If I'd Never Known Your Love (10 page)

Winslow on the English after school, and then Julia and I will alternate with algebra
and social studies until you're where you should be. Julia's mom has four years of
high-school German and three of college. If you have any ear at all for foreign
languages, she can get you to the point where you can challenge the course for credit.

I'm not usually in favor of this kind of thing, but you'll need a language when you apply
for college yourself"

I threw my arms around his neck. "Daddy, I love you. You're the best."

"Why are you doing this?" you asked, confused at a reaction you obviously hadn't
expected.

"For a lot of reasons," Dad said. "Mostly, I suppose, because I think it's about time
you were on the receiving end. You're a good kid, Evan. All you need is half a chance."

"I don't know what to say."

"One more thing," Dad said, seeing we were about to leave. He shifted his gaze from
me to you and then back again. "It's plain as a cat locked in a house watching a flock of
birds in the backyard how you two feel about each other. "He held up his hand when I
started to protest. "I've got eyes, Julia. Anyone around you two five minutes would pick
up on what's going on between you. I just don't want it getting out of hand. You've got
plenty of time. Right now Evan has enough on his plate."

I looked into your eyes and could see the yearning for everything my father had
offered mixed with a longing for me. The promise we made to my dad that day to stay
away from each other was one of the hardest promises I've ever made. But I sucked it
up, as Fred liked to say, and smiled. I wanted you to know that it was okay. I would
wait.

C H A P T E R 6

The doorbell rang. Julia ignored it. It rang again.

Julia pulled her legs to her chest and leaned tighter into the corner. Loud knocking came next, and then a man called her name.

"Mrs. McDonald?" He knocked again. "This is Deputy Thompson from the Sheriff's Department. Are you all right in there?"

Julia stirred. He'd obviously been sent to see her and would not go away until she responded. "Mrs. McDonald? Can you—" "Just a minute," she finally said. She got to her feet, wiped her face with her hands and adjusted her skirt.

She was experienced at hiding her feelings, smiling when she was exhausted, speaking softly when she felt like shouting, gracious when inwardly seething with frustration.

Grief, worry, fear were all emotions she'd learned to bury under a veneer of cordialness, a necessary means to an end.

She glanced at herself in the hall mirror before opening the door. Her eyes betrayed her. She could not hide behind a smile today; the wound ran too deep. Still, she tried.

"I'm Julia McDonald," she said. "What can I do for you?"

A young man dressed in crisp Sheriff's Department green, with a shiny badge and buttons, a wide, black leather belt and bulging holster, took a nervous half step backward. He had bright-red hair and connect-the-dots freckles and looked years too young to have a gun strapped at his side. Another man, dressed in a black suit and cleric's collar, stood with one foot on the step, the other on the porch. He seemed disconcertingly familiar with the role he'd been assigned.

The deputy shifted his hat from one hand to the other, radiating vibes that said, given a choice, he would gladly take an armed suspect over a distraught woman. He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry to disturb you at a time like this, Mrs. McDonald, but Mayor Suhr's office received a phone call from the State Department requesting an officer be sent to this address. Reverend Kisder and I are here to help you in any way we can."

"Thank you," Julia said. "I appreciate the mayor's concern, but I really don't need help. There's nothing for you to do."

"Please, ma'am—there must be something."

"Perhaps we could phone a friend?" Reverend Kisder suggested. "What about family?

Do you have any close by?"

Reality pierced her fog of sorrow. No matter how desperately she wanted to be left alone, to grieve in private, to say goodbye to Evan in the quiet of the house they had shared in dreams but not time, there were others who had to be considered. "My sister, Barbara."

They reacted as if she'd given them a gift. "If we could come inside..." Reverend Kistler gently suggested.

"Of course." She moved out of the doorway. "Would you like some coffee?" The question was automatic, inbred through generations of women who equated food and drink with hospitality even in grief, women who throughout joy and tragedy passed the lesson to their daughters by example.

She could do this; she could go on, alone. After five years without being able to see or feel or touch Evan, she'd already accomplished it physically. Now all she had to do was find a way to do it mentally. One step at a time, one day at a time, and it would become a pattern.

Knowing Evan would never come home was simply a matter of trading one heartache for another.

Within an hour, the rippling word of Evan's death had reached friends across the United States and Colombia. One conversation ended, the receiver was replaced, the phone rang again. Barbara handled all but the most personal calls, noting names and numbers and thanking all for their concern, promising someone would get back to them as soon as the funeral arrangements were made.

Julia listened the way she did with background music, hearing, but not registering details. She remained at the front window, her hand pressed against the cool glass, and watched for Shelly and Jason.

She'd heard from Paul Erickson and George Black and Matt Coatney, the men who'd begun the battle to get Evan home and then over the years had moved on to other jobs in other businesses and agencies. Five years was a long time for men like that to stay in one place.

Not one of them hinted that they'd ever lost hope, and in their voices and words, she felt their shared sorrow. They all told her they would stay in touch, but their link had been severed. Even friendships formed in the fires of adversity suffered and fell to the wayside when not tended regularly.

In less than an hour the sun had given way to a cover of dark clouds, dropping the temperature ten degrees. White-crowned sparrows and juncos popped in and out of the perennial bed next to the driveway, their food gathering hastened by the impending rain.

The perennials were Evan's favorites, everything from foxglove to primroses. In the backyard she'd planted hundreds of daffodils and tulips in meandering beds of yellow and red, deep purple and white, the colors he had marked in the bulb catalog he'd left on the nightstand.

She'd painted the house his favorite colors, wallpapered the bathroom in the pattern he'd said he'd liked when they were at the store together the week before he left, and covered the windows with the mini-blinds he preferred instead of the wooden plantation shutters she liked. They were labors of love, small bargains that her efforts would not go unnoticed, that someday Evan would take pleasure in the paint and paper and pick her a bouquet from the garden.

The sky behind the Modesto ash in the front yard lit with a flash of lightning. Julia waited for the thunder. Rain fell, gently at first, and then as if the clouds had tilted to drop their contents as quickly as possible.

How could she have not known?
The question reverberated like an echo. How could she have felt Evan's presence all those years, when he hadn't been with her anymore?

The answer finally struck, and it was cold and hard and cruel. She'd believed because she had to. Without the fantasy, she could not have done what she had to do.

And in the end, she had succeeded. She had found him.

Julia glanced up as Patty's Mustang pulled into the driveway. Shelly sat in the front passenger seat talking, her face animated, her gestures expansive. She seemed happy, excited, her world as it should be, filled with friends and flights of fancy. She would recover from losing her father—she'd had five years of practice. But she would be changed. She would miss the connection that was part of knowing there was another person in her world who loved her without reservation.

They would have no more conversations about what it would be like when Evan came home. He would never see the trophies she'd won for soccer or the ornaments she'd made for him each Christmas. She would look into the stands at her graduation from high school and college and see her grandfather where her father should have been. And when she walked down the aisle at her wedding, no matter who walked with her it would be the wrong person.

As if she could sense Julia waiting for her, Shelly turned and saw her mother. Her smile faded. She

gathered her books and left the car. After taking a second to wave goodbye, she sprinted toward the house, futilely attempting to outrun the rain.

Julia met her at the door.

"What are you doing here?" Shelly asked. "I thought your plane—"

"The trip was canceled."Julia took Shelly s books and put them on the hall table.

"Then why is Aunt Barbara here?" She shrugged out of her coat. "What's going on?"

Julia had given her children every kind of news and not struggled for words. Now, suddenly, she had no idea what to say. Was there a right way to break someone's heart?

"They found—"

"Daddy?" Shelly finished for her, her eyes brimming with anticipation.

Julia panicked, realizing Shelly completely misunderstood and would suffer the blow twice.

"Where?" Shelly added before Julia could react.

"In the jungle outside Envigado," she said, supplying the wrong answer and allowing the fantasy to live.

"When is he coming home?" She didn't wait for Julia to answer. "Why aren't you happy?"

"He isn't coming home...not to us. At least not the way we wanted him to." She was doing this all wrong. "Your father is dead, Shelly." It sounded so cruel. She should have thought more about how to lessen the blow.

Shelly's jacket fell to the floor. "How do you know?" And then, "How did it happen?"

The question threw Julia. And then she remembered. She couldn't tell Shelly the truth, not after what she'd said that morning about wishing her father had been shot.

Barbara moved into the hall. "He was shot attempting to escape—just a couple of days after he was captured," she added gently, obviously believing she was helping."He's been gone all this time. We should have known your father wouldn't sit around waiting for someone to rescue him."

Shelly stared at Julia, her eyes wide in horror. "That's not true. It can't be. You're making it up." She backed into the wall, trying to get away. "Why would you do that to me? I told you I was sorry."

"This has nothing to do with you." Julia took Shelly's arm. "It's an ugly coincidence.

That's all."

Shelly twisted out of her grasp. "You don't know that," she shouted. "You can't."

"What's going on?" Barbara asked. "What did I do?"

"Nothing," Julia told her, focusing on Shelly.

Shelly let out a wail. She turned to Barbara, a beseeching look in her eyes. "This morning I told Mom...I told her...I wished they'd shot Daddy a long time ago." She brought her hands up in a helpless gesture. "It's my fault."

"Stop it, Shelly," Julia said. "Think about what you're saying. You know that can't possibly be true."

Barbara took her in her arms, casting a helpless look in Julia's direction. "Oh, honey, don't do this to yourself. You only said what all of us have thought at one time or another."

Julia recoiled. In that moment she hated her sister. The idea that Evan's death would bring relief to anyone was almost more than she could bear. She had never, not in her most desperately lonely moments, wished herself free of the effort to bring him home.

She'd been willing to spend the rest of her life waiting. She was still willing.

The phone rang. Barbara glanced toward the kitchen.

"I'll get it," Julia said. She was afraid to say anything to Barbara and wasn't ready to say the words Shelly needed to hear. Until she could, it was better to leave them to each other's care.

The man on the phone was a florist asking where to deliver flowers. She gave him her address and then regretted it. She couldn't face the cloying smell of funeral arrangements or the accompanying trappings of death. It was too soon. She had to have more time.

The doorbell rang. She moved to answer it, when the phone rang again. Momentarily ignoring it, she stepped to the window. Harold and Mary were at the front door, his eyes red and swollen, his shoulders stooped, Mary clutching a casserole dish as if it were a lifeline. A movement at the end of the driveway caught her eye. Oblivious to the extra cars parked out front, Jason and Tom joked and jabbed and moseyed along the walkway up to the house, disregarding the rain.

Julia felt as though she was being parceled out piece by piece to the people who counted on her. She had to find a way to save a part of herself for Evan. What did it matter that she would have nothing left? She had the rest of her life to become whole again.

The plane rattled and creaked and roared as it raced down the runway before lifting with a stomach-lurching leap. After three days in Bogota, Julia was finally headed for home again. Acknowledging she would never return to Colombia, she'd arranged time to see and thank the friends she'd made over the years, the officials who had stuck with her long after everyone else had given up and Matt Coatney, who was there on another hostage negotiation and had unexpectedly knocked on her hotel door late one night. The hardened negotiator sat with his back bowed, his hands on his knees, and fought to keep from breaking down as he talked about the hope he'd had that despite the years that had gone by without hearing from the kidnappers, Evan would one day walk out of the jungle and go home to Julia.

When asked if she felt it would help her to talk to the man who had led police to the grave site, she'd declined at first and then changed her mind. She'd imagined a seasoned man, hard and uncompromising. He was young and terrified. He hadn't witnessed Evan being shot, but he'd dug the grave and heard the story of the attempted escape. At the time he'd been in his early teens, only a year older than Jason was now.