Before Sunrise (32 page)

Liam scratched his forehead. “His name is
Abrams, huh?”

“
Give the doctor a call. But
later on that. Let’s get you to your new place. Not going to let
you add drinking and driving to your list.”

***

Kennedy sat up. She reached over and turned
on the lamp near the bed, then picked up her ringing cell phone.
“Hello? Hello?”

“
I found him,”

“
Oh, thank God, Eric. Is he
okay?”

“
He’s cool. You getting some
sleep?”

“
No.” Kennedy sighed. “Can I
talk to him? To be sure he’s okay.”

“
Not a good idea,
sweetheart. Don’t you think you two should cool off?”

Kennedy closed her eyes. The last thing she
wanted was separation or distance. But she didn’t recognize Liam.
He scared her. “Yeah, yes. I think you’re right.”

“
He wants to know if he can
come tomorrow to get Mackenzie.”

“
No. I don’t think he can
handle it now. He’s too angry.”

“
Kennedy, he’s not going to
hurt her. You know that. Ant will be with him. So he won’t have her
alone. He just wants to spend some time with her. I think it’s a
good idea.”

“
Oh, um, sure.” Kennedy
wiped her tears. “Where is he? Is he in his hotel room? Is he okay?
Wait. I already asked you that.”

Eric laughed. “He’s a grown man. He’s okay.
He survived the war, he can survive a night drying out.”

“
Drying out? He was
drinking? Alone?”

“
Shit. I said too much. You
two work it out. I’ll see you soon okay?”

“
Thank you, Eric, and thank
Anthony, too.”

“
Love you.”

“
Love you too.”

Kennedy hung up. She slipped back down under
her covers. The light from the lamp spilled out over the room.
She’d cleaned up the glass and broken pieces from her vanity. But
the frame with the missing mirror had been a clear indication that
something was missing. It matched the hole in her heart.

***

Morning

Phil coasted up his driveway and shifted the
sedan into park. The men posted at his house remained in their
military-issued vehicles, on guard. Other than them, it looked like
any other day in his neighborhood. The dewy atmosphere and cloudy
sky left the morning air frigid and the roads were beginning to get
slick, covered with black ice. He didn’t see reporters, though one
news van remained parked down the street. It was the same station
that kept giving minute-to-minute reports on the activities in his
home. It was how he’d discovered that Kennedy played house with her
resurrected husband all day while he was miserable.

Phil thought of Alexa’s bargain. If he did
what she suggested, Liam would no longer be his problem. He would
have Kennedy to himself. But even he couldn’t imagine betraying
Kennedy to that degree. She had been honest with him from the
start. He knew she hadn’t recovered from her grief. He just wanted
a fair shot at some of the happiness she bought into his life. Was
that wrong? Was it wrong to wish for a way to force Liam Flanagan
back down the desert hole he’d crawled out of?

Phil turned down the key in the ignition and
shut off the car engine. He got out and shook off the cold blast of
air whipping through the neighborhood. Tied to the roof was the
Christmas tree he’d bought on his way over. He lucked out that the
place opened at six in the morning. The soldiers came to the
vehicle, offering to untie it and bring it in. Mackenzie would get
a kick out of it. He’d go up in the attic and get all the ornaments
and lights and make a day out of it.

Quickly he headed up the walk to his front
door and then unlocked it. The warm smell of breakfast meat and
biscuits enveloped him. Closing the door, Phil let a smile ease
slowly across his face. Had Kennedy gotten up and started
breakfast, knowing he was coming over?

“
Kennedy? Babe?”

Phil dropped his key in the ceramic dish
near the door and shook off his coat. He was hanging it on the rack
as Sally stepped out the kitchen, wearing his wife’s apron. She
looked him up and down, then smiled.

“
Hi, Phil.”

“
Sally? What are you doing
here?”

“
Haven’t you heard? My son’s
alive.” Sally smirked.

Kennedy tossed and turned under the
blankets. She groaned in her sleep, begging Phil not to throw away
their child, begging Liam to forgive her, begging all through the
night and her heart was pummeled and ripped to shreds. She woke
again with a silent scream strangled in her throat, and pillows
soaked with sweat. Confused and mentally exhausted, she waited for
her mind to differentiate between reality and her nightmares. She
couldn’t go on much longer like this. She just couldn’t. The
nightmares only went away after she’d been heavily medicated when
Liam died. This time she would have to beat them back herself.

Mackenzie screamed.

Kennedy shot up from the bed, grabbed her
robe, and raced to the door. Before she made it to the hall,
Mackenzie rushed in, hysterical, her little body racked with sobs.
“Sweetheart, what is it? Calm down and tell mama what it is!”

“
He gone!”

“
Who? Who’s
gone?”

“
My fishie!” Mackenzie
wailed. “Somebody took my fishie!”

Kennedy drew her into her arms. She rolled
her eyes to the ceiling as she vividly recalled Liam’s destruction
of the fishbowl and her subsequent flushing of Fishie down the
toilet. To add to her torment, Phil walked in briskly, alarmed. Now
Kennedy would be forced to address the other man in her life, and
her daughter’s. She had to get off this rollercoaster.

“
What is it,
Mac?”

“
Daddy! He gone! Somebody
stole my fishie!” Mackenzie wept. She rushed from her mother’s arms
to her stepfather’s. Kennedy rose from her knees, adjusted her
robe, and looked on as Phil comforted her daughter. Mackenzie cried
against his neck, mumbling unintelligibly. He rubbed her back; his
caress reduced her daughter’s wails to hiccupping sobs.

“
What happened to the damn
fish?” he asked over Mackenzie’s shoulder.

“
Dead.” Kennedy
mouthed.

Phil sighed. He nodded that he understood
and turned, but froze at the sight of a gutted dresser mirror. He
glanced back at Kennedy. What could she say? There was no
explaining the obvious, so she said nothing. He shook his head and
walked out whispering of a new fish to Mackenzie. Kennedy quickly
went to her closet and found a pair of jeans. She pulled them up
and sucked in her diaphragm to button and zip them. Grabbing one of
Phil’s Army sweatshirts, she put it on, then hurried to the
bathroom. She splashed water on her face, brushed her teeth. The
doctor’s office opened early. She could go as a walk-in for this.
She was sure of it. She had a good relationship with her OB. And
besides, it was an emergency.

“
Kennedy?”

She turned in the mirror with her toothbrush
in her mouth.

“
Where are you
going?”

Kennedy spat sudsy toothpaste in the sink
and turned on the tap to wash it down. “Need to go to the doctor. I
want to get a blood test.”

Phil stared at her. Kennedy ignored the look
in his eyes as she washed her face and hands, then ran a comb
through her tangles. Giving up on the frizzies that reached all the
way to her roots, she grabbed a headband and put it on. She decided
to let her locks remain wild and untamed.

“
Delay it.”

She looked up in the mirror confused.
“Huh?”

“
We need to talk. There’s
lots to talk about. I want to spend the day working through our
feelings. Besides, we haven’t even planned Christmas, the party
yet. I got a surprise for you downstairs.”

“
I can’t think of Christmas
or her party. Phil, I can’t think about anything but the fact that
I might be pregnant. I need a test. I want to know.”

“
Why? Why the hurry? You
made a decision without me?” Phil asked.

Kennedy sucked down a deep breath. “This is
hard.”

“
No shit.”

“
I don’t want to hurt
you.”

“
Then don’t.”

“
You know this isn’t the way
I planned things. If I had known he was alive I wouldn’t have
married you.”

“
But you did. You did marry
me. You made vows to me.”

He stepped inside the bathroom. Kennedy bit
down on her bottom lip. She nodded that she did. She wanted out,
tried to slide by him, but he blocked her passage. She shook her
head, not wanting to tell him that their marriage had ended while
standing next to the toilet and bathroom sink.

“
I made vows to Liam. Vows
that I never intended to break. Vows I am very much committed to.
I’m his wife, Phil, that’s a fact. You and I, we aren’t really
married. And here’s another fact. I want to remain his wife. I
choose him.”

“
Forget Liam for a
moment.”

“
Did you hear what I just
said—”

“
Look at us. The home we
built. Our life. It’s not a substitute for what you lost with Liam
Flanagan. It’s what you found with me. I won’t let you run to him
like this.”

“
You won’t let
me?”

“
I want a fair chance to
hold on to my family. Besides, there are things you don’t know
about Liam. Or wait, maybe you do. What happened to the mirror,
Kennedy?”

“
I really need to get the
test.” She tried again to go around him.

“
So it comes down to the
baby? If you’re pregnant are you going to stay married to
me?”

“
I didn’t say
that.”

“
Say something, damn it.
Give me an answer!”

“
Fine. I want Liam. There, I
said it. Baby or no baby, I want my husband back. I want the life I
had with him. I want to forget five years has been robbed of us and
start right where we left off. That’s my heart’s wish. It’s the
only thing I’ve wanted since the day they told me he was
dead.”

“
And will he want you with
my kid? You think of that? The man isn’t right in the head. Who
goes through what he did and not come out with screws loose? What
happened here last night? You saw it, didn’t you? You saw how
screwed up he is.”

“
I saw how this situation is
killing him. I have to put an end to it.”

“
He’s dangerous, Kennedy.
You have no idea what will set him off. My money is our child is
what will do it. Then what? You going to put Mackenzie in harm’s
way because of some puppy love from years ago?”

“
Spare me,” Kennedy snapped.
“You have no idea who Liam is. Who we were to each other. Don’t let
my mother fool you, she didn’t know either. Liam is my heart. The
other half of my heart. We fought like hell to be together before
you ever knew me. I gave up my family and my future to be his wife
at seventeen and he gave his life to his country to provide for us
both. I have never stopped loving him since the first day I laid
eyes on him. That’s not puppy love, it’s not even close to any love
between you and me, it’s the real thing. Now I’m sorry. I’m so
very, very sorry, Phil. I warned you. I shared all of this with you
when he died. When you came to me time and time again, saying my
love for him didn’t matter. Telling me to get over it. I told you
this and more. So don’t stand there like he is wrong for being
alive. That I’m wrong for wanting my husband back!”

Her words forced Phil to look away. She had
delivered the final blow to his heart and he actually looked like
he expected it. He stared off at nothing. He had to force it, had
to make her say it. Now she had. And part of her felt better
because of it.

“
And if you’re wrong? If
he’s dangerous? Unstable? What then? Are your feelings for Liam
more important than Mackenzie?”

“
All I know is that I need
that damn test. Excuse me.” She pushed past him and hurried to the
closet for her shoes. She felt such a heated shame burning her
cheeks for it all. No one was to blame, but there sure was a lot of
blame being thrown around between them. How could he ask her to
forget Liam? Pretend their love had been just some distant
fairytale of her girlhood. Would that suddenly make her the wife
and mother Phil wanted her to be? No. The truth was she’d used
Phil’s love just as much as he’d used her grief.

Phil remained in the bathroom where she left
him. Part of her wanted to comfort him. Make him hurt less. The
problem was she didn’t know how anymore. Any show of affection she
gave felt like a direct betrayal, and she was tired of feeling like
shit for being human. Liam was right. She had to stop this
back-and-forth and take a stand.

When the phone rang she ignored it. But it
did remind her that Liam would be coming for Mackenzie. She slipped
on her shoes and turned to face Phil, who had now entered the room,
and watched her silently.

“
Liam’s coming for
Mackenzie.”

“
I want my talk. I want you
to take the time to sit down and hear me out.”

Kennedy dropped her hands to her hips. She
chewed on her bottom lip. “I’m all over the place, Phil. If you
want to talk, talk until we’re talked out, then let’s do that. I
owe you that much. Okay?”