“Dan’s trailer? Is he there?”
“His body is. He committed suicide.”
Grace gasped and her breath froze in her lungs. For a long moment she couldn’t breathe. She should’ve been prepared for news such as this, but nothing could have diminished the shock of learning that her husband was dead.
“He left a letter addressed to you.” Troy reached inside his shirt pocket and brought out an envelope, which he handed to her.
“Suicide—but when?”
“Best we can figure, he’s been dead more than a year. He shot himself last April.”
“But that’s not possible!” she argued. “John Malcom spotted him in May, don’t you remember? So it can’t be Dan’s body. I’m sure of it.” She was desperate to prove the body was that of someone else. This had to be an elaborate hoax. It simply wasn’t possible that the dead man could be her husband.
“Grace, the letter is dated….”
“It couldn’t be April,” she continued to argue. “He was back in the house last spring—I knew it the moment I came home from work. I sensed it. Don’t you remember me telling you how the house smelled of evergreen? When Dan worked in the woods, he always smelled like a Christmas tree…I recognized the scent. He was in this house.”
“He probably was back. Before April thirtieth… I’m sorry. But I’m afraid there’s no doubt. It’s him.”
She was shaking now, so badly that she didn’t trust herself to stand.
“Is there someone you want me to call?”
Grace stared up at him, unable to respond.
“Olivia?”
Grace nodded, then covered her face with her hands as she struggled to hold back the tears. All these months she’d assumed Dan had run off with another woman. How could John Malcom have been mistaken? He worked with Dan; surely he’d recognize him.
Troy went into the kitchen and used the phone there. He was gone several minutes and when he returned he pushed the ottoman over and sat down in front of her. “I’m sorry, Grace. Real sorry.”
She had withdrawn and barely heard him. She saw his lips move but no words registered.
“Olivia’s on her way.”
She nodded, although she didn’t understand what he’d said.
“Do you want me to call the girls?”
She just stared at him.
Troy patted her hand. “Don’t worry about any of that yet. I’ll talk to Olivia and see what she thinks is best, all right?”
Again she nodded, without knowing what she’d agreed to.
Buttercup wanted inside the house, and Troy stood and opened the door for the golden retriever. The dog ran immediately to Grace and nudged her hands. Grace wrapped her arms around Buttercup’s neck.
While Troy went outside to meet Olivia, Grace picked up the letter. Where she found the courage to open it, she didn’t know.
April 30th
My dearest Grace,
I’m sorry. Sorrier than you’ll ever know. If there’d been a way to spare you the horror of this, I would have done it. I swear I would’ve done anything. I did try, but there’s no escape from the hell my life has become. I can’t carry the burden of my guilt another day. I tried to forget, tried to put the war behind me, but the memories have pressed in on all sides and there’s no longer any hope of escape.
Years ago while I was on patrol in Nam, we took enemy fire. In the aftermath, a few of us got separated from the unit. Desperate to find our way back to base, we stumbled into a small village. What happened afterward has haunted me all these years. A young woman and her baby stepped out of the shadows. Her infant daughter was clutched in her arms but I thought she was hiding a grenade. Only there wasn’t a weapon. All she had was her child. Instinct took over and I fired. I murdered a mother and her baby in my desperation to survive the war—my desperation to get home alive. I watched her fall, watched the horror come over her face and heard the screams of her family. Then there was more gunfire and more mothers and children and the shooting just never seemed to stop. Almost forty years now, and it’s never gone away. I hear their screams in the night. I hear those screams in my sleep, cursing me, hating me. The irony is that they could never hate me more than I hate myself
There’s no forgiveness for me, Grace. Nothing can absolve me from my sins. Not you, not our daughters and sure as hell not God.
I’m sorry, but it’s better for everyone involved if it ends here and now. I didn’t write Maryellen and Kelly. I couldn’t. I was never the husband you deserved and I wasn’t any kind of father. I love you. I always have.
Dan
Grace read the letter a second time, letting her eyes rest on each word, one by one, as she tried to assimilate what he was saying. By the time she’d finished, the knot in her throat made it impossible to speak and tears slid down her face.
“It’s Dan,” she told Olivia who knelt in front of her. Then, her cries surging from deep inside her, she started to wail. Huge sobs racked her shoulders, sobs that shook the very core of her being.
She’d wanted answers, sought resolution, but not this. Never this. Dan’s death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound wasn’t even close to what she’d expected. He’d been alone, trapped in a private hell. He’d been caught in a time warp, tangled in guilt and shame created by a war he’d never wanted to fight.
The tears flowed until there were none left inside her. “The girls…”
“Troy’s gone to get them for you,” Olivia told her. “They’ll be here any minute.”
“I thought he was with another woman.”
“I know.” Olivia stroked her hair as Grace leaned into her friend’s comforting arms.
“All this time he’s been dead.”
“Yes.”
“Almost from the first.”
“So it seems.”
“He left that one night and then he came back, remember?”
“Apparently he changed his mind.”
Grace sobbed. “He came back because he couldn’t make himself do it.” She recalled how angry he’d been, how Dan had lashed out at her and claimed he’d been in hell for the last thirty-five years. She’d assumed he was talking about their marriage when all along it had been the war.
So many things began to fall into place.
“Troy found his wallet and his wedding ring in the trailer.”
Grace lifted her head. “He left his wedding band at home.” She’d found it the night she’d thrown all his clothes out of the house. Finding the ring was what had triggered her tantrum. She’d believed at the time that he’d wanted her to discover it. She’d believed Dan had wanted to flaunt his new love. How wrong she’d been.
“That was the ring he charged on the VISA card,” Grace whispered.
When Dan disappeared a second time, Grace had returned home and found the bedroom a shambles. He was gone and he hadn’t taken anything with him, but he’d emptied the drawers, torn the room apart. What she didn’t understand then was that he’d been on a search. What he sought, she realized now, had been his wedding band. When he couldn’t find it, he’d gone into Berghoff’s and purchased another. For some confused reason—loyalty? guilt? both?—he’d wanted his wedding ring on his finger when he blew out his brains.
“Mom!” Kelly rushed into the room with Paul and the baby. Her daughter’s sobs tore at her heart, and Grace held out her arms. Maryellen was only a few moments behind. Together they formed a circle, arms around one another, weeping, sobbing, hugging. Then Grace kissed each one in turn and whispered, “We need to make burial arrangements. It’s time we laid your father to rest.”
Eighteen
Daniel Sherman was buried three days later in a private service with only family and a few friends in attendance. Bob Beldon, a childhood friend of Dan’s, gave the eulogy. The two men had been on the highschool football team together and then following graduation they’d enlisted in the Army on the buddy plan. Maryellen hadn’t realized how close Dan and Bob had once been. After Vietnam her father had
let that friendship and all the others slide as he became immersed in his own hell.
Maryellen returned from the memorial, physically and emotionally exhausted. Needing time to think through the events of the past year, she parked near the gallery, then walked down to the waterfront.
The gazebo area, where the Concerts on the Cove were held each Thursday night during summer, was deserted. Sitting halfway up in the stands, Maryellen stared straight ahead as she considered the complex relationship she’d had with her father. He’d loved her, she knew now, as much as he was capable of loving anyone. Kelly, too—perhaps more. And he’d loved their mother.
Grace had taken his death hard. Maryellen attributed her mother’s intense grief to the fact that she hadn’t been prepared for the shock of it. For her, it’d been easier to believe that Dan was with another woman—easier to accept, in some ways, than the knowledge that he’d taken his own life.
As to her own feelings, Maryellen was confused. This was her father, and she loved him, but she’d learned early in life to avoid Dan whenever the darkness came over him. As a five-year-old, she’d come up with that term. “The darkness.” It all made sense now. Her father had been haunted by guilt since the war, guilt he couldn’t drive off and couldn’t share.
Maryellen understood that, since she, too, lived with regret and pain. She, too, struggled with the past. All this time, she’d believed she had nothing in common with her father and without knowing it, they’d been more alike than she could possibly have guessed.
A tear fell onto her cheek, and then another, catching her unawares. Maryellen wasn’t emotional; she refused to be. Couldn’t afford to be. She’d locked away her emotions when she walked away from her marriage. Emotions were too costly.
The sound of someone approaching made her straighten and wipe the tears from her face. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised to see that the intruder was Jon.
“I read about your father. I’m sorry.” He stood some distance from her, down by the gazebo, and looked out over the water. The sky was an azure cloudless blue, and the wind was still.
“Thank you.” The foot ferry that traveled between Bremerton and Cedar Cove lumbered toward the pier. Maryellen concentrated on that instead of Jon. He didn’t leave and she wanted to be alone. If she didn’t pick up the conversation, maybe he’d get the hint and go away.
“I’m sorry to talk to you about this now—”
“Then don’t,” she pleaded.
“You’ve taken that choice away from me.” To his credit, he did sound apologetic. “If you’d told me about the baby we could’ve—”
“We could’ve what?” she shouted. “Gotten rid of it?”
Her anger appeared to shock him. He stiffened and then dashed up the aisle so that he stood directly in front of her. “No, Maryellen, we could’ve talked this out like civilized human beings. Instead, you deceived me. You let me think everything was perfectly fine and it wasn’t.”
She lowered her head and stared at her feet. “You’re wrong. Everything is fine. I’m going to have my baby.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. This isn’t your baby, it’s our baby.”
“No.” A chill ran down her spine, a niggling fear.
“A father has rights, too.”
Maryellen went cold inside. “How much is this going to cost me?”
“What?” He frowned, obviously confused.
“How much money will it take for you to leave me and my—me and the baby alone?” she demanded.
He stared at her for a long, heart-stopping moment. “You want to pay me to stay out of my child’s life? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
She nodded.
“No way!” He sounded angry and disgusted. Then he completely bewildered her by asking, “Who told you?”
“Told me what?” There seemed to be something she could use against him.
“If you don’t know, then I’ll be damned before I hand you another weapon.”
Her mind raced with what she knew about him, which was little. He worked as a chef, was a talented photographer and had inherited an incredible piece of land from his grandfather. That was the sum total of everything she’d learned about him—with one small sidebar. He was a fabulous lover. This last thought made her stomach tense.
“When did you take the photo of me?”
He didn’t answer, but stood his ground.
“I saw it in Seattle. That is me, Jon. Did you think I wouldn’t recognize myself?” She wasn’t the only one who’d been deceptive.
When she glanced up, she saw that he looked chagrined, as though embarrassed that she’d seen something he’d never intended her to know about. Well, she did know and she didn’t like it.
“I didn’t think you’d ever see that,” he admitted, his hands in his pockets.
“Of course you didn’t. Did you follow me around, Jon? When did you take that photograph?”
He lowered himself onto the bench several feet away from her. He kept his eyes focused on the waterfront and the jagged peaks of Olympic Mountains in the background. “We’re both adults. We should be able to come to an agreement regarding the baby.”
“If you don’t want money, what do you want?”
“My son,” he told her. “Or my daughter.”
“Why? Why does my baby matter to you? Is it some sort of male pride? Or vengeance? Or what?”
He shook his head. “A child is a child, and that’s a hell of a lot more than I ever expected out of life.” His voice was rigid with anger. “I’ve given up a lot over the years, but I’m not walking away from my own flesh and blood.”
Maryellen was beginning to feel truly frightened. His interest in the child wasn’t something she’d anticipated. She’d completely misread him that time before Christmas. Based on his reaction and on her own past experience, she’d believed he wouldn’t want anything to do with their child.
“All right,” she said reluctantly, “let’s talk about this. How involved do you expect to be?”
“I want joint custody.”
“Not on your life!” Her reaction was strong and immediate. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“What do you know about taking care of an infant?”
He shrugged. “About as much as you.”
“You work nights,” she argued.
“You work days. It’s a perfect set-up. Our child will be with one of his or her parents at all times.”
By now Maryellen’s stomach was twisted in tight knots. “That’s too difficult—we’d constantly be shuffling the baby from one house to the other.”
“You asked what I want, so I’ll tell you,” Jon continued. “Joint custody is number one on the list, but I also want to be at the hospital when the baby’s born.”
“You want to be there? For what possible reason?”
He ignored her question. “Have you chosen a birthing partner yet?”
“My mother.”
“Fine, have your mother go in with you. But after the baby’s born, I want to be the first one to hold him or her.”
“No.” This was getting far too complicated, far too unreasonable. She longed for him to simply leave her alone. She’d already been through one traumatic experience today and she wasn’t prepared to deal with another. “Anything else you want?” she asked with weary sarcasm.
“Oh, yes, there are several more items on my list.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“And your response is likely to be the same, isn’t it?”
In retrospect she’d been naive to think he’d be like Clint and demand she get rid of the baby. She’d been even more naive not to consider that Jon might actually wish to be involved in the baby’s life.
“Why can’t you be like other men?” she muttered irritably. Like Clint, for example.
“Me?” he challenged. “Why can’t you be like other women who use a child as a meal ticket and a way to manipulate men?”
“You have a rather
jaded view of the female population.”
“No more jaded than your view of men.”
He had her there. “Touché.”
He let the conversation drop a moment, and then turned to her. “Can we compromise, Maryellen? Will you voluntarily allow me to be a part of my baby’s life? To be a father to my child?”
That he would ask her this on the very day she’d buried her own father was an irony she’d never forget. “Do I have to make that decision right now?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been to see an attorney. If we can’t work this out between the two of us, then I’m going to take you to court.”
The day Grace laid her husband to rest, she’d stood with her daughters at the gravesite and gathered them close so the three of them could bid Dan farewell. The nightmare was over. She had the answers she needed. What she hadn’t anticipated was the aching regret that accompanied them. For three days, she’d suffered from nightmares. The questions and doubts that had plagued her constantly since his disappearance had been dispelled by his letter; she knew now that she wasn’t to blame for his misery or for his final choice. But she’d discovered that the answers were as haunting as the questions.
Dan had chosen to take his own life. He’d chosen to die rather than confront the past, rather than deal with the future, rather than seek professional help. What Dan wrote in his letter explained his dark moods, but it didn’t offer the expiation she sought. It didn’t explain why her husband hadn’t been able to turn to her. She’d failed him, failed their marriage. Dan was never the same person after Vietnam; she’d known that and she should’ve gotten him help.
With friends and family at her side these last few days, it had been easy to push the nagging questions out of her mind, but she was alone now. The girls were both in their own homes. They had made peace with their father and gone back to their lives. But Grace wasn’t sure she could ever do that. Dan’s last act had changed the way she saw her whole marriage—her whole life.
She boiled water and then left a pot of tea to steep while she changed out of her suit and into slacks and a sleeveless top. Her eyes stung from the tears she’d shed, but they were dry now. No sooner had she poured her tea than the doorbell rang. Grace half expected Olivia and would have welcomed her dearest friend. Her feelings were contradictory; she didn’t want to be alone, but she didn’t want company, either. Olivia would understand that.