Chapter 2
Claire wasn’t sure. That was the worst part. She just wasn’tsure what was happening.
Please, she thought with sudden clarity. Just tell me whereI am.
“You’re okay,” he murmured to her, his hand out. “You’re in Virginia. At your house where you live withJohnny and Jessie and Peaches.”
She tried to take a breath and ended up sobbing again. God, how she hated to sob. She hated the weight that keptbuilding up on her chest and the sounds that injected themselves into her house.
Mortars. She’d sworn it was mortars. Maybe rockets.Lighting up the sky and thumping into the ground so hardthe windows rattled. She’d spent fifteen minutes just looking for her helmet, and she knew darn well she’d scared thecat to death when she’d thrown herself on the floor so theshrapnel couldn’t hit her.
She was scaringherselfto death, and she couldn’t make it stop.
“Claire,” he asked, “where are the kids?”
She squeezed her eyes shut just to make sure. Opened them again. But he was still there.
Not one of the young ones. Not Jimmy. This one wasolder. A big man. A strong man with broad shoulders anda jaw that would have made Gregory Peck cry.
And his eyes. Claire thought she’d never seen sweeter eyesin her life. Green, she thought in the dim light in the corner, green the color of the Caribbean in the morning.
He was reaching out to her, and that made her cry all overagain.
“Come on, Claire,” he crooned, taking hold of her. “Itwas a storm, but it’s over. It’s okay now.”
He kept talking to her, reminding her, his hands on herarms so she knew he was really there, somebody was there,so she wasn’t alone, and he waited with her as she shook andsobbed and tried so desperately to fend off the worst of it.
It hurt. It hurt so badly. Claire wrapped her arms aroundherself, held herself tight, as if that would be all it took to keep the pain in. Keep it deep where it couldn’t hurt her anymore. It didn’t do any good.
“I didn’t remember you,” she blurted out, finally facinghim, thinking how he should have looked older. He justlooked wiser, tempered and hardened by the years that werebetrayed in the sliver that threaded through his mustacheand rich brown hair.
And the laugh lines. Everywhere. Bracketing his eyes andhis mouth, deepening into dimples when he smiled. Claire loved dimples. They were a symbol of whimsy, and Claireloved whimsy.
She needed whimsy.
“I don’t remember ever having said that to you, or whatyou looked like when you came in or what your injurieswere.”
“I know,” he said, and smiled all over again. Nevermoving. Never backing away or coming too close. Justwaiting there with her until the shakes eased, his handsgentle on her so she knew he was there for her. “I didn’t really expect you to. Like you said, you took care of a lot ofguys.”
Claire went back to rubbing at her eyes, scrubbing awaymemories that didn’t belong in this house, fighting to holdin the sobs. “Why did you come back?”
For a minute, there was just the silence. Out in the fronthallway, her regulator clock ticked off the seconds, and somewhere over the river the thunder still rolled on endlessly, making her wonder just for a second again. Itsounded so familiar, like the snatch of a dream you couldn’tquite forget.
Or want to remember.
It sounded like gunfire.
“I decided I wanted tea after all.”
Claire pulled her hands away from her eyes and wasastonished to see those dimples. All those laugh lines thattransformed that structured, craggy face into gentle comfort.
And for that moment, she couldn’t so much as answerhim. She sucked in another deep breath, as if oxygen couldwash out the terrors. As if the mere act of breathing reestablished her control over herself.
“Give me a second,” she managed, as if this were simplya subject of tea.
“You’re all right,” he assured her, and she knew he meantit.
She tried to smile for him. It didn’t work very well. Shewas still shaking, still frightened and uncertain andashamed. Even so, she tried hard to pull herself together,because that was what was important.
