A chill shot down my spine.
“You don’t need me to go into the gory details of what’s been done to the men and the families of those who collaborated with the American forces.”
My hand flew to my mouth. Mark had told me he was a coward, crawling out of a black hole, and his abandonment of Ibrahim must be what he’d been referring to. But he’d had no option. No choice but to follow orders and leave behind this man he considered family.
“He left his friend, didn’t he, and now his friend is dead.”
“I’ll get to all that in a minute.”
“Okay.” I was sitting close to the edge of my seat.
“Against every dictate of his conscience, Mark followed orders. He hated it; he argued and was nearly court-martialed for insubordination. Remember, his family has a long military history and Mark had to choose between putting a black mark on his family name or following orders.”
“He followed orders.” That went without saying, but I said it anyway. “And hated himself for it.”
“As you can imagine, he became deeply depressed. When it came time to reup, no one expected that he’d leave the military, especially since his father and grandfather had both made it their career. It was expected that Mark would do the same, and he probably would have, if not for what happened with Ibrahim.”
“It was about the same time that he lost his family, too, wasn’t it?” Everything Bob told me started to make sense. The depression, the self-recrimination, the sense that he’d failed everyone he’d ever loved.
“You were his salvation, Jo Marie. You, who came to town, grieving and lost yourself, and you were exactly what Mark needed. Falling in love with you gave him purpose. It took this long for him to accept what he had to do.”
I wrapped my arms around my stomach, my grip tight, as if to hold myself together for what was about to come next. “You’re about to tell me Mark decided to return to Iraq, aren’t you?”
“That’s what he did, Jo Marie. He got word from an old army buddy that Ibrahim and his family needed Mark’s help. They were in dire straits. I tried to talk him out of it myself, without success.”
“He went alone, too.” It wasn’t a question, because I already knew the answer.
Bob’s face was bleak and colorless. “He went without government sanction, without any political clout or connections. He was basically on his own and alone.”
“Ibrahim is alive?”
“Yes, according to the most recent word he’d gotten. Mark doesn’t know for how much longer.”
“Mark’s going back for his friend and Ibrahim’s family?”
Bob lowered his gaze again. He didn’t need to say it for me to know how incredibly dangerous this would be.
There had to be a reason why he would decide to go right now. Some evidence that prompted him to act. “Did he somehow get further word of the situation there?”
“No. Mark has no new information regarding his friend.”
“But he must have some idea of where Ibrahim or his family might be living and…and even if he’s able to find them, how can Mark possibly help Ibrahim now? It’s been years.”
“Yes, nearly five years. You’re bringing up the same questions, doubts, and objections I did. No one knows for sure if Ibrahim is alive or dead. Mark’s not even sure where he is.”
My heart was beating at an alarming pace. “But portions of Iraq are under control of radicals.” I wasn’t telling Bob anything he didn’t already know. The news reports were filled with stories of the killings, and especially anyone connected to Americans. My head refused to think of what would happen to Mark if it were learned he had once been part of the American military and he were captured. My breathing went shallow with fear.
“Jo Marie, Mark asked me to explain all this to you. He wanted you to understand the situation, so that if he didn’t make it back…”
“He left knowing there was a good chance he’d die there.” His reasoning was beyond understanding. Tears clouded my eyes, but I blinked furiously, refusing to let them fall. That explained what I’d heard when I’d inadvertently stumbled upon Mark giving Bob his woodworking equipment.
Bob continued to hold my gaze. “You should also know he’s made you the beneficiary of his life insurance policy.”
I gasped and shook my head several times. That Mark would think that I would want his money was beyond comprehension. I’d already been the beneficiary of Paul’s policy. Surely Mark understood how painful it would be for me to collect his.
“He also asked that you be the executor of the funds from the sale of the house. He’d like for you to give that to the charities of your choice in his father’s name.”
The thickness in my throat made it nearly impossible for me to swallow or speak.
“I’m sorry, Jo Marie, I know hearing this is hard.”
I was capable of speaking only one word. “But…?”
Bob’s own face clouded with grief. “I had the same questions. It’s extremely risky, but nothing I said swayed his decision. He was returning to Iraq to help his friend if at all humanly possible.”
“Why…?” Again I choked out a lone word, which was all I was able to manage.
“Jo Marie, he did it for you.”
“For me?” This made no sense. If he was doing anything for me, it would be to stay right here in Cedar Cove and love me. We were the best of friends. With time, we might have built something more. The potential was there and now Mark was throwing it all away, and for what? I didn’t want a hero.
“Mark didn’t consider himself worthy of you,” Bob continued.
I cried out in disbelief.
“Mark felt that he was a coward who went against his conscience and followed orders he knew in his heart and head were wrong.”
“He had no choice.”
“He believes otherwise. He won’t give up until he finds out what happened to Ibrahim and his family. And frankly, with the chaos going on in Iraq, I don’t even know if that’s possible. It would be best for you to put him out of your mind. He probably won’t be coming back, Jo Marie. Accept that and go on with your life.”
I stared at him in shocked disbelief.
“That was what Mark wanted me to tell you. What he was unable to tell you himself.”
“That is his final message to me?”
“No,” Bob insisted. “His final message is that he loves you and is grateful to you for giving him the courage to do what he knows to be right.”
“I’m ready,” Katie said a full half-hour before they were due to depart for the evening’s reunion events. She was anxious, more than anxious. Tonight was it. It was her last chance with James.
“It’s a bit early, isn’t it?” Coco protested.
Katie knew her friend tended to be fashionably late, but she saw that Coco was dressed and ready as well. She looked great, but she always did. She wore a simple, sleeveless white shirt with a blue-and-white awning skirt and a kelly-green sweater.
“You look amazing,” Katie said, a bit in awe of her friend’s natural style.
“You do, too,” Coco insisted.
“Do I?” Katie had taken great care with her own outfit. The only person she cared about impressing, however, was James. If he told her again this evening that there was no chance for the two of them, then she would accept his decision. With everything in her, she hoped that wouldn’t be the case. Her one hope was that if he would just hear her out and understand why she’d done what she did, he’d be willing to give them another chance.
“I really do want to get there early,” Katie said, pressing her small clutch against her stomach as she paced the hallway outside of Coco’s room. “I want to be there when James comes in the door, that way he won’t be able to ignore me.”
“Gotcha. No problem,” Coco said, and gave Katie’s arm a reassuring squeeze. “Let’s do this.”
The fact that Coco agreed without an argument surprised Katie. “You don’t mind? I mean, you don’t normally
like to get there early. If you want, you can just drop me off.”
“I don’t mind in the least,” Coco said, and reached for her own clutch. “I have my own reasons.” Her smile was wide.
Together the two women walked down the stairs. Jo Marie wasn’t around, though they’d briefly talked about Jo Marie taking their photo on the way out and posting it on the inn’s Facebook page. Actually, Katie was glad not to be waylaid. She was so anxious to speak to James right when he first showed up.
As she suspected, they were the first to arrive. The high school gymnasium looked as if they were stepping back ten years. Posters lined the walls with photos from their school years, along with movie and music memorabilia. Katie hoped these reminders would bring James’s heart back to that special time and the love they’d once shared.
Coco left Katie to stand by the door. While she might have looked outwardly calm, her heart was in turmoil. It was a wonder her purse remained in one piece from the grip she held on it.
Several of their classmates arrived around six. Katie felt like she was one of the welcoming committee, steering her fellow graduates toward Angie and Lily, where they were to get their table assignments.
It was around six-ten when she first caught sight of James. Right away her pulse accelerated.
He must have spied her, too, because he hesitated briefly, his steps slowing as if he dreaded another confrontation. She offered him a tentative, shaky smile, which he didn’t return.
Standing where she did, he couldn’t very well avoid her. “I hoped we could talk for a few minutes,” she said as he approached.
He glared at her. “Katie, we already had this conversation last night. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing more to say.”
“You’re wrong,” she challenged, grateful that her voice remained strong and even, especially when every other part of her body seemed to be shaking.
“I want nothing more to do with you, Katie. You’re not important to me and haven’t been in a very long while.”
She chose to ignore his words, painful though they were. “I understand why you’d rather avoid me,” she told him, doing her best not to let emotion bleed into her voice.
“Do you?”
“This is retaliation for the way I treated you.”
He shook his head in a pitying way, as if he felt sorry for her. “What happened between us was a long time ago. It’s over.”
“It isn’t, James, and won’t be until you hear me out.”
“I’ve heard all I care to hear,” he said, his voice dropping below the freezing point. The chill was enough to make her blood run cold.
He stepped around her and she reached out and laid her hand on his arm. “Three minutes,” she pleaded. “All I ask is that you give me three minutes.”
Other couples passed as they entered. Katie realized that standing in the doorway to have this conversation probably wasn’t the best idea.
James’s look remained skeptical.
“Is three minutes too much to ask?” she said quietly. “If at the end of that time you don’t like what I have to say, then we’ll part ways with no hard feelings.”
He exhaled and crossed his arms. “On one condition.”
“Anything.”
“I’ll give you three minutes, and then you’ll leave me alone the rest of the evening. I want to enjoy tonight without worrying about it being interrupted. I don’t want to be mean or cruel. Katie, please, just accept that it’s over between us.”
Her eyes widened as she took in his words.
“Agreed?” he asked.
It took her a moment to agree and then she smiled. James might want her to think he was immune to her, but his request proved otherwise, bolstering her spirits.
“Agreed,” she answered, when she realized he was waiting for her response.
He wasn’t finished. “Then, after this evening, you promise never to get in touch with me again.”
“Never?” She swallowed hard.
“Never,” he said emphatically. “As I said earlier, I want nothing more to do with you. Stay completely and totally out of my life. Don’t put me on your Christmas card list, and don’t try to friend me on Facebook or any other social media.”
“I already tried that. You wouldn’t accept me as a friend.”
“One would think you’d take the hint,” he muttered under his breath.
Katie had learned a long time ago that the line between love and hate could be laser thin. That he would so adamantly want her out of his life told her that he was unwilling to admit how deeply he continued to care for her. This gave her hope, and she grabbed hold of it with both hands.
“Got it? Do you agree to my terms?” he asked impatiently.
“Okay. Got it.” Despite how anxious she was about the conversation, his officiousness made her smile. Again, perhaps he was protesting a bit much? She could only hope. She moved away from the entrance and led him to the far end of the gym, where they stood beneath the basketball hoop.
When he joined her, he looked at his watch. It was as if he was literally starting his timer. She fully expected a buzzer to go off in three minutes. She took a breath and launched into her speech.
“It about killed me to break up with you, James, whether you believe me or not. You wanted me to come with you to California and I wanted that more than anything, but I had to know if you had your family’s support. I talked to your mother, and she told me everyone was against it. Your grandparents were adamant this would be all wrong for you, and your parents as well. You never told me that. You let me assume none of that mattered, but it did. It was then that I knew if we got married or lived together the way you wanted it would have caused nothing but problems in your family. It would have been the two of us against your parents and your grandparents. They loved you and wanted the best for you and me, and at that time of your life a serious commitment to me wasn’t it. I didn’t have family and I refused to selfishly destroy the relationship you had with yours.”
“Two minutes and thirty-three seconds,” he said, studying the face of his watch.
“You loved me then more than anyone had ever loved me. Even more than my parents or my family…well, other than my grandmother, but she was gone. I was alone.”
“Are you looking for my sympathy?” he asked, giving off the impression he was bored with the conversation.
“Not your sympathy but your understanding.”
“Katie, it’s over. I don’t know what more you want from me.”
“But I’ve already told you,” she pleaded, needing him to let go of the bitterness and see things from her side. The wall he’d built between them was thicker than concrete and just as difficult to crack. “It wasn’t an easy time for me, either.”
His face grew red. “I was away from home for the first time. I missed my family, but mostly I missed you. It drove me crazy that you could break things off as if what we’d shared meant nothing. You cut me completely off without a reasonable explanation. You wanted to date others?” His laugh was devoid of humor. “Overnight you went from hot to cold on me. I was frantic, wanting to know what was going on. You completely shut me out. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong other than love you.”
“I had to cut all ties between us,” she said, lowering her gaze. “It was the only way I could do it.”
“You could have talked to me, told me about this conversation with my mother, and suggested we hold off. Yes, I know my grandparents were against us, but eventually they would have come around. They were married when my grandmother was a teenager. She knew at a young age what it meant to find love. What you did was wrong on so many different levels, Katie, and now you expect me to let it go. You have no idea of the hell you put me through.”
She closed her eyes. She’d been through hell, too, but she’d done it for him.
“You waited until I’d left for college and threw this emotional bomb at me and now I’m supposed to forget it ever happened,” he continued, his voice t
ight with anger. “Sorry, but I can’t do it.”
She tried again, growing desperate. “It would have been too hard to maintain a long-distance relationship. Your mother warned about that…she said if we continued it would distract you…you’d be worried about me and your schooling would suffer.”
“Do you think what you did was any easier on me? Do you have any idea of how cruel and heartless you were?” His voice gained intensity and garnered several glances from around the room. James must have noticed, because he lowered his voice. “Now you seem to think a few words of explanation and an apology are enough to turn everything around as if it didn’t happen? This is a joke, right?”
“I’d hoped…”
“Then you’re living in a fairy tale. I’m glad you did what you did.”
“Glad?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“You taught me a lot about myself. Thank God we never got married, because I’m fairly certain that we would have grown to hate each other.”
Katie gasped, unable to hold back the shock.
“Your time is up.”
From somewhere behind Katie a woman’s voice reached out. “There you are, James.”
The woman joined them and wrapped her arm around James’s elbow and smiled up at him. “I thought you said you’d wait for me by the door,” she said. “I should have known you’d get sidetracked. Class reunions are like that, aren’t they?”
Katie stared at the petite auburn-haired woman who regarded James with her heart in her eyes.
“Is this one of your classmates?” she asked, when neither James nor Katie responded. She held out her hand to Katie. “I’m Emily Gaffney,” she said.
Katie couldn’t have said a word, even if her life hung in the balance.
“This is Katie Gilroy.” James finally spoke up and made the introduction.
“Hello, Katie,” Emily said, her smile warm and open.
“Emily is my fiancée,” James explained.
Katie’s gaze flew to James and then back to the other woman. Although shocked, she managed to recover enough to extend her hand. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
“So you and James were friends in high school,” Emily said, looking to James to confirm. She must have sensed the tension between the two of them, because her smile faded.