to visit his dad alone. Panicked, he asked, “What am I going to say when I go in to see Dad?”

“You don’t have to say anything. Just be with him. Let him know you’re there. If you do want to talk, just tell him you’re sure he can fight through this.”

When his mom’s voice cracked, Sean felt something breaking inside him. He glanced away and told himself his dad would be all right. His dad had to be all right.

As the monitors beeped, Brady floated, trying not to think or even feel. There had been times over the years when he’d blocked out all feeling. In Nam, for sure. As well as after he returned home. After Laura’s miscarriages. After Jason died—

He didn’t want to go there.

He wished there was a clock in the cubicle. But doctors probably thought patients shouldn’t think about time or count the minutes until their next visitor. Would Laura come back? Or would Sean or Kat visit?

In spite of his struggling to stay in the here and now, his mind wandered. To the day he and Laura had moved into their first house—one with a mortgage instead of a landlord. She’d discovered she was pregnant one week and they’d found the split level the next. They’d been so happy…so ready to prepare a nursery.

But then he’d returned home from work one night and—

“Laura! Laura, are you home?” he’d called as he’d set his briefcase in the kitchen. There was no answer. Yet her purse sat on the counter.

Returning to the living room, he called up the short flight of stairs. “Laura.”

A sixth sense urged him to climb them, even though she didn’t call back. At the top of the stairs he heard her crying coming from the bathroom.

Rushing in, he found her on the floor by the bathtub, with blood on her white summer dress. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong? What happened?”

She was sobbing now. “I lost our baby. Oh, Brady. I lost our baby.”

He had to get her medical attention. But her tear-stained cheeks, the sense of loss in her eyes, had him holding her and rocking her. “It’s okay. It’s okay. We’ll have another baby.”

“I wanted this one. I wanted this child. What if I can’t get pregnant again?”

“You’re young and healthy. You’ll get pregnant again. We’ll have lots of kids. You’ll see. I love you, Laura.”

Then he scooped her into his arms and carried her to his car to drive her to the hospital.

The doctor had performed a D&C. Visiting Laura and holding her through her grief had been difficult for him. He’d tried to bury his. When she’d returned home, they’d talked about trying again as soon as the doctor said they could. He’d brought her daisies. He’d bought her her favorite perfume. He hadn’t bought a charm. Charms were for the happy times. The times they wanted to remember.

Eventually her smiles had become natural again.

Until the next miscarriage. There had been a third. Then she’d become pregnant with Jason.

His son.

“Mom?”

An hour later, Sean’s strained voice told Laura she’d been staring into space for at least ten minutes. “How’d it go?” she asked.

Her son dropped down onto the sofa beside her and raked his hands through his hair. “He was sleeping. He didn’t know I was there.”

“He might have.”

Now Sean stretched out his legs and slouched against the cushion. “Tell me something about Dad you’ve never told me. Not about now, but—” he pointed to her bracelet “—tell me what he was like when he was in college. He wasn’t that much older than me.”

“He was twenty-one when I met him.”

“Did he always want to make robots?”

She smiled. As an engineer, Brady had been ahead of his time. “Yep. When he took me to meet his parents, he showed me his workroom. Uncle Matt and Uncle Ryan had an HO train set up year-round.”

“They would have still been in high school.”

“Right. Your dad did all the electrical work on the trains, but on his side of the room there were electronics kits.”

“What about Aunt Pat? Did she have a space in the workroom?”

Laura laughed at the thought of Pat playing with trains or experimenting like Brady. “No. She wanted no part of it. She liked it when her brothers were busy down there because they weren’t annoying her.”

“That sounds like Aunt Pat.” Sean was quiet for a couple of seconds, then murmured, “When you talked earlier about the way you and Dad met and all, he seemed so different from the way he is now. Was he?”

How much should she tell Sean?

Maybe that was the problem. She and Brady had always filtered everything they’d told the kids, instead of just laying it all out. At eighteen, Sean could vote, he could enlist, he could fight in a war. When should parents stop protecting children from heavy truths that would color the rest of their lives if they understood them?

“When I met your dad…”

Her voice trembled and tears blurred her eyes, but she blinked them away. “He wasn’t like anyone else I’d ever met. The first time I looked into those blue eyes, I wanted to stay there. When he took my wrist and dragged me from the demonstration, I felt safe being with him. He knew where we were going even if I didn’t. It was so odd, really, because I’d learned not to depend on anyone. I’d learned I had to make my own way.”

“You were only twenty.”

She nodded. “Losing my parents made me feel so alone. Even though my aunt Marcia took me in, I still felt…abandoned. Your dad changed that. He opened this great big window for me. He let in light and love and warmth. He had this amazing sense of humor and he knew how to relax. We’d sit for hours—”

“Making out?” Sean asked with a smile.

Her cheeks warmed. “Just being together. Before he left, we took walks in the park and fed the squirrels. We flew kites. We went to a party with his friends.”

“Before he left?”

“Before he went to basic training at Fort Dix. Before he got sent to Hawaii. Before he went to Vietnam.”

If she told Sean about that night with Brady’s friends, he’d learn an important truth about his dad.

Six weeks into her dates with Brady—he’d come home every weekend—they’d gone to a party at Jack Crawford’s. His apartment was small, on the second floor of a row house on West Princess Street. Jack had gotten a medical deferment because of a heart murmur and sold shoes at Thom McCann.

When Brady had introduced her to Jack, his buddy had said in an aside, “I guess we have to watch our language tonight.”

Laura had worn a lime-green A-line dress, not sure what kind of party they were attending. She’d tied up half her hair with narrow lime-and-fuchsia grosgrain ribbons. Pretending to appear worldly, she’d remarked offhandedly to Jack, “I’ve heard all kinds of language. Don’t worry about me.”

When Brady had draped his arm around her shoulders, she’d felt trembly and weak-kneed, as she always did when they were close. Although they made out every time they saw each other, they hadn’t gone any further than that, not because they weren’t eager to, but because Brady had said more than once that he respected her dreams, understanding that they had to learn to trust each other—that they’d know when they were ready.

Would they? Was she putting them both through weekends of frustration because she was afraid she’d get hurt? Because the wrong decision could mean an unhappy turn in her life? Because the war was standing between her and Brady and they both understood that?

That night she wanted to forget about it all, and she suspected Brady did, too.

Two more friends—Tom and Luis—showed up. They seemed surprised that she was there, but Brady made no excuses for her presence, just introduced her to Luis, who went to Penn State, and to Tom, who was earning a degree at Shippensburg.

Tom, who defied longer men’s hairstyles by wearing a crew cut, held out a box. “It’s a game called Pass-Out. We can talk and play and drink, all at the same time.”

While Luis and Tom moved the coffee table into the middle of the room, Brady lifted the cushions from the sofa and positioned them around it. Luis took out three packs of Lucky Strikes and tossed then onto the coffee table next to the game. “My contribution.”

Brady produced a bottle of Burgundy from a paper sack he’d carried in and set it on the counter in the narrow kitchen. Laura had never been to a party like this, with a lava lamp glowing blue-green on top of the TV console, smoke filling the room and scents of wine and whiskey wafting up from juice glasses. She tucked her legs under her on the cushion and felt really grown up for the first time. While Luis strummed his guitar, Tom and Brady talked about the courses they’d enrolled in, the ones they’d hated and the ones they’d liked. Jack told funny stories about how picky some of the customers at the shoe store were. The guys reminisced about their high-school days.

At a lull in the conversation, Brady leaned close to her. “I might have met you in high school if you’d stayed in Catholic school.”

“My aunt didn’t intend to pay anything extra to send me there.”

When they started the game, Brady rolled the dice and moved his marker. The square said All had to take a drink. They did. The talking and playing went on as the sun set and traffic noises outside the open windows became quieter.

After she’d downed two glasses of wine, Laura switched to soda. Jack, Luis and Tom started mixing more ginger ale into their bourbon. But she noticed Brady wasn’t diluting his. At some point, pink-elephant cards from the game forgotten, Jack flipped on a transistor radio and they listened to the Saturday-night countdown. The Beatles’ “Get Back” pounded through the room.

By midnight, Laura realized Brady and his friends had talked about absolutely everything except the thousand-pound gorilla in the room. None of them had mentioned the war. None of them had mentioned friends who hadn’t come home. None of them had mentioned that Brady, Tom and Luis would be drafted into service for their country after they graduated. It was almost one in the morning when Luis and Tom left. As Brady stood, he wasn’t quite steady on his feet.

“If you two would like some privacy, you can have my bedroom. I can bunk on the couch,” Jack told them.

Since Laura had worked at the Bon Ton until five, she and Brady hadn’t had any time alone. Tomorrow his family was going to have dinner with his uncle, then he’d be leaving to return to school. She wouldn’t see him again until next weekend.

“Why don’t we take him up on his offer for a little while,” Brady suggested. “I shouldn’t drive yet. We can leave when my head clears.”

She wasn’t sure what her aunt would say if she came home in the wee hours of the morning, but right now she didn’t care. Being with Brady was more important than anything else.

“All right. Let’s stay,” she agreed.

Ten minutes later, they were lying on top of Jack’s cotton spread, breathing in sweaty socks, Aqua Velva and smoke that had drifted in from the living room. The room was black except for the glare of the street lamps battling against the rolled-down shades.

Brady lay on his side, his muscled arm resting across her waist. He kissed her longingly, deeply, passionately.

Afterward, he brushed his thumb along her hairline. “So what did you think of everybody?”

Still reeling from the effects of his kiss, she didn’t filter her thoughts. “You have good friends, but I’m not sure you should have brought me along tonight.”

“Why not?”

They’d kicked off their shoes, and Brady’s stockinged foot rested against her nylon-clad one. “Because none of you talked about what was on your minds.”

“Sure we did. We talked for hours.”

Their body heat, Brady’s face so close to hers, his scent and pure maleness tempted her to kiss him instead of talking to him. But she spoke her mind anyway. “You didn’t talk about the draft, or about you and Luis and Tom going to basic training in a few weeks. Or about your friends who are there now and what’s happening.”

Brady shifted away from her, rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. “Damn it, Laura, not everything’s about the war. What did you think we should do? Analyze the last news report? Talk about how we’re giving up real life for the next two years? Share notes on why our mothers cry because they don’t want us to go? What good would any of that do?”

Brady had never been angry with her, never shut her out, never turned away. She suspected what was at the bottom of it all.

Although his long, hard body was tense and rigid, she turned into his shoulder, laid her head against his arm, hugged him as best she could. “I know sometimes when you get really quiet, you’re thinking about it,” she said softly. “I imagine when you’re lying in bed at night, you can’t get to sleep because pictures are going through your head—pictures from TV and stories you’ve heard. You don’t have to hide what you’re thinking or feeling from me, Brady.”

His body was so still, so stiff, she couldn’t even feel him breathing. She wished there was a little more light in the room and fewer shadows. She wished she could see him.

Finally she felt his breath. It was fast and shallow. She raised her hand to his face, and he suddenly turned away from her. But not before she felt the wetness. Not before she realized there had been tears on his cheeks.

She held on tighter. “Tell me,” she whispered into his neck.

He just shook his head and mumbled, “I had too much to drink.”

She guessed why that was so. “Nothing you say is going to change the way I feel about you.”

His shirt was damp from their combined body heat. Still staring at the wall instead of at her, he kept his voice so low she had to strain to hear.

“In the daytime, I think about our reasons for being in Vietnam and I know I have to do my part. I think about how proud my parents will be when they see me in a uniform. I think about learning skills I don’t have now. I think about toughening up so I can really face the world when I get back. But at night—At night I think about Bill’s leg being blown off. I think about the guys who haven’t come home. I think about the swamps and a strange country, living in God-knows-what conditions.” Without warning, he faced her. “Most of all at night, I think about dying. Since I met you, I think about that a lot and I get so damn scared.”

He wasn’t touching her and she realized he expected her to move away, either to turn away in disgust or to leave him with his misery. She wasn’t about to do either.

Winding her arms around his neck, she felt her own voice break when she admitted, “I’m scared, too.”

As they held each other, she knew that what had just happened between them was more intimate than making love.

“Mom. Mom?” Sean asked. His voice seemed to come from very far away.

She focused once again on her son. “Yes, honey. I was remembering.”

“Remembering what? What Dad was like?”

“I often wonder if children ever really know their parents,” she admitted with a sad smile. “I mean, we’re people, too, and we had lives before you were born. Believe it or not, we had the same struggles you do.”

“Not Dad. He never had to struggle with anything.” Sean’s voice was almost bitter.

If only you knew, she mused, and then realized maybe it was time Sean did know. Not everything. Lots of things Brady needed to tell him. But she could reveal bits and pieces that Brady would never tell him. Brady was a proud man. Brady wanted his son to always see him as strong, maybe even as invincible. Her, too, for that matter. But she knew better. She knew he was human just as she was, with flaws and needs, wants and desires that sometimes got them into trouble and other times made life worth living.

“I was remembering the night your dad cried and I held him tight and we prayed he’d return safely from the war.”

The shock on Sean’s face was reiterated in his words. “You’ve got to be kidding. Dad cried?”

Had she made an awful mistake? Was this something too private to share with her son? Yet if Sean didn’t soon learn that his father had flaws, that he hurt and got disappointed and didn’t always succeed, she was afraid the two of them would always be at odds.

Her voice vibrated with the intensity she felt. “I’m talking to you as one adult to another. You wanted to know something about your dad. I just confided in you about a night when both of us were so scared that there wasn’t any escape from it. Your dad was twenty-one, graduating from college. You’ll be graduating from high school soon. What if someone put a weapon in your hands and shouted orders at you? What if you were sent to a foreign land where nothing is easy, nothing is familiar and there’s no way to go home? Think about it and then tell me what you’d do with that storm building inside you.”

It was a few moments before Sean murmured, “I can’t imagine it.”

“Vietnam wasn’t so different from Iraq. Maybe the cause was more idealistic. I don’t know. By the time I met your dad, no one could ignore the clips on the news…our boys dying. The war was touching so many families’ lives that the nation couldn’t look away.”

She tapped her finger on Sean’s chest over his heart. “When war touches you personally, when a relative or friend dies or loses a leg, the fight is a prison you can’t escape from. A young man walking into hell has every right to cry.”

She was talking to Sean from a woman’s perspective, from her woman’s perspective, as a girlfriend and a mother, or as simply a lover of peace. Maybe he needed to know her, too, in all this. Maybe he’d never realized what was at her core. Perhaps it was time he did.

After a few very long minutes during which neither of them spoke, Sean asked what she thought was an odd question. “How long had you been dating Dad when that happened…when he let you know he was scared?”

“Six weeks. We’d had six weekends together, letters in between.”

“He must have trusted you.”

“That night, we started to trust each other. I can’t explain what happened between me and your dad that spring. As your mom, I’d tell you never trust love at first sight, never trust that initial excitement because it could fade away, never think the moment is going to last forever. Because what your dad and I shared was so rare, Sean, so very rare. But your dad and I were blessed with knowing from the moment I met him.”

“Knowing you were going to get married?” her son asked.

“No. Everything was still too uncertain. But we knew for sure we had a connection, a bond that would never be broken. That weekend was a turning point for me in more ways than one. Up until that weekend, I’d lived with my aunt.” Aunt Marcia had died of lung cancer before Sean and Kat had come into her and Brady’s lives.

“What happened that weekend?” In spite of the late hour, Sean’s eyes sparkled with interest, as if he was intrigued by everything she was telling him.

“Your dad and I had gone to a party. I met his high-school friends, who’d gone their separate ways for a while. Your father didn’t take me home until 4:00 a.m.”

Slipping back in time again, she remembered how they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms on that bed in Jack’s apartment. When they’d awakened, Jack was snoring on the sofa. It had been so late and she’d had no idea what her aunt was going to say.

She’d never expected Aunt Marcia to be waiting up for her.

Brady had driven away after she’d unlocked the door and gone inside. How she wished he’d still been by her side. How she wished she’d felt like a niece to this woman with the angry expression and a slip of paper in her hand.

Marcia Watson had thrust that piece of paper at her. “I can only imagine why you’re traipsing in here at 4:00 a.m., but I’m telling you this—I’ve had enough of looking after you. Here’s a place you can stay. If you don’t like it, you have a week to find somewhere else. You’re old enough to be on your own.”

Chapter 4

Hours had passed since Brady’s surgery.

Laura’s palms were sweaty as she approached the Open Heart Intensive Care Unit, thinking about Dr. Gregano’s words after Brady’s heart catheterization the previous day. “Your husband has ninety-nine percent blockage in the main artery, eighty-five percent in the…”

His diagnosis had hit Laura like a belly blow. For some reason, she hadn’t been able to absorb everything. When she’d managed to concentrate on his voice again, she’d heard, “…surgery as soon as we can schedule him in the morning.”

Now, as she stood there after so many cups of coffee she’d lost count, trying to prepare herself for this first visit, all she could think about was the fact that she’d triggered this. She’d caused Brady’s heart attack. And she had to face the aftermath of it.

Both the surgeon and Dr. Gregano had warned her that some people didn’t want to visit their loved ones the first night after surgery.

Stepping inside the cubicle, she felt her breath catch as she saw Brady, and she almost backed away. The doctors had explained what she’d find, yet she hadn’t been prepared.

He looked like death. He was so white she wasn’t sure blood pumped through him. His hands, arms and face were swollen, his fingers blue. He seemed to be shivering. He was hooked up to tubes, IVs and monitors, and a machine breathed for him, making his chest heave. There were markings and dye on his body.

She felt as if she’d stepped into a science-fiction movie.

Still, even if a machine was breathing for him, this was her Brady and he was alive.

A nurse touched her arm. “He’s doing fine.”

Fine. What an inadequate word.

Dr. Gregano had told her Brady would be sedated. That was best the first twelve hours. But she wanted to see those blue eyes of her husband’s. She needed to see those eyes. She needed to know he was still her Brady.

After approaching Brady slowly, Laura sat on the edge of a chair next to the bed. This was so different from when she’d visited him after his heart attack. She wasn’t sure exactly why. Maybe because she knew that during the operation, the surgeon had cut through Brady’s chest and cracked open his sternum. Brady had been connected to a heart-lung machine and his heart had stopped. The surgery had been traumatic, and she really didn’t fathom the results of that yet. Maybe because she was afraid that the Brady who would wake up wouldn’t be the Brady she’d married and loved for more than half her life.

The lump in her throat made it hard for her to swallow. Her stomach roiled with fear and she felt nauseated. Yet she had to be here for him, just as she’d been there for him after other kinds of nightmares, just as he’d been there for her after her miscarriages and after the death of their son. That was what she and Brady did. They held on to each other through the difficult times, even when they didn’t feel like it, even when it was hard, even when they didn’t want to. When had they stopped going out for dinner on the odd evening the kids were both involved in activities and Brady was home? When had kisses become short and perfunctory rather than long and passionate? She couldn’t remember when making love had joined their souls. More tears came to her eyes and once more she blinked them away. Making love with Brady had always brought them back together when distance found its way between them.

She laid her hand on Brady’s arm and whispered, “I’m here.”

He didn’t respond and she recognized the fact that he couldn’t.

Because the sight of Brady like this was so overwhelming, because she had to stay and touch him, yet felt he wasn’t really here, she sank into memories again, desperately wanting to escape the complications of everything happening now, to be anywhere else with Brady.

All over again it was May 1969. Each day that month had brought her and Brady closer. Each day had shown her how much he cared.

After Aunt Marcia had ordered her to rent a place of her own, Laura had gone to the address on the slip of paper her aunt had thrust at her. She’d found a boardinghouse that smelled like sour cabbage. As the landlady had taken her to the second floor, a disheveled man had opened his door and leered at her. When Mrs. Treedy had told her she’d be sleeping on the third floor with another “gentleman” across the hall from her, Laura had made her escape.

On her return to her aunt’s, she’d found a note:

I’ll be back around five. I put some boxes in your room for you to start packing. See you later.

Aunt M.

Laura had replaced the note on the red Formica table but had brought the Sunday paper with her to the sofa. Sinking onto it, she’d told herself she was not going to cry. She was twenty. She was old enough to be on her own. She’d get extra hours of work somehow or add another job. And she’d find a place better than Mrs. Treedy’s.

About three o’clock, a car pulled up outside. Brady hadn’t said anything about getting together again. He’d been silent the night before as he’d driven her home. Today was the dinner at his uncle’s with his family, then he’d be headed back to school. Maybe he’d call her before he left. Maybe he wouldn’t. She had the feeling he was embarrassed about last night. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing to be embarrassed about.

She sensed rather than heard the footsteps on the porch and realized she was holding her breath when the bell rang. Running to the door, she broke into a full smile. It was Brady.

“Are you busy?” His tone was nonchalant, but his hands dug deep into his jeans pockets.

“I thought you were having dinner at your uncle’s.”

“I was…I did…but I needed to see you.”

She opened the screen door and motioned him inside. “Aunt Marcia’s not here. I…need to talk to you, too.”

He saw the paper spread out on the sofa, the black circles around ads. “What’s going on?”

“You wanted to talk about something.”

Now he shifted uncomfortably. “Actually I don’t really want to. I’d rather forget all about last night. You must think I’m a coward.”

When she clasped his arm, she looked him in the eyes. “I don’t think that. I’d never think that. There’s nothing wrong with feelings, Brady. Last night, you felt everything that’s been piling up inside. You have every right to be scared.”

He winced at the word and protested, “I’m not scared. I know what I have to do.”

For a moment he studied her, then he took her hand and pulled her to the sofa. When they were seated, facing each other, he ran his hand down her cheek. “I don’t let anybody see what you saw last night. Don’t you get that?”

She rubbed her cheek against his large strong hand. “You can be who you are with me. You don’t have to pretend. I want to know you. Last night, I felt closer to you than I’ve ever felt to anyone.”

Wrapping his arm around her, he drew her against him on the sofa. He tilted his head against hers and they just sat there, their bodies touching, just like their hearts.

A few minutes later, he motioned to the newspaper. “So tell me what this is all about.”

It seemed so natural to pour out everything to him. “When I got in so late last night, Aunt Marcia was up. She said I have to move. She gave me this address for a rooming house and I went there this morning. Oh, Brady, it was awful!” Her voice quivered as she told him about the condition of the place, the man in the hall, the attic rooms.

“You’re dead-on you’re not staying there. I don’t want you anywhere around a creep like him.”

She pointed to the paper. “I have about ten possibilities circled here. I probably shouldn’t call on a Sunday, but I’m going to. I have to find a place as soon as possible. Aunt Marcia put boxes in my room—”

Brady pushed himself from the sofa and rose to his feet.

“What’s wrong?”

He headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to make a call.”

“Who are you calling?”

“No questions yet. Just give me a couple of minutes, okay?”

She gave him about ten minutes, and privacy, too. If whatever he was trying to do for her didn’t work out, she didn’t want her disappointment to show.

When he returned to the living room, he was grinning. “Let’s take a ride.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

At that moment, she’d follow him anywhere.

Fifteen minutes later, Brady had veered off North George Street, down an alley and into a small parking lot in back of a flower shop.

“Are we window-shopping for flowers?” she asked, not understanding at all what they were doing here. She’d heard of Blossoms, a shop with a wonderful reputation, especially for providing wedding flowers. Last year on her aunt’s birthday, she’d had a small arrangement delivered to her.

“It’s my mother’s shop,” Brady explained with a hint of pride.

“Your mother owns Blossoms?” His mom had talked about working with flowers, but Laura hadn’t realized she owned her own shop.

“Yep. But it’s not the flower shop we’re interested in today. Come on.”

He was out of the car and around to her door before she could even open it. When he took her hand, she followed him to the back door of the store, thinking they were going inside. But they weren’t. Instead they started up the stairs to the second floor. On the small porch, he produced a key and opened the door.

When they stepped inside, Laura saw trellises and plant stands. Then she noticed the sink, small refrigerator and gas range. “It’s a kitchen.”

“This apartment was here when Mom bought the shop. She rented it for a few years but then decided the renters were more trouble than they were worth. She’s been storing odds and ends here. So when I told her about your aunt kicking you out because I brought you home too late—”

“Brady, that’s not the reason. She’s just using it as an excuse.”

“I know that, but I wanted to keep things simple. Anyway, I asked Mom if she’d consider renting it to you. She said she would if—” he stopped and gave her a mischievous grin “—if I convince my brothers to help me move everything out of here.”

“But where will you put it all?”

“Mom’s going to pick out what we should take downstairs to her storage room. The rest she said she might donate to the Salvation Army. The apartment isn’t very big—just a kitchen, a bedroom with a sitting area and a bath….”

As Laura peeked into the other room, her chest felt tight. “Brady, it’s wonderful. But I’m not certain I can afford this.”

“Mom said you could pay whatever you were going to pay for the room in that boardinghouse.”

That wasn’t nearly enough. “Maybe I could help your mom in the shop when I’m not working at the store.”

“I’m sure she’d like that, especially during her busy times. It really gets crazy at Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter—most of the holidays.”

Jubilant over the idea of having an apartment of her own, she threw her arms around his neck. “Thank you. You don’t know how much this means to me.”

His fingers laced in her long hair. “I think I do.”

When Brady’s lips captured hers, she melted into him, wishing they could start a life together right now…wishing the war waiting for him would simply go away.

A nurse came through the sliding glass doors into the OHICU cubicle, bringing Laura back to reality again—the reality that Brady wasn’t breathing on his own and seemed too ill to ever recover.

“Time’s up,” the woman informed her gently.

Laura had so many questions. How soon would it be before Brady could breath on his own? What did she need to know to make his recuperation successful? Would he look better tomorrow? Would he really be ready to go home in a few days?

Yet she understood the nurse couldn’t answer those questions. She realized that for now she’d have to take one hour at a time. For certain, she wasn’t going to let Kat or Sean visit their dad. Kat would fall apart, and Sean, even though he’d pretend to handle this scene, really couldn’t.

There were so many tubes and lines and electrodes attached to Brady she couldn’t give him a real hug. She didn’t even realize she was crying until she leaned over him to kiss his cheek and a tear landed on his jaw. The terror of seeing him like this built inside her until it was clawing at her chest to break out.

After she squeezed his arm, she said close to his ear, “I love you, Brady.” Then reluctantly she let go of him and left the cubicle.

Tears from fatigue, from worry about Brady, blurred her vision. Exiting his room, she ran into a nurse, murmured, “Excuse me,” and headed for the shelter of the hall. She had to be alone. She needed to cry out the weakness inside her so it was gone and she could deal with the rest of this.

“Mrs. Malone, are you all right?”

Having spoken with Dr. Gregano a few times now, she recognized his voice. She swiped her tears away with her palms. “I’m just—” she finally raised her gaze to his “—tired.”

“Stay here a moment,” he ordered, his brow drawn.

Where was she going to go?

To her dismay, the tears kept coming, and she scrubbed at them like a small child who didn’t want to be caught crying.

Suddenly Dr. Gregano was back, carrying a box of tissues. He offered them to her. “Here, blow your nose. Then you have to listen to me.”

She felt like an idiot, blowing her nose in front of him, but she did, and wiped her tears and stuffed the tissues in her pocket. “I’m sorry, I—”

He was already shaking his head. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about. The first visit is tough. I saw my father like that. I thought I was prepared. I knew how he’d look. I knew what the machines would be doing. But to visit a loved one like that is devastating. I’m here to tell you, though, the next visit will be better and the one after that better still. Your husband’s color will improve. He’ll begin breathing with the respirator. He’ll be more alert and realize where he is. In a few hours, we’ll get rid of that tube down his throat and he’ll really start the road to recovery.”

“I’m so scared,” she admitted. “This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. We have some family issues and—”

“Every family does. But as far as being at the worst time—” he shook his head “—this shake-up can let everyone reevaluate what’s happening in their lives.”

This doctor might be years younger than she was, but he had experience she didn’t have and there was a maturity about him. Maybe it came from dealing with life and death every day.

“How old are you?” she asked boldly.

At first he was taken aback, and then he smiled. “Forty-seven. How about you?”

“Fifty-eight,” she admitted with a sigh. “But feeling a lot older right now.”

“At times I feel a hundred and four,” he confided. “But fortunately, once I get out of this hospital, work out at the gym and eat a breakfast that counteracts everything I’ve done, I feel middle-aged again, ready to come back in here and start the war all over.”

“You fight for your patients,” she said, “even when they give up.”

“Sure do.”

Almost reflexively, she glanced at his left hand. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

Observant of where she’d targeted her gaze, he said, “I’m not married. No woman would put up with my schedule.”

“Maybe you just haven’t met the right one.” A man like him, dedicated to his profession, determined to give his patients most of his energy, deserved to have somebody waiting for him at the end of a long day. But she didn’t say that. It seemed too…personal somehow.

“Feeling a little better?” he asked.

“Yes, and thank you for your concern. You’re busy and I know Brady’s your patient, not me. I’ll be fine. After the next visit I’ll try to get some sleep.”

“Away from the hospital?”

“Well, I was just going to stretch out in the waiting room again.”

“Go home, Mrs. Malone. Sleep in your own bed. Try to get a good night’s rest. You’ll do more for your husband that way than if he spots those dark circles under your eyes and realizes you’re dragging because you haven’t slept.”

“I just…I just don’t want to leave him. It’s crazy, but I feel that as long as I’m here watching over him, as long as I’m talking to him and touching him, he’ll get stronger faster.”

Dr. Gregano gave her a wry smile. “Mr. Malone is a lucky man. I imagine that whether you’re here or whether you’re at home, he’ll feel you pulling for him.”

The cardiologist’s pager went off. Excusing himself, he checked the number. “I have to get this,” he said with a grim expression. “Remember what I said and take my advice. Go home.” Then he was rushing toward the elevator.

Laura looked back at the cubicle she’d exited. Dr. Gregano had said Brady would be better in another hour. She couldn’t leave yet…she just couldn’t. She’d call Pat to pick up the kids, but she was going to stay. No matter what Dr. Gregano said, she wanted Brady to feel her presence. She wanted him to feel her touch.

After thirty-three years of marriage, she didn’t know what else to do.

Chapter 5

“Kat looked so grown-up today.” Brady laid down his fork and rested his head against the back of the chair Sunday afternoon, four days after surgery, feeling more tired than he could ever remember feeling. The surgery should have fixed him. Had it?

Making conversation took effort. But he didn’t want Laura worrying any more than she already was. He could see the guilt in her eyes that she’d caused his heart attack. He could see the questions. But he wasn’t ready to face problems that had been around much too long. He needed a hell of a lot more energy than this to do that.

So he concentrated on pushing his lunch around his plate and forced himself to talk just to get this visit finished. “But I got the feeling she couldn’t wait to leave.” He could still hear the rasp in his voice from being on the ventilator.

After a moment’s hesitation, during which he could tell Laura was debating with herself, she said, “She likes to spend time with you. She just doesn’t want to spend it with you in a hospital.”

“You don’t like hospitals, either.”

She shrugged. “I’m grateful to this hospital and the doctors who saved your life.”

Brady closed his eyes for a few moments. “I’m just so damn tired.”

“I hear that’s normal. You might feel that way for a while.”

When Brady opened his eyes, he studied her, a list of everything she’d had to handle since he’d been rushed in here clicking in his mind. “Sean’s been okay through all this? No signs of him drinking?”

Last summer Sean had gotten home in the middle of the night two nights in a row. They’d let the first time pass, but Brady had confronted him the second night. He’d been so drunk he couldn’t stand without leaning against the wall. Brady had grounded him for six weeks and taken away his driving privileges except for going to and from work. Their son had been resentful and angry the rest of the summer. After the fact, from talking to another parent, Brady had learned the boys partied much too often, and he’d known he’d had to be strict with Sean. It had seemed to work. When the school year started and his son had kept up his grades—knowing he had to in order to get into college—he and Brady had formed an uneasy truce. But it was a truce that could easily be broken.

“Actually, he’s been very supportive,” Laura replied. “The thing is, he overheard some of our argument. He thought we were arguing about him and that caused your heart attack.”

“The blockage in my heart was a time bomb. That caused my heart attack. Be sure to tell him that.”

“I did.”

He knew what she was thinking. He should talk to their son. She’d always expected so much of him where Sean was concerned and he hadn’t been able to deliver.

To avoid an argument he commented, “One of the nurses mentioned you had to elude a reporter when you left yesterday. Are they bothering you?”

Laura hesitated.

He hated that she was being so careful around him. He hated that she thought since his heart attack he had to be coddled or protected. She obviously didn’t know what to say and what not to say because of that videotape they’d had to watch and the suggestions in the informational binder he’d glanced at but she’d probably read cover to cover. Both had warned that a recuperating heart surgery patient should keep anxiety and stress to a minimum.

“Laura, what’s going on?”

“There was a short segment on the local news about the article,” she replied quickly.

There was more. “What else?” he prodded. “Don’t hide things from me.”

After glancing out the window for a moment, she admitted, “We’ve had news vans in front of the house and reporters waiting for us downstairs. But the ruckus is dying down now. Pat told the reporters to get lost while I was here with you. Since then, they’ve kept their distance.”

Hospital sounds—a metal cart clicking on tile, lowered voices, a laugh track on someone’s TV—filled the silence between them.

It was time to change the subject. Brady commented, “I can’t believe Dr. Gregano is going to discharge me tomorrow.”

Laura gave Brady a bright smile. “You walked up and down the hall three times today and you’re going to do it again tonight. That’s progress.”

“At home—”

“At home, we’ll take things one day at a time. I was thinking…” she began lightly. “Sean could help me bring down one of the single beds in the spare room and set it up in your den. That way you could sleep there and…rest during the day if you need to.”

The thought of being an invalid was unfathomable. “I’m going to hate this. Maybe I can just use the recliner.”

“They stopped your heart,” she reminded him softly. “Your body went through terrific trauma. You’re not going to come home and try to act all macho, are you? Because there are restrictions.”

“I read the list,” he admitted, wishing the next few weeks were over.

Edging forward on her chair as if she wanted to reach out to him but didn’t know exactly how, she asked, “How much do you remember about surgery and afterward?”

After he lifted his glass from the nightstand, he took a few swallows of water, then shook his head. “Not much. I was hoping I’d see that bright light and maybe find answers in it, but no such luck. I went to sleep, and when I woke up, that damn machine was breathing for me. I couldn’t even feel my arms and legs. It was the weirdest thing. Then little by little sensation came back and I felt I was in my body again.”

When she moved her hand, her bracelet brushed against the arm of the chair. She studied it, then met his gaze again. “I told Sean about how we met, about the demonstration, about Aunt Marcia kicking me out.”

That surprised him. “Why?”

“We spent a lot of hours together waiting to hear about your condition. He asked me about the charms on my bracelet and what you were like back then.”

After a few beats, Brady inquired, “And what did you tell him?”

“That we fell in love and it happened fast and we were connected from the moment we met. When I told him…”

He caught the glimmer of sudden emotion in her eyes.

She gave him another smile. “The memories are still so alive and real. They were comforting when you were in surgery. I could recall what I’d been wearing and what you’d been wearing. I could even smell the scent of British Sterling. Remember? You wore it the night we went dancing…the weekend before you left.”

Were the memories comforting to her because back then everything had been so easy between them and now nothing seemed easy?

She pointed to the tiny envelope charm. “Do you remember calling me from Fort Dix to make sure I’d received this?”

“I remember.” He’d known how much those charms had meant to her. That was why he’d bought another one. “I sent you that charm to remind you that what we had was real.”

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