The War Within (20 page)

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

Meredith reached for her, but Natalie pulled away.

“Has George asked you to marry him yet?”

Meredith was thrown by the sudden conversational shift. “What? No.”

“He will.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me so.”

“George and I have talked about marriage as a possibility, but nothing in this world is certain. Did he tell you he wanted to marry me?”

“He wanted to be sure I wouldn’t stand in his way. And I won’t. Because, in the end, he and I want the same thing—for you to be happy. As much as I want to, I can’t make you happy, Meredith. Not because I’m not capable, but because you won’t let me show you how much we could accomplish together. What we’ve done here is a fraction of what we could do if we set our minds and our hearts to it, but you’re too afraid of what everyone would think to allow yourself the happiness you deserve. The happiness you want to have, not what you’re expected to settle for.”

Meredith didn’t have a rebuttal for Natalie’s argument because everything Natalie had said was true. She had always wanted to know how it felt to fall in love. The moment she realized she already knew was also the moment she realized how it felt to watch the one she loved slip through her fingers.

She looked around at the ruined room.

“How can you do this? There’s no place to run. No place to hide. No place that’s safe for you to be who you are. How can you live like this?”

“Because, for me, there is no other way.”

Meredith wished the decision was as easy as Natalie made it sound. Natalie made her feel things she had never felt before, but when she thought about what her family and friends would say if she admitted to being attracted to a woman—

Not just attracted. In love. She was in love with Natalie Robinson. If they knew—if they even suspected—her life would never be the same.

“I want to be with you,” she said, “but I can’t. I just can’t.”

“I know.” Natalie dropped her head. “But that doesn’t make it any easier to hear.” She replaced the drawers in the dresser and began to pick up the clothes that had been dumped out of them. Meredith knelt to help her. “When we get back to Long Binh, I intend to ask Lt. Col. Daniels for a transfer.”

The news was unexpected, but Meredith felt relief instead of surprise. She was disappointed by her reaction. Natalie was walking away. And she was letting her do it because she was too afraid to ask her to stay.

Their hands brushed as they reached for the same blouse in the pile of clothes on the floor. Neither let go. The small piece of cloth was the only thing that still bound them together. As soon as they released their grip, the last tenuous tie between them would be severed. Forever.

Meredith trailed her finger across the back of Natalie’s hand.

“Where will you go?” she asked, unable to look Natalie in the eye. She knew she’d burst into tears if she even tried.

“Wherever they send me.”

Meredith forced herself to look up. To look into eyes filled with disappointment and pain. Eyes that undoubtedly matched her own. “What will you say when the LTC asks why you want to leave?”

“I’m sure I won’t have to
say
anything. She’ll know.” The tears Meredith had tried to hold back began to fall. Natalie cupped her hand against Meredith’s cheek, her voice as gentle as her touch. “Be happy, Meredith. And tell George if he ever hurts you, he’ll have me to deal with.”

Meredith laughed through her tears. She tried to talk but failed, unable to say the words she longed to say. Unable to tell Natalie she couldn’t possibly be happy without her. Unable to tell her she loved her, too.

So she did the only thing she could. She kissed her. She kissed her with all her heart. She kissed her with all her soul. She kissed her good-bye.

Jordan couldn’t move. She and Grandma Meredith had been parked in front of a modest ranch house on Jekyll Island’s North Beachview Drive for a good thirty minutes, but neither had bothered to get out of the car. The neighbors probably thought they were crazy. Not the first impression she had hoped to make, but she didn’t give a shit. Everything she had ever assumed about Grandma Meredith and Papa George—everything she thought she had known about love—had been proven false. She needed a minute to wrap her head around those realizations, the summer neighbors’ first impressions be damned.

“You chose Papa George because it was easier to be with him than to be with a woman?”

“I chose him because I loved him and wanted a family.”

“You chose him because you were too scared to be yourself.”

“Perhaps.”

Jordan gripped her cell phone like a kid squeezing a security blanket. She needed reassurance, but she didn’t know how to find it or where to look. Who was she supposed to call when the person who always talked her down from the ledge was the one responsible for putting her there this time?

“Papa George might have been your second choice, but he made you happy. Didn’t he?”

Grandma Meredith gripped her hand. “I was happy with him, yes, but something was missing.”

Jordan knew exactly how she felt. She hadn’t felt whole until she came to terms with her feelings for other girls. She and Grandma Meredith were tight. How could she not have known Grandma Meredith had gone through similar struggles?

“Papa George knew how Natalie felt about you, but did he know how you felt about her?”

“He mentioned it once or twice in Vietnam, trying, I suppose, to see where he stood or to force me to be honest with myself. I either denied it or changed the subject because I wasn’t ready to admit Natalie’s feelings for me were mutual. Once George and I returned Stateside, my love for her wasn’t something we talked about. It was the proverbial elephant in the room meant to be discussed only in hushed tones or raised voices. We didn’t do either. I made my choice, George supported my decision, and we made a life together. I lived the life I chose to live. The one I had always imagined.”

“But not the one you wanted. That’s why you were so supportive when I came out to you. Because you didn’t want me to make the same mistake you did.”

A flash of anger sparked in Grandma Meredith’s eyes. “Marrying George wasn’t a mistake. Having a family wasn’t a mistake. The only mistake I made was not being honest with myself or the people I loved.”

Jordan’s head spun the way it always did when she tried to cram in too much information all at once. “I assume Mom doesn’t know.”

Grandma Meredith shrugged helplessly. “I’ve always wanted to tell her, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t want her to feel like having her—having a family—was something I felt obligated to do instead of something I truly wanted.”

Grandma Meredith always seemed so confident. So sure of herself. Jordan had never seen her look so uncertain. She wanted to comfort her, just as Grandma Meredith had done for her when she had made her own hesitant declaration about her sexuality, but she felt too betrayed to make the effort. The life she had known was a lie and she wasn’t ready to face her new reality. She turned to take a closer look at the woman she’d thought she knew.

“My life, though fulfilling, is incomplete. Seeing Natalie again would provide closure to a chapter that’s been left unfinished for far too long. Will you help me find her?” Grandma Meredith wiped away tears. She had reached the crossroads of a journey nearly seventy years in the making and the effort was clearly wearing on her.

“I can tell how much the idea of seeing Natalie again means to you, but have you considered the consequences? What if she doesn’t want to be found? What happens if you look for her and she’s not here? Or what if you do find her and she says she hasn’t forgiven you for choosing to have a life with Papa George instead of one with her? A lot could go wrong when you start messing with the past, Gran. If this doesn’t turn out the way you want it to, are you prepared to handle the disappointment?”

“I’ve been preparing myself for this moment for forty-seven years. I’m ready for anything that happens.”

“If you find her, what will you say?”

“I have no idea. I hadn’t planned on trying to find her, but there has to be a reason we ended up in her hometown this year. You might call it dumb luck, but I call it destiny. Whatever I say to her when I see her again has to come from the heart. Of course I’m hoping she feels the same way she did the last time we spoke, but if she doesn’t—if she has a lifetime of resentment she can’t get past—I’ll understand. I just want her to see I’m not the scared little girl she once knew. I want to introduce her to the woman I’ve become.”

“I don’t get it. Your first kiss was your last kiss and you haven’t seen each other since you were in your twenties. How can you say you’re still in love with her after all this time?”

Grandma Meredith spoke with quiet conviction. “Because I am.”

“I hate to play devil’s advocate, Gran, but what if it’s too late? What if she and Helen hooked up after the war or she made a life with someone new? You chose to be with someone else. What if she did, too?”

Grandma Meredith looked off into the distance as if she hadn’t considered the possibility that the alleged love of her life had moved on without her.

“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

When Grandma Meredith looked back, Jordan saw a familiar determination in her eyes. She hoped the bridge Grandma Meredith so desperately wanted to cross hadn’t already been burned.

Meredith pedaled her bicycle along a picturesque shaded pathway. She slowed as she neared the fire station, wary an emergency vehicle might dart into traffic after suddenly being called into service. A warm breeze redolent of pine, oak, and Spanish moss swept across her sweat-dampened skin. She was dressed in sneakers, spandex leggings, and a Green Bay Packers T-shirt, but the oppressive humidity made the outfit feel like cold-weather gear instead of workout wear. A wide sun visor and oversized sunglasses protected her head and face from the blazing sun.

She and Jordan had been in town a little over two weeks. Plenty of time for her to familiarize herself with most of the major attractions on tiny Jekyll Island but not enough time for her to locate Natalie.

The residents were friendly enough when Meredith introduced herself and said she would be living in town for the summer, but they clammed up as soon as she asked if they knew Natalie Robinson or could help locate her. Meredith wasn’t surprised by the wall of silence. She knew from experience denizens of small towns could be protective of their own and standoffish with strangers, but she was determined to continue her search, with or without help. She had come too far to give up now.

She pedaled toward the Jekyll Island Museum, then circled back and stopped in front of the Georgia Sea Turtle Center. The ruins of the Horton House, an almost three-hundred-year-old remnant of Georgia’s British colonial period, were supposed to be around here somewhere. Frances Turtledove, who lived next door to the rental house Meredith was staying in, had told her the Horton House was a sight not to be missed. She hadn’t told her, though, it would be so hard to find.

Meredith and Frances chatted every morning while Frances tended to her garden and Meredith cooled down from her yoga workout. Frances’s gardening skills were impressive, but her sense of direction left much to be desired.

Meredith unfurled a map of the island, draped it across the large basket affixed to the bicycle’s handlebars, and tried to locate her current position. That explained it. She was in the wrong spot. She was on Stable Road. The Horton House was on Riverview Drive, several streets over.

“Looks like I did it again.”

She and George used to joke that no road trip was complete without at least two wrong turns. She had already made one, which meant she had one to spare.

She looked up when she heard a vehicle approach. A Ford Bronco slowly made its way down the street, the driver in no apparent hurry to get where she was going. The driver raised her hand in greeting. Meredith lifted hers in kind, but she froze as soon as she got a better look at the driver’s face. The woman looked just like Natalie. Or how she had always imagined Natalie would look if she ever saw her again. The sharp angles of her face had been softened by time, and her once-brown hair was sprinkled with a liberal dose of gray, but her eyes had the same intensity.

“No, it couldn’t be.”

As the Bronco drove past, Meredith’s mind tried to convince her the woman’s resemblance to Natalie Robinson was a product of wishful thinking. But her heart knew otherwise.

Natalie was here, after all. Now what? Meredith couldn’t catch up to the Bronco on her bike, but there was no telling how long it would be before their paths crossed again. After nearly a lifetime apart, would this one brief encounter be the only reunion they were allowed to experience?

Meredith reached inside her T-shirt, pulled out her dog tags, and ran her fingers over them as if the raised letters and numbers were a set of rosary beads. She had made the gesture countless times. In times of mortal danger and in moments of quiet reflection. She made it again now, seeking comfort during a moment of uncertainty.

Then Natalie hit the brakes, spun the wheel, and turned the car around. She pulled up beside Meredith and lowered the passenger’s side window. “Are you looking for something?”

“As a matter of fact,” Meredith said, staring into the face of the woman she had last seen when her age and waist size were roughly the same number, “I was looking for you.”

*

“Dude, this is a handicapped spot,” Jordan said as Hayden switched off her car. The BMW had an out-of-state license plate, a custom paint job, and a set of four-thousand-dollar rims, but no handicapped parking decal. “You can’t park here.”

“I’m not planning to set up camp. I want to put the beer on ice before we hit the beach so it will still be cold when we get there. If the space is empty, that means our downstairs neighbor isn’t home. If we hurry, we’ll be gone before she shows up. Come on. It will only take a sec.”

Jordan had met Hayden and her friend Willow on her fourth day in town. She had been walking on the beach when Hayden’s barely-there swimsuit and banging bod caught her eye. Hayden had responded with the inevitable, “Do you see something you like?” but she had looked so good lying there in next to nothing, Jordan had been able to overlook the lameness of the line.