Rachel Van Dyken (8 page)

****

Mara was impatient. Ordinarily, she would allow time to work its magic in situations like these, but
i
t wasn’t a luxury David had. It occurred to her that if Blaine could see the letters his father had written to him, it
might
speed up the
reconciliation
process. Heaven kn
e
w, he wasn’t going to sit long
enough
to listen to his father tell his side of things; not to mention how quickly the sick man would become exhausted
with the emotional exertion.

Leading the way throug
h the kitchen, she
strode
to the cupboard where she had found the unopened letters
this morning. Captain Graham followed at a safe distance, apprehensive
probably
, that she might lash out at him at any moment. Another frightening effect he had had on her since his arrival.

Normally, patience and a level temperament
came easily to her
. Captain Graham brought out the worst in her
.
Another confusing side effect of his presence.

She reached
with shaky hands
into
the cupboard and brought out two thick
bundle
s of envelopes – letters David had written over the past ten years but never posted. Mara didn’t know what they said
; she hadn’t read them
. She imagined they contained the words the man could never bring himself to say out loud to his wounded son, maybe not even to himself – his years of grief and pain from the loss of first his baby girl, then his beloved wife and finally, his
prodigal
son.

Her fingers
brushed lightly over
the packets in her hands and
she
s
ighed, turning to face the
man behind her. He leaned against the wall near the door
with his arms crossed against his chest, regarding her
with an icy stare
.

“Here.”

He raised an eyebrow skeptically, but didn’t move.
“What is it?”

“Letters. From your father.”

Blaine remained still. He was so infuriating.

“You want me to read his mail?”

“Yes. I mean, no. Captain Graham, these are letters he’s written to you. Every last one of them.”

Confusion flashed in his eyes. And was that a hint of tenderness, brief though it was? His
hands dropped to his sides
and he stood up straight, allowing his
gaze
to fall
on
the bundled stacks
Mara clutched.

H
is hand reached forward, but he withdrew it
in hesitation
and wiped both his palms on the side
s
of his blue jeans. Then, as though he had come to a
sudden
decision he stepped forward and held out his hand to accept them.

He exhaled roughly and his eyes d
arted to the door of his
room. She knew he was looking for a quick escape
once
again. It was okay. He woul
d need time to read the letters, and she obviously had a similar grating effect on his composure as well.

“I need to check on your father,” she announced.

It had been a long, trying day.
As
Mara
trudged
up
the
stairs to check on Da
vid, she
whispered a prayer for Blaine
.

For several days after giving Blaine the letters, Mara did her best to give him space
and
time to read and digest the content of his father’s letters. She made a valiant effort, and for the most part he made it easy by staying in his room for much of the day. But when he came out, she often found herself biting her tongue to keep from asking him about the letters or trying to convince him to spend time with David.

Whenever she would begin to encourage him in that direction, he would retreat back into himself and make a quick escape. His attitude in general was still resistant. Mara didn’t understand him. He was so stubborn. So infuriatingly arrogant.

It took everything she had not to ask him straight out if he had even read the letters.
Her curiosity finally broke the morning of the eighteenth during breakfast when he plopped into the seat next to her with all the grace of a giant bear. Up until then Mara had been trying to keep her big mouth closed,
but she had finally had enough.

“Have you read them?” So much for being subtle. She closed her eyes in embarrassment for her bluntness.

“You’re going to have to be more specific as to what you are referring. If by
them
you mean the two newspapers I was trying to catch up on from the past week, then yes. If by
them
you mean the letters you gave me the other day, then I say that’s none of your business.”

“None of my business?” Mara carefully set her
teacup
down. “I don’t understand—
”

“It isn’t for you to understand.”

Mara sat in silence
for
the rest of the meal as Blaine continued to ignore her. She had said her
piece
and he had said his, but this conversation was by no means over.

He disappeared right after breakfast. Mara didn’t see him again until she called him for lunch.

****

After lunch, Blaine went to the living room to escape Mara’s judging glower. The woman was unrelenting in her nagging insistence – her constant lecturing about the forgiveness and reconciliation he could find in God. Add to that her enticing beauty, and it was a recipe for an impossible interaction every time they came near one another. Blaine grew
increasingly
flustered
in her presence, unable to string more than a few words together at a time. He must have seemed like an imbecile to her.

“Captain Graham, I think we need to talk.” The sound of her voice sent his
heart racing again. There was no escaping her today
.

He
stood to leave. This was a conversation he
wanted no part of.

“Why won’t you just listen to him? He wants to explain!” she pleaded
, clasping his arm to keep him from going, but he
wrenched
out of her grasp
. “Errrggghhhh!!! You’re so frustrating!” She stomped her foot on the wooden floor, rattling the lamp on the end table.

“He had his chance long ago,” Blaine muttered, growing uncomfortable.

“But don’t you see? It’s not about what
he
deserves! It’s about what the bitterness is doing to you now! You have to make a choice – for your own good!”

Blaine rolled his eyes in
irritation
. “You’re worried about
me
now?”

“You! Yes! Hold
ing on to all that hate is destructive
!
His pain will all be over soon, but i
f you don’t forgive him, your suffering
is never going to
end!
”

He didn’t answer her. What did she know about his
suffering
? And if he was hurting only himself, what difference did it make to the old man?

“Why won’t you just hear him out?” Mara pleaded again.

“It would be futile.”

“Futile? You really want to know what’s
futile
? Talking to
you
! You have no concern for anything other than yourself!
It’s like you’ve allowed your soul to die, and you’re nothing but an empty shell!
”

The woman was positiv
ely
irrational
, and Blaine
’s stifled frustration threatened to suffocate him.
He could feel the fury building deep within him, constricting first in his abdomen and then in his chest, spreading into his biceps
and working its way down
his arms
to his fists, which clenched and released in turn.

His practice of maintaining a façade of impenetrable control melted away in the molten rage surging through him.
S
earching for a way of escape before he reached his boiling point, he backed away from her
tremulously. But with every step he took, she advanced toward him with the flames blazing in her self-righteous glare.
He knew s
he wasn’t going to let him run away from the confrontation.

“You are so arrogant! You’re not even trying to understand his side!
” Mara bellowed in exasperation
,
inches from his face.

The precarious balance of his composure cracked.

“What’s to understand? I was there! I witnessed it! He didn’t care I lost my mother
.
The man refused to acknowledge she had
ever
existed from the day we buried her
.
”
The anger rushed out with a roar. Blaine was pacing back and forth
now. The tears he had been fighting to restrain rebelled against his control and streamed unashamedly down his cheeks. “I was
eleven
! Eleven years old, and no mother
.
He should have held me! He should have told me it was going to be okay
.
He should have told me he understood my pain
.
But he
didn’t
.
Instead, he left me to deal with it alone; instead, he made me think my grief wasn’t worth his time.”

Mara said nothing, but stared at him wide-eyed, tears streaming down her own face as she shared in his anguish.

Everything he had kept bottled up and hidden away for fifteen years gushed out of him like an erupting geyser.
There was no stopping it now.

“Did he come to me when I woke screaming from nightmares? No! If he had felt anything at all for my mother
—
for me
—
would it have killed him to say so? Just once! I
would’ve died to hear him say it
just once
.
It’s too late now
.
He’s
too late! I lost both my parents many years ago, and I’ll be hanged if I’m going to go through that heartache again!”

Blaine stopped abruptly
and crumpled to his knees, holding his head in his
hands. He had no more words. Only the groans of his unutterable grief – long since overdue – were left, and he surrendered himself to them.

When he felt a
light
hand on his shoulder, he turned involuntarily into Mara’s enfolding arms and wrapped his own arms around her waist, weeping against her. She
held him
,
stroking his hair
until his sobs subside
d and were no more than faltering
breaths.

“He still loves her, you know. I know it’s hard to hear this, but he never stopped loving her. His pain was just
as
–
is
just as excruciating as yours,”
Mara whispered as she fingered a strand of his hair. Blaine didn’t want to move out of her embrace; he didn’t want her to let go, so he held completely still. Her warm voice spoke healing directly into his soul.

“He loves you too. I’ve seen it in his eyes
, heard it in how he speaks of you
. A love just as real as the pain he suffers from losing you. His only wish – his soul
’s
desire – is to have that one chance to put things right between you.”

Blaine raised his head to meet her eyes gazing down at him. Her words washed over him like a balm.
Fifteen years
was
such a long time – a long time to be without love. And Blaine knew if he had only
one
wish that would be his too. He scanned her face for hope that what she said was true, then murmured, “I want that too.”

Mara
gazed
back at him,
eyes
glistening with her own ripe emotion. Her soft smile warmed hi
s
heart. She moved her hand to his face, caressing his cheek and tenderly
brushing away his tears.

The sound of her name floating down the stairs from David’s room broke the spell between them. Mara jolted as if from a dream and stepped away from him. “Excuse me, Captain.” The next moment she was gone, leavin
g Blaine cold, empty and alone with his thoughts.

She was right, of course. He wasn’t being fair to his father. No matter how Blaine missed his mother, he knew his father had grieved even more. The letters were proof of that. Line after line
expressed
heartache in living color, to a depth Blaine wasn’t
sure he had ever known, having never been in love with anything other than flying.

His father had lost a baby, someone Blaine had never known. He had lost a wife – his soul mate, according to the letters. And then he had lost his son, a completely different kind of loss, because this loss came through a choice Blaine had made. A choice which had seemed just at the time and had felt like his only option to escape the pain of home.

Selfish. That’s what it was. He had run to escape the sorrow and the loneliness he felt at home, but he had left his father with a fresh wound in his soul. If anyone should still be angry, it was the sick old man lying upstairs. Why wasn’t he? What had made forgiveness possible?

None of the letters had addressed it. In fact, the first several of them were written very differently from the more recent. His father had been angry and hurt and still grieving all of his losses. Blaine had almost given up and thrown the whole bunch of them
into the stove
. The
guilt was so unbearable at one point, he had crumpled up the letter he was reading and
threw it
at the wall, cursing the old man who insisted
on blaming his son for the problems between them.

At that point, Blaine had stopped reading altogether and hid the letters under his bed, allowing his own resentment to build even more
–
a
phenomenon which made it necessary to avoid interactions with the other members of the household whenever possible. Unfortunately, there were few places in the house other than his own room to escape them, and in his tiny room there were two things to do: sleep and read those cursed letters. Reluctantly, he returned to them after three days.

Somewhere in the middle
,
the tone of the letters began to evolve from accusation to regret
and finally,
to
repentance
.

Having spent more than half of his life wallowing in his own misery and self-pity, the repentance was difficult for him to digest. So he had worked hard to elude Mara’s judgmental lectures, but she was nothing if not persistent. And that is what brought him to this final breaking point. Somewhere deep in his heart there seemed to be a flicker of light, growing
into a slow but steady
flame of hope that he could have his father again
, even if only for a short time
.

His father, the man who had taught him to throw a baseball in the back
yard, who had carried him on his shoulders on their hikes in the mountains, who had ruffled his hair and beamed with pride when
he brought home a good report card.

Blaine strode to the window and gazed out at the fresh blanket of snow. It was time to let this go.
He closed his eyes and
sighed
.

Behind him, he could hear the creak of Mara’
s return
dow
n the stairs. Her presence brought with it a peace he hadn’t felt since he was ten years old.
An idea unfurled in his mind as he turned to face her.