Abiding Love (10 page)

“For Mark. It might help him if he could be reasonably sure they’re in heaven.”

Now, that idea really ticked him off and he said so, instinctively, without any thought at all. Then he noticed that she looked so shocked, he might just as well have said he was glad they were dead. Which he wasn’t. He’d loved Mallory. And Jerry hadn’t been a bad guy. He’d been good to Mark and that said something about the man.

“She really hurt you badly, didn’t she,” Alexandra said, her expression grave as she reached out and touched his arm.

He told her then. It just all spilled out the way it had started to that day in her office. Maybe it was her touch short-circuiting his brain again. He didn’t know why he did it but he told her about the day he’d been wounded. About his battlefield decision to quit the
SEAL teams for Mallory’s sake and their son’s. About returning home to that letter and finding himself recuperating in an empty house. His years of loving the woman who’d left him without warning. The continued hurt when she’d circumvented his visitation and asked him to give up his rights to Mark altogether. And then the biggest confession of all. He told her why Mallory had tried so hard to keep them apart. She’d said he would be a bad father—as his own had been. And finally he confessed his own fear that she’d been right, though for reasons other than Mallory’s.

All the while she just listened, saying nothing. Maybe because he didn’t give her a chance to get in a word. Maybe because she was in shock. Maybe because there was nothing to say. Then she said the one thing Mallory never had.

“I’m so sorry.”

T
he kindness and sincerity of Alexandra’s sympathy jolted Adam, making him realize how much he’d unloaded on her. He swore and smacked the steering wheel. Luckily they were at a red light—one he didn’t even remember stopping for.

He looked around. How far had he driven while his mouth went off at a hundred miles per hour? “I’m the one who’s sorry. I asked you to be a sounding board about Mark, not about his mother and our sorry relationship.”

Her back pressed up against the door, she stared at him, something wary in her expression that he’d seen before but couldn’t fully identify. “You…seem to, uh, have a right to your anger,” she said so hesitantly it brought him up short.

He’d told her she could say anything she felt he needed to hear. Why was she so nervous? Like Mallory, did she think his being a SEAL labeled him as
violent? She was so fair-minded that he just couldn’t see her making a snap judgment like that.

“I think I’ve kept it hidden from Mark. I hope so, anyway.” he added, cautiously watching her every reaction. She was becoming quite a puzzle.

“Do you ever force the issue and try to get him to talk about her?”

He stared back, trying to put his finger on what was off-kilter about her reactions. But a horn behind them blared, startling them both. Embarrassed to have forgotten where they were, Adam felt his face heat. He was thankful for the semidarkness left by the setting sun, when he let the clutch up and started them moving forward through the intersection. As if it were a lifeline, he grasped on to the safer subject of Mark. He’d said more than enough about himself, thank you very much.

“The day before I first took him to church, I got Mark to tell me what they did as a family. It wasn’t easy, and it hurt to have to ask about how my son had spent his everyday life. I was glad I did it, though, because that’s what gave me the idea to take him to church. He was a little ambivalent about the idea. He sounded a little—I guess you could call it—mad at God over her death. At least that’s what I got from what he said. But now he seems to enjoy it there, so maybe I’m wrong.”

“And what about you? Do you enjoy it?”

He glanced at her and shrugged, tension zinging along his nerve endings. Both felt like loaded questions. “It’s a way to get Mark together with some
nice kids. Jim Dillon’s a good speaker. Even entertaining at times.” He shrugged, striving for nonchalance. “Other than that, I don’t get it. Especially that whole thing he talked about at the end of last week’s service. Tell God you believe in Jesus and that you’re sorry for your sins and you get a free pass into heaven.”

“It isn’t free at all. The whole basis of the Christian faith is that Christ died for our sins. It was a huge payment from a sinless man who was also God incarnate.”

He grinned and shook his head. “I know all that. I’m not a heathen, you know.”

She didn’t even chuckle. She merely sat in telling silence for a long, uneasy moment.

“But do you really understand?” she finally asked. “For instance, if Mallory accepted the salvation offered by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, then she was forgiven by God, even if you haven’t forgiven her. Christians are on a path trying to be as perfect as our Savior, but we all fall short. Jesus was the only one who lived a sinless, blameless life.”

He squinted and gave her a quick look. “So you’re saying it’s okay to hurt people as long as you’ve said some magic prayer at one point in your life? That just doesn’t sound fair. Mallory slept with that man when she was married to me—when I was off getting myself shot to keep her and our country safe. Then she left me for him and took off with my son.”

“Now I’m going to annoy you even more.” She twisted in her seat, ignoring the constraints of her seat
belt. “You’re still angry at her. You have to forgive her, Adam. It isn’t good to harbor the kind of anger you’re feeling for her right now.”

He gave her a long look this time before dragging his gaze back to the long ribbon of highway ahead. He had to fight to keep his hands from gripping the wheel too tightly. “Forgive her? How? I know it’s been ten years, but I live with Mark. Day in and day out his attitude reminds me that my son is a near stranger because of what they did.”

“You don’t
try
to forgive people. You
decide
to forgive.”

“Decide to?”

“I read that when soldiers are trained in survival they’re taught to force themselves to eat something unappetizing by visualizing it as choosing life over death. Have you done that?”

“Tell myself it’s for my survival? Yeah. A time or two.”

“Forgiveness can be just as important. Anger and hatred eat at us and use up incredible amounts of energy. They fill our souls and keep us from feeling the good things in life. They hold us in the past and stop us from moving ahead, just as effectively as hunger could make a soldier too weak to get back home to safety.”

Adam could understand the concept, but right then it didn’t seem possible. “You’re divorced. Have
you
forgiven
him?”

Xandra stared at Adam. Was he only turning the
tables on her or did he know the reasons for her divorce? Did he know about the abuse or the infidelity?

The truth was, she
had
forgiven Michael. She had forgiven him for all of it. But it hadn’t been easy. Because to grant forgiveness she had had to get angry in the first place. She had fled her marriage in fear, not fury.

Feeling anger was something her therapist had helped her with. Xandra had come to realize that during her marriage she’d turned off her anger response as a safety measure. When Michael had said or done something that would anger any normal red-blooded woman, she’d passively accepted it. It was safer that way. To do otherwise was to give him a reason to retaliate either emotionally or physically. The dawning of her anger had been another step in the right direction.

Forgiveness had been the next.

Xandra paused in self-reflection. It was impossible to miss certain basic similarities between her story and Adam’s. Mallory’s claim that Adam was a bad father sounded like the same kind of emotional abuse she’d lived with day in and day out. He’d also been cheated on by his wife, as Michael had cheated on her. And Adam had buried his anger behind layers of hurt and self-doubt. Even their distant pasts had a similarity in their upbringing in homes where love had carried conditions.

She couldn’t let what Michael had done to her, and her own apprehension about Adam’s growing appeal for her, stop her from comforting him. She glanced
at him and his gaze flicked her way at the same moment. Their eyes locked.

“I forgave him,” she said. “It wasn’t easy, but I refused to give him the power to hurt me any longer. I can’t pretend to know how much your ex-wife hurt you by taking Mark away, but I do know what it feels like when a spouse is unfaithful.”

“The man was an idiot,” Adam said baldly, and glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “There’s a fast-food place coming up on the right. You want me to stop? We could grab something and eat in the truck if you’re hungry.”

Her stomach growled. Her hand on her noisy abdomen, she let out an unladylike snort, then slapped her other hand over her mouth to cover a nervous giggle. She knew it had more to do with a sudden relieving of the charged atmosphere than anything else.

“Not the smoothest change of subject I’ve ever heard,” she quipped, smiling to take the sting out of her accusation, “but a pretty effective one. Stop, please. I’m starving.”

He grinned and shot her a wry look. “You don’t say. I’d never have guessed.”

Mark knelt in front of the box of his father’s belongings that had just been delivered. He’d decided to carry it upstairs but had accidentally dropped it, and he was checking the damage. Inside, his parents’ wedding photo lay on top in a broken frame. They stood in their wedding clothes—his mother in a white
gown and his father in dress whites—beneath an arch of crossed swords.

He hadn’t thought his father would keep something so sentimental. Feeling responsible, Mark picked the photo up to see if the backing could be fixed…and a letter fluttered out.

He wouldn’t have considered reading it but the letter was in his mother’s handwriting. His heart squeezed painfully. The letter was short. Mean. Full of truths he’d never understood, and full of lies.

She’d left his father for Jerry, who she said was everything his father wasn’t. Mark thought back and remembered coming home from kindergarten and finding Jerry and his mom laughing in the kitchen. Mark had liked Jerry right off because he made his mom laugh more. She had never laughed when his dad was there. When his dad was home they fought sometimes, and Mark had always felt guilty when it happened. So he’d thought Jerry was okay.

But his dad had been okay, too. It had been Mom who was always yelling. Usually when he and Dad were playing.

Mark remembered the report card ceremony now—his dad pinning a ribbon on him for each report card after hanging it on the fridge. He remembered ordinary days when his dad came home and tossed Mark high in the air. Once again, he remembered how his mother would shout that Mark would get hurt, even though his father had never dropped him. So Dad would put him down, smiling but looking kind of worried. Mark had hated that worried sad smile, and
so he’d tackle his big, tall father and knock him down. They’d roll around on the ground and laugh. Together.

He smiled sadly, knowing now that he hadn’t knocked that big man off his feet at all. Then one day his dad, his hero, had left with his big green pack after promising to be back. But he hadn’t come back. The day came when Jerry—he was there all the time by then—had loaded up their things in his car and taken them to New Mexico. His mother had explained that Jerry was his father now and that his dad wasn’t ever coming home.

It was all so clear now. And Mark understood. He’d missed more than his bedroom. More than the wallpaper. Had he really told that to this man whom he’d once idolized? He’d missed the bedtime stories his dad used to tell. And the wrestling matches on the floor. The report card ceremonies and those cool ribbons that Mark now recognized as uniform ribbons that represented his father’s decorations. Mark had missed a lifetime with his father. His hero.

“Mark?” Adam said from the doorway of his bathroom.

Mark surreptitiously wiped his eyes before turning around and looking up. “Your, uh, your stuff got here,” Mark said. He had to get the picture fixed. He couldn’t embarrass his father by letting him know Mark had seen that letter. And he had to call Aunt Sky. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he had the timing wrong in his head. It had been wrong for years, after all. Aunt Sky would know.

Adam, towel around his waist, walked over and looked down at the box. He chuckled. “Yeah. Military efficiency. Apparently there’s a town in England with the same name as this one. That’s where my stuff was. Thanks for carrying it up.”

“Sure,” Mark said, and watched his father’s face as his gaze came to rest on the wedding picture.

“Man, we were so young,” his father said with kind of a sad smile. “We thought we knew it all. Do yourself a favor, son. Don’t push growing up too fast. Once you get there, there’s no going back.”

As Mark let his eyes drop to the picture, he noticed the scar on his father’s leg, and something occurred to him that he remembered questioning once before. The leg wound his father had gotten his Purple Heart for. When had it happened?

It was there on their first trip to Disney together, red and angry looking. That’s when Mark had asked about the wound, and Adam had brushed it off as unimportant. But the fact was, it had to have been a new wound, or Mark wouldn’t have been asking about it.

“Can I look through this stuff?” he asked his father. “It just looks like pictures and commendations. Stuff like that.”

Adam shrugged. “Sure. I didn’t think you were interested in all that stuff.”

Mark shrugged, trying for a neutral expression. “It looks sort of cool.”

“Okay, then,” Adam said, and just stood there as if he didn’t know what to make of Mark being nice.

How wrong was
that?

“Sully said dinner at seven, though. Try not to be late. He gets cranky when his dinner gets cold before we eat it.”

“How can you tell if he
gets
cranky? Seems he’s
always
cranky,” Mark said, but he smiled. Sully was okay. He even took out the garbage.

Adam smiled, too. “That’s Sully. Equal opportunity grump. Then you like him okay? You didn’t have an opinion before I called him about the job. How about now?”

Mark stared at his father. He’d said he didn’t care. Why did he have to keep rubbing it in? Talk about twisting the knife! “Like I said.
Whatever.
A guy maid is a little weird, but as long as I don’t have to call you Commander the way he does, it’s all good.”

All he got in response was this intense stare. Then his father said, “
Dad
is all I ever wanted to be to you, son.”

The sincerity ringing in his voice tossed salt on the wound. Now if Mark could just remember who had made that wound in the first place, maybe he’d understand all this anger he felt.

“Yeah. I think I’m getting that,” Mark grumbled, and walked out carrying the box.

He went to his room, determined to find the Purple Heart commendation, call Aunt Sky and piece the truth together. He needed to know. Had his father left them as his mother had said, or had he been deployed? And was he off getting wounded when she’d packed them up and left with Jerry?

He needed the truth no matter how much it hurt, because every day that went by prolonged his father’s pain. And as he once again looked down at his mother’s letter, Mark had a feeling his father had suffered more than his share already.