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She smiled sadly. “I think I better. I was so stupid, such a kid. When your daddy got orders to Lebanon, I knew he’d be back sooner or later. ” She shook her head, closed her eyes, lost for a moment in a past Donovan knew nothing about.

When she met his eyes, a sad sort of peace had replaced the sheer pain from moments before. “I have so much to say.”

Donovan didn’t know how to respond. He just knew he didn’t want his mother to hurt anymore. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind the feeling echoed from a time he could barely remember.

“You don’t have to. I don’t need
this
to be whole. I know what grief does to a person, and I know you loved me. Even when….”

Tammy interrupted him. “Even when I let someone beat up on you. Even when I drank myself into oblivion….”

“Even when you made sure I had the entire Jenkins family on my side. Even when you made sure I had a place to live, food to eat. Even when you kicked my butt for skipping classes and smoking pot.” Donovan’s hands were shaking. His whole damn body was shaking. “I’m not going to lie. Life as a kid wasn’t Disneyland, but I’ve seen a hell of a lot worse.”

He closed his eyes against the memories bombarding his senses now. Memories that had nothing to do with his mother or his childhood. Bloody bodies, burning flesh, dark brown eyes that forgave. Every damn time he believed he was better the clips played in his mind, threatened to take him over the edge, begged him to give in and go bat shit crazy or drink himself into oblivion.

If he’d gone anywhere else than his mother’s home, the second might have been an option, but he wouldn’t risk his mother’s recovery to fall into his own stupor. The first option taunted him daily.
 

God. His breath shortened with the visions and his mother’s arms wrapped around his shoulders in a somewhat stilted hug.

For all its clumsiness, it was a real hug, and for the moment, it wiped away the memories he didn’t want to face. He held on to her, called himself a fool and turned so she wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

If she saw them, she didn’t comment. Just picked up the conversation. Donovan held onto her words like an anchor. Her story would keep the memories that threatened to destroy him at bay.
 

“No, life around our house definitely wasn’t Disneyland, and I can’t go back and change the past. I wish I could. I’ve tried hard enough. But I can fix this. Hold on.”

The cold air wrapped around him as Tammy’s muffled steps sounded on the hall carpet. Donovan stared at the magazines on his mother’s coffee table and told himself not to think. Not to see. Not to remember. She’d be back in a minute, and she’d tell him a story he could spend time ruminating on.

When she returned she held a cardboard box and an old yearbook. This time she sat beside him on the couch.

She took his hand in hers. She had to feel the tremors, but she didn’t comment on them.

 
“Like I said, I was young and stupid and incredibly naive. But know this, from the moment I knew about you, I wanted you. And so did your daddy.”

She flipped the yearbook open. “I think this is probably important to understanding the story I’m about to tell.”

His mother had grown up in a different era, a time before Internet and smart phones. She turned the pages, and then there she was in a bright colored photo wearing a neon shirt with matching socks with hair sprayed sky high, standing under a live oak next to Ike, Kacie Jo’s mother, and the boy who must be his father. She looked so different, so happy, so damn young.

Her finger traced over the image of the stranger. “His name was Stephen Carter. He was everything that is good in life, and he was my soulmate.”

Donovan couldn’t take is eyes away from the page, but the pain in his mother’s voice was obvious.

Slowly, he covered her hand with his. “Don’t. You don’t have to do this for me.”

Her sad laugh sounded through the room, and she continued her story. “I was eighteen, barely, when I found out I was pregnant. Stephen joined the Army right out of high school. He was determined to make something of himself before he married me.

“He hadn’t been gone long when I found out. Once it got out…” She trailed off for a second. “You’ve got to understand times were different. And I was so damn stubborn. I fought with my parents and they told me to leave if I wouldn’t give you up, and I was going to prove to them how wrong they were. So I packed my bags and left without looking back. I was miserable, but I was determined. I wanted you so bad, and no one was going to stand in my way. Besides, your daddy would be home soon and that would be that.”

She pulled the box top off and pulled out the first letter.

“He died in a terrorist attack on his barracks on one of the last nights his unit was deployed. Ike wrote me, sent me Stephen’s final letter.”

She placed the box in Donovan’s lap and stood. “I’m going to let you read these when you’re ready. And I’ll answer any of your questions. But you need to remember the most important part of what I’ve said. When Stephen didn’t make it, I let life eat me up. I didn’t fight for anything. And then before I even realized it, I quit caring.”

It could happen to him just as easily. “You care now.”

“I do. And I’ll try to make up for those years for the rest of my life. I wish I could undo everything that happened to you. I wish I could’ve been a good mother. I wish I could’ve taken you to the park and thrown big birthday parties for you. You were such a good boy. But I lost myself.”

Like he’d lost himself. His mother had her own battle scars. “I understand,” he said.

She patted his hand. “I know you do. And I learned in the last few years that sometimes life gives us things we can’t control. It’s the things we can control we’ve got to work on.”

With that she walked out of the room leaving the box of yellowed letters behind for him to read. His father, Stephen Carter. Just a kid who died like thousands of others. And his mother, a kid who let losing the love of her life nearly destroy her because she’d tried to conquer her own demons.

He lifted the crisp end of the top envelope and read the words, written in black block letters.

My Dearest Tammy Lynn,

I know I should start this with something simple like how are you, but I can’t. I just got your letter and I’m so damn proud. A baby. I’m going to be a daddy and you’re going to be a momma and we’re going to be the best damn family in Caldale, Texas. I want you to tell that baby I’ll be home soon. Orders came down last night. Less than a month and I’ll be swinging you around, holding you in my arms, telling that baby we made how happy I am.

You are my heart and so is this child. I figure your parents aren’t too happy, but tell them, we’ll be Mr. and Mrs. Carter before that baby’s born.

You should see this place. The water’s as blue as postcards from the Caribbean and the sky matches. I think this might be the Garden of Eden.

I’m sending some presents over soon. Ike already agreed to be godfather, as long as you don’t mind.

I gotta run, but I’ll write more when I get back. I love you. Thank you for making me the happiest man in the world.

Be home soon,

Stephen

Donovan reread the last letter his father had written. He brushed his hands over the dried tear stain marks and wondered how many times his mother had read and reread this same letter. How many times she’d cried over the yellowed, lined with age paper.

Stephen Carter. Just a kid. His father.

He didn’t know what he’d expected to feel, but it hadn’t been this combination of grief and curiosity.
 

He slipped the letter back in its envelope and took the next one out of the box. And on and on. Until he’d read every letter to Tammy Nelson from Pfc. Stephen Carter.

And once he was done with the letters, he flipped through the pages of the Caldale High School annual. He didn’t know if he was looking for answers, peace or preservation.

But as his parents’ doomed love story played out before his eyes, he realized the simple truth of the Serenity Prayer hanging at his mother’s front door.

He couldn’t control the nightmare images that plagued him, couldn’t change the awful truths that played out in his mind. He could control running from them. And he could control running away from Kacie Jo. He wouldn’t put her in danger, but he could let her know how sorry he was, how wrong he’d been to use her. He owed her that.

Donovan closed the yearbook and picked up the envelope containing the divorce papers. If this was the end, he owed Kacie Jo an explanation now. Once she listened, he’d give her whatever she wanted. Whatever as long as it didn’t include giving up his child.

He wanted his baby as desperately as it seemed Stephen Carter had wanted him.

His mother had run from her pain and it had almost destroyed her. It was time for this family tradition to end. With that thought, he walked out the door, determined to quit running for a change.
 

Kacie Jo hung up the phone and tried to shrug away the tension in her shoulders. Grady had delivered the papers. A few months from now she’d be a mother and divorced. It seemed unreal.

She needed to get out of the house before the walls crashed in on her. Before she gave in to the tears and doubt.

Closing the door behind her, she set off with no specific destination in mind. No plan at all. She needed to figure out how to breathe again because for the last few weeks she’d been suffocating. Suffocating first from fear Donovan would leave. Then from fear he’d come back.

She tried to clear her mind as she walked, but memories of her time with Donovan bombarded her, leaving her more alone, more unsure, than ever.

When she found herself back in the park, she almost turned away. The pain of the memories here was too fresh, too intense.

But maybe this was the first step to recovery from love. She felt ridiculous. But that’s what her heartbreak felt like. An illness, a destructive force. Maybe here, she could find a way to free herself from the pain.

She passed the hill where she and Donovan sat that first night and counted stars, and she wondered what had made Donovan so irresistible then. Was his pain one of his biggest draws?

She shook her head as she moved on. She’d spent so much time wondering what she’d been thinking, she was pretty sure she knew the answer. Donovan’s pain had been the least of her concerns until she’d seen him at Grady’s.

No. When she’d hatched her plan she’d convinced herself she wanted him because he was her fantasy, and while that was true, the honest answer was more base.

She could stand in this park and acknowledge that fact. She’d chased Donovan Nelson because he was the unattainable. And he was supposed to be temporary. And he was the most attractive man she knew.

No matter how often she told herself she’d loved Donovan forever, she couldn’t fool herself on this one. Not any more. Not now when she knew what love really felt like.

She sat on a swing and kicked off the sandy ground, closing her eyes so she could lose herself in the squeak of old chains. Anything to erase the image of Donovan in the car telling her he loved her.

Because it didn’t matter. Love wasn’t enough.

Behind her someone kicked a pebble, and she dragged her feet to stop the swing before she stood to face him. She didn’t have to see him to know it was Donovan standing there behind her in the park. Even though she’d seen him at the grocery store, she wasn’t ready to see him here like this, standing on the scuffed grass in old jeans and a t-shirt with his hair blowing in the soft wind. This was fate of some sort. This was where it had all begun, and this was where it would all end.

“I understand if you want to walk away right now,” he said. “Or tell me to go to hell. Or throw something.”

She didn’t say a word. Didn’t trust herself.

“I’m an ass, Kacie Jo.”

“You are,” she agreed and then crossed her arms over her chest where they rested on her very pregnant stomach.
 

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

Oh that was rich. He dared to show up on some mission to beg mercy? Three weeks ago, maybe. Now, no way.

“I’m glad you understand that.”

“I ran away from you...”

“Twice,” she interrupted holding up two fingers, and he concurred.

“Twice.”
 

He stopped and closed his eyes like he was praying.
 

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he started with the same old excuse and inside her brain was screaming well, that’s too bad because you didn’t just hurt me you rat bastard, you shattered my whole effing world.

“I ran away because that’s what I do. What I’ve done my whole life. And I was afraid. It doesn’t make it okay, doesn’t erase anything. I just want you to know.”

His words unleashed the torrent of emotions that had built up from the moment she’d woken to his nightmare over a month before.

“I was afraid, too, Donovan. Terrified for you. And you left without a word. And stayed gone without a word. Only not gone. You stayed in Caldale without talking to me. You let everyone in town watch my greatest folly play out. You embarrassed me and hurt me and terrified me and now you show up at
my
park and what? You want me to say it’s all good, Donovan. I know you’re sick because you’re some kind of hero rock star journalist out saving the world from itself and that makes it all okay? Well guess what. It’s not okay. You can go be a hero to everyone else in the world. To me you’re an asshole, loser, coward, jerk, relationship deserter. You go tell the world you’re sorry. I’m not interested.”