Wednesday's Child

“No, I won’t,” Susan promised, “but…” She hesitated again, wondering if this was something she could share, even with someone she was so close to.

“Suz? You still there?”

“You know how you said you knew the delivery would go well?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s the way I feel, Charlotte. She’s here. I know it. I couldn’t tell you how I know that to save my life, but I do.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line before her sister’s voice, filled with love and concern, came across it. “Honey, don’t you let this break your heart. You can’t. Not again. You just take care of you. Try not to get your hopes up too much. There’s always the possibility…”

Her sister’s warning faded, but the unspoken message was clear. Just because Richard’s body had been found didn’t mean Emma was here. Or even that she was still alive. Most people would argue that the discovery of her father’s body would indicate exactly the opposite.

“I know, but…I have to try.”

“I know. Just remember that all kinds of things could have happened. Seven years is a very long time.”

An eternity in the life of a child. In Emma’s case, the only part of it that she would remember. Whatever had happened during those first fourteen months would have been long forgotten. All the scraps of memory Susan had cherished would mean nothing to her daughter.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Susan said, unwilling to let her sister’s warning interfere with her surety. “Sleep tight.”

“Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

They must have said the same silly rhyme thousands of nights, lying side by side in their twin beds. Tonight, with so much riding on the events of the next few days—for both of them—the familiar words were comforting, providing the same web of love and protection Charlotte and David would give their son from the instant of his birth. The kind that unless Susan found her, she could never be sure that Emma had ever known at all.

“I HOPE JEB MADE YOU welcome. He can sometimes be…a little off-putting.”

Susan wasn’t sure she’d ever heard the term before, but it was appropriate. Lorena, however, had proved to be as warm and welcoming as her great-nephew had been “off-putting.”

“Jeb? Is that your nephew?”

“Great-nephew. And it’s not really Jeb. It’s Jubal. Jubal Early Bedford the Fourth. We’d run out of nicknames by then, so they just used his initials.”

However he’d acquired the name Jeb, Susan thought, it fit. As hard and totally masculine as he had been.

“I know I should have called before I came out.”

Susan smiled her thanks as she accepted the tray the old woman had brought up to her. Although it contained only a sandwich and a cup of tea, the bread was obviously homemade and the piece of ham large enough to droop out over the bottom crust. At the sight, Susan’s mouth watered, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten anything since the cereal bar she’d grabbed from her pantry this morning.

“You want some cobbler to go with that?” Lorena asked as she bustled over to turn back the covers on the bed. “I canned the peaches myself. Not as good as they were this summer, of course, but pretty good for October, I promise you.”

“This is fine, Mrs. Bedford. I don’t expect you to feed me, too.”

“Lorena. You call me Lorena. Everybody does. And as far out as we are, you’ll find it convenient to take your meals with us. I have to cook for Jeb anyway. There’s always plenty.”

The house was less than five miles from town, but apparently to Lorena that seemed a distance one should find onerous to travel for meals. Susan suspected she would find it convenient to eat some of her meals here.

The thought of sharing a table with Jeb Bedford was a bit intimidating, however. That was the second time she had used that word in conjunction with Mrs. Bedford’s great-nephew. Apparently his tactics tonight had been successful. He would probably be pleased to know that.

“Has he been living with you long?”

“Jeb? Since he was released from Walter Reed. I’m glad to have him, of course. Even if some days we don’t say two words to one another, it’s nice to know there’s another soul in the house. You know what they say about having a man about the house? All those things I used to have to find someone in town to do for me, the yard work and such, Jeb does without me even having to ask him. Not that I would have asked him—”

The old woman stopped, putting the arthritis-twisted fingers of both hands over her lips. When she removed them, she smiled at Susan.

“You’d think I’d learn, wouldn’t you. That’s the one topic of conversation that’s forbidden around here. What Jeb can’t do. He admits to no limitations, of course. And he can’t understand why I find it so hard to see him struggle to do things. I guess it’s his training. Some kind of secret unit. Special Forces, but I’m not supposed to tell that either. Anyway, that’s where he got that never-admit-defeat and all, but sometimes…” She shook her head, her smile fading.

“I think it’s always hard to watch those we love struggle,” Susan said. “No matter what it’s with.”

“He was just always so adept at anything physical. Not that he’s not plenty bright, too, you understand, but Jeb could do anything. I remember when he was a little boy, he was as rough-and-tumble as a child could be. Into every sport known to man. Far more than my brother, Jubal, or his father ever were.”

It was slightly disconcerting for Susan to think about the man who had answered the door tonight as a little boy. The persona he’d projected had been too blatantly masculine, even to his determination not to allow her to make any of the normal concessions because of his limp.

“Here I am, babbling on while your tea’s getting cold,” Lorena said. “It’s just so nice to have a guest again. You go on now and eat up. I didn’t mean to keep you from your meal. Folks always like to just settle in their first night.”

Susan smiled, unable to resist either the kindness or the food. She picked up the sandwich, bringing it to her mouth as the old woman crossed the suite and closed the door to the hall. As soon as she disappeared, Susan lowered the food, hunger forgotten.

Special Forces, Lorena had said. And the information fit her initial impressions of Jeb Bedford. The military-style haircut. The olive-drab T-shirt. Even his arrogance.

He was old enough, maybe midthirties, that he must have been a career soldier. And an officer, of course. There was no logical reason for her certainty about that, nothing except the indefinable air of being in command that had been obvious even in the few minutes she’d spent with him.

And it had been only minutes. She had no idea why Jeb Bedford had made such an impression. He had been outright rude, at least until she had told him why she was here. Apparently, although he clearly rejected any sympathy for himself, he wasn’t incapable of feeling it for others.

She attempted to put Lorena’s great-nephew from her mind, lifting the sandwich again. This time she took a bite, savoring the salt-smoke flavor of country ham, perfectly complemented by mayonnaise and the yeasty bread.

She ate half of it before she stopped to taste her tea and realized she hadn’t asked if it was decaf. Tonight it wouldn’t matter. Once she lay down on that feather mattress, she’d be asleep in a matter of minutes. Something devotedly to be wished for, given the events of the last few days.

This afternoon she had seen the river that had taken Richard’s life. No longer were the images of his death imaginary as they had been during the last forty-eight hours. She had been to the place where he’d died. Smelled the miasma of that muddy, slow-moving water. And she would never be able to forget any of it.

She banished those images, determined not to think about them anymore. Tonight she would finish her sandwich and drink her tea and then climb between the lavender-scented sheets her hostess had already turned back.

And then tomorrow she would set about finding Emma.

CHAPTER FOUR

JEB UNSTRAPPED the weighted belt from his ankle and tossed it on the stone floor, waiting for the familiar agony to subside. Damaged muscles still trembling in the aftermath of exertion, he picked up the towel that he’d draped across his waist and used it to wipe sweat from his eyes.

Despite the warnings of Dr. Duncan McKey, the rehabilitation genius at Southeastern Rehab whom he’d come down here to work with, he had increased all the weights this morning as he’d gone through the routine he did twice a day. And he knew he would pay for that senseless bit of bravado.

In spite of McKey’s continued encouragement, however, Jeb hadn’t been able to detect any improvement either in strength or flexibility during his last few sessions. With the medical board’s reevaluation in a few days, he desperately needed to believe there would be.

Although McKey had warned him that overdoing could be as harmful to his progress as slacking off, Jeb had taken matters into his own hands. If he wasn’t able to demonstrate progress this time, he wasn’t sure the Army would give him another shot. After all, he had just about used up the special leave he’d been granted. And the military experts had been skeptical from the first, given the extent of his injuries, that he could get back into the kind of shape necessary to resume his duties with Combat Applications Group, the elite Delta Force team he’d been part of for over ten years.

Actually, he was the only one who had ever believed that was possible. With encouragement from McKey, however, he had given it his all during the six months he’d been in Mississippi.

He’d known from the first time he walked into the surgeon’s office that he’d found a kindred spirit. Between the framed degrees and awards had been an old poem Jeb had remembered reading as a child. It hadn’t made much of an impression then, but the final lines “I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul” had, at the time, seemed to reflect his own determination. And obviously McKey’s philosophy as well.

The problem was determination apparently wasn’t going to be good enough, he acknowledged bitterly, running his palm down the scar that bisected his thigh. Although that was now the most visible of the injuries he’d sustained when the land mine had exploded under his Humvee, it was the mangled foot and ankle that had defied his attempts—and those of his doctors—to regain the mobility he’d had before the injury. That was what the Army was demanding before they would consider returning him to CAG.