After the family breakfast, Jenna wanted to join Lexi’s hike with the others. She wanted to be excited for Papa’s travel plans. But wanting did not supply the necessary energy. She went to one of the Hideaway’s guest bedrooms and crawled between cool, crisp sheets.
They were blue floral.
They reminded her of the small room at the hospital.
She kneaded the pillow beneath her head and looked up at oak beams across the ultrawhite plaster.
They reminded her of Amber looking up at ugly, gray ceiling tiles. Not that she could see them. As of a few hours ago, her friend still lay in a coma at the hospital.
Jenna rolled onto her side. Outdoors the sun shone, making for a miserably hot September day. The old hacienda room was comfortable, though. Its thick adobe walls and shuttered windows locked in the previous night’s cool. Mingled scents of wood furniture and lavender sachets added another layer of serenity.
Nothing like the antiseptic odors at the hospital.
The guest room was at the farthest end of the courtyard, away from the family commotion taking place in the kitchen. She would sleep.
Just as soon as she forgot about the hospital with its gruesome odors and the blue floral print wallpaper . . .
Had she really kissed him?
Jenna shut her eyes, but the mental video recorded last night rolled on . . .
After talking with Joey in the middle of the night, Jenna laid her head on Cade’s shoulder. She did not cry more. Her tears had been all used up, shed while on the phone first with Kevin, then with Joey. Nor did she sleep. Her earlier nap on the couch in the waiting room had taken the edge off her exhaustion.
What she did was move into a new space. All defenses and pretenses fell away, leaving her more real than she’d ever been in her life. As she had told Kevin, it was time to admit and to accept their current situation.
Like writing a grocery list, she listed the elements with a cold practicality.
One, Kevin was overseas, fighting in a war.
Two, she was on her own, teaching, and befriending Amber. At long last she was embracing her role as a Marine’s wife, which meant, basically, that she lived day in and day out inside an emotional combat zone.
Three, people offered their appreciation, privately and publicly, for her and Kevin’s sacrifice. They honored them.
And they exploded bombs near them. Both of them. At home and over there.
Four, damage was done. Physical, mental, emotional. Untold. Irreparable. Collateral.
Five, steps were taken to ease the pain. Stitches were made, comas induced, phone calls exchanged, rules broken, prayers offered, courage summoned, comfort sought.
The list was finished, its elements admitted and accepted. She understood that she was a casualty of the emotional combat zone in which she lived.
Coherent thought fled, taking with it the ability to step back and coldly assess the damage. Pain crashed through her, physical, mental, emotional.
She could take meds for her arm and for her head. For that deeper, unfathomable hurt she could only turn intuitively to the comfort close at hand.
She tilted her face up toward Cade, her mouth centimeters from his.
“Jenna.” The dim lamplight cast shadows over his eyes, but his tone was clear. It cautioned.
But she didn’t move.
He waited.
She waited.
He lowered his face. His lips grazed hers.
Her hurt began to ebb away.
And then she kissed him back . . .
The mental video ended.
In the safe harbor of her parents’ home, Jenna rolled to her other side, angling her left arm so that it would not be squished underneath her.
Yes, Cade had kissed her and she had kissed him back. For long, sweet moments, the intimate contact eased her deep ache.
Now, in the light of day, she saw it as the result of a glitch in the system. When a happily married couple was torn apart and thrown into the chaos of war, one or both could quite easily turn for desperately needed comfort to another.
Like Uncle BJ did in Vietnam. Away from his beloved Beth Russell, he turned to a woman who comforted him, the one who would in time give birth to Tuyen.
Jenna thought her heart stopped right then and there.
That which she so feared had become her reality.
Of course Kevin could—if put into Uncle BJ’s position—respond the same way. Of course he could. Danny kept saying it would never happen. But it could.
And of course she herself, surviving a bombing and watching over a comatose friend, could respond in the same way. Had responded in the same way.
Similar way, she corrected herself. Similar. Not the same. A few kisses of comfort from Cade Edmunds did not signify a thing. The physicality was morally wrong, yes, but also the result of a glitch in an unfair system.
It was, even, part of the whole abominable scene. She shuddered at the memory of the funeral, the explosion, Amber falling against her, both of them bleeding, the ambulance ride. The needles, the pills. Amber’s head swathed in white. Listening to men cry on the phone. Cade being there at that precise moment.
Yes, Cade’s comfort was for the time of utmost anguish, a time that was past. She’d reached the other side of the glitch.
Jenna succumbed at last to sleep.