But at least she was making an effort, and when she looked over the past day, she felt glad those kids had made that stupid call. Yes, it had thrown her into a tizzy, and yes, it had upset Marsha just as much, but in the course of reacting to it, she had helped Marsha a little bit. Now she could at least help Wade learn to cook.
Little things, but more purposeful than almost anything since that awful night. Time to cherish her tiny victories.
“When do you usually like to eat dinner?” she asked as they worked together to put things away. She stopped a moment to look at her refrigerator. It hadn’t been that full while she lived here, ever. And now it held an embarrassment of riches.
He paused, a box of cornstarch in hand, and looked at her. “Ma’am, you’re talking to a SEAL. I learned to eat when the food was there.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip. “A SEAL? Really?”
“Really.”
That would explain at least some of it, she thought, how he could look so hard and dangerous at times. It might even explain his lack of expression and his disinclination to talk. Hesitantly she said, “I can’t imagine what it must have been like.”
“No.”
And that closed the subject. Well, it would if she let it. How much did she want to risk now that they’d found some common ground? But the silence seemed heavy in some way, no longer comfortable. With one word he’d fixed an image of himself in her mind and she didn’t know how to absorb it. Nor did she know why she wanted to cross the barrier he had set so firmly in place with that one word.
Recklessly, she didn’t take the warning. “I’ve seen programs about SEALs,” she offered.
“A lot of people have.” He started folding her cotton grocery bags neatly.
“The training looks terribly hard.”
“It is.”
Volumes of information. She almost sighed. “I saw another program about an operation where the SEALs had to board a ship at sea to remove a container of plutonium that could have been used to make a bomb.”
“Yes.”
“It’s amazing what you guys can do.”
“Most people have no idea what we do.” With that he put the folded bags in a neat stack on her counter and walked from the kitchen.
She listened to him climb the stairs, listened to the creak as he went into his room.
And with him departed the little bit of positive purpose she’d found just today.
Cory felt bad. For the first time in forever, she had felt positive, felt ready to reach out, however tentatively. And she’d blown it.
She had pressed Wade, even when her instincts had warned her that might be a mistake. Apparently her skills had atrophied over the past year. There’d been a time when she would have handled that approach a whole lot better.
Or would she? How could she even know anymore? For so long she’d been curled inward in a tight ball around her own fear and pain. Maybe she would have flubbed the conversational attempt even back then. Wade, after all, was a grown man, not one of her kids. His barriers had to be even higher, even more deeply ingrained.
Regardless, she wished she’d just kept her mouth shut, because it had been surprisingly nice to do ordinary, routine tasks with someone else, even a someone she didn’t know, and could barely talk with. Just the rhythm of it had probably been one of the most soothing experiences she could remember in a while.
Worse, she was brooding about what surely had to be the most minor of trespasses. It wasn’t as if she’d demanded personal war stories or anything. Far from it.
Let it go, she told herself. Good advice except that perhaps the worst change in her over the past year was the way she could seldom just dismiss things. Like that phone call last night.
In her previous life, she wouldn’t have given it a second thought. Once upon a time, even if it had disturbed her, she’d have been able to shake it off in relatively short order.
Events had changed her. Worry had burrowed mole holes in her mind, ever ready to grant easy access to the next concern that showed up. The stupidest things could run in circles for hours or days, and she could no longer shake them.
But today, thanks to Marsha and then Wade, she’d managed to put that call out of her mind. To put it in its proper place.
But it was still there, ready to pounce the instant she allowed it to. If she sat here too much longer brooding, the fear would steal back in and soon she’d be like a dog gnawing at a bone, unable to let it go.
Finally she stood up, deciding the best thing in the world would be to take a walk. She’d spent too many hours hiding in this house over the past year, and that had turned her into an even worse mess.
She wondered if she had failed to heal because fear had taken over to a paralyzing degree. Which was more ridiculous when she considered the entire weight of the federal government had thrown itself behind making her disappear.
Yes, she was still grieving, but somehow grief and fear had become so intertwined she no longer knew which was which. The one was a healthy thing, the other not.
Today she seemed to have taken two successful baby steps in the right direction. It was time, she decided, to step back out into the sunlight, to start living again the way most other people lived: without the constant expectation of the terrible happening.
Nobody got a guarantee, after all.
Grabbing her keys, leaving her purse behind, she slipped into her jogging shoes then turned off the alarm. She had to turn it off, because once it was set and had been on more than forty seconds, opening and closing the door without triggering the alarm sequence became impossible. Failure to turn off the alarm within forty seconds meant that the police would be called.
So she punched in the code to turn it off, listening to the near-squeal it made. As soon as it was disarmed, she could reset it and safely leave.
But she didn’t get to the rearming part.
“Where are you going?”
She turned and saw Wade at the top of the stairs. A spark of annoyance flared, a welcome change from the steady diet of fear she’d been living with. “Out. What business is it of yours?”
“None.” His shirt was unbuttoned again, but he still wore his jeans and deck shoes. This time she noticed more than the broad expanse of his chest. She noted his flat belly, the fact that he had the coveted “six-pack” of abdominal ripples, though not overdeveloped. She had to drag her gaze away, back to his face. He started down the stairs. “I’ll go with you.”
Her jaw dropped a little, and her annoyance grew. “Why? I’m just going to walk around the block.”
“I’d like a walk.”
But he didn’t have to take it with her. She almost said so, quite sharply, and then realized something. Her fear hadn’t just dissipated on its own today. No, he had driven it back.
Now what? Would she insist she go on the walk alone? When she might well get scared again halfway around the block? Was she going to take the offered crutch?
She ought to say no, for her own good. It was high time she started conquering her fears. But then remembering how she had felt when she’d made him leave the room earlier, she decided she didn’t want to needlessly offend him again.
It was as good an excuse as any, she supposed, because now that she actually thought about it, she wasn’t sure she yet had the courage to take that walk alone. Especially