Sealed with a promise (38 page)

  “You thought looking after your mother was your responsibility. Looked at in that light, you failed her, and she died. Teague Calhoun is guilty of plenty, but don’t blame him for what
you’re
guilty of.

  “Now, you’re trying to assuage your guilt by making Teague feel as you do. Except you’ve got the guilt in the wrong place. You were
not
guilty of your mother’s death. But if you allow your sister to die without trying to help her, you
will
be guilty, and you
will
turn against yourself.

  “You were powerless then. You’re not now. Let go of your guilt. You don’t deserve to suffer the way you will. And your mother would never have asked this of you.”

  Emmie let her hands drop into her lap. “Well, I’ve preached like the child of missionaries that I am, and I’ve lectured like the professor I am.” She stood and shook the wrinkles from her slacks. “You’ve listened to me patiently, and I think I’ve said all I have to say.”

  Caleb halted her, one hand upraised. “One more thing. Why?”

  She looked at him blankly. “Why what?”

  He covered his chagrin at needing to ‘fess up to his hidden agenda with a little shrug. “I expected you to talk me into donating my marrow. I thought you would talk about duty, kindness, or mastering the situation by being generous.”

  “Oh, Caleb.” She laughed a helpless, painful laugh. “You don’t need a ‘talking to’ about those things! You could give lessons!”

  Now, he knew he had to be straight. “I was hoping you could talk me out of letting Vicky be my revenge. You haven’t mentioned her. Instead you have talked only about the situation from my side. Only my side. Why?”

  “You’re in a very heavy, hard place. I’m your friend.” Her eyes filled with tears again, and she smiled upside down. “I didn’t want you to face it alone. I will be your friend, and I’ll care for you no matter what. I want you to do what’s right for you. I would love to see Vicky get better. I will pray that she does through whatever agency God selects. But this isn’t about her.”

  The moment felt fragile. And yet all the confusion he had known fell away. He loved Emmie and knew he loved her as never before. The whole time he’d used her, he tried
not
to use her, although it was not a distinction he was sure she could appreciate.

  He took her carefully by her elbows to draw her to him, but he wouldn’t confine her in his arms. He kissed the tear tracks across her cheeks, drying her silken skin with his lips. The space underneath his heart contracted so hard he couldn’t breathe for a minute. She’d protest and get all prickly anytime he got high-handed with her, but she’d always turned her face up for his kiss with such simple trust. Just as she was doing now.

  Their bodies knew how right things were between them. Always had. He could feel it now.

  “Emmie,” he whispered against her lips. “Emmie, I love you. The best thing about all this is that it brought me you. Now that you know all of it, I realize you’re disappointed in me. Is there a chance for us?”

  She twisted her shoulders hardly at all. But he was holding her lightly, so it didn’t take much to break the connection. She looked away for a second, a
far off
gaze, as if she could see a distant reality. She stepped back-if she wanted to put space between them she would have to do it, because he wasn’t going to move away from her.

  “Oh, Caleb.” She took a deep breath, the way someone does when breathing through pain.

  She smiled that upside-down smile again. A smile he couldn’t remember seeing her use before today. He hoped he hadn’t been the one to put it there.

  “Oh, Caleb.” Slow and final, she shook her head. She sighed, and said, in a voice he’d never heard before, “There never was an
us.
”

  She took another step back and ducked her head like she was embarrassed. Then turned and walked away.

  The kids were in the family room with the TV and the host of electronic gifts from Santa.

  The adults, having cleaned up the supper dishes, the litter of paper from presents, and sticky fingerprints from every surface in the house, were sprawled in various states of exhaustion around the living room.

  Tonight an eight-foot Christmas tree shed colored lights in the room, while only a month ago, the same space had been piled with wedding presents, a fact that had been remarked on again and again, as if they all needed to search for the roots of the mystery of change.

  Grace got up to extinguish a guttering candle. “Emmie, I know you’re sorry that Do-Lord’s leave was cut short.” That had also been remarked on a number of times.

  Emmie smiled, but didn’t comment. She hadn’t told anyone that the decision to leave a day early had been Caleb’s. Aching numbness would probably be replaced by pain tomorrow when the full truth that he was gone-and would be gone the next day, and the next-descended on her. For now, she was grateful for whatever anodyne was giving her a period of grace.

  “Everybody come in here!” Grace’s oldest son called from the family room. “They said Vicky’s got a donor.”

  “North Carolina senator, Teague Calhoun, announced from his home in Wilmington, where he and his wife are spending the Christmas recess, that a bone marrow donor has been found for his daughter, Vicky, who is suffering from a rare form of anemia.”

  The picture switched to Calhoun and Charlotte on the porch of the mansion, the huge Christmas wreath behind them.

  “Do you know who the donor is Senator?” a heavyset reporter called out.

  “The donor wishes to remain anonymous, nor will they be told that Vicky is the recipient-though I imagine they might guess.” He flashed his famous folksy smile. There was a murmur of chuckles. “Charlotte and I wish to express our gratitude to him or her. Not only for Vicky, but for all lives that are extended and made better by the extraordinary generosity of people willing to give of themselves in this way.”

  There was a bit more with the anchor recapping the procedure and an interview with a doctor who made it clear that Vicky wasn’t out of the woods-there was no telling if she would survive the procedure-but at least she had a chance.

  In the family room, children were cheering and clapping-even the littlest who probably didn’t know what was happening-while adults were embracing one another and wiping away tears. Parents stole looks at their children and whispered prayers of gratitude that for tonight their children were safe and well.

  Emmie sat on the big teal hassock where she had landed when her legs had given out beneath her.

  There was only one possible donor.

  He had done it. Somehow, he had found the generosity or the forgiveness or the healing to free himself of the past and had chosen to have a sister-one he could hold in his heart, even if the relationship was never acknowledged. The first truly altruistic prayers of her life had been answered; her tragic hero was tragic no longer.

  “Emmie, darling!” Grace-Sarah Bea-
someone-
exclaimed. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  The adults, their faces full of shock, concern, or embarrassment, according to their temperament, were staring at her. Emmie regarded them in confusion.

  “You’re sobbing.”

  Emmie touched her face. It was true. Her cheeks were slick with hot tears; her fingers came away wet.

  Faces swam into and out of her line of vision. She could hear voices over the babble of the TV.

  “Is it Vicky?”

  “Are you worried about her?”

  “She’s sad Do-Lord left.”

  “She and Do-Lord spent a lot of time with them in the hospital.”

  “Tell us what’s the matter.”

  “Someone, get Pickett!” Mary Cole snapped.

  In a minute, Pickett was there, wrapping her in the scent of wholehearted comfort, murmuring and stroking. She took Emmie in her arms and led her from the room.

  She shepherded her upstairs to “Emmie’s room,” lay down with her on the candlewick bedspread, and held her close, even after the tears ceased.

  Jax stuck his head in the door and pantomimed “Need help?” and “I’ll take Tyler.” Pickett smiled her gratitude over Emmie’s shoulder and continued to hold her.

  “What do you want?” he growled from the hospital bed.

  Well, she hadn’t really expected him to greet her with open arms. He was a proud man. The last time they met he had let himself be vulnerable to her. He had told her he loved her and she had walked away. He wouldn’t easily let his guard down again.

  After she had collapsed, overcome with mingled grief and joy, she had leaned on Pickett for twenty-four hours. And cried. And poured her heart out to Pickett and cried some more. She’d pictured Caleb in a hospital facing needles. Big needles through which they would extract the marrow from his hipbone. He’d be under anesthesia, of course, but still. He was facing needles and not even for his own good. For someone else’s.

  “I want to hold your hand.”

  “Why?” he growled again.

  He was trying to put on his hard face. It didn’t fool her.
She
could see his stoic, brave, generous face, and the hard face just made her ache for him. Maybe someday he would be able to hear her say,
because you need me
.

  “Because you’re my friend,” she said. “Can you please hold my hand?”

  He was generous. If someone asked him for what he had to give, he would give it. He offered his hand.

  She put her hand in his and almost cried at the warm, rough weight of his fingers as they curled around hers.

  She took a deep breath for courage. With a lot of help from Pickett and others, she had come this far.

  Because it didn’t matter where the extraction was done, Caleb had elected to go on to his new assignment at the SEAL training base at Coronado, California. However, Caleb wouldn’t return her phone calls, so she’d called Lon Swales, the kindly senior chief. He’d found out the date of the marrow extraction in time for her to catch a flight across the country. Now it was up to her.

  “Caleb, I told you there was no ‘us.’ I was wrong. There is an ‘us.’
This
” -she gripped his hand more tightly-“
this
is us, and to
be
us, all we need to do is sit together and hold one another’s hand.”

  “You’re saying we do have a relationship? I thought you said it wasn’t real.” Wary hope kindled in his hazel eyes.

  “I don’t know if I can explain. I had a fantasy ‘us.’ The fantasy is what wasn’t real-never existed.”

  He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “What was your fantasy?”

  “That there would be this person who wants me for myself alone and couldn’t care less what I bring to the table and will never leave me or send me away.”

  Caleb sat up straight, making it clear he was not in the hospital because he was sick. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Every powerful, vital line of his body was revealed.

  “But I do want you for yourself alone.” He pushed his hair back, even though it wasn’t in his eyes. He used to do that, she remembered. And just like now, he looked so young. “That’s what kept confusing me! One minute you’re this kitten. A kitten with a genius IQ,” he clarified, “pretending to be a nerdy professor, and I fall in love. The next, you’re this totally hot babe, who is also a vulnerable and courageous woman-and I fall in love again. Then, you’re this transcendent being with a voice like an angel, and I fall in love a third time. And no matter which one you were-or how hard I tried to remember it was all about making Calhoun pay-all I wanted was to be with you.”

  “Well.” Emmie looked down at her hands. “That humbles me.”

  “It shouldn’t.” He lifted her chin with a gentle finger. “I blew it with you. I couldn’t see the truth about how I felt until I could get Calhoun out of my eye.”

  “And until I let go of the fantasy, I couldn’t see that I’d
rather
have you. Pickett straightened me out. She said, ‘Many forces bring a couple together initially. It’s up to them to choose what will keep them together.’”

  “Where do we go from here?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. Neither one of us has had very good models for long-term relationships, so we’re not good at it. But I am good at friendship. And so are you.”

  “Wait a minute.” He flung up a hand, palm out. “No. You didn’t come here to give me the ‘can’t we be friends?’ speech, did you?”

  “Well, no. I’m just thinking we should go with our strengths and see if we can work the rest out.”

  “Does this mean we can make love?”

  “As often as possible.”

  “Same rules? Marriage is on the table? Faithful and loyal?”

  “A couple of hounds, that’s us.”

  “Goodwill, tolerance for human shortcomings, and forgiveness?”

  “Those weren’t part of our original deal.”

  He used his strength to pull her down on the bed with him. “I’ve been taking love lessons. I might be further along than you think.”

  And that’s how they finally found…

  
The Beginning

  “Caleb, I’m so glad you’re here!” Lilly Hale held out her arms in clear expectation of a hug.

  Caleb had another one of those “Where the hell am I?” moments. There were many descriptive names for the phenomenon:
d?j? vu, d?j? v?cu, jamais vu.
In itself the feeling wasn’t evidence of psychic activity, and yet in his own experience it signaled that a turning point in his life was approaching. He didn’t need psychic powers to know a turning point was at hand. He was on long term loan to an agency working on a project to determine if SEALs could be taught to access and enhance their psychic abilities, by helping them to recognize it in context. He was excited about it as he hadn’t been excited about operating-not for a long time.