Jarod eased his way
across the green of the cemetery, the crutches that supported him pushing
dangerously deep into soft dirt beneath the grass. It was still difficult to walk, and if
his doctors had had anything to do with it, he would have still been lying in a
hospital room with his leg wrapped and immobilized. However, thirty years of captivity had
left him with a serious aversion to enforced confinement. Promising rather unconvincingly to take
it easy, he had left the hospital and a rather irate
orthopedist.
He
could see two figures in the distance, still there when he finally made his slow
arrival. Angelo sat upon the
ground, weaving a chain of flowers most probably innocently stolen from nearby
gravesites. He looked up from his
work and smiled.
“I’m surprised that you
made it here.” Sydney gave an
appraising look to the crutches and the obvious pain that flitted across his
protégé’s features whenever he moved.
“You look as if you should still be in hospital.”
“That’s
what they all say.” Jarod found a
nearby tombstone and leaned against it.
“I wanted to come and pay my last respects.”
The
psychologist bent and ran his fingers across the letters engraved into the
marble. “I, too, wanted to say my
farewells. I thought that Catherine
would like to know that Angelo is coming with me, that at last he will be in the
loving environment that he deserves.”
“You’re
going to live with Michele?”
Sydney
smiled. “Yes, if she will have
me. I’m at the point where I must
begin to make up for lost time, and for my mistakes. The Centre no longer has a need for my
expertise or myself, now that the government has taken over. I have spoken to Michele, and there is a
school for gifted children near her home. Perhaps they will have a place for me
to atone for my sins there.”
“And
Angelo?”
Sydney
looked over at him with affection.
“Angelo will live with us. I
have a feeling that he will be teaching me as much as I educate any child that I
may come in contact with.”
They
both looked off to the trees nearby as the carefree ripple of a child’s laughter
floated toward them. Sydney eyes
twinkled. “I don’t need an empath
to read your mind. You’ll be
pleased to know that Angela called me today from Europe, with the boy.
“Right
now she is not sure where they will be making their home, but the information
and the documentation that you gave them will be put to good use. No one will be able to find them for a
very long time, not the scattered remains of the Triumvirate hierarchy, nor the
government agencies that have taken over the Centre. We all agreed that the kind of power
that comes with the Centre’s knowledge has the ability to warp even the highest
of principles. It has happened
before, it could again, but they will not be using that particular little
Pretender for any of their plans.”
Jarod
tried to sound nonchalant, while inside his heart was nearly singing. The liberation of the little boy had
meant more to him than to anyone else.
He still felt a twinge of guilt for putting the tyke through the myriad
tests that had come with the original diagnosis that he had fabricated, but even
now, he knew that the final outcome, Angela’s knowledge of her paternity, and
Lyle’s discovery of his death sentence, had been worth it. “Which of the names did she decide to
use for him?”
Angelo
looked up again, his head tilted sideways in his peculiar manner, his eyes
bright. “Timmy! Baby boy is Timmy, now. Timmy will be
free.”
Sidney
smiled once more. “The situation
was forced upon her, but I think that motherhood will be a very good thing for
Angela. She has an incredible
capacity for love, and the child has a great need for someone to give it to
him. And no one could ask for a
better protector. I think that they
will be happy, wherever they end, as long as they are
together.”
There
was a moment of silence, punctuated only the sound of the gentle breeze soughing
through the nearby pines. “What
about you, Jarod? Your kind of
anger is difficult to maintain.
What will you do now that the Centre is gone?”
“You
mean what will I do now that I have ruined a number of lives, don’t you,
Sydney?”
The
doctor was silent.
“I
did what I had to do, Sydney. No
one ever asked me when they destroyed my life, I figured that I was only
returning the favor.”
“And
you are still angry.”
It
was Jarod’s turn for silence.
Finally, he sighed. “You’re
right, that kind of rage rots the soul, it takes too much energy to keep up, and
I don’t have that right now. I’ve done what I set out to accomplish: I’ve
finished the Centre so that no other children will have to go through the kind
of hell that I did, I’ve opened the former Miss Parker’s eyes to the reality of
the world, I’ve taken away Mr. Parker’s family just as he took away mine, and
I’ve dished out my last dose of retribution on Lyle. I don’t need the anger any more, and
it’s slowly dying out.” He laughed
bitterly. “After all these months
of its companionship, I may actually miss it.”
“There
are many things to replace it with.
Miss Parker, I mean, Angela, is learning that. Mr. Broots has a fine example for her
and a good friend, and now, with the child…”
“I
know, I know.” Jarod heaved himself
off the tombstone and settled the crutches back under his arms. “I’m meeting with my father and Emily in
Tucson this week, and we’re going to find my mother. He’s fairly sure that he has tracked her
down in a little vineyard town in the north of California. It will be good to be with my family
again, it’s been so very long.”
Sydney
smiled. “I’m very happy for you,
Jarod. I hope that your reunion is
everything that you ever hoped for.”
“It
could have been, Sydney, if only…” He walked slowly over to the headstone near
his mentor, and he, too, ran his fingertips over the cool smooth marble. His head bent and a shudder passed
through his body before he looked up again. “Do you think that they can hear us,
Syd? Do you think that they know
how we feel?”
“I
have to believe that somehow, they do.”
The doctor looked up into the blue sky. “I don’t know where they are, but a
spirit that loved so deeply and sacrificed so readily for those whom they cared
for cannot simply cease to exist, it is not logical. Catherine had faith, I have to have it
too.”
Jarod’s
gaze wandered out among the rows of marble monuments and crosses, his mind’s eye
traveling to another graveyard, another place of memory and sacrifice. He wondered if he would ever have that
kind of faith.
Angelo
stood, grinning in self-satisfaction.
With reverent precision he draped the headstone with the colorful floral
wreath, positioning it like a shawl over the marble. “Work is done now, Catherine,” he
whispered just loudly enough to be heard.
“Angels are safe now.
Angels…go home.”
Entering the
construction site, he had been amazed at the progress that had been made on the
museum that he had designed, what seemed like a lifetime ago. As men scrambled around, sweating in the
unexpected humidity, the curves and heights of the building were already taking
shape, a cool contrast to the construction workers, trucks, and equipment that
built them. Jarod picked his way
carefully around the perimeter, seeing between the cranes and cement mixers the
various design elements that would make this thoroughly modern building fit into
the antebellum neighborhood that surrounded it.
His architect’s mind deconstructed the
design, and that in itself was odd.
He had the feeling that he was looking at a completely different
individual’s work, something that he had read about in a magazine and come to
see. He shook his head. This was his design, he knew it,
but the person who had created the museum of marble and light was so drastically
different than the man who was standing here before its rising walls that he
found it impossible to equate the two.
Even when a
workman had come over and asked, nicely but firmly, if he could be helped, Jarod
had found it difficult to say “I’m the architect.” The words were foreign, feeling more
like an outright lie than the pretend that it once had been. The worker had accepted it, however, and
motioned him toward the foreman’s trailer to get the required hard hat. Perhaps it was the cane that garnered
the sympathy, or offered an explanation why he was not better known around the
site. Nonetheless, Jarod had heeded
his advice and hobbled across the recently rain-soaked Georgia
clay.
He knocked
tentatively on the door and receiving no answer, opened it up. A large man sat at a desk just inside,
his shoulder cradling a phone while he wrote on a well-used legal pad. One hand came up in a combination
“hello” and “I’ll be right with you, stay there.” Jarod waited.
“…I know,
that’s what I said to them, but they don’t care. It’s Tuesday or never, and the truck is
already on the way. Yeah, yeah,
well, we’re going to have to find some storage then. Okay, you do it, I’ve got enough
on my hands. Okay, yeah, I’ll talk
to Perry about it. Sure, sure
thing. Yeah, okay, bye.” The man hung up the phone and jotted a
last few notes.
“Sorry about
the wait, but scheduling fifty different venders can be a bitch.” The man stood and Jarod could see the
strong arms that had done more than man phones and schedule deliveries for the
last twenty years. “Marcus Coleman,
I’m foreman here. What can I help
y’all with?”
Once again,
Jarod choked on the words. “I
came to, I mean, I wanted to see how things are going. I – I designed this
place.”
The other
man’s broad dark face split into a grin.
“So you must be Mr. Johnson.
A pleasure to meet ya.” He
extended his hand and pumped Jarod’s aggressively. “I was wondering if you were ever going
to stop by, but,” he looked down at Jarod’s leg, “it looks like you’ve had a
good reason to stay away. Come on
in, have a seat.”
“Actually, “
Jarod broke in as the man was clearing off a nearby chair, “I just came in for a
hard hat. I wanted to take a walk
around the site, but then I need to be going.”
“You can do
that if you like, but you really should let Perry take you around, if you want
the whole tour.” Coleman grabbed
one of the hard hats hanging on pegs near the door. “I’ve got to see what the problem is
with a cement mixer, but Perry should be back soon. If you’d like, you can wait over there,”
he nodded his head toward a well-worn sofa situated in front of a desk that was
piled high with papers and plans.
Jarod
returned the foreman’s friendly smile.
“Alright, I’ll do that. I’d
like ‘the whole tour.’”
Sliding past
him as Jarod moved toward the couch, the foreman clapped the hard hat on and
headed out the door, promising to “send Perry along.” With the door of the trailer closed once
again, the noises from the construction site were muted and Jarod took a moment
to look around, not trusting his ability to easily rise from the sinking couch
once ensconced within.
One entire
wall of the trailer was filled with sketches of the museum that Jarod was sure
had been printed from the “cyber-tour” program he had put together for the
benefit of Arthur and his prospective clients. Looking at the pictures, he could
remember the joy that he had felt as he had created this monument, this work of
art for artwork. The memories,
however, were as distant as they had been when he first arrived, the emotions of
a man that he had come across in some book. He sighed inwardly. One of his greatest achievements, and
now it meant nothing to him.
The exterior
door opened with a creak as he was perusing one of the sketches, trying to
remember whether the raised dais in the middle of the courtyard was his idea or
not. Out of the corner of his eye,
he saw a form in jeans, work boots and a dark blue tank top remove a battered
hard hat and hang it on the hooks.
The figure ruffled both hands through short blond hair aggressively,
causing it to stand almost on end with accumulated
perspiration.
Looking over
at the newcomer, Jarod was surprised to realize that it was a woman. Her tanned back still to him, she
reached into a refrigerator near the foreman’s desk. “Marcus told me somebody wanted a tour,”
she started as she reached for a can of soda and turned around, her hand
extended with the drink. “I don’t
supposed he offered you anything to-“
The words
stopped in mid sentence. For a
moment, her body swayed with the heartbeat that suddenly thundered in her
ears. The can slipped from her
fingers and fell to the floor.
Jarod’s eyes
followed the bright red can as it rolled across the floor. The sound of her voice had warned him,
registering deep within his psyche that the potentially disastrous was about to
occur. It had happened to him
before – he had heard a word, caught a glimpse of a head, a look from a
stranger, and it had all come tumbling back in on him; the memories, good, bad
and horrific, avalanching down on him, triggered by the slightest
similarity. He had found a way to
cope with it, had to find a way, lest he fall into the same well that he
had succumbed to for so long. With
a mental shake of his head to clear his mind, he slowly looked
up.
Her
eyes. They were there, grey and
beautiful beneath that incongruous shock of yellow hair. It’s happening again, he told himself,
just a little worse this time. The
similarity was incredible, but just a coincidence, he repeated, struggling to
push back the hysteria mounting inside him. The eyes so familiar, but not
hers, he screamed inwardly, watching those same eyes fill with tears,
hearing her breath catch in her throat.
The battle
broke upon his face, his lips curled back to reveal teeth clenched in pain. Still, he could not look away, could not
tear himself from the eyes that could not be
hers!
“Oh, my God.
Jarod.”
He breathed
in shallowly, hyperventilating, while his expression flashed between fear and
disbelief. The analytical part of
his mind told him that if he continued breathing this way he would soon black
out, but even that sounded like a reasonable alternative to this deranged
scenario. He stumbled backwards,
the cane tripping along the tile, useless until he was forced to lean on it to
regain his balance.
His own eyes
were wide in a disbelief akin to horror.
“They told me that you were dead!”
Hannah wiped
the tears that had cascaded down one cheek, fighting the urge to run over to
him, but the look on his face warned her back. Her voice caught once again in her chest
and when she finally forced out the words, they were barely above a whisper.
“I was. For three and a half minutes. They brought me
back.”
Jarod found
the edge of the desk and leaned on it.
He blinked slowly, letting the import of her words sink in. “Caitlin?”
Hannah moved
toward the desk, only to see him shy away from her, as if she was some kind of
terrible spectre, a frightening ghost.
Reaching across to the other side, she retrieved a small picture in a
gold frame. A note of desperation
crept into her voice as she held it out for him. “She was hurt, really hurt - they
thought that she might not make it.
She lost part of her liver – they had to operate and for a while it was
touch and go. But now, now she’s
fine, really, she’s – she’s great.
It was her birthday last month.”
Jarod
tentatively took the frame and gazed at the picture of the happy child. Like her mother, the little girl’s long
brown hair was now cut short, but that could not disguise the pixie features
that had unabashedly invited him to dinner a lifetime ago. A tear spilled off of his face and
splashed onto the glass; he wiped it off reverently.
There was a
pause, a question that both of them knew hung between them. Closing his eyes, he steeled
himself. “What about the
baby?”
The pained
exhalation that erupted from her was all he needed to hear. He grasped his head with his hand,
digging the heel of it into his eye as if it could stop the tears from their
course.
Hannah leaned
back against a nearby wall, wrapping her arms around herself. The distance between them, between her
and Jarod, her husband, hurt as much as the memories of the miscarriage
she was forced to relive. She
willed herself on. “I was, um,
pretty messed up myself.“ She
swallowed. “Internal bleeding, they
said. My blood pressure went down
so far and then my heart stopped, and,“ her voice cracked, “and when they
brought me back, there wasn’t anything that they could do for him.” She bit her lip, trying to hold back the
torrent, but it was no use. “I’m
sorry, Jarod,” she sobbed. “Oh,
God, I’m so sorry.”
Old emotions
tore at Jarod’s heart, begging him to take the sobbing woman into his arms, but
the newer feelings of betrayal and loss forced him back, pushed him away from
the one he saw as the cause of it all.
Edging away from the desk, he hobbled over to the couch and sat down
heavily, the weight of his body almost too much to bear. He leaned forward and put his head into
his hands again.
“I’m sorry,
Jarod,” she repeated. “I thought
that it would be best for you, that you would be safer if you weren’t worrying
about us. I didn’t want to be used
as bait again.” He looked up, and
she nodded. “Yes, I know all about
it, I know that we were forced off the road to try to bring you running back to
the Centre. I couldn’t let you do that!”
“It was MY
decision to make!” The ferocity of
Jarod’s anger surprised both of them.
“Just when the hell were you going to tell me, Hannah? Or for that matter, if all this hadn’t
happened, if I hadn’t just spent the last six months insane over losing the only
family I had left, just when the hell were you going to tell me that you were
carrying my son?”
Hannah slid
her back down the wall until she was sitting on the floor. “I was trying to protect you. It was the only way that I knew
how.”
“I can
protect my goddamned self!”
“You
can?” Hannah’s voice was starting
to rise in response. “If you can
protect yourself so well, Jarod, what’s with the cane? Huh? You told me what kind of people
they were, you warned me about the Centre. You could protect yourself, but you
couldn’t protect us!” She hated the
words as they spilled from her mouth, hated to hurt him further, but the fear
and pain and anger that she had been living through for the past nine months
could not be halted midway. “And
don’t you ever think that because you didn’t know about your son, that
your pain is any more than my own.
He was my child, too, Jarod,” she cried through clenched teeth. “He was part of me, the only part of you
that I had left, and I lost him!”
There was a long silence between them,
punctuated only by the occasional convulsive breath in the aftermath of her
sobs. Hannah rubbed her face and
looked up at the ceiling, her voice resigned, exhausted. “I had lost one child already. I had to do whatever I could to save my
other child, and you. Arthur knew
the doctor, knew a judge, he knew everybody. He had us moved to a private hospital,
had the records sealed, our deaths recorded and then he went ahead with the
funeral. We had no time and we were
desperate, Jarod. It was the only
thing that we could think of.”
The silence
remained, stretching into minutes.
Outside, the sounds of the construction continued, completely oblivious
to the drama contained within the trailer walls.
Hannah
twisted the ring on her left hand.
“This wasn’t exactly the way I envisioned this.”
“What?”
“This,” she
threw her hands in the air and gave a sardonic little laugh. “This reunion.”
Jarod watched
her from across the room as she went back to twisting the ring. He had to agree. The few times that he had allowed
himself the fantasy of seeing her again, it had been a more joyful
affair.
His voice was
solemn. “You still wear
it.”
“I never took
it-“ she stopped suddenly as her own gaze went to his left hand, bereft of the
ring that she had placed on his little finger the night of their wedding. She shook her head and dropped her eyes
again, fighting back more tears.
Jarod reached
into the coin pocket of his jeans and removed a small gold circlet. He contemplated it. “I wore it everyday, too, as a
remembrance. But as time went on,
it took on a new meaning.” The
anger in his voice returned.
“Revenge. I wore it until I
took vengeance on the people who had attacked you, the ones who had imprisoned
me, used and abused me for all those years and still weren’t satisfied enough to
leave me alone, to leave my family alone.
I wore it until everyone of the bastards had paid and paid, until their
lives were the same living hell that they had put me
through.”
Hannah eyes
were now the ones that held fear.
This was a side of Jarod, of her husband, that she had never seen
before. Even though she had known
him for only a short time, she never had guessed that this vindictive, ruthless
man lurked beneath the one she had loved so dearly. “You’ve
changed.”
His head fell
once again, and the words were nearly imperceptible. “Maybe you never knew
me.”
There was
another uncomfortable silence.
Finally, Hannah could stand it no longer. “Where have you been? Are you…” she stumbled over the right
word, “free?”
“I’ve been to
Hell.” From his intonation, she
could tell that he was being specific, he had been through the damning
fires. But then he gave a
self-mocking snort. “I’ve been to
Hell and a dairy farm, not to confuse the two. And yes,” he looked up at her, his
expression slightly less serious. “I am ‘free,’ as you put it. The Centre doesn’t control me, and they
aren’t after me any more, I’ve seen to that. I’ve found both my parents, my sister,
my whole family. I spent the last few weeks with them while I was
recovering. It was – it was
nice.”
He had never
been one to forgive quickly – it was both a strength and a weakness. That invariable sense of right and wrong
had been what had kept him going when it would have been so much easier to
simply hide away from the Centre, but his sense of justice had prevailed upon
him to right the wrongs, to undo some of the things that he had been forced to
do as a captive.
He would find
it so terribly hard to forgive her for what she had done. She knew so, had known it from the
moment she had decided to make her deception, but at the same time she had hoped
that perhaps – no, it wouldn’t happen. Time to face facts. He was different. Not only that, but now
he had his real family, the people who had loved him for his entire life. As
much as she loved the man whom she had married that wintry night months before,
she could no more hold this man to that vow than she could cage a wild
animal. What was that sappy saying
– if you love something, set it free?
A saccharin platitude for high-schoolers most of the time, but on this
occasion, it might just hold some truth, although she had no illusions about him
“coming back to her.”
He was free
from the Centre now, free to explore the kind of life that he should have had
for the last thirty years. He
didn’t need a spur-of-the-moment wife and child. If their baby had been born, she might
have fought harder, might have tried to get past the hurt. But watching Jarod now, seeing him still
awash in bitterness, she refused to put him through anymore. As much as it hurt her, she knew it was
the right thing to do.
He had tried
to use all of his pretender skills to put himself in her position, to
understand, but it was impossible.
He had no idea how her life had been since she and Caitlin had been
forced into hiding, only that his own pain had been so great. While he had been struggling with
the knowledge – trying to reconcile his life with hers, his feelings with her
fears – he had lashed out at her instead of holding her as he had so desperately
wanted to. He had confronted her
with his selfish thoughts when he should have been comforting her. How could he have done that? It was so incredibly stupid, so
heartless. So - dare he say it,
even to himself? - so cruel.
Now there was
such a distance between them he wondered if it could ever be crossed. Yes, he was a different person, he knew
that. He also knew that their
relationship had happened so fast, so intensely. Perhaps she really didn’t know
him, know what he was capable of, and now the idea of it scared her. Some days, it scared
him.
She looked so
sad. At least he could assure her
that she was safe from harm now; no one at the Centre would be looking for her
to use her as lure to get him back.
He glanced around the trailer, seeing the vestiges of her new life here
in Georgia. There had been a smile
on her face when she had first walked into the trailer, her skin was tanned and
healthy looking, overall she appeared to be comfortable and happy here, without
him. Was it fair to throw her life
into disarray once more? After all
the chaos that he had already caused her, could he do it to her again by making
her honor an unexpected promise made on a hilltop in the snow? He thought about the ring that he
had worn for so many months, and the man who had first given it to Hannah, her
first husband, Scott. That was a
marriage, he thought. Two people
who knew and trusted each other, willing to spend the rest of their lives
together. What could he offer her
now but a man barely back from insanity, someone she hardly knew before and
understood even less now? He loved her too much to do that to
her.
She reached
up and took the ring from him, her face resolute. This is it, she thought to herself, this
is the deciding moment. If I crack
now, he won’t leave, he’ll stay here out of pity and be miserable for the rest
of his life. I can’t let that
happen. “Thank you,” she said out
loud. “I’ll make sure that she gets
it.”
“You’re safe
now, you know. They won’t hurt you
ever again.”
Hannah nodded
silently, staring at the ring.
Jarod cleared
his throat. “I should go now.” There, it was said. He waited a moment but Hannah said
nothing, made no protestation. He
started to move toward the exit.
Without
warning, the door opened and the foreman, Marcus, thrust his head in. He quickly surveyed the situation,
confusion and mounting concern showing on his dark features. He looked toward the woman still sitting
on the floor. “Hey, Perry, you all
right?”
Hannah
brushed at tear still trapped on her cheek with the back of her hand. She looked over and tried to appear
normal. “Yeah, Marc, I’m fine,
don’t worry. Jarod just brought me
some news, kinda shook me, ya know?”
The foreman
nodded his head but reserved judgement.
“Yeah, well, some of the guys are waiting to meet the fella who designed
this place. Are you comin’ out or
what?”
“I appreciate
it, but I have to be going,” Jarod said.
The
misgivings were clearly growing in Marcus’ mind. “If you say so. Perry, you, uh, want
anything?”
“No, thanks
Marcus.” She proffered a
smile. “I’ll be out in a little
bit.”
“Ok.” The door closed with a bang, leaving the
two alone again.
“I didn’t
realize that you were the “Perry” that he had been talking
about.”
Hannah
laughed self-consciously. “Yes,
that’s me. Perry, short for
“Esperanza Lopez, Architectural Liaison,” or so the sign on my desk says. I thought with a name like that, the
Centre would never think that I was old Teutonic Hannah
Braun.”
Jarod
nodded. Esperanza, very Latin
sounding but pretty. She had a
valid point; names could be imbued with so much value, in theory giving someone
a clue into another’s heritage, their gender and even their age. She had learned more from him about
staying out of sight than he imagined.
He turned
again toward the door, battling with himself whether to say something more or
simply walk out. But what else
could he say? Everything he thought
of would only make things worse.
Esperanza. Hope. A beautiful
name.
He stopped,
one hand on the door handle, and turned around. Hannah, now up from the floor, was
reaching for a tissue on the desk.
She was not watching him.
“Why did you pick that name?” he asked suddenly.
“I told
you. It was so different from my
name. I was trying to hide.”
“I know,
that’s what you said. But it
means-“
“Hope.” She cut him off before he could
finish. “It means
‘hope.’”
He moved
closer to her, inches away, but she refused to look at him, staring instead at
some unseen spot on the wall.
Inwardly he cursed the vague empathic talent that left him with only the
feeling of her confusion. How he
wished at the moment that he were Angelo, that he could somehow break through
the silence and understand her.
Esperanza. Hope.
“Esperanza.” Jarod spoke the name, the word, almost
religiously. With the side of his
finger, he brushed away the last remnants of a tear on her cheek. “Esperanza de mi corazón, mi solamente
esperanza. Déjeme verlo otra vez.”
Trust him to
speak another language, probably several, she thought ironically to herself, but
what had he said? She had picked
the Spanish name, not the knowledge.
Looking up at him, her eyes opened wide as if to search for the meaning
of his beautiful, unknown words. If
she could only understand, she might know what to
do.
The crook of
his finger caught her chin and gently raised her face so that she was looking at
him once again. His eyes were
softer now, less searching and more resolved. “Is that really what you want me to
do? To leave now and come back in
nine months when the building is finished?”
Oh, no, she
thought, don’t make me answer that.
“You have a whole lifetime to catch up on. You should go and do
that.”
“You really don’t get it, do you?” A
slow, sad smile crept across his features.
“I haven’t felt alive since the day that they told me that you and
Caitlin were gone. If you’re doing
this for my sake, stop. I can make
my own decisions about what is right or wrong for me.”
“I know that,
I’m just…” Hannah turned away again, tried to get away from him, to have space
to think. His presence, his touch,
his expression; they were almost too much to overcome.
Jarod reached
over and grabbed both of her shoulders before she could escape. He gently but firmly positioned her in
front of him. “Tell me that you
want me to leave, tell me that there is nothing left between us, and I’ll
go. Tell me that you want me
out of your life, for your sake, and I will
leave.”
“I – I
can’t.”
The words
seemed torn from her, but they were the most beautiful that Jarod had ever
heard. He dabbed again at the tears
that rushed out onto her face and pulled her close to him, wrapping his arms
around her as her body shook with emotion. The sensation rushed over him like a warm
breeze, the final embers of his anger bursting away from his soul. Here it was at last, the undying love
that he had desired for so long, the need that even his parents and family could
not fulfill – his heart’s home.
The last
angel was finally home.
Copyright
2001 by Liz Shelbourne. All rights
reserved.