Familiar Stranger. Шарон Сала

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СКАЧАТЬ shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks.

      “I know this is going to be difficult for you to understand, but you’ve got to believe me when I tell you that what I did, I did for you, not to you.”

      Cara’s eyes teared again, but she remained firmly in her seat.

      “Letting me think you were dead was doing me a favor?” Her voice started to shake. “Even if I didn’t matter to you anymore, how could you father a child and then ignore her existence?”

      “No…no…not that. Never that.”

      “Then explain,” Cara begged. “Make me understand.”

      He took his hands out of his pockets as he began to pace, and Cara couldn’t help but stare at the animal grace of his movements. And then he started to talk and she became lost in the sound of his voice.

      “It began with the letters.”

      “What letters?”

      “The letters I wrote to you.”

      “I didn’t receive any letters.”

      “Yes, I know…at least, I knew after a while, but before I found out, I kept wondering why you didn’t answer mine. There were dozens and dozens. I wrote almost every day for about three months and then as often as I could after that.”

      She stiffened. “I don’t believe you.”

      He strode to a chair and picked up a packet he’d gotten from his car while she had been dressing.

      “See for yourself. I carried the damn things all over Nam after they came back. Half a dozen times I thought about chucking them, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them. Even though you hadn’t opened them, they were the last link I had to you.”

      Cara’s brows knitted as she dumped the contents of the packet into her lap.

      “That’s not all of them,” David said. “But enough for you to know I’m telling the truth.”

      As she turned them over, she started to shake. The evidence was there before her eyes. Water-stained papers. Ancient postmarks. All addressed to Cara Weber and all unopened. But it was the two newspaper clippings, yellowed with age, that startled her. One was of her wedding, the other an announcement of her baby’s birth.

      “Where did you get these?”

      “Your parents sent them to me, along with all of the letters I’d written you.”

      She gasped.

      “The message was plain,” David said. “I had no place in your life anymore. You had a husband and a child.” He tried to smile, but the pain of saying what he’d lived with all these years made it impossible. “Only I knew the child was mine. I knew you would never have cheated on me before, and the baby came too soon after your wedding.”

      “But David…why let everyone think you were dead? I would never have refused you the right to know and love your own child.”

      “I know, but you have to understand. It was hell over there and Frank died about a month after I got the package. After that, I guess I pretty much went out of my head. I tried so many damn ways to get myself killed, but it didn’t work. I volunteered for mission after mission, and each one should have been my last. When my tour of duty was up, I reenlisted. I was there when Saigon fell.”

      Tears slid down Cara’s face as she sat with her hands clenched tightly in her lap.

      “Why didn’t you come home then? Why did you let me…let everyone…think you were dead?”

      He shrugged. “I don’t know. Hell…I felt dead, I guess I was just waiting for my body to catch up with my mind. Only thing was, Uncle Sam beat me to it.”

      “I don’t understand.”

      He hesitated, trying to figure out exactly what he could say without giving too much away.

      “I can’t tell you everything,” he said. “But I got recruited by a Special Forces unit and became involved in some covert missions for the government. One thing led to another and now, let’s just say that my years with Uncle Sam are coming to an end.”

      “Are you telling me you became a spy?”

      “Don’t ask me anything more, honey…please. I’ve already said more than I should have.”

      “My God,” Cara muttered. She stared down at the unopened letters in her lap and then covered her face with her hands.

      David dropped to his knees and took her hands in his.

      “Cara?”

      Forced to look at him, she realized that, for the first time, she was really seeing the man—and his secrets—and his scars.

      “Why did you come back? Why now, after all these years?”

      He hesitated again, still carefully choosing his answers.

      “Because I needed to make peace with myself and with you. I needed to look you in the face and tell you that when I left for Vietnam, I had every intention of coming back and making a life with you. I couldn’t go to my grave knowing you still believed I’d walked out on you, leaving you pregnant to raise our baby on your own. I swear to God, Cara, I would never have done that to you. I loved you.”

      “What do you mean, go to your grave? Are you ill?”

      He slid into the seat beside her, reaching for her hands.

      “No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m fine.”

      Cara looked down at his hands, so gently worrying the knuckles of her fingers, wondering if it was safe to give so much of herself away. And then she shoved the worry away. They’d already lost too many precious years. Whatever he had to give her, she was willing to take.

      “What are your plans?” she asked. “I mean…can you stay awhile? Maybe a few days? I want to show you things…and oh, David, you have to stay and meet Bethany. She and her family are on vacation, but they’ll be back at the end of the week. Five or six days. You can stay that long…can’t you?”

      He heard himself answering and knew he was making a mistake, but there was no way he was going to lose her again, at least not yet. There was every reason to believe that his final showdown with Frank could be his last. He didn’t want to give Cara false hope, but on the other hand, he couldn’t deny himself this little bit of heaven.

      “Yes. I’ll stay. At least for a while.”

      For the first time in a very long while, Cara felt a sense of anticipation.

      “Are you hungry? I was coming in the house to make myself some lunch when I heard you arrive.”

      The lilt in her voice only deepened his guilt, but he found himself agreeing. “That sounds good. I can’t remember when I last shared a meal with anyone.”

      Cara СКАЧАТЬ