Familiar Stranger. Sharon Sala
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pardon me if I have doubts about that,” she said. “I seem to remember telling you the same thing about forty years ago and look what happened.”
She walked away, leaving him with nothing but a cold, hard truth. He had walked out on her—twice. Once when she wouldn’t run away with him and then again when he left for Vietnam. He headed for the bathroom, feeling a lot less optimism than he had when he walked in the door with her earlier.
Cara barely made it to her bedroom before she started to cry—huge, gulping sobs that shattered her all the way to her soul.
Tearing off her clothes as she went, she staggered into the shower and then turned the water on full force, standing beneath the stinging spray until her mind was numb and her skin was burning.
One minute led to another and then another until she lost all track of time. The adrenaline rush of making love to a man she’d long thought dead was fading, leaving her shaken and weak. If it hadn’t been for the slight discomfort between her legs, she could have made herself believe it was nothing more than a dream.
She flinched as the water began to run cold and reached down and turned off the faucets. She pushed back the curtains only to find David sitting on a small stool by the door.
He handed her a towel.
“I got worried.”
She clutched it in front of her nudity like a shield, and as she did, realized any show of modesty was like closing the barn door after the horse had escaped.
“If you’ll give me a few moments…”
He stood up and quietly closed the door, leaving her alone to finish drying.
Cara’s hands began to shake as she swiped erratically at the moisture clinging to her body. It wasn’t until she was completely dry that she realized her clothes were in the other room, with him. She grabbed her bathrobe from a hook on the back of the door and quickly put it on, wrapping and tying it firmly before making another appearance. To her relief, he was nowhere in sight.
As she began to dress, she glanced at the clock. It was almost three. It had been just after one when she’d come around the corner of the house. No wonder he’d come looking for her. He probably thought she’d gone to her room and slit her wrists.
She snorted lightly as the thought came and went. If ever there had been a day when that thought had crossed her mind, it was long since over. She’d survived a lot more than this with a hell of a lot less reason. Except for their child. After she’d known about Bethany, everything had changed. David Wilson might have walked out on her, but he’d left a piece of himself behind that he’d never get back. With that thought in mind, she gave herself the once-over in the mirror, nodding in satisfaction at the simplistic style of her clothes. No need dressing like this was any kind of a celebration, because it felt more like a wake. But as she started down the stairs to face the ghost from her past, she had to accept the fact that she didn’t want to bury him again.
David was lost in thought, staring at the array of family pictures displayed on the mantel and trying not to resent the picture of the short, stocky man with his arms around Cara. Ray Justice. They had been laughing when the picture was taken. He took a deep breath, making himself accept the reality of her life. She’d done just fine without him. Maybe being here was another selfish act on his part and he should never have come back. Before his thoughts could go further, he heard her footsteps in the hall and turned to face his accuser.
She saw him by the mantel. Her gaze slid from his face to the pictures behind him, and she realized what he’d been doing.
“She’s beautiful,” David said.
Cara’s lips trembled, but she nodded. “She has your coloring. All that pretty dark hair and your eyes.”
“But she has your smile.”
Cara caught back a sob, determined not to fall apart again.
“Oh, David…where have you been? We were told you were dead, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
Cara tried not to stare as she sat down on the sofa, but it was difficult not to do so. Her memories encompassed a young, gangly sixteen-year-old boy, not this powerful, secretive man.
“Won’t you please sit?” she said, as she seated herself on the sofa.
“I think better standing.”
She sighed and then smoothed her hands down the legs of her navy slacks.
“I couldn’t form a rational thought right now if my life depended on it,” she said.
David shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks.
“I know this is going to be difficult for you to understand, but you’ve got to believe me when I tell you that what I did, I did for you, not to you.”
Cara’s eyes teared again, but she remained firmly in her seat.
“Letting me think you were dead was doing me a favor?” Her voice started to shake. “Even if I didn’t matter to you anymore, how could you father a child and then ignore her existence?”
“No…no…not that. Never that.”
“Then explain,” Cara begged. “Make me understand.”
He took his hands out of his pockets as he began to pace, and Cara couldn’t help but stare at the animal grace of his movements. And then he started to talk and she became lost in the sound of his voice.
“It began with the letters.”
“What letters?”
“The letters I wrote to you.”
“I didn’t receive any letters.”
“Yes, I know…at least, I knew after a while, but before I found out, I kept wondering why you didn’t answer mine. There were dozens and dozens. I wrote almost every day for about three months and then as often as I could after that.”
She stiffened. “I don’t believe you.”
He strode to a chair and picked up a packet he’d gotten from his car while she had been dressing.
“See for yourself. I carried the damn things all over Nam after they came back. Half a dozen times I thought about chucking them, but I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of them. Even though you hadn’t opened them, they were the last link I had to you.”
Cara’s brows knitted as she dumped the contents of the packet into her lap.
“That’s not all of them,” David said. “But enough for you to know I’m telling the truth.”
As she turned them over, she started to shake. The evidence was there before her eyes. Water-stained papers. Ancient postmarks. All addressed to Cara Weber and all unopened. But it was the two newspaper clippings, yellowed with age, that startled her. One was of her wedding, the other an announcement of her baby’s birth.
“Where did you get these?”
“Your parents sent them to me, along with all of the letters I’d written you.”
She gasped.
“The message was plain,” David said. “I had no place in your life anymore. You had a husband and a child.” He tried to smile, but the pain of saying what he’d lived with all these years made it impossible. “Only I knew the child was mine. I knew you would never have cheated on me before, and the baby came too soon after your wedding.”
“But David…why let everyone think you were dead? I would never have refused you the right to know and love your own child.”
“I know, but you have to understand. It was hell over there and Frank died about a month after I got the package. After that, I guess I pretty much went out of my head. I tried so many damn ways to get myself killed, but it didn’t work. I volunteered for mission