Rachel Van Dyken (11 page)

****

The old man seemed aged
well
beyond his
fifty-six
years, frail and brittle from the cancer eating him
from the inside out.
The hair he had left was pure white, and dark
shadows
outlined
his eyes against pale
,
thin skin.
Bla
in
e sat at his bedside gazing at the
mere shade
of the man his father
had
once
been
, watching his chest rise and fall
in ragged breaths
as he slept.

H
e
had
wasted so much time
.
Why
hadn’t he come home years ago?
His pride and
inability to forgive
had kept him from having a father – the father who had battled the same grief, the same pain he had struggled with his whole life. They
could have
been
a family,
but
now
what could have been
lay
dying here in this room.
Dying and leaving him forever. Just like his mother had done.

No matter how many years had gone by, her death was still a sore spot for him. He could feel the
lump of emotion building in his throat again. This had been a record-breaking week for him. Blaine hadn’t cried this much in fifteen years. He had long since learned to swallow that lump and push the accompanying sentiment
back into the chasm of his soul, to keep it buried where no one could get to it.

The change was an excruciating process. Dredging the all
-
but
-
forgotten pain back to the surface was an ordeal far worse than anything he had experienced during the war.
But here he was. Sitting beside his father, crying like he was eleven years old again.

Mara had sai
d he needed to work through it or it would destroy him.
He knew she was right, but a
t this point
,
it felt as if
the process
itself
might
tear
him
apart
.

As his father stirred in his sleep, a sudden idea occurred to Blaine. They both needed heal
ing, some kind of closure
.
He stood and stepped toward his father’s bedside. The movement caused the old man to open his eyes, focusing on
Blaine’s
face. A weak smile spread across his lips.

“Hey, Pop,” Blaine whispered, returning his father’s grin. “You feel up for a little
ride
?”

Forming words had
grown
increasingly difficult for
him
, so he answered with an almost imperceptible nod.

“All right then.”
He
gathered
his father into his arms, blankets and all and carried him down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door. As the screen door slammed behind him and he stepped out into the brisk December chill, he heard Mara’s voice calling out behind him.

“Captain Graham! What are you doing?”

Blaine continued down the porch steps and strode purposefully toward his father’s old Model A pickup. In an instant she was at his elbow, concern raising her voice to a fevered pitch. “You can’t take him out in this cold!”

“He’s my father.”

“I’m not going to let you take him!”

“It’s not up to you.”
He lengthened his stride to the pickup, leaving her stunned in his wake. When he reached the vehicle, he set his father’s feet down, continuing to support his weight on one arm while opening the passenger side door with the other. Blaine lifted his father into the seat and carefully tu
cked the blankets around him,
then gently closed the door.

As he rounded the back of the truck to the driver’s side, he came face to face with Mara. Her green eyes were electric with a mixture of fear and indignation. “Where are you going?” she demanded.

“For a ride.” He tried to step around her, but she moved
into his path
to cut him off
, her jaw
set stubbornly.

“He’s my responsibility. I can’t in good conscience approve of you taking him out like this when I know—”

“
Mrs. Crawford
–
he
’s
my father. I’m taking him for a ride. If you have a problem with
i
t, you’re welcome to come along,” he interrupted her, his eyes boring into hers, daring her to object.
“But I’m leaving right now. So either get in or get out of my way.
”

The effect of his words was made plain in her lack of reply. Instead of speaking
,
she opened the driver’s side door and clambered into the cab. Scooting in next to Blaine’s father, she wrapped her right arm protectively around the sick man and examined his face.

“Are you all right, Mr. Graham? You don’t have to go. We can tell him you’d rather stay home,” she offered, pleading
with
him to intervene on his own behalf.

“Mara,
” David gasped. “I want to go.”

Mara nodded, patting her patient’s shoulder, then turned back to the man on her left and sighed
with resignation
, “All right. But this has to be quick.”

Blaine fired up the old truck and drove it rumbling down the
snow-covered
driveway.

****

When the pickup turned down the famili
ar road, Mara noticed David
perk up in surprise. Blaine must not have told him where they were going either.

On her left, Captain Graham seemed to tense
;
his breathing became thin and anxious. What she had come to recognize as an endeavor to maintain his composure, flexed in his jaw and
whitened his knuckles
which twisted
around the steering wheel.
She wondered what he was thinking
.

He was not the same bitter man he
had been
at
h
is
arriv
al
, harboring a lifetime of pain and anger against his father’s reticence and his mother’s abandonment.
Had it been
only
three weeks?
Together they had made a br
eak-through in the walls
built around his heart. But in the last few days since the kiss, he seemed increasingly distant
, avoiding interaction with her
. She wasn’t sure if it was the shock of what happened or if he was just consumed with his father’s decline. For her part, she could still feel his lips on hers every time she closed her eyes.
And now sitting so close to him, as near to him as she had been in days, her own heart seemed to race within her chest, and her nerves fluttered deep in the pit of her stomach.

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. H
is cloudy gray eyes were intent on the
path
before him as he pulled
cautiously
to the side of the road
.

Her soul ached for him to hold her one more time, to linger in her arms for a moment. But as soon as the image flashed in her mind, a stab of guilt interrupted the thought, and she averted her gaze in shame.
This is about
Captain Graham
and his father. Not me
, she told herself.

On the right, David squinted
across the
snow-laden
field, lined with cold, gray headstones, an
d seemed to be craning his neck to the left,
search
ing for a specific site.
And suddenly Mara knew what they
had come
here for. Emily.
This should be just between them. Why did I insist on coming?
S
he chided herself for the
intrusion
.

The three of them sat in silence a moment, gazing at the rows upon rows of grave markers. Blaine cut the engine and turned to look at
h
e
r
.

“Listen to me,” h
e said huskily. His tone drew
her full attention to his face. “We have to do this. Just me and Pop. Please.” The last word was barely a whisper, a desperate plea that she trust him to do
what was
best.

The raw emotion in his voice and in the deep silver well of his eyes swept her breath away, and she couldn’t gather enough
air
to answer him.
She nodded mutely and
glanced
down at her hands to hide her own tears
,
which threatened to spill over.

He opened the door
,
and the heat from his body
disappeared
with
him, leaving her feeling cold and unprotected.
Mara
trac
ed Blaine
’s
movements
around the front of the truck and to the passenger side door. The hinges creaked with age, as it swung open. He stepped forward, slipped his strong arms under his frail father and lifted him from the seat. “We’ll be a few minutes,” he grunted and kicked the door closed behind him.

Mara
could hear the crunch of Blaine’s heavy footsteps
march
ing through the snow toward the barren maple tree overlooking Emily’s resting-place
. The sight of the strong, young pilot carrying his dying father across the field knotted Mara’s stomach, and the unexpected sentiment choked her until she conceded and allowed the tears to stream freely down her cheeks.

****

The frosty wind whipped at Blaine’s face as he trudged toward his mother’s grave. It wasn’t far, but his heart sank lower with each subsequent step – not for grief of his mother, but grief for the fact his father was no heavier than an armful of firewood.
Gingerly, he set the man on the nearby bench and
arranged
his blankets around him.

Blaine
felt a sudden chill.
Everything had happened so fast
, he had forgotten to grab his own coat. Rubbing his hands on his own arms briskly to keep warm, he peered at his father who trembled beneath the layers of quilts.

“Are you cold, Pop?” David shook his head. His eyes turned to the headstone. It was layered in drifts of snow. He lifted a tremulous finger toward the grave. Blaine turned and commented, “She’s a bit covered, isn’t she?” Kneeling over the stone, he used his shirt sleeve to brush the snow from the inscription.

His father laid a hand on Blaine’s shoulder and leaned forward to trace the words with his other hand –
Beloved Wife.
His skeletal fingers caressed the engraving with a tenderness Blaine had never seen in him before.
When he glanced at David’s face, he noticed the tears cutting a swarthy path down the pale, gaunt cheeks.
Hesitantly, he reached to brush away his father’s tears.

David brought his hand back inside his blanket and seemed to be searching for something hidden among the folds of his clothing. Blaine’s eyes traced his father’s movements as he drew out his fist and opened it, revealing
a dainty gold chain bearing what Blaine recognized as his m
other’s
most
prized possession. Something he hadn’t seen since she had died. All this time his father had kept it.

The sight of the heart-shaped locket took him by surprise. The memory of that Christmas gift so long ago resonated in his mind in vivid color. He was no older than eight. His father had brought him into his secret confidence, and they spirited away all the spare change they could find for months until a few days before Christmas. His father had picked him up after school one day and they snuck down to the local jeweler to find the perfect gift. The heart-shaped locket. They had picked it out together. They had trimmed the tiny pictures and placed them inside it with love.

Her eyes had sparkled like blue diamonds when she opened the present. The memory of his father clasping the chain around her neck, and how she had turned and wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. Blaine had forgotten until now how much they had loved one another, perhaps as a young boy had taken it for granted.

But here his father grasped the precious gift in his frail hand, as if the locket alone was his one connection to his beloved bride.

David’s gray eyes glistened as he met his son’s gaze. “I loved her,” he rasped. His lips were dry
and cracked
. Blaine enclosed the fragile hand
, wrapping the treasure up in his father’s hand
with his own sinewy palms, his gray eyes mirroring the moisture of the aged gaze before him.

“I know, Pop. I know,” he whispered.
As he spoke the words
,
the realization it had always been that way
finally sa
nk in. His father loved his mother. Loved her more than Blaine had thought possible. The pain he had suffered with the loss of his mother
was nothing compared
to what h
is father had gone through. What it must have been like to lose his soul mate.

He held his father’s gaze a moment.
Then glanced back at the truck. David followed his gaze.

“She’s a good one too,” he wheezed. “Like Mom.”

Blaine sighed and kept staring toward the truck. “Yeah, Pop.” Funny how his dad would say the exact thing he’d been thinking for the past several days. “Let’s go home.”