The Bracelet

Although his long, hard body was tense and rigid, she turned into his shoulder, laid her head against his arm, hugged him as best she could. “I know sometimes when you get really quiet, you’re thinking about it,” she said softly. “I imagine when you’re lying in bed at night, you can’t get to sleep because pictures are going through your head—pictures from TV and stories you’ve heard. You don’t have to hide what you’re thinking or feeling from me, Brady.”

His body was so still, so stiff, she couldn’t even feel him breathing. She wished there was a little more light in the room and fewer shadows. She wished she could see him.

Finally she felt his breath. It was fast and shallow. She raised her hand to his face, and he suddenly turned away from her. But not before she felt the wetness. Not before she realized there had been tears on his cheeks.

She held on tighter. “Tell me,” she whispered into his neck.

He just shook his head and mumbled, “I had too much to drink.”

She guessed why that was so. “Nothing you say is going to change the way I feel about you.”

His shirt was damp from their combined body heat. Still staring at the wall instead of at her, he kept his voice so low she had to strain to hear.

“In the daytime, I think about our reasons for being in Vietnam and I know I have to do my part. I think about how proud my parents will be when they see me in a uniform. I think about learning skills I don’t have now. I think about toughening up so I can really face the world when I get back. But at night—At night I think about Bill’s leg being blown off. I think about the guys who haven’t come home. I think about the swamps and a strange country, living in God-knows-what conditions.” Without warning, he faced her. “Most of all at night, I think about dying. Since I met you, I think about that a lot and I get so damn scared.”

He wasn’t touching her and she realized he expected her to move away, either to turn away in disgust or to leave him with his misery. She wasn’t about to do either.

Winding her arms around his neck, she felt her own voice break when she admitted, “I’m scared, too.”

As they held each other, she knew that what had just happened between them was more intimate than making love.

“Mom. Mom?” Sean asked. His voice seemed to come from very far away.

She focused once again on her son. “Yes, honey. I was remembering.”

“Remembering what? What Dad was like?”

“I often wonder if children ever really know their parents,” she admitted with a sad smile. “I mean, we’re people, too, and we had lives before you were born. Believe it or not, we had the same struggles you do.”

“Not Dad. He never had to struggle with anything.” Sean’s voice was almost bitter.

If only you knew, she mused, and then realized maybe it was time Sean did know. Not everything. Lots of things Brady needed to tell him. But she could reveal bits and pieces that Brady would never tell him. Brady was a proud man. Brady wanted his son to always see him as strong, maybe even as invincible. Her, too, for that matter. But she knew better. She knew he was human just as she was, with flaws and needs, wants and desires that sometimes got them into trouble and other times made life worth living.

“I was remembering the night your dad cried and I held him tight and we prayed he’d return safely from the war.”

The shock on Sean’s face was reiterated in his words. “You’ve got to be kidding. Dad cried?”

Had she made an awful mistake? Was this something too private to share with her son? Yet if Sean didn’t soon learn that his father had flaws, that he hurt and got disappointed and didn’t always succeed, she was afraid the two of them would always be at odds.

Her voice vibrated with the intensity she felt. “I’m talking to you as one adult to another. You wanted to know something about your dad. I just confided in you about a night when both of us were so scared that there wasn’t any escape from it. Your dad was twenty-one, graduating from college. You’ll be graduating from high school soon. What if someone put a weapon in your hands and shouted orders at you? What if you were sent to a foreign land where nothing is easy, nothing is familiar and there’s no way to go home? Think about it and then tell me what you’d do with that storm building inside you.”

It was a few moments before Sean murmured, “I can’t imagine it.”

“Vietnam wasn’t so different from Iraq. Maybe the cause was more idealistic. I don’t know. By the time I met your dad, no one could ignore the clips on the news…our boys dying. The war was touching so many families’ lives that the nation couldn’t look away.”

She tapped her finger on Sean’s chest over his heart. “When war touches you personally, when a relative or friend dies or loses a leg, the fight is a prison you can’t escape from. A young man walking into hell has every right to cry.”

She was talking to Sean from a woman’s perspective, from her woman’s perspective, as a girlfriend and a mother, or as simply a lover of peace. Maybe he needed to know her, too, in all this. Maybe he’d never realized what was at her core. Perhaps it was time he did.

After a few very long minutes during which neither of them spoke, Sean asked what she thought was an odd question. “How long had you been dating Dad when that happened…when he let you know he was scared?”

“Six weeks. We’d had six weekends together, letters in between.”

“He must have trusted you.”

“That night, we started to trust each other. I can’t explain what happened between me and your dad that spring. As your mom, I’d tell you never trust love at first sight, never trust that initial excitement because it could fade away, never think the moment is going to last forever. Because what your dad and I shared was so rare, Sean, so very rare. But your dad and I were blessed with knowing from the moment I met him.”

“Knowing you were going to get married?” her son asked.

“No. Everything was still too uncertain. But we knew for sure we had a connection, a bond that would never be broken. That weekend was a turning point for me in more ways than one. Up until that weekend, I’d lived with my aunt.” Aunt Marcia had died of lung cancer before Sean and Kat had come into her and Brady’s lives.

“What happened that weekend?” In spite of the late hour, Sean’s eyes sparkled with interest, as if he was intrigued by everything she was telling him.

“Your dad and I had gone to a party. I met his high-school friends, who’d gone their separate ways for a while. Your father didn’t take me home until 4:00 a.m.”

Slipping back in time again, she remembered how they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms on that bed in Jack’s apartment. When they’d awakened, Jack was snoring on the sofa. It had been so late and she’d had no idea what her aunt was going to say.

She’d never expected Aunt Marcia to be waiting up for her.

Brady had driven away after she’d unlocked the door and gone inside. How she wished he’d still been by her side. How she wished she’d felt like a niece to this woman with the angry expression and a slip of paper in her hand.

Marcia Watson had thrust that piece of paper at her. “I can only imagine why you’re traipsing in here at 4:00 a.m., but I’m telling you this—I’ve had enough of looking after you. Here’s a place you can stay. If you don’t like it, you have a week to find somewhere else. You’re old enough to be on your own.”

Chapter 4

Hours had passed since Brady’s surgery.

Laura’s palms were sweaty as she approached the Open Heart Intensive Care Unit, thinking about Dr. Gregano’s words after Brady’s heart catheterization the previous day. “Your husband has ninety-nine percent blockage in the main artery, eighty-five percent in the…”

His diagnosis had hit Laura like a belly blow. For some reason, she hadn’t been able to absorb everything. When she’d managed to concentrate on his voice again, she’d heard, “…surgery as soon as we can schedule him in the morning.”

Now, as she stood there after so many cups of coffee she’d lost count, trying to prepare herself for this first visit, all she could think about was the fact that she’d triggered this. She’d caused Brady’s heart attack. And she had to face the aftermath of it.

Both the surgeon and Dr. Gregano had warned her that some people didn’t want to visit their loved ones the first night after surgery.

Stepping inside the cubicle, she felt her breath catch as she saw Brady, and she almost backed away. The doctors had explained what she’d find, yet she hadn’t been prepared.

He looked like death. He was so white she wasn’t sure blood pumped through him. His hands, arms and face were swollen, his fingers blue. He seemed to be shivering. He was hooked up to tubes, IVs and monitors, and a machine breathed for him, making his chest heave. There were markings and dye on his body.

She felt as if she’d stepped into a science-fiction movie.

Still, even if a machine was breathing for him, this was her Brady and he was alive.

A nurse touched her arm. “He’s doing fine.”

Fine. What an inadequate word.

Dr. Gregano had told her Brady would be sedated. That was best the first twelve hours. But she wanted to see those blue eyes of her husband’s. She needed to see those eyes. She needed to know he was still her Brady.