“David.” Heather hoped her voice didn’t waver. Her mouth had suddenly gone as dry as the Texas plain in the middle of summer. It was all coming together. She could now make an educated guess as to who David was, and she wished she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear Shawn’s next words.
His face said it all.
“How do you know about David?”
“I don’t, really. I heard you talking about him when you were speaking with your father, but I had no idea he was your brother until now. What happened?”
She clung to his hand. Whatever he was about to say, she wanted him to know that she still believed in him. Cared for him, more than she wanted to admit, and definitely more than she should.
“I was eight years old, just a little bit younger than Jacob, and David was six,” he began, his lips quirking with anguish at the memory. “We were on vacation. At the beach off the coast of California. It’s the only time I’ve ever been to the ocean. Before or since.”
His eyes took on a faraway look, and she knew he was seeing the moment as if it were happening again. She wanted to put her arms around him but feared that might be too much for him. She knew how it felt to need to get something out without drowning in emotion. So she did the best thing she knew how to do. She listened.
“We were playing in the waves. My brother, he had this Irish complexion. As ginger as they came. You know—bright red hair, fair skin, freckles. The sun was roasting him as red as a cherry. Mom forgot to bring the sunblock out to the sand, so she sent us back to the car to get the bottle.”
He groaned and shook his head, his fingers biting into her palm.
“I was only distracted for a second. There was this sand crab on its back. I was watching it struggle to turn over.”
“Sounds like something any eight-year-old boy would be doing.” She tried not to tense, knowing he would feel her stiffen, but her pulse was beating rapidly as her mind filled in the blanks. Even without all the details, she knew what was coming. Her stomach lurched.
“I unlocked the car door and David crawled into the backseat, digging for the lotion in one of Mom’s canvas swim bags. I threw the keys on the front seat, Heather. I don’t know why I did that. How stupid could I be?”
His voice broke and his gaze broke away from hers. His struggle was evident in his rigid jaw and the tense lines of his neck.
She wanted to tell him it was all right, but of course it wasn’t, and would never be. She was afraid if she spoke she’d only make things worse for him. So she waited, silent, for him to finish his tragic story.
“He was goofing around, pretending to drive. Pushing all of the buttons and pulling at the wheel. I yelled at him to knock it off but he wouldn’t listen to me. I kept thinking of how Mom was going to be mad at me for letting David push the buttons, like maybe when she started the car and the windshield wipers would go on or something.”
“It wasn’t the wipers you had to worry about,” she guessed.
“No,” he growled, agonized and angry. “It wasn’t the wipers. Or the air conditioner. Or anything else on the dashboard. He hit the door lock.”
“Goodness,” Heather said in a breathy voice, hardly able to absorb the incredibly tragic story. And to think Shawn had carried it around on his shoulders all these years. Her heart ached for him.
“It was so hot that day. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t realize how quickly hyperthermia could set in.”
“Of course you didn’t. You were only eight.”
“He begged me to help him.” Shawn’s face turned as white as his shirt. “He screamed for me. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to talk him through it, to get him to unlock the door, but he didn’t understand what I was trying to tell him. All of those buttons. I couldn’t get him to push the one that unlocked the car.”
Heather was so deep in her own imagination, picturing the event, that she nearly started out of her skin when Noelle let out a wail. Shawn immediately disengaged from Heather, jamming his fingers through his hair, clearly as dazed as she was. But she intensely missed his touch when he walked away from her.
Glad to have something constructive to do, she scooped Noelle into her arms, shushing her mildly and rocking her back and forth. She wished it was as easy to comfort Shawn in his grief.
“David was rapidly overheating,” Shawn continued. “I didn’t know all the ins and outs of what was happening to him, but I could see the changes in his face. I can still see him staring at me, terrified, his palms pressed against the glass. I was his big brother. He depended on me to save him, and I couldn’t. Lord forgive me, but I couldn’t.”
“It’s not your fault, Shawn. It was a terrible accident, to be sure, but you weren’t the cause of it.”
“No, maybe not directly, but I could have stopped it from happening. I should have been more careful. I should have held on to the keys and put them in my pocket instead of throwing them on the seat of the car. I shouldn’t have gotten distracted with that stupid crab. I should have recognized how serious the circumstances were as soon as I realized he’d locked himself in the car. Maybe if I’d run for my mother straightaway things might have turned out differently. By the time I comprehended that I needed adult help, it was too late for David.”
“Could the adults have done anything to save David if you’d brought them in earlier, do you think? Your mom, I mean? Did she have an extra set of keys? What could she have done in that short space of time that you didn’t do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He slumped back onto the pew and covered his face in his hands.
“Then how are you at fault? Explain that to me?” She hated to push him, but she needed him to see the truth—that it was a terrible accident for which no one was to blame.
“Do you know what David’s death did to my mom? She’s institutionalized, Heather. She completely lost her mind thanks to me. She needs psychotic meds and constant supervision just to make it through the day, even all these years later.”
He scoffed in disgust. “You want to know why my dad drinks so much? Well, there you have it. Because of me.”
The hard edge to Shawn’s voice upset Noelle, who protested and squirmed in Heather’s arms. The baby wasn’t used to having her daddy use that tone of voice.
Heather thought Shawn was lost in his own world, but he immediately noticed how his reaction had affected his baby.
“I’m upsetting her.” He held his hands out and Heather transferred Noelle into his arms. “I’m sorry, little darlin’. It’s all right. I’m here, baby. Nothing’s going to hurt you while I’m around.”
Heather wished Shawn could see himself through her eyes. She wanted him to see what she saw—a man who had beat nearly insurmountable odds to become a pastor. He’d spent his life helping other people and didn’t think twice about putting his own convenience on the line for the sake of the abandoned baby girl.
Most men would have passed Noelle off to the system. But not Shawn. He’d given the baby his very best. He gave everyone his very best. And it was enough, even if he couldn’t see it right now.
“I still see David’s face when I close my eyes,” he continued in a soft, carefully modulated tone of voice. “Forever reaching out to me. Calling for help. Not only in the daytime, either. I have nightmares.”
“I know where you’re coming from with the nightmares. Not a night goes by that I don’t wake up drenched in a cold sweat.”
Even in the midst of his own turmoil, Shawn’s gaze flooded with compassion. “Because of what Adrian did to you.”
“No,” she countered in surprise. “I mean, I suppose I still think about that sometimes, but my nightmares are of the family Adrian hit with his car, the children I could not save.”
Shawn grunted and shook his head. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened. That was all on Adrian.”
“But looking back on it, I feel like I could have stopped him from walking out the door in the first place. I should have tried harder. I knew he was drunk, and I knew he was going to climb behind the wheel. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Like with you throwing the car keys on the seat instead of putting them in your pocket. We can’t stop the regrets over the things we’d do differently if we had the chance to do it all again.”
“But there aren’t any do-overs in life.”
“No. No, there aren’t. There’s no going back. But we can move forward, and that’s where I think you’ve got it all wrong.”
Shawn stiffened. The woman certainly didn’t mince words. She didn’t hesitate to point out that he was wallowing in his own misery. If he was being brutally honest with himself, he had been wallowing for years.
And Heather was calling him on it.
Resentment built for exactly one second before he took in Heather’s demanding hazel-eyed gaze, challenging him to push his pride aside. His respect for her grew with every beat of his heart. Every time he was with her, he grew to appreciate her more.
Respect, appreciation and...something more. If things were different for him—for them—he might have pursued that line of thought. But circumstances being what they were, he consciously pushed his feelings aside. Heather had just said she was in the process of permanently adopting her three kids. She didn’t need him and Noelle to further complicate her life.
“Would you answer a question honestly if I asked you to?” she asked.
“I’m always honest, but whether I answer or not depends on the question.”
“The day we were in San Antonio. You were prepared to hand Noelle over to the state, and then suddenly you weren’t. Why not? What changed?”
“That’s two questions.” Shawn laughed, trying to shake off the tension between his shoulder blades, but it remained, fierce and tight.
“I don’t know. I guess I had it in my mind that she’d be going straight into a loving home.”
“Mom, dad, two-point-five kids, a dog and a white picket fence?”
She got him. Again.
He quirked his lips. “Something like that.”
“But?”
“But the reality was sobering. I hadn’t realized that Noelle was probably going to end up in a state home, at least at first. I know after I got her tested that she was negative for drugs, but who knows what would have happened if she’d become a ward of the state. They might have labeled her a possible drug baby even before the testing, which would mean she’d never get a fair shot. Or—well, I don’t know where she might have landed.”
“And you still don’t. That’s the real point here, isn’t it? You didn’t know where she would end up and so you stepped up to make sure she had a soft, safe landing.”
“I suppose. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. It was more a reaction than an action.”
Heather smiled, and Shawn’s heart jumped into his throat. She stroked his arm where Noelle was cradled and sleeping, and then she shoved out a breath.
“Now, Pastor Shawn O’Riley, you have the opportunity to change that reaction into an action. A very important, thoughtful and loving action.”
“That’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it? Adopt your kids?”
“Yes, I’m going to try. When I originally agreed to foster my three, I was driven by a sense of guilt over the children Adrian killed, but now...”
“Now it’s all about love.” He could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. Even the rose-laced scent of spring in her perfume hinted at new beginnings.
He wanted that. He wanted what she had. She carried this deep, abiding assurance that she was doing the right thing. And it hadn’t come easy to her. He knew how hard she’d worked for it, how much she’d overcome, and that only made him want it more.
He had every confidence that Heather would succeed with whatever she put her mind to, up to and including adopting her three children. He just didn’t know if it was possible for him to do the same.
He settled Noelle back in her car seat and buckled her in. Heather reached for his elbow and turned him around.
“Promise me you’ll think about it, at least,” she whispered. “That you won’t make any rash decisions without talking to me first.”
He couldn’t help but doubt himself, although seeing Heather’s courage in the face of conflict somehow infused his spirit with a new energy. And when he looked into her eyes, he saw what she’d been trying to say all along but that his ears and his stubborn heart refused to hear.
She believed in him.
It was right in front of him—her faith, her strength, her hope for the future, and...
His entire being warmed with what he saw in her gaze. It wasn’t that he’d never thought about this—he had. Many times. But she had so many emotional walls up, and rightly so, that he’d never considered it might actually come to pass.
He never thought... He never imagined that he might be the man to break down those barriers. He’d put up his own walls as well, but the second he looked into her eyes, he forgot what they were.
He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe, even. Didn’t want to be the one to ruin this moment with a misplaced word or wrong movement.
She was the one who closed the distance between them. She stepped forward and reached for his hands, wrapping them around her waist, and then she laid a tentative hand on his jaw. It was the lightest of caresses, but he was a goner. Shawn leaned into her touch. His gaze dropped to her full lips. She was smiling as she tilted her head up to his.
“Heather, I—” he started, but she brushed a finger across his mouth, silencing him before he could continue.
“Please, Shawn. No words. Just please—kiss me.”
His heart slammed into his ribs and it took every bit of his self-control for him not to do just that. There was nothing in the world he wanted so much as to taste her lips and drink in the strength and tenderness of this wonderful, magnificent woman.
But he had to be sure—that she was sure. He was caught up in the moment, and she might be, too. If she was, she might not really be ready, and she might not know how to put the brakes on. He couldn’t begin to imagine everything she’d been through, and so he didn’t know quite how to proceed.
“There are only two people in this room right now,” she said, the timbre of her voice a low purr. She clutched his shirt and pulled him forward, closing whatever distance had been left between them. “Well, except for the baby, and she’s asleep.”
She chuckled against his lips. It was the laughter that relieved Shawn of any anxiety he was feeling.
He kissed her slowly but thoroughly, softly exploring every inch of her lips. He let her set the pace while he simply reveled in her—her touch, her taste, the smell of roses.
This woman was meant to be cherished, honored and loved by a man with his whole heart. She was all that was good and right in the world, and the fact that she had chosen him, at least for today, that it was his arms she’d allowed to shelter her, made him feel honored and blessed, as well.
And when she sighed and deepened the kiss, time stood still.