When Happily Ever After Ends (16 page)

Shannon attached two tether lines to Black’s halter to confine him in the stall; then she lifted the swollen hoof, set it down in a bucket, and packed ice around it.

“He won’t jerk it out?” Zack asked.

“No. It’ll feel good, like stopping a tooth from throbbing.” Afterward, she crawled over to the blanket, sat cross-legged, and nibbled on a slice of pizza that by now had grown cold. “It’s nice of you to stay,” she told Zack, who settled next to her.

“I couldn’t have left tonight if I’d wanted to,” he said with a smile. “I guess I’ve sort of gotten attached to you all.”

She tossed the pizza aside, pulled her knees against her chest, and rested her chin on them. The sleeves of the sweater flopped about her arms. “Are you saying you feel ‘responsible’ for me?”

“Is that what you think?”

Her face felt hot under his gaze. “I’m tired of thinking. My mind gets so mixed up sometimes, I can’t figure anything out.”

“I don’t feel responsible for you,” he said, running the tip of his finger along the arch of her neck.

A shiver shot up her spine. “My father
was
responsible for Mom and me, but that didn’t stop him from leaving us.”

“The worst thing a person can do is go away and leave another person all alone. As far as I’m concerned, desertion is a crime.”

She heard an underlying sadness in his voice that pricked her heart. “You
do
know what it feels like, don’t you?” she asked.

He didn’t answer for such a long time that she decided he wasn’t going to. “I know, all right.”

“Would you tell me about it?” She wasn’t sure he would, knowing it had something to do with why he lived with his grandmother instead of his parents.

“When I was ten my mom and dad brought me to grandma’s, said good-bye, and never came back.”

He spoke so quickly and with such little emotion that she was confused as to what he meant. “Did they die?”

“It might have been easier if they had. Then I wouldn’t have felt like I’d done something to make them hate me.”

“Maybe they couldn’t take care of you anymore.”

“All I remember from the time we did live together is that they drank all the time. They smashed things up and yelled. I used to hide under my bed and put my pillow over my head. One day they took me to Grandma’s and never came to pick me up.”

Shannon was shocked. She couldn’t imagine such a life. “Didn’t they call or write?”

“Not that I ever knew. I used to get up every morning and get dressed and put my suitcase by the front door and sit in the living room and wait for
them to come. Then every night, Grandma would put me to bed, but only after I made her promise to wake me up when they came.”

“That’s so sad.”

“Finally, one day, Grandma told me, ‘Guess it’s just you and me, Zack. Your mother’s not been much of a mother to you or a daughter to me. We best get on with the process of living. I’ll be good to you and in turn, I don’t expect you to cause me trouble.’ I learned later that she petitioned the court to become my legal guardian. I’ve been living with Grandma ever since.”

After he told his story, silence settled in the barn, and Shannon swallowed against a lump in her throat. She rested her cheek on her knee. “I guess it makes no difference
why
someone leaves you, does it? It hurts just the same.”

Very slowly, Zack reached over and stroked the silky strands of her blond hair. “At least you know where your daddy is for sure. I’m not saying being dead’s better, but you’ll never have to wonder every birthday, or every Christmas, if this is the year he’ll call you or remember you exist.”

She wiped dampness from her face with the sleeve of the sweater, raised her head, and reached for Zack. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

His arms went around her and she scrunched against him, resting her cheek on his chest. He said, “When I was younger, I used to fantasize about them coming back and me telling them, ‘Sorry, I don’t want to live with you ever again.’ And I imagined
them crying and begging me to come live with them. I used to think it would serve them right—to have them want me and me reject them.”

“But you don’t think that anymore?”

“No.” His fingers played in her hair. “Grandma must have figured out what I was thinking because one day she told me, ‘Hating halts healing, Zack.’ She helped me see that all my anger toward them was only affecting me—not them. So, I started thinking about doing the best I could with my life. Maybe someday they’ll see me and think, ‘He turned out all right, and we didn’t have anything to do with it.’ ”

“Are you saying that you forgive them for leaving you?”

Zack pulled back, lifted her chin, and peered down at her upturned, tear-stained face. “Over time I began to see that they really did me a favor. They weren’t able to take care of me, and I’ve been much better off with Grandma. I’m not excusing them, and I’m not forgetting what they did, but I do forgive them for it.”

Shannon felt a jumble of emotions—pain, remorse, frustration. Was that what she was supposed to do? Forgive her father for rejecting her grandmother, her mother, herself? Forgive him for taking his life and leaving them to manage without him?

Zack said, “Forgiving’s a choice you make—a gift you give to somebody even if they don’t deserve it. It costs nothing, but it makes you feel rich for giving it away.”

She stared deeply into Zack’s dark eyes while he
spoke. She saw compassion and understanding, not only for her, but for her father too. “All he gave me was this terrible hurt when he killed himself.” Her voice caught and she would have turned away, but Zack held her fast.

“He gave you
life,”
Zack told her. “The same as my parents gave me. It’s up to you as to what you do with it.”

Shannon leaned again against Zack’s chest and thought about what he said. Ironically her father had often told her similar things. “
You can do anything you put your mind and heart to, Shannon. It’s your life.”
“Zack?” she asked. “If your parents ever come back, will you tell them you forgive them?”

“I won’t have to. They’ll know by the way I hug them.”

Sometime after midnight, while Shannon was pouring fresh ice in the bucket, her mother came into the barn, wrapped in a parka and rubbing her hands together. “Where’s Zack?” she asked.

Shannon motioned toward the tack room. “I made him go lie down on the cot. He’s wiped out, and I knew it was almost time for you to show up.” Shannon figured that adrenaline was the only thing keeping her going.

“How’s Black doing?”

“He took some feed out of my hand.”

“That’s a good sign,” her mother said in an encouraging voice. She sat on the blanket. “It’s always good news when they feel well enough to eat.”

Shannon tried to catch her mother’s enthusiasm, but one look at Black told her that the horse was no better. Shannon repacked the ice around his hoof and joined her mother on the blanket. She poured herself a cup of hot chocolate and offered some to her mom.

“I don’t know what to say about Black, honey, except that it’s just one more thing in a long list of things that went wrong this summer.”

“I wish … I wish everything was different.”

“Nothing can change what happened, Shannon. Nothing can bring your father back.”

“I know.” Saying the words expressed a finality that made Shannon shiver. “There’s so many things I’d like to ask you, Mom. Things I’ve wanted to talk about for the longest time.”

“We have plenty of time now,” her mother said.

Shannon felt momentarily overwhelmed, unable to decide where to begin. She had so much to say and to ask that the remainder of the night seemed hardly long enough to get it all out. She took a deep breath and started with telling her mother about going through her father’s trunk and about the notes she’d found in his handwriting. “I think he was depressed about Vietnam, Mom. I know he didn’t want to go over there.”

Shannon’s mother dragged her fingers through her curly hair. “The experience did change him,” she said slowly. “He didn’t believe in the war, but he went to please his family. I had just met him. We wrote throughout his whole tour of duty and we decided to marry when he returned—
if
he returned. He was different when he came back.”

“How?”

“He would never talk about what happened to him while he was there even though I asked. He said, ‘It was hell, Kathleen. Who wants to talk about going to hell?’ It was as if he put a part of himself away in a box. He went on with life—we got married, had you, started the business—but he had bad dreams for
years—flashbacks, that’s what doctors call them. He’d wake up in a cold sweat and sometimes stay up the rest of the night. I thought he should see a psychiatrist, but he didn’t want to. I thought he was better for awhile. Maybe I should have insisted on the psychiatrist.” She shrugged her shoulders in resignation.

“Maybe going to Vietnam was the start of all his problems,” Shannon observed.

“I’m not so sure. It’s true that that war split families apart. Every time you turned on TV, you saw young men dying in your living room. Protestors marched on college campuses. People were put in jail for protesting. I was certainly against the war. I had a poster in my room all the time Paul was gone. It said, ‘War Is Harmful to Children and Other Living Things.’ I’m telling you, it was a terrible time for all of us.”

She crossed her arms, hugging herself as if she were very cold. “Thousands of men fought in Vietnam, and they were wounded in ways that we couldn’t see. But most didn’t kill themselves over it. A person has to face his problems, and deal with them. I would have helped your father. I never wanted him to go through it alone.”

“Grandma said he was idealistic, and that made it harder for him to accept things the way they are.”

“That’s true. But if there weren’t idealistic people, who’d save the world?” Her mother managed a half-smile. “No … I think that your father had problems long before Vietnam came along. He and
his father were always butting heads over things. He used to tell me that your grandfather was intractable—very stubborn and obstinate. They argued about everything.” Shannon heard her mother sigh. “The Campbells were quite wealthy. I used to think that having money would mean being happy; but after meeting your father, I discovered that wasn’t true.”

“Wasn’t Dad ever happy?”

Her mother reached out and covered Shannon’s hands, resting on her drawn-up knees, with hers. “Yes. You were the most wonderful thing that ever happened to either of us. The day you were born he sent me six dozen red roses, twenty-five balloons—that’s how long I was in labor with you—and he bought me this ring.” She held up her right hand, where a pearl, Shannon’s birthstone, gleamed in the weak light. “I know he loved all of us. He certainly loved you. His problem was that he couldn’t get outside of himself. He couldn’t reach out to others and we didn’t know how to reach in.”

Shannon wanted to throw her arms around her mother and tell her she wasn’t to blame. She wanted her mother to forgive herself for what happened. “Grandma feels it’s her fault because she encouraged him to do his duty and not run away to Canada.”

“I’m sorry Betty thinks that. Duty was important to her generation. Your father and I discussed that importance often.”

“You did?”

“It turned out duty was important to us, too.
He never could have run off to Canada. I know that now.” Her mother poured herself some hot chocolate, then sat holding the cup between her palms and staring into the brown liquid. “We all lost someone irreplaceable this summer. You, a father. Me, a husband. And Betty, a son.”

“Why didn’t he think about how much he was going to hurt all of us before he did what he did?”

“That’s the big question.” Her mother took a long sip from the cup. “When I see him again, I’ll ask him.”

Lulled by the warmth of the blanket and chocolate, Shannon began to nod. She didn’t want to sleep, she wanted to keep talking, but her eyelids felt like lead.

“Go on to sleep,” her mother urged. “We can talk more tomorrow.” She tugged the blanket over Shannon. “I’ll watch over Black. Sooner or later, the night will end. It’s got to.”

Shannon woke to the sound of soft voices. She saw her grandmother and mother huddled in the far corner of the stall and heard them whispering. “Grandma?” Shannon asked. “When did you come?”

The two women came over and took a seat on the jumble of blankets. Grandmother hugged Shannon, saying, “Your mother called and told me last night about your horse. She said there was nothing I could do, but by this morning, I had to come see you.”

“Is it morning?” Shannon rubbed her sleep-filled eyes and squinted. The pale gray light of dawn was
visible through the stable doorway. Quickly, she spun toward Blackwatch. “How is he?”

“Not much better, I’m afraid,” her mother admitted.

Shannon’s heart sank. “I thought the shot and ice would help him.” Shannon scrambled to the horse and checked him over. If anything, he looked worse and appeared to be leaning against the wall of the stall for support.

“We’re not giving up,” her mother said.