It Had To Be You (23 page)

She handed the mic to Felicia, a delight to
look at in gold sequins. The woman bent down and sang—to her hubby,
Lela guessed, “I’ll cut you down with my charm.”

Hoots and hollers.

“
I’ll beat you up the ladder and over
the roof.” Oh, Lord. That was Rachel Wellington, strutting around
with a huge belly, also encased in silk.

“
Hey, those aren’t the real words.”
This from Gabe Malvaso, who was cheering the loudest.

The women sashayed, flirted, and snubbed the
men. When they were finished, raucous cheers filled the room.

“
Hi.” A pretty woman in a sage-green
dress came up to her. “That was cool, wasn’t it?”

“
Yes. The place looks great, too.” Lela
motioned to the array of white tables, with red napkins and
blood-red roses, set up for diners.

“
I’m Emma O’Malley.”

“
Oh, Brody’s wife?”

“
Yes, have you met him?”

“
He’s around the hospital sometimes.
I’m Lela Allen, a nurse there.”

“
Oh, you’re the war medic. Brody sings
your praises.” Emma took a sip of her drink. “It was very brave of
you to go to the Middle East. He said you joined right after
9/11.”

Nodding an acknowledgement of the compliment,
Lela asked, “What do you do?”

“
I’m a fourth-grade
teacher.”

“
That takes its own kind of
courage.”

Emma laughed. It made her pretty face
startlingly beautiful.

Lela gestured to the now-empty stage. “Who
were the other two women up there? I’ve met Rachel, Sydney and
Felicia.”

“
Casey Malvaso and Megan Hale
Malvaso.”

Something triggered. “Hale, as in Hale’s
Haven. The camp for kids.”

“
Yeah.” She winked at Lela. “They
always need medical personnel.”

“
I heard. I’m thinking about
volunteering.” For one of the overnight camps.
Don’t go to
Junior Hale’s Haven.

Dinner was called after fifteen minutes. It
was then Lela noted there were place settings.
Please don’t let
Sophia have put me near him.

She hadn’t. Finding her tag, Lela sat down
and was introduced to the fire chief and his wife, Noah and Eve
Callahan, Mitch and Megan Malvaso, and Eve’s brother, Ian Woodward.
His wife, Lisel Loring, was stunning. And famous.

“
I’ve seen you on stage, Lisel,” Lela
said to the woman. First, they’d gotten the wheelchair for Ian in
place, and then Lisel took a chair next to her.

“
Which show?”

“
A special revival of
Longshot
.”

Ian grinned broadly. “Yeah, isn’t she
spectacular?”

“
Was.” Lisel touched her stomach.
“After the baby, I’ve definitely retired from the dance
world.”

Ian’s blue eyes burned with love.

They talked about babies and Broadway, then
dinner was served. Lela managed several bites of the lobster, steak
and accompaniments as small talk went on at the table. Then the
time came for toasts.

Standing, Noah held up his glass while
several others clinked theirs with spoons for quiet. “I’m not going
to talk about what a good firefighter Tony is. We see that every
day. Instead, I’ll tell you what a good role model he is for
husbands. His and Sophia’s relationship is a strong statement to us
all about the enduring nature of love if two people are willing to
sacrifice anything for each other.” He smiled down at his wife. “I
try to emulate him.”

An older Hispanic woman rose from the head
table—Sophia’s mother, with the same statuesque build and thick,
black hair. Lela had met her at the hospital. “My girl and my boy
have gone through so many hardships since they were fifteen. But no
matter what problems they had, they stayed together to fix them.
Felicidades a mis hijos maravillosos
.”

By the end of the toasts, Lela’s stomach had
cramped painfully. She pushed back her chair. “Excuse me, I need to
use the ladies’ room.”

“
You all right?” Megan asked from the
other side of her. “You look a bit pale.”

Lela had to get away. “I’m fine. Be right
back.”

Instead of heading to the ladies room, she
detoured to a side exit. She needed some air, some relief from the
smothering knowledge that other people could make their
relationships work, but not her and Beck.

o0o

His hand hurt like a bitch, the ache from the
bump on his head had worsened, and his butt was sore, so Beck
thought it totally fucking
unfair
that he had to sit through
accolades about how two people can overcome anything if they love
each other enough. So when he caught sight of a streak of peach
scurrying across the floor behind the group of diners, he got up
and followed it.

He found Lela outside, leaning against the
brick wall of the side entrance. The night air was warm and sultry,
and moonbeams kissed her hair. At first, he didn’t say anything,
just absorbed the way the outfit clung in all the places he’d
kissed three weeks ago. Finally she sensed his presence and glanced
over. “Hi.”

He watched her. “I couldn’t take it,
either.”

“
The solemn swearing that you can beat
any odds?”

“
Yeah, must be they never heard of the
effects of PTSD on kids.”

She shook her head, sending her fall of hair
swirling around her shoulders. His hands itched to touch it.

Instead, he searched her face in the dim
light coming from inside. “You okay?”

“
As well as can be
expected.”

He nodded.

“
I’ve never seen you in a
suit.”

Jesus. It didn’t help that she devoured him
with her gaze. Eye-banging, the guys in theater crudely called
it.

“
How are you?”

“
The same.”

She frowned at his hand. “What happened?”

He filled her in on his bad luck today.

“
Sorry.”

“
Something good came out of it. Tommy’s
talking to me again. He seems to have gotten over…you
know.”

Without thinking, she reached out and
squeezed his arm. “Oh, Beck, I’m so glad.”

He stared down at her touch. His throat
clogged at the intimacy of the one simple gesture. Best to break
the mood. He stepped back. “Tommy also told me something about Josh
you should know.”

“
What?”

He explained about the way Len reacted to
Josh when he had an attack. Beck knew a lot of men with PTSD who
took out their frustrations on the families, but the notion made
him sick.

“
I’ll try to talk to him about that. He
never said anything to me about Len’s reactions.”

“
He, um, also asked why I never took
them anywhere now.”

“
I guess this was
inevitable.”

“
Lee, do you think you could trust me
to take them for just a couple of hours to the batting cages at
Play Station? We won’t go often, but I’d like to try it for Tommy’s
sake. If this doesn’t happen, our relationship might get stalemated
again.”

“
Oh, Beck, there’s more to it than
that.”

He cocked his head.

“
Do we really want to encourage them to
spend so much time together? School’s out next week and they’re
going to want to see each other a lot.”

“
I’m not sure we have a
choice.”

She leaned against the wall again. “Maybe
not. I’ll think about it and let you know what I decide.”

“
Good enough.” He angled his head
toward the room inside. “So, you think they’re all done with the
mushiness?”

“
I hope so.”

“
Ready to go back in?”

“
Sure.”

He stopped at the entrance, turned to her and
brushed his knuckles down her cheek. “I miss you.”

She leaned into his caress. “Me, too.”

Feeling a little better, Beck let her go
first into the room. But the tableau that greeted them made them
both stop dead in their tracks.

Tony was on stage with the microphone,
staring down at stunning-in-a-red-dress Sophia, who was seated and
looking up at him. In a deep baritone, Ramirez sang the first bars
of Elvis Presley’s famous love song, “I Can’t Help Falling in Love
with You.” When Tony got to the part about the inexorable nature of
love finding a way, Beck sensed Lela move. When he looked over, she
turned away and headed back outside.

This time, he didn’t go after her.

With her arm around Josh, who clung to her
side like a toddler, Lela stared at the coffin in front of the
Allens’ church and choked back her own grief. She’d had to be
strong for a long time now, but no more so than when she’d gotten
the crippling news.

A few days ago her husband, her
ex-husband,
had been found dead outside the Warrior House
four weeks after he’d entered treatment. Not from booze, which she
knew all along might kill him, but from an overdose of cocaine that
he’d taken right there in his room at rehab. How on earth could he
have gotten the drugs? How had he avoided detection with the
regular drug testing?

The coroner’s findings were
inconclusive.
No one could say if the father of her child
had accidentally ingested too much of the drug or if he’d killed
himself. Did it even matter? The results were the same. Len was
dead. Josh was devastated, and Lela was simply hanging on.

A terrible dirge from the organ played as
people filtered into the church, mostly Joe and Marsha Allen’s
friends but also a few guys she recognized as Len’s boyhood
buddies. Some people from the rehab center had been bussed over.
One guy, a crusty vet who looked like the stereotyped Vietnam
veteran, seemed to be pretty broken up.

“
Lela?” She glanced up to see Christian
Singer standing in the empty pew in front of her. He looked big and
strong and unbreakable.

“
Hi.”

“
I don’t mean to intrude.”

He wasn’t. After the searing loss she’d felt
at seeing Beck at the anniversary party, after Lela had realized
that her life was in a shambles over him and she needed to move on,
she’d accepted a date with Christian, then another and another.
She’d been with him when she’d gotten the news. He’d been a godsend
this last week, giving her advice, consoling her.

“
I have a seat in the back with some
other hospital personnel. We just want you to know we’re here to
share your grief.”

“
Thank you so much. I appreciate your
coming. Tell them for me.”

He glanced at Josh. Interestingly, Christian
and her son had become friends. The two of them had taken their
kids places three times, and the young ones had fun together.

“
You doing okay, buddy?” Christian
asked Josh.

Nodding, the boy burrowed deeper into his
mother’s side. He’d said practically nothing to anyone since Len
had died.

With one squeeze of her arm, Christian
whispered, “I’m here if you need me,” and sidled down the pew to
the aisle on the left.

Leaving her alone with her grief. And the
obscene knowledge that she’d done little to preclude Len’s death.
Guilt, big and ugly, swamped her, making black spots swim before
her eyes. She thought he’d been getting better at Warrior House but
didn’t know for sure because she’d never visited him there.
Instead, she’d divorced him, controlled his visits to his son and
cut him out of her life.

A priest appeared in the pulpit up front,
dressed in a white robe and a black stole, the Catholic garments
for a funeral mass; candles and incense surrounded the church.
“Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming. I’m sure your
presence provides great solace to Len’s family.”

Absolute quiet among the gatherers.

The man continued, “I know it’s difficult to
understand, let alone accept, what’s happened to our friend and
loyal soldier. Len Allen was a good man with unfortunate issues
when he came back from war. You might be thinking, “Where does God
fit in with this?”

As the priest began to talk about death and
the existence of God, about war and trauma and a Supreme Being’s
role in such awful things, Lela only half listened. Her gaze
strayed to the other side of the church, where Joe and Marsha Allen
huddled together. Since their son’s death, they’d become
diminished
somehow. They seemed smaller in their grief,
beaten down. They’d done so much for Len and it hadn’t been enough.
The notion pierced her like a scalpel to the skin. When Lela had
gone to see them, after the rehab center called them, they’d been
cold to her…

Marsha had snapped, “You did this to my
boy!”

Joe had shaken his head. “No, Martha, she
didn’t. Our boy was sick. The war did this to him.” He’d raised the
bleakest eyes to Lela. “But you understand why we don’t want you
here.” It had been a statement, not a question.

“
Of course I do. I’ll leave you
alone.”

When she’d gotten outside, Joe caught up with
her. “We can still see Josh, can’t we Lela? He’s all we have…left.”
The last word came out on a sob.

“
Of course, whenever you’re both
ready,” was all she managed to say before she stumbled to her car.
Once in the front seat, she laid her forehead down on the steering
wheel and sobbed.

After the priest finished his eulogy, there
were no requests for friends and family to speak. Len had alienated
most of his acquaintances and the circumstances of his death hung
like a pall over the attendees.