Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover. Merline Lovelace
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a warm relaxation spread throughout the rest of her.
He didn’t say anything. It seemed as if holding her was enough for him, too.
“What about pain?” she asked. “I’ve seen how you move sometimes. You hurt, don’t you?”
He sighed. “Most of the time,” he admitted. “They say it’ll get better eventually.”
“How do you stand it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Did they give you anything for it?”
“Of course. I can have all the painkillers I want. Thing is, I don’t want them.”
“Why not?”
“Because I like a clear head, and because I don’t want to become an addict.”
“But if it gets really bad...”
“If it gets bad enough that I can’t move, I might consider them. But only then. Discomfort is a state of mind to a large extent.”
“Pain is a little more than discomfort.”
“Same thing, different degree. A lot depends on how you look at it. It’s not a fatal disease, it’s an injury. Lots of people live with that.”
“You’re right.” She sighed again and unconsciously snuggled closer. “Was it hard being raised by a single parent?”
“I suppose there were disadvantages, but none I really noticed. My mother made sure I knew her people.”
“Her people?”
“Her family. Her father’s side was Cherokee, which is how my uncle came to train me. Her mother’s side was...” All of sudden he gave a deep chuckle. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“What?”
“Philadelphia mainline.”
“What?” She nearly giggled. “Mayflower?”
“They didn’t get here quite that early. But you can imagine. They weren’t rich. That pretty much went away in the Great Depression, but they were still part of that crowd. And they didn’t quite know what to make of me.”
“Perplexing indeed.”
He chuckled again. “Quite a combination. So I got exposed to two very different worlds, but mostly to her father’s side. They didn’t seem to care that I was half-blood.”
“But the Philadelphia crowd did?”
“I don’t know exactly what it was. I mean, you can see how Cherokee I look. So it wasn’t as if they could ignore it. But they loved my mother, and I came with her, so they tried. Maybe they were just embarrassed that she had never married. It might have been more that than me. But my uncle...he took me to his heart. So in that sense I didn’t miss out on much.”
“What made you decide to go into the service?”
“That’s simple. I was brought up to be patriotic, to feel that service is essential. Many Native Americans enlist for that reason. My uncle nurtured that in me, along with my more mystical side, and I guess I felt a natural urge to follow in my father’s footsteps, even if I didn’t know him.”
“I can understand that.” She hesitated. “Do you ever wonder if your mother’s background and family were part of the reason she never told Micah about you?”
“Yeah, it’s crossed my mind. They were a somewhat hidebound bunch. Maybe that entered into her decision. I don’t know. But she never hesitated to take me with her when she went to visit, so I doubt she ever hid her relationship with Micah.”
“Interesting.”
He gave her a little squeeze. “Some questions never get answered, not in any fully meaningful way. We keep hunting for those answers, but they stay just out of reach. Thing is, I think hunting for the answers is generally more important than finding them.”
“So is knowing when to stop looking,” she said, thinking of Leo. “Some questions are only going to drive you crazy. Like why Leo beat me. He made me feel responsible for it. Maybe I was, in some way. But why he did it... I don’t think I’ll ever understand, even though I’ve heard all the psychobabble about it.”
“Maybe he was just plain mean.”
“There’s that possibility, too. But you still want to ask why.”
“Not necessarily. Some folks are just born with something missing.”
“Also true. God knows, I saw enough of it on the streets in Denver. But the thing is, in a particular case, you never know.”
“Rarely,” he agreed. “But there’s another thing my uncle taught me.”
“What’s that?”
“That no matter what we are when we’re born, whether we’re missing a leg or missing something else, as long as we have a working brain, we make choices. Those choices define us.”
Another crack of thunder rent the afternoon, loud, as if it was right overhead. Moments later a voice called from the doorway, “Mommy, I’m scared.”
Before Connie could even sit up, Sophie had catapulted herself into the bed beside her. Connie at once turned her back to Ethan and hugged her daughter. “It’s loud, all right.”
“It’s a bad storm.” Sophie snuggled in, seeming not at all fazed that Ethan was there. Seconds ticked by like heartbeats, and thunder cracked again, this time almost at exactly the same moment that lightning bleached the room.
Not long after that, Ethan wrapped his arms around both of them and pulled them close.
Throughout the storm, he sheltered them.
The storm continued to rage throughout the afternoon. Around three, Connie, Ethan and Sophie went downstairs to start dinner.
“I think we should have something special tonight,” Connie said.
“Yay!” Sophie clapped her hands.
“It has to be something I already have,” Connie cautioned her. “I’m not going out in this storm.”
Sophie immediately ran to check the refrigerator. Apparently she had something in mind, because in no time at all she’d pulled out a quart of her mother’s frozen spaghetti sauce, grated parmesan and a large container of ricotta cheese, then ran to get a box of lasagna noodles from the cupboard.
“Well, that’s pretty clear,” Connie said, watching with a smile. “Make sure I have mozzarella.”
A ball of same emerged from the cheese drawer in the fridge and joined the other ingredients on the table.
“We seem to have everything essential,” Connie said.
Sophie clapped her hands again.
Connie looked at Ethan. “I hope you like lasagna.”
“I love it.”
Connie nodded and looked at Sophie. “So what do we do first?”
“Thaw the sauce.”
“Right. You know how.”
Sophie retrieved a saucepan from a lower cupboard, filled it half full with water and put in on the stove over a low flame. Then she placed the container of spaghetti sauce in it to thaw.
“Good job,” Connie said. “Let’s mix the filling, then put it in the fridge until we’re ready to use it.”
Ethan volunteered to grate the parmesan and mozarella, saving Connie’s and Sophie’s knuckles. Connie and Sophie mixed the ricotta with seasonings