Stranded (26 page)

Halfway up the slope to the Japanese garden, Eve hesitated at Crystal’s plea. Poor child. It was obvious she was upset, that she needed the assurance of Eve’s love and the comfort of her forgiveness. But not yet. Not when she had her own emotional bomb to recover from.

At the garden, she paused to admire the progress they’d made in reclaiming its beauty. Miniature shrubs and bushes, dainty constructs of rocks formed into stepping-stones and bridges, and pools of water flowing from diminutive waterfalls were restored to view. With the grass gone, the garden’s only enemy now was the noonday sun, unobstructed by the boulders on the east and west that hindered its morning and evening rays.

The heat of the stone pathway soaked into her moccasins as she followed its meandering trail through patches of flowers. A dizzying aroma of perfume clung to the air. At the spot where she had discovered the Sampaguitas, she sat down and inhaled a breath that sucked every molecule of oxygen off the island and spun her into giddiness.

Giddiness because she had been absolved of murder.

Of any part of murder.

Jake and Crystal had placed the guilt squarely on Captain Emilio’s shoulders. All those passengers on the
Gateway
, dear Ginny—Captain Emilio was the murderer, not she, not even indirectly. Not even for boarding the
Gateway
.

All this time she had believed she was the linchpin, but she wasn’t. It was Captain Emilio who was the key player. He had chosen to target not just her, but all the passengers. She didn’t understand his choice, but clearly the blame was on him and his decision. He, and he alone, bore the guilt.

She released the air from her lungs with a loud laugh. Shouted it out. Her rump was flat on the ground, but, oh, was her soul ever soaring! Spinning and dancing and whirling like a gull riding an eddy high above the earth.

She was free! Free from her self-imposed, misplaced guilt for Ginny’s death! For the deaths of all the
Gateway
passengers.

Her euphoria segued into a long sigh. Free now, too, to look at those tumultuous emotions battering her heart for attention. Emotions about Jake she didn’t want to look at.

Because once she freed those feelings, once she granted them their own life, she would have to kill them.

The feelings weren’t hard to figure out. With her misplaced guilt relocated to Captain Emilio, they stood on the ramparts of her heart and jumped and waved and hollered. Insisted on recognition. Demanded action.

She closed her eyes and clamped her jaw against the emotions, but there was no denying them.

She, who had never loved a man, who had scoffed at the idea of romantic love bearing any authenticity—
she
was in love.

In love with Jake Chalmers.

Who was in love with his wife.

Her stomach tightened in a spasm. She wrapped her arms across her chest in a tight squeeze. It was the only hug she was going to get. The only comfort. No one would ever know about these feelings. What was never meant to be would be buried on this island. Buried with a platoon of Japanese soldiers. She mustn’t be like Lone Soldier, watching and waiting for what would never come.

She rose to her feet and gazed at the Sampaguita flowerbed. Waited for her heartbeat to level out. Her breathing to calm. The sun was hot on her head. Sweat beaded her skin. She lifted her chin and drew in air through her nostrils. “I haven’t forgotten you, Mari. It’s two Romeros now. Danny for you, Captain Emilio for me.”

Old dreams still awaited her. She closed the coffin lid on what could only be an empty hope and slipped it into the soil with the Sampaguitas.

To stop her lips from quivering, she pinched them between her teeth and went to find Crystal.

Jake poured the last of the water over his head. Oh, what he wouldn’t give to be able to trek up to the waterfall pool and bathe like a man. None of this ridiculous sponging off with rags out of a pail of water in the trench. He pulled on the briefs and shorts Eve had washed and mended and laid out to dry before she and Crystal left on their morning
fruit hunt. Today for sure he’d have to step up to the plate and begin a recovery routine.

“You decent out there?” From inside the cave, the tap of Betty’s cane grew louder.

“Not if I don’t get my belt. I seem to have lost a little weight these past two weeks.” He pulled the waistline of his shorts away from his stomach. He could fit two of him in there.

Betty crawled outside with her cane in one hand, his belt in the other, and handed it to him. Instead of standing, she scooted to the side to rest her back and head against the cliff and stretch her legs in front of her. “My favorite time of the day. Sun high enough to warm, but not to burn.” She patted the trampled grass next to her. “Come sit. I want to tell you something.”

He glanced down the trench. So much for starting an exercise routine. He’d never make it down and back, anyway. How could a mere spit bath be so exhausting?

He stepped past her to sink into a cautious sitting position against the cliff. His incisions were still sore from Eve removing the stitches.

Betty turned her head to face him. “I’ve been wanting for several days now to thank you for how you handled Crystal and her lie. You’re a wise man, Jake. You’ve been good for Crystal. She’s blossomed on this island in a way I’d hoped only in my dreams to see.”

Wise? Maybe three days ago when he’d been on a high about escaping death. He hunched forward, not wanting to meet her eyes. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“What was it like for you when Frank died?”

She paused, inhaling deeply, as if steeling herself to open a cobwebbed vault. “Devastating. Frank cheated on me several times in our marriage. I thought I would be glad when he died, that at last I would be free of the shame and hurt.”

Her voice quivered. “But the shame and hurt didn’t go away. Instead, I discovered I’d stuck with Frank because I believed his affairs were my punishment—punishment for deserting God so I could marry Frank, knowing he wasn’t a believer. Then, when he died, I had no one. Not him, not God. Only worse pain, worse loneliness. Each day was a black hole I had to get through by myself.”

Jake squirmed. He shouldn’t have asked her the question, shouldn’t have provoked this painful confession. He sat back and slipped his hand over hers. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s all right. I’ve come full circle now. When I arrived on this island, I thought it was further punishment
.
But when you explained God’s forgiveness to Crystal, I realized that even though I’d deserted God, I’d never ceased being His beloved. I never stopped believing in Him—I just wallowed in my guilt instead of having the sense to come back home.” She laid her other hand on his, sandwiching his big hand between her two small ones. “Jake, you not only helped Crystal, but me too. I’m back in the sheepfold where I belong, and I’m singing halleluiah!”

He eked out a smile, but her joy was hers to exult in, not his. He wasn’t a lost sheep. He’d never strayed from the sheepfold. So why had the green pastures and still waters been taken away?

“What about you, Jake? How are you doing?”

His gaze shifted to the Lone Soldier. He pulled his hand away and pointed at the skeleton. “That’s how I’m doing.”

“I don’t understand.”

His chest tightened, radiating tension up his neck to his jaws. “I miss Ginny terribly.” He cast a wry smile Betty’s way. “You heard my ranting. Later I wondered, is Ginny what I want, more than I want God? Is that why I find no comfort in Him?” He shook his head. “No. There’s no doubt in my mind. No doubt in my heart. I want God more than I want anything or anyone.”

He turned his head to the skeleton and spat out the words, “Just like th Lone Soldier wanted his motherland.”

Betty sat in silence, her brow furrowed. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “Sounds to me as if you’re saying you’ve been loyal to God, but He hasn’t been loyal to you. Jake, you know God doesn’t abandon His loved ones.”

He scowled.

“He hasn’t abandoned you, Jake.”

“No?” He twisted to confront her, eyeball to eyeball. “Then what has He done to my life?”

Above them, Eve stood at the edge of the small plateau, her fingers gripping her shirt tighter with every word until her knuckles paled. Jake’s answer to Betty, mounting like the red-hot lava of an erupting volcano, stunned her.

Not about wanting God—she didn’t care about that. But about being abandoned.
Abandoned.
Her heart pounded so hard her whole body shook. That was the horrifying truth undergirding her nightmare about the wolves.

Her own volcano erupted with frightening intensity. Whatever terror the wolves were, her father hadn’t rescued her from them—that part she understood. What was new was that he hadn’t cared. Hadn’t cared! He had abandoned her to them. Had made that deliberate choice.

The shock registered a 7.0 on the Richter scale of her heart. It knocked flat every thought, every memory, every emotion. Except one. The one that revealed her sprawled by the roadside, dumped like trash from a fleeing vehicle.

She turned numbly as Crystal, panting, her shirt as stuffed with fruit as Eve’s, skittered off the mountain path and onto the plateau. “Thanks for waiting. I dropped the mangosteens and had to chase them.”

Eve blinked. Below them, Jake and Betty craned their necks to spot them.

“We’re ba-ack,” Crystal sang out. She sat on her bottom and scooted down the plateau to the trench. “We are fruit-rich!” She giggled and lowered the front of her shirt to reveal her cache. “C’mon, Eve, no fair jumping!”

Eve backed away from the edge and obediently slid down the plateau. She clasped the fruit to her chest as if it were something precious. Something she must not let go of. Inside the cave, she gently deposited the fruit onto the table.

A mental fog, so thick she could hardly push through it, stilled her hands, her feet, her brain. She stood, vaguely aware of Jake bumbling off to the sleeping corridor, of Betty and Crystal pawing over the fruit spread across the bamboo slats of the table.

“Did you hear me?” Betty whispered fiercely. “Jake needs your help!”

That caught her attention. She elbowed out of the fog. God-abandoned hero needs help of father-abandoned wolf victim. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “Tell me again.”

“Exercise,” Betty hissed. “Help him recover. Keep him busy with goals. Get him over this grump hump he’s facing.”

“He knows how to exercise, Betty. He doesn’t need me nagging him. We’d both hate it.”

“You said you’d be a blessing to him from now on. Well, here’s your chance.”

Blessing? Keeping her distance would be the blessing, not ramping up time spent with him. A feeling of light-headedness weaseled into her heart at the thought of an excuse to be with him. Could she handle it without giving herself away?

She shook her head. “Sorry, it won’t work.”

“You can help him get his mind off his problems,” Betty persisted. “Give him something to be successful at. You owe it to him.”

“I don’t—”
Owe him anything?
She gritted her teeth. Only her life. Her heart, too, although she couldn’t reveal that. “Okay, Betty, I don’t think he’ll go for it, but I’ll offer.”

And hope, for her heart’s sake, that he rejected it.

Sighing, Eve set two stones weighing some five pounds apiece onto the flattened grass halfway down the trench. Her heartbeat quickened as Jake stuck his head out the cave door and inched his way like an ancient, emaciated tortoise into the morning sunshine. She ached to help him to his feet, to feel his arm clasping her shoulders while they plodded side by side down the trench for his morning walk. But that was not what Jake wanted. His plan was recovery, not intimacy. Fine. That’s what she’d help him with then.

She stood with her hands loosely at her sides. No folding her arms—that looked authoritative. Jake was the one in charge here; he’d made that clear. She was still surprised he’d agreed to let her assist him with an exercise plan. The patter of her heartbeat slowed at remembering the expression on his face when she’d offered. Definitely not a look of appreciation. More like she was cod liver oil, distasteful but good for the health.

“I found two rocks for you.” She retrieved them from the grass and held them up. Oh, good grief—she was acting like a ten year old trying to win the approval of a dumb boy too young to be aware of girls yet.

“Good. Thanks.” Jake didn’t even glance at her. His attention was focused on where he placed his steps on the uneven terrain of the trench.

Ah, that was probably why he’d said yes. For him to trip now, or to fall short in any of his exercise goals, meant humiliation. Betty or Crystal would give him sympathy and be easy on him, but certainly not Eve. No, he’d think of her as being as hard-nosed as a boot-camp drill sergeant. She crunched her bottom lip between her front teeth. So, was that a compliment or a finger pointing to yet another of her faults?

His smile when he reached her set her heart thumping even faster. So what if the grin was because he’d gone the distance without stumbling—that big flash of teeth said he was sharing the success with her. She couldn’t help but return the smile. But she didn’t compliment him. Not when her role was to be the tough guy.

“Ready?” As soon as he stopped next to her, she held out the two stones.

He settled his puffing with a big intake of breath, took hold of the rocks, and shifted his feet into a wider stance. “Curls first, then presses.”

She counted for him, her stomach clenching toward the end at seeing him strain to barely lift the rocks. Her sigh at the finish was as heavy with relief as his. “Good job, Jake.” An understatement, really. She relieved him of the stones and set them where no one would trip over them.

The last part of his plan was to walk back to the cave. How was he going to do that when, simply standing there, his whole body trembled from his exertion with the stones?

Sometimes you just had to overrule good intentions. Stepping past him, she took his hand and fastened it onto her shoulder with her own grip. She pivoted to face the cave. “Jailbird’s march,” she commanded. Her step forward forced him to step with her. His weight jolted through his arm to her shoulder, so that she had to brace herself to keep from sprawling on the grass. But he didn’t protest the change of plans. Step, brace, step, brace. Slower than an ancient tortoise, they made it back to the cave door without falling.

Jake sank to his knees at the entrance and sat back against the cliff with a deep huff. Crawling inside didn’t look like a viable option.

“I’ll get us some water.” She brought them each a coconut shell filled from the bucket inside the cave.

“Didn’t realize I was this bad off.” Jake held the shell with both hands to drink.

“You did well. I was impressed.” She let the compliment sink in. Then, with a wicked snicker, “Ready to do it again tonight?” That was the plan. His plan. And she was the tough guy helping him out.

His cheek twitched in a half-hearted smile.

A week later, the trench was an easy walk. They moved the routine down to the cove, where Jake could also bathe. Heavier rocks and longer distances were added, until, at the end of a month, he announced he was fit and ready to resume his responsibilities. His body was no longer a mirror image of the skeletal lone soldier, but was filled out with regained weight and muscle.

In fact, he looked quite good. With shaggy, dark auburn hair curling onto his neck, his beard a startling orange, and the katana sword strapped across his bare chest and back, he rated the title of Island Warrior. He laughed at that.

He laughed a lot now, smiled a lot. Betty beamed at the change. “Nice work, Eve. Nothing builds up a man like achieving his goals.”

If only the laughter and joy were in reaction to her. Oh, she knew how to attract a man’s attention, to let him know he was an item of interest. But that wasn’t what she wanted with Jake. She’d had enough of shallow relationships.

Clearly he thought of her as a comfortable companion, nothing more. And that was how they’d remain.

She’d have no problem keeping her love a secret.