Healing A Hero (The Camerons of Tide’s Way #4) (10 page)

Chapter 18

March 2015

Tide’s Way, North Carolina

ELENA STEPPED OUT onto her brother’s front porch, drawn by the sound of her daughter’s voice. She smiled as Julie leapt into the air and spiked the volleyball hard into enemy territory, chortling with glee. For the moment, at least, Julie had forgotten how homesick she was for San Diego.

Julie had scoffed at tiny, small-town Tide’s Way. She’d acted like coming down for her cousin’s sixteenth birthday was going to be nothing but a big yawn. Once the gifts and the ice cream and cake were finished, the teenagers had gotten up a game of volleyball, but Julie had hung back, trying to act like she didn’t care. But the older kids had dragged her into the game anyway. Elena silently thanked Bianca for caring enough to notice Julie and get her involved.

She started down the steps, and then hesitated.

Seated on the bottom step, Philip was watching the game, too. He was Bianca’s godfather, so of course he’d be here. After their last session in the PT department, and her sleepless night afterward, she’d tried to avoid him. His tantrum and her own tearful meltdown weren’t something she wanted to think about, or get drawn into a discussion about.

But there was something about the slump of his shoulders that tugged at her heart. He held something in his hands; his finger and thumb rubbed over it repeatedly. With a pang, she remembered that odd habit—rubbing a fold of his clothing or a bit of cloth when he was troubled or anxious.

Ignoring the clanging warning bells in her head, she went down the steps and sat next to him. It was the satiny label of a child’s toy he was fiddling with, but he stopped as soon as he realized he wasn’t alone.

“Last time I found you sitting on the steps brooding was after your gran’s funeral. Did someone else die?” She tried to keep her voice light and teasing.

Philip turned his head in her direction. His intense blue eyes seemed shadowed with some kind of grief, and she immediately regretted her unthinking remark. His mouth stretched into an effort to smile, but it never reached his eyes. Deeply creased lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes. Years spent in hot deserts squinting into the sun had aged him. That, and other things she might never know or understand. He’d always had the laugh lines around his mouth, and crinkles at the corners of his eyes, but they had deepened. Too much worry. Too much brooding. Too much war.

She’d worked with a lot of warriors during her years in San Diego. Many of them had fought through stony silences, withdrawal, discouragement, and despair, but when Philip had first walked into the PT department at Lejeune, he hadn’t seemed withdrawn at all.

After his initial shock at seeing her wore off, he’d been cheerful and inquisitive about her life in the years since they’d dated. He’d been eager to get busy working to rehab his hand and get back to his unit. And he had smiled through what she knew was a lot of pain.

But the longer she worked with him, the more she noticed the less obvious things. Tight little silences when he seemed to be somewhere else in his mind. Too often not the confident, lighthearted man she’d fallen in love with. He’d been a warrior even then and she’d known he had a serious, no-nonsense side to his personality, but she’d seen only the outgoing charisma that drew everyone into his orbit.

In the weeks she’d been treating him, she’d had glimpses of the wounded man that lurked just below the surface of the old Philip. Telling herself her only job was to rehab his hand and his psyche was the shrink’s department had not kept worry from growing. Especially after their last session.

“It’s okay if you don’t feel like talking about it,” she said as the silence stretched, and his fingers resumed their rhythmic rubbing of the child’s toy.

“There was something I should have said the other day and didn’t,” he finally said, tossing the toy aside.

“Oh?” Elena glanced at the toy, a cloth book, meant for a baby with a series of tabs sewn along the edges of its pages. She touched the bit of blue ribbon, imagining the heat of his fingers still lingered.

“I said you were a memorable woman. I—I should have said I never forgot you.” His eyes met hers, blue and intense. Something heavy lurked in his gaze. “I thought of you a lot. And I missed you more than you know.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask if he missed her so much, why had he stopped writing? But she swallowed the retort. “I missed you, too.”

“I—whoa!” Whatever he’d been about to say got cut off when the volleyball thudded into his chest.

“Sorry, Gaddy.” Bianca snatched the ball from Philip’s hands, planted a noisy kiss on his cheek, and dashed back to the game.

“Gaddy?”

“Short for God Daddy.” Philip grinned and this time the smile did filter into his eyes. “I’m having a hard time believing she’s sixteen already. Next thing you know, she’ll be driving a car. Look out, world! Where did the years go?”

“Tell me about it,” Elena agreed. Even though she was considerably younger than the rest of the lithe young people throwing their hearts into the game, Julie was as tall as the rest of the girls and taller than some, taller even than some of the boys. Before she knew it, her own daughter would be begging for the car keys and permission to go on a date.

“I remember when she fit in one hand,” Philip said, holding his big hand out, fingers spread. “The first time I held her, I thought I was going to break her.”

Bianca had been premature. Still in the NICU on the day of her baptism, Mia had insisted that Bianca’s Godfather was going to hold her while the priest baptized her.

With tubes and monitor wires attached to her tiny body, Bianca had looked vulnerable and frail. And incredibly tiny in Philip’s big hands. His thumb was nearly as big as her tiny forehead when he touched it to make the sign of the cross.

“I remember that day,” Elena said softly.

“And look at her now.”

Elena turned back to the game and they watched in companionable silence. A dozen thoughts went through Elena’s mind. Questions, really. Like how different this day would have been had she and Philip not lost touch with each other. Would he have asked her to marry him at Christmas? She definitely would not have been his therapist. Maybe she wouldn’t even have become a therapist if she’d been a military wife, moving somewhere new every couple years.

The volleyball game ended and the teens trooped past them up the stairs in search of refreshment, but Philip didn’t get up to follow them and neither did she.

“How come you never had more than just the one kid? I thought you wanted a big family.” Philip picked up the infant toy and fiddled with the ribbon again.

Elena’s heart was jerked back to another neonatal intensive care unit. To the endless hours she’d spent sitting beside a NICU bassinet surrounded by beeping machines, watching her baby boy fight for his life. There had been no priest. No baptism. Eli’s son was going to grow up Jewish, but in the end, that hadn’t mattered.

“I did have a son,” she finally answered. “His name was Samuel. He only lived for thirty-six hours.”

“I’m—I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Philip’s hushed voice held both shock and sympathy. He dropped the book, this time to take her hand in both of his. He squeezed it and patted the back of her hand. Then he pulled her against his side. “I am so very sorry.”

Elena felt the usual rush of tears and loss that never seemed to get easier no matter how many years had passed. For a moment, she fought the overwhelming pain and the desire to cry. Philip didn’t need to see her that way.

But his body was warm and his embrace comforting. And just this once, she was tired of being strong all on her own. She leaned her head against Philip’s shoulder and let his strength and concern flow over her.

He brought his hand up to cradle her cheek. “That must have felt like the end of the world.”

Chapter 19

August 2001

Tide’s Way, North Carolina

“IT’S NOT THE end of the world.” Philip pulled Elena into his embrace and rested his chin on the top of her head. “I have to go. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

“I know,” she whispered, pressing her face into the fabric of his shirt and wrapping her arms about his chest. She held him tight, desperate to put the moment of parting off.

When he released her, she almost fell forward, but he put his hands on her shoulders and eased her away. He framed her face with his hands and kissed her. It was a long, lingering kiss, as if he was having just as hard a time with this goodbye as she was.

Then he stepped back, dropping his arms to his sides. “I’ll see you at Christmas. And I’ll write every day. Take care of yourself.”

He started to reach out to her, but then turned and walked back down the walk to his motorcycle.

Through the tears she’d been fighting most of the night, she watched him strap on his helmet, then swing his leg over the machine and settle onto the seat. He kicked it into life, and looked her way. He touched his fingers to his lips and blew her a kiss.

Her fingers trembled as she returned the windblown caress.

Then he pushed away from the curb and moved off. A moment later, he turned the corner and was gone from sight. Long after the sound of his bike had faded and disappeared, she stood where he had left her, fingers still pressed against her lips, her heart already aching with loss.

He’d be home by Christmas. But the past month had been a magical time, and already she knew they would never recapture the carefree days they’d spent falling in love.

For the first time in her life, she began to appreciate the tear-filled homecomings she’d seen on the news and in movies because now she understood the wrenching ache of having to say goodbye.

“Stay safe,” she whispered to the night air. Then she turned and went into the house.

ELENA’S BROTHER flipped pancakes at the stove while her two-year-old niece banged her sippy cup on the table chanting “pancake, pancake, pancake.” Elena hugged her coffee mug and tried to smile at the little girl who was enjoying every moment of her morning with Daddy.

At this very moment, Jake would be driving Philip up to Lejeune from where he’d catch a military flight to Germany. Then there would be another flight from there to Australia. How he got from Australia to his ship, he hadn’t been sure.

Is Philip is thinking of me right now? Will he tell Jake about our last week together?

“So, sis. How did you leave it?”

“Leave what?” Elena turned back to meet Andy’s questioning gaze.

“Between you and Philip?”

She shrugged. She and Andy were close, and she’d shared a lot about her relationships with Brad and Eli with him. But Philip was different. Philip was special. She wanted to hold the memories of their last week together close. Whether Philip shared his feelings with Jake or not, she wasn’t ready to share lest the sharing diminish it somehow.

“We promised to stay in touch.”

Andy dumped a stack of pancakes onto a serving plate, then transferred one to his daughter’s princess plate and began cutting it up. “I didn’t see much of you this past week. I was kind of thinking things must be pretty serious between the two of you.”

Elena swallowed a sip of coffee, but instead of putting the mug back on the table, she sat with it touching her lips and didn’t quite meet Andy’s probing gaze.

“We had a fun week.” A wild, crazy week. It was a wonder she could still walk. But that definitely wasn’t something she was ever going to tell her brother. “We—he wanted to pack as much fun as possible into the time he had left. I just helped.”

“Should I have been asking my best friend what his intentions were toward my little sister?”

Elena set her mug down and forced a chuckle. “Of course not. We’re just—just friends. He’s got his commitment to the Marine Corps and I’ve got college to finish.” She stood and began stacking her breakfast dishes. “Speaking of which, I’ve got to get online and get my books ordered.”

Elena rinsed her plate and dropped everything into the dishwasher, hoping Andy wouldn’t see the tears that had suddenly sprung into her eyes.

She and Philip had kissed goodbye less than six hours ago and already she missed him terribly. She’d missed him the moment his bike pulled away from the curb. They
were
friends. Friends who happened to have become lovers. But no words of love had been spoken by either of them and most definitely no words of commitment. Saying goodbye in the wee hours before dawn had been the hardest thing she’d ever done.

The reality was that, if their relationship did move past friendship and lovers to something permanent, nights like last night and mornings like this would become part of her life. The Marine Corps had been part of Philip’s life before her and would continue to be. Deployments would be expected. Months spent apart to be endured. But women did it every day.

She straightened her shoulders and turned back to the table, determined to be as strong and capable as any military wife or sweetheart.

“Let me know when you’re ready to take off. Bianca and I have plans for our girls’ day together. Right, pumpkin?” Elena kissed her niece on top of her silky black curls.

I can do this
, she told herself as she strode from the room.
I can definitely do this
.