Rachel Van Dyken (5 page)

A
visible shiver shook the
man before him.

And then
Blaine
cold-cocked him.

Patrick and the boys leaped at him
at once
,
cheering and
pounding him on the back in congratulations. He brushed them off in annoyance
a
nd stalked to the bar, the muscle twitching in his jaw. His bottle was empty, and he was still standing. Time to remedy that situation.

“Another bottle of whiskey, Duke,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

“Not a chance, Blaine. You’ve had enough
,
”
the
bartender
insisted
. Blaine regarded him wi
th an ic
y glare, weighing the possible battle
against
his altered judgment.

Suddenly
,
a light hand rested on his still tense forearm
, distracting him from his current mission
. He turned
blearily
to the woman draped over his right
side
. She smiled seductively up at him and
traced
her fingers up and down his flexed bicep
lightly
.

“Oh, Captain Graham, I’m just so sorry about that. The beast practically forced me to go dancing with him
,
even though I told him I just wanted my beauty rest.”
Her southern drawl caressed his foggy awareness and entranced him momentarily. “You’re so…
confident
, Captain. You were so quiet before, I thought maybe you didn’t... I mean, I had no idea you felt so –” she drew close enough for him to feel her breath on his ear
, “—strongly about me.”

Blaine gazed at her a moment.
Her brown eyes tantalized him with fickle deception. No. Not even for a meaningless roll in the hay.

“I don’t,” he stated
with a hint of cold steel in his voice
, then took her wrist between his finger and thumb a
nd tossed it away from his arm.

He spun on his heel to stalk out, but as he did the whole pub reeled around him, and he felt himself careen face-forward to the knotted wooden floor.
A
s the darkness encompassed him
,
Duke’s deep voice
washed
over him
.
“
Patrick, Tony,
you boys help me out here.
Let’s get him home
.
B
oy’s gonna feel this in the morning.”

****

Blaine was awakened by the metallic resonance in his skull as the
sledgehammer
pounded the wedge into it.
If it didn’t hurt so
much
to think, he would have reminded himself that this was the
precise
reason he
avoided
hard liquor.

He
struggled in
to a sitting position and cradled his throbbing head in both hands.
A wave of nausea swept over him
,
causing him to lunge forward onto the
hard floor and expel the liquid-less remnants from his stomach. Exhausted and
weak, he rolled over onto
his back and groaned
in misery
, wishing for death to save him.

The rap at the door echoed in his head, and he cringed in pain. “Lad, mind ye don’t be hurlin’ on my good rug now!”
Mrs. Callahan called from behind the door. “I’ll be holdin’ yer breakfast
fer when ye are more sportin’.
In the meantime, just get yerself back in that be
d,
young fool.”

Movement was impossible, so he
lay
there on the cold floor suffering from the skull-splitting headache. Blaine smacked his dry tongue against the thick stickiness lining the inside of his mouth. He could die right here on the floor from lack of moisture, and nobody would notice until he didn’t show up for supper.

Another knock on his door sent him careening into fetal position with a torrent of
whispered curses pouring from
his mouth.

“I beg yer pardon,
laddie
,” old Mr. Hanigan warned, as he sauntered in without an invitation.
Blaine’s eyes felt like sandpaper as he squinted to trace the old man’s steps across the room
, and then
carefully stepp
ed
over the curdled puddle of the previous night’s
indiscretion. He set a full glass on the bureau, then turned and offered Blaine his hand, pulling him up and guiding him back to sit on his bed.

“Here, m
’
boy.” Mr. Hanigan placed the glass in Blaine’s hand and helped
him
guide it to his mouth. “No, no. Don’t look at it,
lad
. Just close yer eyes and throw it back. Tastes like raw sewage, but ye’ll
be
thank
in’
me
later
.”

Blaine did as he was told, though the strange concoction did cause him to gag several times before he was able to gulp down the whole thing.
“What is in that?” he
g
as
p
ed, trying desperately to smack the taste away while sputtering for a fresh breath.

“Oh, it’s best if ye don’t know. Feelin
’
better,
lad
?”

Blaine thought about the question for a moment. A weak smile spread across his lips. “
A bit. My stomach feels a lot better. Thank you.
”

“Aye,
lad
.” The old Irish man eyed him sympathetically. He opened his mouth to speak,
but
seemed to change his mind again
.
I
nstead
he
took the glass from Blaine’s hand
,
filled it with water from the pitcher on the bureau and returned it to him.

As the numbness from the rest of his body slowly dissipate
d
, Blaine began to notice another
violent
throbbing in his right cheekbone just below the eye. He reached up tenderly to feel out the situation and found the area around his eye to be sensitive to the touch.

“Ah, yes. A fine shiner. Ye’ll want a raw steak for that, no doubt.
” Old Mr. Hanigan gestured toward Blaine’s face. “Mrs. Callahan is worried about ye,
lad
.”

Blaine lay back against his pillow. “Is she?”

“Aye.
And t
he lads think ye got bad news in yer telegram yesterday.”

“
And w
hat do you think?”

“I think whatever ‘twas
,
stirred up
an
old fury ye thought was dead
and buried
.”

The young man nodded with downcast eyes. “I guess it was just sleeping.” He reached into the pocket of his pants which hung over the headboard and retrieved the crumpled telegram. Tears threatened to spill over as he turned the telegram over and over in his hands for a moment, smoothing the creases.

Hesitantly,
he
offered the paper to the old man
who sat on the edge of his bed. He took it reluctantly, scrutinizing
Blaine's
face as he did so. Turning to the telegram, Mr. Hanigan adjusted his glasses and read the words
, moving his lips slightly as he scoured the page.

He folded the paper and returned it to Blaine. “
Ye
r father.
I’m sorry,
lad
.
”

“My father.”

Mr. Hanigan seemed to be reading him like an open book, and Blaine couldn’t hold his gaze. Instead he hung his head in defeat and sighed.

“I left my father when I was sixteen, you know. I haven’t seen him since. We fought. He didn’t seem to care about what I was going through – ever. When my mother died, she wasn’t even cold in her grave yet, and he forgot all about her. He went to work the next day
. Back to the Ford plant
–
t
he
only thing that ever mattered to him… well, that and whether or not I was late for school.

“He never talked about her again. Never looked at a picture of her. Never remembered for a single moment anything about her
.
Her smile, her laugh. I was eleven, you know. I can still hear her laughing sometimes, and when I close my eyes, I can pull up a memory
of her smile
as clear as day.

“I was eleven, and I can remember… He
couldn
’
t have
loved her. And
I know
he never loved me. He left me floundering in my own grief. I had to figure it out on my own. I had to figure everything out on my own.

“And when I turned sixteen, I did figure it out.
So
I left him there to wallow in his arrogance.

“The war was on, but America wasn’t in it yet. My buddy, George – a great guy if ever there was one – and me, we found us a fella to make us up some official looking papers
that said we were of age
, and
we
crossed the border into Canada. They were taking anybody, so we joined up with the air force.

“They taught us to fly and shipped us to Europe. George got shot down over Belgium. He was a good guy.

“I lived
.
W
ell, obviously.
But I think, maybe I wanted to die. They decorated me, you know. For what happened over there.
But I never went back
home
. I d
id
n’t want to go back. I left that part of my life behind me, and it’s like he died back then. My father. He died the day we buried my mother.”

Mr. Hanigan listened silently with his arms crossed.

Blaine fell silent and closed his eyes. Mr. Hanigan stroked his chin between his thumb and forefinger
thoughtfully
.

“I see.”

They sat in silence for a moment, then Mr. Hanigan cleared his throat. “May I tell you a story,
lad
?”

Blaine said nothing, but h
e looked at the old man expecta
ntly.

“I had a son, ye know. Peter, he was. A bright lad. A lad with ambitions. He moved out west in search of opportunity. He wrote me often, begging me to follow him. I didn’t want to leave Boston, so I refused.
” Tears streaked the man’s aged face. “He died, ye know. Caught a fever long ago and died. And there’s not a day, an hour, even a moment, I don’t regret refusin’ him. I didn’t get to say goodbye.” He met Blaine’s gaze directly, his bright blue eyes burning right into the young man’s soul. “I won’t pretend to know what yer goin’ through,
lad
, but I can tell ye true – regret is a terrible way to live.”

Mara woke the next day with a crick in her neck, thanks to the odd position she
had
f
a
ll
en
asleep in. She had been up half the night reading, and the other half checking on David. His coughing fits were getting worse. Yet all she could do was make him comfortable until the end. Medicines and tonics only took away the symptoms and some of the pain, but the cancer was
spreading
fast. His health was declining with each leaf that fell to the ground
from the oak in the front yard
. Mara hoped he would last through Christmas. The doctors had
given
h
im
six months. He was on month two, but when she had first arrived David had
still been able to
walk. Now he
struggled
to take short
trips from one room to the next
before needing to res
t again
.
He was going downhill
faster
than she thought he would, and six months seemed more like a pipe dream. It broke her heart.

She rose from her chair
and made her way down to the kitchen to search for some tea. The cupboard was bare. Had she already
used
the last they had? Normally David had a housekeeper who delivered groceries and cleaned once a week. She shrugged and wrote down tea on the shopping list then decided to rummage for coffee.

“Where does he keep his coffee?”
s
he wondered aloud.

The logical place to look was the cupboard, but she had already searched all but one. Well, it couldn’t hurt. The last cupboard was facing the dining room table and set apart from the rest. It appeared to have not been opened in years, but
with the heavy Michigan wind,
dust could accumulate even in a short amount of time.

Reaching
out
, she
grasped the tiny knob
and jerked
it open. Packets of unopened letters fluttered out, a newspaper clipping landed on her shoe.

Hands trembling, she picked it up off the floor. The man in the picture was strikingly handsome. The date was from two years back. It said ‘Medal of Honor for valor beyond the call of duty while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force.’ The article went on to say honors were conferred by the Canadian government as well as the American government on Captain Blaine Graham, who had saved hundreds
,
maybe
thousands of lives with his dedication and skill in the field.

Mara didn’t want to read anymore. She knew what type of man Blaine was. His work was his
life; he was an arrogant pilot
who couldn’t even bring himself to contact his dying father.

An impulse to sit down overwhelmed her when
she saw a tiny American flag
in the background of the photograph
, bringing t
he emotions of that day slamming back.

“Will you wait for me, Mara?” She could still hear Michael’s plea.

She had swallowed the lump in her throat. “Yes. I’ll be here when you get back.”

Grinning, he had kissed her full on the mouth. “I love you,
d
oll. Write me letters, and you take care, you hear?” One more kiss, and he was on the train.

Mara had stood paralyzed except for the tiny flag blowing in her clenched hand. As the train began moving, she lifted her hand to wave the flag. All the soldiers,
drafted
so young, and her husband was one of them.

They had married when he got the news. Being engaged to a soldier wasn’t enough. Information wouldn’t be sent back. Couples had to be married to receive those benefits. So they had married without thought. Michael had always been her best friend; although the passion they had shared was more of a mutual love for God, family, and country. The memory of his touch seemed to sear her forever.

Seven months after his deployment, the sound of a
bicycle rattling
into the driveway brought her to the kitchen window. A uniformed telegram
deliveryman
strode
purposefully toward her front door. She watched from the kitchen and prayed it was a waking nightmare.

The
doorbell
rang. Putting the last dishes away, she wiped her hands on her apron and approached the screen. “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”

“Telegram for Mrs. Michael Crawford.” He held out the envelope in a steady hand.

She had stared at it interminably until the man had cleared his throat and said, “Ma’am?” With a trembling hand she
took
the news from him and
sunk to
the porch step. Reluctantly she
peeled
the envelope open, holding her breath while the knowing tears slipped
unchecked
down her cheeks.

The weight of the loneliness, desperation, and anger threatened to crush her. But God knew, and halfway down the drive the man had turned back and approached her sobbing form. “I almost forgot
,
ma’am
. T
his package is for you as well.”

She held out her hands. The man placed a small package wrapped in brown paper into her waiting fingers. Mara opened it and
drew
out
Michael’s dog tags
.
A
picture fluttered onto the porch. When she
reached
to pick it up, she realized it was
the picture of their wedding day. On the back it read,
The happiest day of my life
.

Mara blinked back tears as she thought about her marriage. The picture was hidden away in her things now. She was tempted to pull it out, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to look at it without bursting into tears. Yes, she was stronger now; she had to be. It was why she dedicated her life to helping others. It consumed her, allow
ed
her no time to think about her own pain,
but
at times like this, too much time to think. It was why reaching
Captain Graham
was so important. What would she have said, if she could have seen Michael one last time before he died?

“I’m going to miss you.” The words left her lips before she could stop them.

“Odd
.
I wasn’t aware we were acquainted.” A man’s deep voice interrupted her thoughts.

Stumbling out of the chair onto her feet, she
spun
around
to address the intruder
.
So deep had she been in her thoughts, she hadn’t recognized the creaking of the back door.
Standing by the sink was a tall, familiar man. His face wore a cynical expression. His arms crossed his broad chest, and he looked at her as if she were insane. Which was, of course, entirely understandable, considering she had just been crying and talking to herself.

“And you are?”
s
he demand
ed with an
air
of authority. And then she looked into his eyes. The same eyes she looked into every day. The newspaper clipping was still in her hand. Bringing it up into full view she looked at the man in front of her then back at the picture. Repeating the process until she was dizzy.

“You’re…
Y
ou’re…”

“Blaine Graham,” he finished
for her
.