The Sooner the Better (19 page)

His dreams were full of Lorraine. Of her lying in his arms, talking about movies while he tried not to kiss her.
Of the two of them sleeping, arms and legs entwined, on the deck, gazing up at the moon. He could hear the sound of her laughter. It rang in his ears like a forgotten melody. He felt the softness of her skin against his. It seemed so real.

His eyes fluttered open and he saw a figure sitting in the dark, rocking back and forth in a high-backed wooden chair.

“Lorraine?” he whispered. It had to be her. Must be her. Heaven help him, he didn't have the will to send her away a second time. How had she found him? Who'd told her?

“It's Letty,” Murphy's wife said.

The disappointment was almost too painful to bear.

“Sleep,” she murmured.

He yearned to tell her he'd done enough of that in the past six months. If there was any justice in the world, he'd—

Jack's musings were interrupted by the sound of someone else coming into the room.

“How's he doing?” Murphy asked.

“He woke up briefly. He seemed to think I was someone named Lorraine, but he's asleep now.”

Jack would've loved to shock them both by bolting upright, but he hadn't the strength. It demanded more than he could muster even to open his eyes.

“Did he tell you about her?” Letty asked.

“Not a word. He'll say something when he's ready.”

Letty seemed to consider her husband's statement. “He'll recover.”

“Dr. Berilo said as much.”

“I mean emotionally,” Letty explained. “He loved Marcie and regrouped after they split up. He'll do it again.”

Little did she know, Jack thought. Technically Letty
was right; he
had
loved Marcie. But what he felt for Lorraine was far stronger. He'd willingly surrendered a large part of himself, his heart, his very being—his life—when he'd asked Dr. Berilo to tell Lorraine he was dead.

It had been a noble thing to do, or so Jack had believed. What he hadn't realized at the time was how close to the truth that lie actually was. Without Lorraine, he found little purpose in life. Without her he was empty. He'd been willing to die so she could live. Now he had a more difficult task to accomplish.

He had to learn to live without her.

“He must love her the way I love you,” Murphy said.

In that moment Jack understood why he considered Murphy his family. Murphy knew him like no one else.

“Yes,” Letty whispered.

They were right, both of them. Jack loved Lorraine with that same intensity. Enough to send her away. Enough to make his own life hell because she was no longer part of it and never would be again.

 

Thomas Dancy dismissed his last class, but remained in the classroom as he often did these days. He sat at his desk and studied his schedule, although his thoughts weren't on his work.

His American friend was dead, and Lorraine seemed to blame him. It was the only reason Thomas could conceive of for the fact that she completely ignored his letters.

Almost six months earlier he'd received a hysterical phone call from her about Jack. He'd immediately left the school and joined her at the hospital in Mexico City. Along with Raine, he'd kept vigil at Jack's bedside while his friend hovered near death. For countless hours, he'd talked to the hospital staff in an effort to glean what information he could. It was from the nurses that he came
to understand the gravity of the situation. In his own way he'd attempted to prepare Raine for the worst.

When the inevitable happened, his daughter had wept as he'd never heard a woman weep. In her grief she'd collapsed against him. Her agony clawed at his heart, and Thomas recognized anew how much he loved his daughter. Her pain was even worse for him than the loss of his friend.

He was the one who led her out of the hospital, who spoke to the doctor and, with his help, made the burial arrangements. He'd had only a glimpse of the body through the door of Jack's room; it was all he could stand. Later that day, he'd tried to bring Lorraine home with him. She'd politely declined, which had confused him. Now, like her mother, she wouldn't answer his letters, and as each day passed without word, she broke his heart.

This was crueler than Ginny's abandonment. He'd accepted his wife's decision, but had pleaded with her when Raine turned twenty-one to tell their daughter the truth, allow her to make her own judgments.

Raine had done that, it seemed, and rejected him. Rejected his love.

This grief was the most painful yet.

“Thomas?”

Azucena stood at his classroom door. She was by herself, which was rare, and his fears were immediate.

“Is everything all right? The children?”

“They're fine,” she assured him as she walked into the room. “They're with Consuela.” Her cousin.

Azucena's beauty was unassuming, and at first glance few would find her pretty. He'd been guilty of that himself. For years he'd used her body as an escape from a hell of his own making. He'd loved Ginny, pretended in
the dark of night that it was his wife's body he sank into, his wife who cried out in joy as she received him. But it had been Azucena who slept next to him, Azucena who comforted him when the dream came, who woke up with him in the morning. Azucena who gave him a second chance at life and bore him three wonderful sons.

Azucena who was his wife now.

She was by far the most beautiful woman he'd ever known, and his heart swelled with love at the sight of her. He started to get up, but she stopped him.

“Stay,” she instructed.

“Stay?”

“I need you to write a letter for me.”

“You don't need me to write your letters.”

“In English.”

His curiosity was keen now. “To whom?”

Azucena's gentle smile reached out to him. “Your daughter.”

Nothing could have surprised him more. He wanted to tell her it would do no good. He'd poured out his heart to Raine, pleaded with her to respond—and she'd refused, with no explanation and apparently no regret. Her silence baffled him. Hurt him.

He took out a fresh sheet of paper and a pen while Azucena removed a folded paper from her pocket. “Please translate this into English for me,” she said, and handed him the letter.

Thomas read it over and frowned. He read it a second time, then slowly set it aside. He loved Azucena, but she was a simple woman with little education or knowledge of the world. “I don't think—”

“If you love me, you will do this.”

It was unusual for her to ask anything of him. Thomas felt he had no choice. Besides, what did he have to lose?
Lorraine hadn't responded to his letters, and he sincerely doubted she'd respond to Azucena's heartfelt message, either.

Thomas read the letter twice to make the translation as accurate as possible. When he finished, he took Azucena's hand and kissed her palm.

“I thank God for you,” he whispered.

She slipped her arm around his shoulders and pressed his face against her soft belly.

“You'll come home now?” she asked.

Thomas nodded. Many afternoons he lingered at the school, not wishing to darken the home with his bleak mood or trouble his family with his sense of failure and loss.

“Good,” she said.

Together they walked past the tiny post office and mailed the letter. But after all these months of silence from Raine, Thomas didn't hold out much hope she'd answer.

He turned to Azucena that night and made love to her for the first time in weeks. Afterward he held her close, grateful for her presence in his life. Mentally he released his daughter, set her free. He couldn't use her rejection as an excuse to punish himself any longer. He had a new
family now, and Raine was welcome to join him and Azucena or make her own life without them. The choice was hers.

To his surprise, a letter arrived from Raine a week before Christmas.

I
t was Azucena's letter that persuaded Lorraine to confront her feelings about her father. She suspected Christmas had something to do with it, too. All around her, people were celebrating the festive season with their families. Lorraine had no family. And the only man she'd ever truly loved was dead.

She hadn't stayed in Mexico for the funeral and deeply regretted that now. But at the time it had been more than she could bear. Perhaps she'd feel a greater sense of closure—as everyone called it these days—if she'd stayed in Mexico City. She hadn't even wanted to see the body; that wasn't
Jack,
that lifeless shell, bandaged and hooked up to monitors and IVs.

And she hadn't been able to tolerate the thought of being with her father, knowing how he'd misled her. She'd only wanted to leave Mexico.

Never had she felt more like an orphan. She missed her mother dreadfully, and the small traditions they'd observed over the years didn't feel right when she performed them by herself.

She did manage to dredge up the enthusiasm to buy a
Christmas tree. But it sat undecorated for nearly a week before she started to trim it.

Halfway through the project, she realized her heart wasn't in it. She paused, sat down at her computer and without forethought, started writing to her father and Azucena.

For four months Lorraine and her father exchanged letters. Email was out of the question, since at this point neither Thomas nor the school had a computer. Every night Lorraine eagerly checked her mail and sent off lengthy letters of her own. For the first time in her life, she came to know her father and to appreciate his wit and intelligence. He wrote often of his sons, Antonio, Hector and baby Alberto. The two oldest boys sometimes enclosed pictures they'd created for their big sister. Lorraine posted them on her refrigerator and smiled whenever they caught her eye.

Thomas encouraged her to visit again, to give Mexico another chance. Someday she would, she promised. As the weeks and months passed, she found herself thinking about the possibility. Then, on the anniversary of her mother's death, Alberto became seriously ill. Lorraine knew what she had to do—but she needed to talk it over with her mother first.

Taking a large bouquet of spring flowers, Lorraine visited the cemetery in early May. She arranged the tulips and daffodils about the gravesite, then stood next to Virginia Dancy's engraved marble marker.

“Hi, Mom,” she whispered, staring down at the perfectly manicured lawn. This was her first visit since shortly before Christmas. Her throat felt thick, and tears gathered in her eyes.

“I was angry with you for a while,” she said, her voice hoarse. “But I understand now why you did the things you did.” She was silent as she thought about that for a moment.

“I'm not the same person I was a year ago.” Lorraine knew she was wiser now. More mature. More tolerant, braver, a better person. Thanks to her love for Jack, of course, but also her growing relationship with Thomas
and Azucena. She'd changed in other ways, too. Outer ways. For one thing, the style of her hair. She'd had it cut to a more practical length. She felt Jack would have approved of that. Bit by bit her casual wardrobe changed from tailored slacks and silk blouses to cotton shorts and T-shirts. Already she'd reaped a small harvest from the garden she'd planted and that winter had taken up knitting. Gary and Marjorie's newborn daughter was the recipient of her first project, a beautiful—even if she did say so herself—yellow baby blanket.

“I've grown up,” she added softly. “Dad and I write now—a couple of letters a week. His wife is a lovely, gentle woman, and his three sons are beautiful. I know you'd want him to be happy—that's why I'm telling you this. He is. Happy for the first time in ages. He's got a wonderful family and he's made peace with his past. He still believes the war was wrong, but he deeply regrets his involvement with the bombing.”

She waited a few minutes and then brought up the subject she'd come here to talk to her mother about. “I've decided to put the house on the market,” she said. “I waited because…well, because it helped me deal with losing you and Jack. I might have continued to live here if Alberto hadn't come down with strep throat last month. El Mirador doesn't have a medical clinic, and Dad ended up taking Azucena and the baby into Mérida to see a doctor. By the time they got there, Alberto's temperature was 106 and he had scarlet fever. He nearly died. The town needs a medical clinic and a trained medical professional. Do you realize what I'm saying, Mom? What I want to do?

“Alberto should have been on antibiotics much earlier, and he would have been if El Mirador had a clinic. Dad and I've written to each other about this several times
now. I'm going to take the money from my inheritance and the sale of the house and use it to build a clinic in El Mirador. So many people want to help. Gary got Med-X to donate supplies, and even Group Wellness wants to contribute. If you don't mind, I'm going to name the clinic after someone you never met, someone I've told you about. His name was Jack Keller.

“You probably wouldn't have liked him,” she said, and smiled sadly. “In the beginning I didn't, either, but I came to love him and in time you would have, too.”

Peace settled over her. An inner peace that told her she'd made the right decision. There was nothing more for her in Louisville. Her father, his wife and her three half brothers, all the family she had in the world, waited for her in a Mexican village on the Yucatán Peninsula. There she would build a lasting memorial to Jack. There she would make a new life for herself the way her father had all those years ago.

 

“Jack, Jack.” The six-year-old boy raced across the yard, rimed with autumn frost, to join Jack at the fence. They stood together watching a number of llamas graze contentedly in the pasture.

“How's it going, Andy?”

“Good.” The boy was the spitting image of Jack's friend and fellow mercenary, Tim Mallory. He leaped onto the bottom rung of the fence and folded his arms over the post. “Hey, you're walking without your cane!”

“Yup.” His offhand response showed no hint of the massive effort and patience this accomplishment had required. Jack had lived in Texas with Murphy and Letty for nearly a year, using the time to recover his strength and learn to walk all over again. He'd never intended
to stay that long, but his physical therapy had been extensive.

Recently Cain and his wife, Linette, had visited him from their cattle ranch in Montana and brought their two daughters with them. Cain's girls were relatively close in age to Murphy's boys, and the kids had gotten along famously. Cain had hoped for a Deliverance Company reunion, but Tim and Francine couldn't get away. Their llama ranch on Vashon Island up in Washington State was thriving, and Tim Mallory had a small but growing herd.

When he could travel comfortably, Jack went to visit Tim and Francine himself. He'd originally planned to stay a couple of days, but found he enjoyed the view off Puget Sound. It reminded him of Mexico and the years he'd spent aboard
Scotch on Water
and those all-too-brief weeks with Lorraine.

“Mom says one day no one'll know you used to walk with a cane,” Andy said. He rested his chin on the top of his hands and heaved a deep sigh.

“Hey, there's Bubba!” the boy said next, pointing toward a llama at the far end of the pasture.

“Bubba?” Jack asked, grinning.

“Dad and him don't get along very well, but I know he gives Bubba some extra feed every day.”

“Did you ask him why?”

“Yeah.”

“And what did he say?”

Andy shrugged. “That Bubba did him a favor once and he hasn't forgotten it.”

Jack knew all about that favor. Six years ago, the very night Andrew Mallory was born, two hired assassins had paid a visit to Vashon Island. Their job had been to eliminate Tim and Francine. Unbelievably enough, the
timely appearance of the big llama had been a lifesaving intervention.

“What else did your mother say?” Jack asked. “About my walking, I mean.” At one time Francine had been the best physical therapist on the West Coast. She'd been in charge of his rehabilitation from the beginning.