Catch a Falling Star (42 page)

Owning a home was one thing.

Being pregnant . . . well, by the time she got used to that life-and-body-altering idea, the baby would be here and she'd be wrestling with the up-close-and-personal reality of motherhood.

And now, four and a half months later, she still shifted under the heaviness of the word
widow
. There was no dodging the truth. But when would the nightmare of Sam's death stop slapping her awake in the early hours of the morning?

Haley rolled her shoulders—backward, forward—in an attempt to ease the tautness that had settled right between her shoulder blades. Until tonight, work had given her a respite from thinking about the what-ifs and the what-nows
stalking her. She usually got a kick out of teaching the weekly women's gun safety class.

But not tonight.

Doubt had followed her out to her car and settled in the passenger seat beside her. Some trained professional she was—she hadn't once thought about how being on the range might affect her unborn son. But then, hearing the “Mrs. Ames, we're sorry to inform you . . .” speech from the military representatives four months ago had muted every other reality in her life—even her pregnancy. What kind of mother didn't go to her first OB appointment until she was sixteen weeks pregnant? Had she been too relaxed about being on the range?

Haley crumbled the candy bar wrapper and stuffed it beneath her seat. She hadn't enjoyed a single bite. After months of spending her days staring into the bottom of a bucket—or worse, the toilet—she could eat again, and she wasn't even paying attention.

As if a Three Musketeers bar would give her anything more than—what?—two minutes of enjoyment. Not that something as temporary as a sugar rush mattered anymore. She needed to take care of, well,
everything
—and that included the baby. Her son. Sam's son. And if it meant starting to act as though she was pregnant and taking a leave from her job, then that's what she'd do.

But first she'd grab a banana or a bowl of cereal—something—to eat when she got home. And she needed to surf some of the pregnancy websites she'd found when she first realized she was pregnant. Her friends with kids said there was lots of good information available on the sites. But had they meant the slideshow labeled “Poppy seed to pumpkin: How big is your baby”? Imagining her unborn child as an ear of corn was odd enough. But would she ever get used to the thought that by the end of this pregnancy, she'd be carrying around something—
someone
—the size of a small pumpkin?

Sam would have laughed at the entire fruits-and-veggies slideshow, probably juggled a few of the oranges and apples in the fruit bowl—if they had any—to make Haley laugh, and then suggested they go out to eat.

Haley pulled the car in front of the house—her home—put the vehicle in park, and cut the engine, closing her eyes and tilting her head as if to catch the echo of Sam's laugh. Yes. She still remembered her husband's low, rumbling chuckle that created a crooked half smile and warmed his chicory-brown eyes.

She needed to remember Sam's laugh.

Half in and half out of the car, Haley froze. Why was a Mustang parked in her driveway? Had one of Sam's army friends come to check up on her? But none of them drove a Mustang—Sam's dream car.

She reached over to grab her gun case from the backseat, stilling when a movement on her front porch caught her eye. Who was that backlit by her porch light? Most likely a man, based on the width of the shoulders. She left the gun case where it was, bringing her hand back to check the SIG Sauer 9mm holstered on her belt, hidden by her shirt. Was she overreacting? Probably. But better armed and safe than caught unaware and sorry.

She stepped out of her car, keeping the Forester's front end between her and the house. The heels of her boots tapped on the cul-de-sac's asphalt, and she forced herself to steady her breathing, small white puffs of air appearing with each exhale. A man stood in the pale yellow halo cast by her front porch light. His face was hidden by the darkness . . . but the set of his shoulders, his height, reminded her of . . .

“Sam?” Even as she whispered his name, Haley strained to see past the shadows. It wasn't possible . . . was it? She'd been confronted by a Bereavement Team. Endured alone the rain on the tarmac at Dover, Delaware, when Sam's body came off a plane in a flag-draped coffin. Stood beside his grave surrounded by her family, Sam's mother clinging to her hand, while an army chaplain she barely knew talked about God's grace being sufficient . . .

Haley moved around the car and stumbled toward the specter of her husband as he stepped off the porch.

“Haley—Haley Ames? I'm—”

She would know her husband's voice anywhere.

With a strangled cry, Haley launched herself into the shelter of Sam's arms. “Sam . . . Sam . . . how—”

She'd told herself to wait . . . to not think during the funeral, or about the future without Sam. She hadn't taken a true, complete breath in months. If she sifted through and measured everything she'd lost, she'd become nothing more than one unending, keening wail. She inhaled. Exhaled. The brittleness around her heart began to splinter. Sam was home.
Home.
His heart beat against the palm of her hand, which she'd pressed against his chest. Maybe now her heart would find the right rhythm again.

• • •

She didn't know.

Even as Haley Ames threw herself into his arms, Stephen staggered back under the weight of realizing she didn't know he existed. Neither his brother nor his mother had told her that Sam had an identical twin brother.

They'd left that job for him.

For a moment, she clung to him, her body shaking—the silence more painful than if she'd sobbed so that the neighbors came running out of their houses. Stephen's arms hung at his sides. He didn't dare comfort this woman—not when the first words he spoke would rend her wound open again.

He cleared his throat. Tried to step back, to put some space between them. “Haley, I'm sorry . . . I'm not Sam. I'm his brother, Stephen.”

No response. He tried again. “Haley—I'm Sam's brother, Stephen.”

She pushed away from him, her movements jerky. “What?” Her expression twisted around the question. “Sam? What are you saying? You don't have a brother—”

“Yes, I do—I mean, yes, he does. I'm Sam's twin brother. My mother—our mother told me that Sam was killed in Afghanistan. That's why I decided to contact you—”

She backed away from him, her steps unsteady, her eyes wide in the moonlit darkness. “Who are you . . . you look exactly like . . . like . . .” Her voice was high. Frail.

“I know this is a shock. I didn't know Sam hadn't told you about me—”

“Stop talking. Now.” She reached behind her back and then positioned her arm beside her right leg. “I don't know who you are or why you look like Sam, but I'm telling you this: I have a gun and I know how to use it. Get out of here.”

“Let me explain.” A sharp metallic click stopped Stephen before he could find a way to unravel who he was from who Haley thought he was.

“I've released the safety on my gun.” Haley took another step back, raising her arms so he could see the gun pointed halfway between his feet and his knees. “Leave. Now.”

She was either bluffing or ready to put a hole in him.

Stephen lifted his hands in the universal sign of surrender. “I'm going.” He shifted his position in the direction of his Mustang, her eyes tracking him. “Just one thing.”

She turned, her aim straight and sure, as he moved right, one slow step at a time, giving her a wide berth. But she didn't respond to his statement.

“I left my, uh, business card tucked in your screen door. Will you at least think about calling me so we can talk?”

Silence followed him as he rounded the front of his car. Opened the driver's-side door. Ducked his head and climbed inside, the chill of the Colorado night air following him into the car. He knew Sam's widow watched him, could almost feel the heat of her eyes trained on him through the car windows—could almost hear the measured pace of her breathing, until he slid behind the wheel and shut the door. Locked it. She remained still as he started the engine and backed out of the driveway. In the rearview mirror as he pulled away, Stephen saw her walk toward the house, shoulders hunched, arms crossed over her waist.

Wait a minute.

There was something eluding him . . . something not right, beyond the fact that Sam's widow had just threatened to shoot him. He hadn't expected a warm “Where have you been all these years?” welcome, but he hadn't imagined being threatened by a pistol-packing mama either.

Mama.

Sam's widow was pregnant.

The few moments that Haley Ames clung to him something had felt . . .
odd
about their one-sided embrace. She was tall. Slender. And yet the woman had a belly. There was no other way to say it. Not a “What have you been eating since Sam died?” kind of weight gain . . . but a firm tummy that indicated pregnancy. Not that Stephen knew a lot about pregnant women. But holding Haley reminded him of hugging his stepmother, Gina, when she'd been pregnant with his half brother, Pete.

What do I do now, God?

Stephen's hand clenched and unclenched around the cool steering wheel. He resisted the urge to slow down, pull the car into the next driveway, turn around, and head back to Haley's house. And then what? Knock on the door, wait for her to answer, and hope she didn't shoot him before he asked her—what?
When is the baby due?

He'd get settled in his hotel room. Regroup. Pray. And maybe figure out a way to approach his armed and angry sister-in-law tomorrow.

• • •

Sam did not have a brother.

He didn't.
He would have told her. Husbands and wives told each other things like that, didn't they?

As if she had any right to hold Sam to a standard of honesty.

Haley curled up under a white and gray rugby-striped blanket in the middle of the faded blue corduroy couch that she and Sam had bought off Craigslist, clutching her cell phone to her chest. In the background, John Wayne discovered Maureen O'Hara hiding in his family's cottage. How many hours of movies had filled the backdrop of her life since Sam had died? What had once helped her deal with Sam's back-to-back deployments—fill the empty apartment with a movie . . . and another . . . and another—was now a daily ritual. Anything for background noise—even life in black and white, with a disgraced boxer who escaped his demons by traveling home to Ireland.

She needed to call her mother-in-law.

Right.

She'd call Miriam at ten thirty at night—eleven thirty in Oklahoma, where she lived—wake her up, and ask, “You don't have another child that you and Sam forgot to tell me about, do you? A son who looks just like Sam?”

Absurd.

Gathering the edges of the blanket closer, she closed her eyes—and stared down the image of a man who walked like her husband. Sounded like her husband. Who had her husband's face.

In all the months since a trio of somber men in military uniform had shown up at her door to inform her that Sam had been killed, she'd never once dreamed of him—no matter how many nights she lay in bed and begged God for a glimpse of her husband. And now, when she was wide awake, he had walked toward her.

But he wasn't Sam.

Sam had died last August. And what had happened tonight didn't alter that reality.

Four people had answers. One, she had buried. One, she had chased away at gunpoint. Then there was Sam's father—whom she'd never even talked to. That left her mother-in-law.

She needed to make the call. Get it over with.

As the shrill sound of the phone rang in her ear, Haley prayed that Sam's mother would answer the phone. If not, what would she do? Leave a message?
Hi, Miriam. This is Haley. I wanted to ask you if Sam had a twin brother?

Miriam Ames's half-asleep “Hello?” interrupted Haley's practice conversation.

“Miriam, it's Haley. I'm sorry to call so late.”

“Oh, Haley.” It sounded as if her mother-in-law was moving around in bed—maybe sitting up. “Honey, you know you can call me anytime. Is the baby keeping you awake?”

More like an unwanted apparition.

“I'm sleeping okay.” She was—when she was able to fall asleep. She shoved her hair back from her face. “I don't know how to ask this. I mean, you're going to think I'm certifiable—”

Miriam's sharp inhale should have warned her, told her to tuck her heart away. Prepare for the blow of the unwanted but expected truth. “Did he call you?”

“Did who call me?”

“Sam's twin brother, Stephen.”

She'd read about how people felt as if they'd been verbally punched in the gut. But Miriam's statement felt more like something—someone—had strangled the breath from her throat.

Was she the only person speaking truth tonight? “Sam doesn't have a twin brother.”

As if she should have been telling Sam's
mother
any such thing.

The silence between them dissolved into muffled sobs.

“Does he?” Her whispered question couldn't pierce the woman's grief. She tried again, reining in her emotions and raising her voice. “Sam has a twin brother?”

“Yes. Sam never talked about Stephen—” Miriam broke off again, any attempt to talk lost in her tears, forcing Haley to wait. “—and it wasn't my place to tell you if he didn't.”

Dear God, help me, help me.

Since Sam's death, all of her prayers had been reduced to that one-sentence plea. God was all-knowing. All-powerful. His thoughts were higher than hers—he could decipher all the hidden meanings in six words. Six syllables.