Pretend You're Mine: A Small Town Love Story (30 page)

“I swear to God, he just looked at me and knew. He started shaking his head and running. I was just hysterical and crying. He grabbed me by the shoulders. Ty was still on the phone. And all I could say to Luke was ‘Karen’ and I handed him the phone.”

Harper reached a hand across the table and laid it on Sophie’s. “I’m so, so sorry, Soph.”

“I will never forget his eyes when he heard the words. The light died right out of them and I just kept thinking he would never be the same after this.

“I think that’s why we let him get away with locking himself up and keeping us at arm’s length. His life was destroyed in front of us and we’re just so grateful we still have him. I think they were thinking about starting a family. They kept it pretty hush-hush, but I had a feeling that they’d start ‘trying’ when he was home again.”

“Were you afraid he would ...” Harper trailed off. She couldn’t even finish the thought let alone the sentence.

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. He didn’t answer his phone for days. Wouldn’t answer his door. He took care of all of the funeral plans himself and just told us when and where to be.”

“What about Joni?”

“That went about as bad as it could have. Karen was Joni’s only child and they were so close. Karen’s father had skipped out on them when she was a kid. Luke shut her out with the rest of us, and at the graveside, Joni lost it. She told Luke it was his fault that Karen wasn’t here. That he chose his country over his wife and that’s why her family was gone.”

Harper brought her hands to her mouth. “He believed her. Didn’t he?”

“I can’t say for sure because he never spoke about it, but yeah. I think he thought he was to blame.

“She was sobbing and yelling ‘You took my family from me.’ He just stood there and took it. Like it was penance. Dad got her away and calmed down, and that was the end of it. She never spoke to any of us again. She lives just outside of town and I still see her occasionally. She just kind of shrinks up and goes in the opposite direction when she sees me. Like I’m just too painful a reminder.”

“How did you cope with it?” Harper asked, braving another sip of Jack.

“I married Ty. We had been off and on in typical high school sweetheart fashion. We were off again at that point. I was worried that I was missing out on what else was out there. But when he called me that day ... he came to the house after his shift that night and we stayed up all night talking on the porch. It was like we both had realized how short life was and how we were just wasting time doing what we were doing. He proposed a month later and we got married six months after that.”

She shifted on the bench. “Part of me had hoped that a big, splashy wedding full of love and happiness would help bring Luke back to life. He was a groomsman and he did his part. But you looked at him and all you saw was a hole where his heart should have been.

“Sometimes I look at Ty and wonder if that’s how I would be if something happened to him. I love that man so much. He is such a good, solid, kind-hearted soul. And he’s not afraid to get in my way and tell me when I’m being an idiot. He’s an amazing father and sometimes I just send up a little thank you to Karen, because if it weren’t for her, I might have stayed stupid and stubborn and wanting to see what else was out there instead of hanging on to what was in front of me.”

Harper smiled. “I’ve never heard you get so mushy before.”

Sophie laughed and swiped at a stray tear. “I’ll deny it if you ever share a word of this!”

“You’ve got a good heart, Sophie Garrison Adler.”

“It’s nothing compared to Ty’s. Or Luke’s. Every once in a while, you can still see a glimpse of it.”

Harper nodded and thought of her first look at him. Those warm hazel eyes filled with concern as he hovered over her in the parking lot. Yeah, he still had a big heart in there. It was just behind a locked door.

“I see it sometimes in the way he looks at you,” Sophie said suddenly.

“Really?”

“I don’t think he knows what he feels for you or how deep he feels it. But there’s a reason he asked you to stay. And it wasn’t to take care of his house or run the office. He looks at you with this ... softness. He needs you.”

Harper poured more soda in her glass. She wanted it to be true. But craving the security of being loved made her so vulnerable.

“It breaks my heart to know that he believes he’s responsible for Karen’s death,” she said, changing the subject.

Sophie nodded and drank deeply. “It was an accident. Karen didn’t cross the centerline on purpose. The other driver didn’t hit her on purpose. It was just a horrible accident. You can’t take ownership of it. You can’t place blame for it.”

“But Luke did. Joni did.”

“Some people just handle loss like that. How about you? How do you handle not having parents?”

Harper shrugged. “That’s different. I was seven. And after a long time of not understanding you’re just kind of forced to accept and move forward.”

“I’d think a seven-year-old learning to cope is harder than an adult. An adult has reason and logic. They can understand the concept of never seeing someone again.”

“There’s no logic behind death and loss,” Harper argued. “Trying to reason it out can take you to some pretty dark places. Guilt. Blame. Hiding from your pain by distracting yourself with work, booze, sex, shopping.”

“You’re right. Being an adult sucks.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Harper raised her glass to Sophie.

S
he was just curious, Harper told herself. That’s why she was detouring to the cemetery instead of going straight home. Her talk with Sophie still hung heavy in her heart.

She glanced down at the tiny bouquet of wildflowers she had picked up at the farmer’s market. They were a summery impulse buy while she waited in line to pay for her strawberries. After all, you couldn’t go empty-handed to meet the woman who still had Luke’s heart.

The cemetery was a grassy stretch of park a few blocks back from the center of town. She thought back to all the times she and Luke must have driven past and wondered if she had missed him gazing out the window for his wife.

His wife. The mother of his child.

To be starting a new life, a family, only to have it all taken from you. Harper’s heart ached.

She put the car in park and climbed out. She knew the general direction of the grave thanks to a morbid but helpful website dedicated to mapping cemeteries. While summer had blanketed Benevolence in a dry heat, the grass here stayed vibrantly green.

Harper wandered down the skinny asphalt path that wound its way through the park. She hung a left at the winged angel statue and found a pocket of graves on a gentle slope.

The headstone caught her eye immediately. She recognized the carving before she saw the name. It was Luke’s tattoo. The phoenix he had over his heart.

She heard the far off sounds of a lawn mower and an airplane in flight, but all she saw was the phoenix.

Holding her breath, she approached the glossy black stone.

––––––––

K
aren Garrison

Loving wife and daughter.

––––––––

T
here was no mention of the loving mother she would have been. In a tragic way, she had taken their secret to the grave.

Harper let her breath out and knelt down gingerly on the grass. She sat back on her heels. It was a beautiful spot. The tree line at her back cast its shade over the dozen graves decorating the copse.

There was already a pretty arrangement of colorful blooms that was starting to dry out tucked in the metal urn behind the stone.

It didn’t feel sad. It felt ... peaceful.

Harper toyed with the twine around the wildflowers and cleared her throat.

“I’m not really sure how to introduce myself, or if I even should,” she started. “I’m in love with your husband so I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t make us friends if you were still here. But maybe, given the circumstances, you’d be okay with it?

“I think you must have been a pretty amazing person. I think Luke is, too. You must have been so happy together.

“I don’t really know why I’m here. He shouldn’t be trying to keep you locked away. I can’t tell if he’s trying to protect everyone else or himself.

“I fell in love with a man who can’t be honest with me and I don’t know what this is going to mean for us when he comes home.”

Harper sat in silence for a few moments. She leaned forward and ran a finger across the phoenix. She missed him. Missed him with a hard edge that rubbed everything raw. She didn’t know what the future would hold, but right now she knew that she wanted him home.

***

T
he workweek was passing in a blur. Harper found if she kept herself busy, she didn’t have as much time to focus on the keen edge of need just below the surface. It was only at night that she couldn’t block out the ache. She found herself getting up earlier and earlier in the mornings to head out for a quiet run.

Like today.

It was still hours away from the full heat of a summer day when she laced up her shoes. Hours away from work, from words, from people. Now there was only time for thoughts and dreams.

She chose a different route today, one that wound through the still silent streets of town. Harper had finally found that space between the beats of her foot strike where peace reigned.

Aldo was impressed with her progress and she with his. The last round of modifications made to his prosthesis really seemed to help. His gait was smooth and he was steadily increasing the intensity of his physical therapy. She was surprised she hadn’t seen similar progress between him and Gloria.

“Not everyone is a love story waiting to happen,” Luke had teased her last night from seven thousand miles away.

He was smiling on the screen, and Harper knew it was a good sign. After Aldo, she had seen the gray, the shadows, and she knew that he was fighting battles not just on the ground. As strong as he was, he took sustenance from the good news at home. They discussed work in brief broad strokes, but Harper saw his expression come to life most when she talked about home. Aldo’s latest stunt at physical therapy or Josh’s new saying or what new tofu recipe Claire had tried on Charlie.

She didn’t mention Karen or her trip to the cemetery. They would talk eventually. Face to face. 

It was Karen on her mind that had Harper choosing this route. She stopped to catch her breath in front of a tidy two-story duplex. 417 Meadow View. Their home together. Luke and Karen. Behind those walls they had cooked breakfast together, made love, argued, and planned a family.

She didn’t know what she expected to feel being here. What was someone supposed to feel when they stalked ghosts?

Hands on her hips, she paced the sidewalk, glancing every now and then at the house. Did Luke ever do this? Did he come back to the place where there was life? Did he visit the cemetery where there was only death?

Harper felt something. A presence. A ghost?

But it was a woman. Flesh and blood. Haunting the sidewalk. They studied each other from several paces away. The trim figure was dressed casually in shorts and a t-shirt. She had her brown hair with its silver strands pulled back in a short curly stub.

Harper felt like she had been caught in the act. She gave an awkward wave. “Morning,” she called.

The woman simply stared. There was something familiar about her face. It reminded her of Karen. Harper felt her heart skip a beat. “Joni?”

The woman’s face transformed into an impassive mask.

“So you’re her,” she said, her tone soft, but laced with pain.

“I’m who?”

“Luke’s replacement for my daughter.”

Harper froze where she was.

“Joni, I can guarantee there’s no replacement for Karen.”

“That’s not how it looks to me. What it looks like to me is he tried to pretend she never existed until he found someone new to help him forget.”

Harper started toward her. “Now hang on a minute —”

“I’ve been hanging on for five years.” Her voice broke. “I lost my family because of him. He never loved her enough. His country came first and my daughter came a distant second. He’ll do it to you, too.”

Harper could see the tears now. She shook her head. “I think we need to talk.”

***

I
t took some coaxing and some strong-arming, but Harper got Joni to come home with her. They walked back, the summer humidity teasing a line of sweat down Harper’s back.

“What was Karen like?”

Joni sighed. “She was everything to me. Her father left us when she was very young. He just up and walked out one day. Said he didn’t want to be a husband and a father anymore. So it was just the two of us from then on.”

The abandonment had stung and still did. Harper could hear it in her tone.

“Karen was this driven, ambitious girl. Even when she was eight, she had her entire life mapped out. She was going to go to college to be a scientist and marry a man who would ‘be a good daddy.’ It was amazing to watch her set her sights on a goal and then march toward it until she captured it.” Joni took a breath.

“And now she’s gone. And he pretends she never existed. Did he ever love her? If he did, how could he have walked away from her, from us, so easily?”

Another abandonment.

They arrived home and Joni stopped to take it in. “Karen would have loved this house. That townhouse was just a waypoint. They were going to have a home, a family. They were going to have it all.”

Harper led her up onto the porch. “Are you okay with dogs?”

Joni sighed. “Of course you have a dog.”

Harper pushed the front door open and Lola and Max rushed to greet them.

“Oh my, hello there,” Joni said, crouching to greet the mass of tongues and paws and wiggling rear ends.

“Let me give them some t-r-e-a-t-ses and we can head down to the basement.”

Harper hurried down the hallway to the kitchen and grabbed a bag of bacon treats. She shook the bag and the dogs hurtled down the hall toward her.

“Good puppies. Okay, sit. Good job. Here’s one for you and one for you.”