“Okay?” I asked.
Her midnight-blue eyes blinked at me solemnly, and then she nodded. “I’m really glad you’re here with me.”
“Nothing could have kept me away. Wherever you go, so must I.”
Elaina mouthed the words “love you” to me as we followed behind the servicewoman who was leading us.
She stopped us at a room that appeared to be set up, just as a viewing area in a funeral parlor would be. Darkened lighting, rich décor with stained-glass windows, and even a platform of sorts. This whole experience was eerie. The very idea that this facility had returned partial remains, so many times, to so many families—the Yanks had been forced to make a room especially for the purpose—was depressing. I worried about what Elaina would be presented with. It didn’t take profound logic to understand that there wasn’t going to be a body for George Morrison. If there had been a body for him, it would’ve been identified almost immediately, not a decade later. There would be very little for the family to claim, and I ached for my girl, and her mother, and brother over it.
“Right through here is where you’ll take possession.” Staff Sergeant Knowles gestured with her arm. “The documentation is on the altar beside your father’s remains, and you’ll take that with you as well.” She gave instructions for Elaina and spoke to her directly. “This room is yours for however long you need it. When you’d like to leave, please use the exit out the hall and to the right. As you come out of the building, you’ll see the car waiting to take you back to your hotel.” She smiled placidly, as if she’d done her small speech thousands of times and could recite it in her sleep. “Whenever you’re ready, though. Again, please take all the time you need.”
Yes, Dover AFB had done this far too many times for my liking. The Yanks had a protocol, which had been honed to perfection because of it. I hated the whole thing. I hated that George Morrison had been killed in a terrorist attack. I hated that a good man had been snuffed out needlessly, as so many others had been, in a pointless war, over semantics…and ideals that would never change any minds. Stupid.
My own service, in the very same war, had made me somewhat of a cynic. Seeing troops die right in front of me was something my mind probably would never let go of. Lost friends and brothers, people you talked to, ate meals with. People you trusted with your life. Lost. Taken. Dead. Was hard for me to evade feelings of guilt, when I still had a life, and they no longer did. Why them and not me?
I also hated that the daughter had to be here claiming the few small bits of her father, a decade after his death, so the family had something to bury. I hated what the circumstances of his death had done to Mum, to Ian, and to Elaina. It brought home the knowledge of how quickly somebody you loved could be taken away from you forever. Like Gran—like my own mother.
Sergeant Knowles gave a salute and left us, the sound of her boots in regulated step, tapping out a beat as she departed, leaving us in quiet once again.
Elaina started forward to the altar, still holding tightly to my hand. She hadn’t broken down or been visibly upset by going there, but I knew it had to be very hard on her to be the one to actually make the trip. There was never a doubt in my mind about coming with her. She needed me and that was all. Family came first, no matter what. The Morrisons were my family.
We stopped at the altar and looked down at the two things placed there. An envelope and a small square box made of cardboard, with a self-closing lid and label marked with his name and address.
Elaina put her hand out and touched it. “It’s so tiny…”
I didn’t know what to say. I just put my arm around her and looked down at the small, tidy box containing some small portion of her dad.
A whole person reduced to what could fit inside a minute cardboard box.
“Let’s go now,” she said.
Elaina picked up the box and the envelope in her hands and looked up at me. Not much expression on her beautiful face, just a kind of blankness that showed me she was suffering from no small amount of shock. She had to be in disbelief at what she’d been given of her father to bring home.
“I want to leave this place.”
So I walked her outside of the building and into the sunshine. A few puffy white clouds in a clear blue autumn sky displayed above our heads. We both looked up at it and I imagined we were both thinking the same thought that didn’t need to be expressed out loud.
This day was very much like the final day of George Morrison’s life.
I sat at the table in our hotel room and stared at the box. A box that held some small parts of my father inside it. So many emotions were boiling around inside my head. Things I’d put aside over the years because the passage of time does dull the ache when you have to live daily life. Also, I’d been a child when he’d died, so the more years that passed without him, made the time I’d had with my father become shorter by comparison. In a way, death is easier than letting go. When the person is gone, you have no choice but to accept that fact. Death is final. When they are still alive but lost to you, the grief stays alive, too.
But Mum had had many wonderful years with my dad. I thought about Neil, and how it would be for me if something like this happened to us. If he was just…gone. And there was never another chance to be together again. I shuddered. Yeah, G&T’s every day didn’t seem like something that far off the mark, when I put it in my terms. My mother had lost her husband, the father of her children, the love of her life. Who was I to judge how she handled her grief? I didn’t even know how I would present this—what should I even call it?—portion of my dad to my mother, when we arrived back home.
“Neil, I can’t bring him back to Mum in this…box. There has to be something better we can find.”
His response was to bring his hand up to the back of my neck and rub with his thumb gently back and forth. He’d been so good about everything, showing me, with his quiet strength and support, how much he loved me, and my family. I’d done a number on Neil when I’d left him six years ago. I realized now, how much my abandonment had hurt him to the point he was unreasonably worried about me going anywhere without him. I suppose he was still afraid I might not come back.
This was something I agonized over each time I saw the signs of his obsessive worry about me. It made me feel guilty and I didn’t like feeling that way. I knew he had me on surveillance in his office at work, that he could watch me at my station and hear me talking to clients and such. I was being patient with him for now, but I didn’t think it was healthy for us, either.
“I saw some shops on the street like antiques and even a pawn shop, I think. Maybe you can find something suitable in one of them. You want to go right now?” he asked.
“You don’t have to come with me, you know.” I sighed without meaning to. “I’ll be fine by myself. It’s just a block of shops on the same street as this hotel.”
He shook his head at me and frowned. “I’m coming with—”
“You don’t have to worry anymore, babe. I know I hurt you badly, and I own up to what I did to you by leaving like that.” I put my hand on his face. “But I’ll always come back to you. I love you and I can’t live without you. There is nothing that will ever keep me from my man again. I’ll always come back to you. Promise.”
The look he gave me nearly split my heart in two. His eyes turned glassy and he brought his head to my lap and just rested it there, saying nothing. He reached for my hand and clasped it against his lips. I ran my fingers through his hair with my other hand and we just stayed like that for a while. No words needed. We communicated just fine without them.
Decisions were permanent, and although we could regret some of them, we couldn’t call them back. I had made some poor ones. Neil had too. I guess the best we could hope for, was to love each other as honestly as possible on each day we had left together. And hope for many, many long years of those days in our future.
He still had his head in my lap when he asked, “I want to take you somewhere before we go back to
London. Please?”
“Of course, my darling,” I answered immediately. “Wherever you go, so must I.”
CHAPTER 25
From Washington D.C., Neil brought me to Scotland.
He’d told me he just wanted one weekend where we could rest and be together, without any distractions from work, or the myriad of other problems that had a way of taking one’s attention away from what you really wanted to be doing. He needed me all to himself, according to him.
He’d also said, that it was time for me to see his inheritance from the uncle he’d never met.
The whole idea of it still amazed me. Neil, a landowner, and from the looks of it, there was a lot of land involved.
“I can’t believe this,” I mumbled looking from the window as the car pulled into a long drive bordered with more trees.
“What can’t you believe, Cherry?” Neil was doing that thing where he liked to surprise me and gave virtually no information, just to torture me. Made me insane, but he sure seemed to be enjoying himself.
“This is a bloody estate with an enormous amount of land and, well, you made out like it was just an old house on a plot with some trees, not something out of Pride and Prejudice.”
“Is that Mr. Darcy’s house you mean?”
“Yes, it was named Pemberley, if you care to know.” I still hadn’t seen Neil’s house come into view yet, and was getting very impatient as I peered out the window.
“I’ll make a note of it.” He leaned over to give me a kiss on the side of my temple. “I know how you love your romance books. You’re always reading in bed.”
“And you’re always making a point to distract me when I’m trying to read in bed.”
“Damn straight, woman. Do you think I’m a moron or something?” He nuzzled my neck.
“Shhh.” I pointed stealthily in the direction of our cab driver with my finger.
“But I’m just kissing your neck,” Neil whispered, “that doesn’t make any sound.”
I continued looking out the window, and let out a scream about a minute later when our cab turned down what looked to be a private road.
“Who is needing a very firm “shhh” now, huh?”
I didn’t pay any attention to him. My eyes were riveted to what framed the road. Lining both sides of us were trees completely covered with white and pink blossoms. A surprise for November, but they were definitely blooming. The Autumn Cherry. It comes into bloom for a second time in autumn. All the way up the drive leading to his house.
“These are the autumn cherry trees you told me about…”
“Yes, darlin’. Aren’t they pretty?”
I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t because my vocal chords had frozen. I nodded my reply to him with my hand firmly attached to the window of the cab.
Rivers of tears were streaming down my face.
***
The next minutes were a blur as I indulged in an ugly-cry moment. Neil seemed to know what to do with me, though. Thankfully, he took charge of everything else in his life so competently, and, it seemed, me as well. He’d always had an uncanny ability to know when he needed to—the part about taking charge of me.
He paid the driver and sent him away, before leading me up the stone steps of his house on very wobbly feet.
Mansion was a much more accurate description of what I was staring at.
Four massive, white stone pillars held up the façade, which framed a beautiful door painted in a rich shade of dark blue. Yellow and grey stone, trimmed with white bricks made up the rest of it. The house was flanked by colossal pine and oak trees on a lush green park, one that spread out for what seemed like miles.
He then greeted an older man, with graying hair, who appeared to be waiting at the top of the steps for us. Neil introduced him to me as Batesman, and the two of them had a small chat, while my knees felt like they would buckle at any moment. I made a valiant attempt to say hello and not frighten the poor man to an early death. Highly doubtful I could be successful on that one. Well, we would just have to wait and see if Mr. Batesman died in his sleep tonight, wouldn’t we? Wait, more importantly begged the question—Neil had a servant? In his Scottish mansion? On his frickin’ country estate?!
My head suddenly ached terribly.
I needed a ginormous glass of red and then a chaser of something much stronger. This was Scotland; maybe there were bottles of hundred-year-old Scotch down in the cellars left over from the smuggling days of Jack Sparrow and his ilk. I’d bet my sarcastic thought was closer to the mark than not.
I followed along as he led me by the hand, and felt more and more out of my element. My sense of security with him, of us, felt strangely threatened. This was all something new to me. A part of him I had no knowledge of, introduced into his life at a time when I wasn’t there. He’d learned everything of this place…without me.
I let him lead me along blindly, as I was no longer able to see anything of the inside of his magnificent house, my eyes so blurry with tears.
Neil knew what was going on with me, though. He always knew.
Without a word, he paused at the bottom of a huge staircase before scooping me up in his arms. He carried me up that marble staircase and brought me to a room with a four-poster bed made up with a plush white duvet.
He laid me back onto the soft, fluffy down cover and hovered over me, his eyes flickering over my face, reading me, understanding how hard it was to let go of regret. He must have regrets, too. I knew he had them, and that they were the reasons he forgave me for mine.
“I know what you need, Cherry,” he told me, as he descended. “Let me take care of you.”
His soft lips kissed, and his warm tongue licked away every tear on my face, until any sad thought that weighed upon my conscience was set aside for that moment. He stripped me out of my clothes slowly, piece by piece, until I was totally naked and he could trail his hands and mouth over me.
Until no part of my body was left untouched. Until he’d given me too many orgasms to count. Until he’d made me feel reassured of my place with him, in Scotland. Yes, my man knew me well.
He left the bed and stripped out of his own clothes. Less slowly than he’d undressed me. He was ready for me, well before his trousers landed somewhere on the floor.
When he returned, I sat up and pushed my hands on his chest, forcing him back down into the softness of the bed. “My turn.”
He smiled at me, his lips still glossy from what they’d been doing to me for the past glorious minutes, as realization dawned on his handsome face.
I got comfortable and took his thick cock in my hand, stroking up and down the velvet skin that sheathed the rock hardness underneath. I wrapped my mouth around the head of him and drew deeply, sucking to the back of my throat until I couldn’t take him any farther.
“Oh, fuckin’ fuck yes…” he growled, as I went to work on his beautiful penis.
And it was beautiful. Neil in the throes of passion was breathtaking to me. I wouldn’t say no to a picture or two if he ever offered. Golden male beauty with muscles honed to perfection, tight and straining beneath me, because of what I did to him. From what I made him feel. With all the love I could give to him with my whole heart.
I sucked him to the brink, until I was waiting for his release of semen to land in my mouth, when he pulled completely out of and away from me.
“No, I want—” he whispered harshly, before repositioning himself and lifting me under my arms. He hauled me back onto his lap, set me down onto his cock, and thrust inside me violently. He took control of his orgasm, as his mouth claimed mine, just as roughly as his cock had just claimed my sex. “Cherry, Cherry…Cherry—I love…YOU,” he chanted against my lips.
His hands gripped at my hips almost painfully, keeping our bodies fused together, his cock buried deep inside me, even after he’d laid back into the softness of the bed, and brought me with him.
After we settled down from the rush, he pulled the duvet over us to keep off the autumn chill
. I moved to rearrange my body but he gripped my bum and kept us connected. “Stay like this with me.”
I touched his face and held it. “Why?”
“Because I want to be in you.”
“Why?” I had my theories about what he was doing.
His eyes looked to the left, betraying his untruth. “I love being inside you after. I love you.”
“I love you too, and I think I know what you’re trying to accomplish.” I rested my chin carefully on his sternum so I wouldn’t hurt him. “It’s probably not going to work though. You know I’m on the pill. You’ve seen me taking them.”
He sighed slightly, his expression giving up in defeat, that I had routed out his motivation for coming inside me, instead of letting me take him in my mouth.
“Well, I hope they fail at some point, because you’re the only woman who’ll ever be mother to my kids.”
When I admitted to my caveman plan to knock her up so I’d never lose her again, she smiled. My Cherry Girl knew me so well.
“You don’t have to get me pregnant to keep me. I’ll stay either way,” she said sweetly, before resting her cheek to my chest.
I stroked up and down her back and pictured her and me with our future children. There should be a few, I thought. Boys and girls that looked like her, and never had to know a life without loving parents who were there every step of the way, helping them to grow, and become good people.
“I’ll still work on it, thank you very much,” I said. “I have a plan all sorted out, Cherry…and, as you’ve learned—” I coughed and muttered the words, “self-defense training classes” under my breath, “—I take my plans in regards to you very seriously.”
She giggled and snaked her hand down to my ribs for a jab.
“Oh, that’s gonna get you something for sure, beautiful girl,” I said to her, as I rolled her beneath me.
I kept my promise.
Over and over again.
***