The Bracelet

“This is a big place, Kat—”

“Mom, I’m fourteen, not four. I won’t get lost. There are signs everywhere.”

“We don’t need to worry about where you are,” Sean argued.

Kat went to the door anyway and said over her shoulder, “Then don’t,” and was gone.

A heavy silence settled over the room until Sean asked, “Do you want me to go with her?”

Her daughter was independent. Yet she was intelligent and usually acted with some degree of common sense. “She’ll be okay. She has to let off a little steam. She doesn’t understand everything that’s going on.”

“Neither do I,” Sean mumbled.

“The article is something your dad has to discuss with you. If something happens to him—” She’d never intended to say that. It had just spilled out.

“If something happens to Dad, it’ll be my fault. I heard you arguing about me.”

How could he have—Then she remembered. He’d run in as soon as Brady collapsed. He must have returned home after baseball practice, seen the vans and heard them arguing. The most important thing was that he didn’t blame himself. She knew what guilt did. Brady had taught her.

She moved closer to her son. “You are not to blame. The argument wasn’t about you no matter what you think you heard. It was about the newspaper article. If anyone’s to blame, I am. Vietnam is a touchy subject and I should have—” She stopped, not sure exactly what she should have done.

After a deep breath, she continued. “Sean, your dad had a medical condition we apparently didn’t know about. That’s what caused his heart attack. Okay?” If she repeated that often enough, maybe she’d believe it, too.

He stared back at her for a long time, then finally agreed, “Okay.”

“The important thing now is to let the doctors do their job, then listen when they tell us what we can do.”

She always felt better when there was something she could do. She’d always been like that.

Her fingers went to the bracelet again. She was the one at fault. She and Brady had made an agreement the day of their wedding not to talk about the past again. Yet when that past stood up and socked you in the face…Guilt gnawed at her anew. Why had she pushed so hard, when dealing with the article was her husband’s decision to make?

Because the past still cast a shadow over him no matter how much he denied it.

Sean noticed her absently fingering a charm. Since he obviously preferred to change the subject, she let him when he remarked, “You’ve got a lot of charms on there. When did Dad buy you the last one?”

Her children knew the gold charms made her happier than any other gift. But they’d never shown much interest in their meaning.

She singled out a tiny ski. “The last one Dad gave me was two Valentine’s Days ago. It was supposed to bring back all the memories from our winter trip to Vermont.”

“The vacation I wanted to ditch?”

She nodded. It had been the vacation she’d proposed so they’d all have time to spend together as a family.

At first Brady had insisted, “I can’t take a vacation now.” As CEO of his own robotics firm, he could work twenty hours a day, get four hours of sleep and be perfectly happy. And more often than not, that was what he tried to do. But Sean had been having trouble in school because of his dyslexia. He’d become rebellious and needed reinforcement that they were a family. Kat had been entering her teenage years and Laura had known that soon Kat wouldn’t want to spend time with her parents, either. Then to Laura’s surprise, one day that January, Brady had come home early to celebrate winning a government contract and agreed they all deserved to get away for a few days.

She and Brady had slipped back to the chalet while the kids were taking a skiing lesson and made love in front of the fire.

“Which charm’s the first one he ever gave you?” her son asked now.

Smiling, she pointed to two charms, both rife with symbolism of everything she and Brady had shared from the beginning. “He gave me the bracelet with the heart and the daisy before he went to basic training.”

“You met Dad when he was home from college on spring break, didn’t you?”

That had been their story all these years. And it was true. But it was a very small part of how they’d met. They’d never gone into it with the kids because their first encounter was connected to the memories Brady had of Vietnam. So they’d always kept their story simple. But now simple might not be enough. With Brady lying in intensive care, maybe it was time to break down barriers, even if she had to do it alone. Maybe it was time to let their children realize who she and Brady had been and possibly understand who they were now. They would only be able to do that with the truth.

Laura slipped back in time so easily that she could almost touch the daisy in her hair. Flower power at its finest. She could practically feel the wind whipping her long skirt around her knees as she’d stood with the antiwar protest line in front of the courthouse in York, in early April 1969—girls in everything from miniskirts and beads to guys with ponytails and beards taking advantage of their right to make their opinion count. Even more than that, they were rebelling against institutions they no longer believed in. All that passion paired with rebellion was scary, and Laura had shivered in spite of the warm day.

Although much of the protest against the war had originated on college campuses—she’d gone to business school for two years, then started working full-time—everyone seemed to have an opinion. That day she’d worked until four at the Bon Ton department store, then had walked to the courthouse.

The underground newspapers at the coffeehouse along with the antiwar lyrics strummed on a guitar had touched deep chords inside her. Throwing off her fear of getting involved, she’d decided another voice might make a difference. This was her first demonstration and she was jittery about it. But she had high-school friends who were in Vietnam and she wanted them home. Why should they be fighting a war the U.S. could never win? Maybe didn’t even know how to win.

She’d arrived at the courthouse steps, where about twenty-five other young people were gathered, holding signs, many wearing peace symbols. She had on a silver one on a leather thong around her neck. As she lifted her sign—it had taken hours to design it the night before, with its big blue peace letters and flowers around the borders in fluorescent shades of orange and green—someone started strumming a guitar, singing the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” The song brought tears to her eyes. There was something rousing and deep-down wrenching about raising her sign, singing along, wishing and hoping she’d see friends again who hadn’t been able to get college deferments and had gone to fight a war they didn’t understand.

When she turned away from the musician toward the sidewalk at the base of the steps, she noticed him. She was on one of the lower steps, her gauzy sleeves laced with ribbons flapping around the handle of her sign. He was standing across the sidewalk, seemingly removed from all of it, observing, a bystander rather than a protester. Their gazes met. She felt a ripple of awareness dance through her.

His eyes were blue, his shaggy hair coal black and wavy. Her heart lurched. Her breath came faster. He stood a little straighter, gave her a wry smile as if to say, It’s a shame you’re over there and I’m over here. His stance was so optimally male. His gaze held hers as the protesters began chanting. Remembering why she was there, she joined in. Still he stood watching as she turned to face the courthouse. She listened to one of the protesters spout his views of the war, but she was still distracted by him.

When she slanted toward the street again, she’d half expected the man—and he did look like a man rather than a boy—to be gone. But he was still there, interested in all of it, with his focus returning to her.

She’d dated in high school. She’d attended her senior prom. She’d gone out a few times with guys from business school. But losing her parents and living with an aunt who pretended Laura didn’t exist had made her yearn for self-sufficiency. In an era of girls learning that sex was fun, she wasn’t so sure. Before she gave herself to anyone, she had to be certain they’d have more than one night, one date, one groping session to build on. Besides, she was Catholic and the teachings of her parochial-school days had stuck whether she liked it or not. Deep down, she’d believed in the idea of saving herself for the man she’d spend her life with.

Yet, one look at this man, one fall into his eyes and she felt all trembly.

The police had surrounded the gathering now, watching just as the wavy-haired man was watching.

Suddenly an old bus rattled to the curb. The front and back doors opened simultaneously and twenty-five to thirty more protesters filed out. The bus’s arrival surprised everyone, including the police. The officers spread out. Laura heard one patrolman encouraging the new protesters to get back on the bus. But they were on a mission, even if they were late.

They shouted in unison, “Bring our boys home now!”

Then all at once, nothing was peaceful anymore.

As bedlam erupted, someone caught Laura’s wrist. When she turned, she was standing toe-to-toe with…him.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” he said, “or you’ll be arrested. Or worse.”

From demonstrations that had gone before at colleges and in other towns, she knew anything could happen.

He tugged on her arm. “This way.”

Without a second thought, she followed him across the street as he somehow kept her safe from a station wagon that almost mowed them down. As they ran up the block, Mr. Blue-eyes slipped the sign from her hands and dumped it in an office doorway. They kept up their fast pace until he guided her around the corner where the public library stood.

Breathless, they stopped.

“Are you okay?” he asked, placing his hand protectively on her back, peering into her face.

“I guess.” Her voice was shaky from everything that had happened—from running…from being so close to him. Yet underneath it all, she felt indignant. “We could have demonstrated peacefully.” She added angrily, “If only everyone had just kept their cool.”

“Have you demonstrated before?”