CHAPTER
Nine
Did John know for sure where they were going? Because a large number of people, who were perfectly effective in other areas of their lives, were hopeless when confronted with phone maps and concepts like north and south.
They’d left the gas station twenty minutes ago. John had directed her onto a road that climbed through a forest populated with towering pine and glinting streams. They’d swept past alpine lakes and meadows dotted with snowberry. It was all tremendously lovely, and Nora would have appreciated it more if they hadn’t very clearly been journeying away from civilization instead of toward it. Following this course, they were more likely to find themselves in Idaho than at an establishment that served appetizers.
She bit her lip and wondered whether she should question his directions.
John saved her from having to make that decision.
“The hotel’s coming up in half a mile,” he said.
Sure enough, an understated marker announcing Conifer Crest Lodge appeared. She turned in, feeling chagrined for having doubted John and relieved that she’d kept her mouth shut.
A bend in the drive brought the lodge into view. Nora gaped through the windshield at it, wonder settling over her. In the style of so many buildings of the Northwest, it had been built to complement its natural setting. Cedar shake siding, towering beams, and sparkling rectangular windows composed its exterior. It oozed the kind of rustic elegance that Condé Nast was so fond of. Rory, who’d been endowed with an overabundance of good taste, would definitely have said yes to this lodge on her Say Yes to Beauty blog.
Why had she just had that wayward thought about Rory? Rory wasn’t welcome here, thank you very much, in this unexpectedly charming place.
“When you said you were booking rooms, I assumed you meant you were booking rooms at a hotel along the lines of a Holiday Inn Express,” she murmured.
“This . . .” he said, “isn’t that.”
The valet met them and soon Nora was standing at the check-in desk, engaging in an imaginary scenario in which she and John were married and were about to go from here to a room and a bed they shared. He’d have to take his shirt off to get in the shower, of course, and . . . well, yummy. She’d love to know what he looked like shirtless. To feel his arms around her. To have all that strength and intensity focused entirely on her.
Was it warm in here?
The check-in attendant behind the desk kept shooting glances at John, each one longer than the last, until the sound of his fingers clicking computer keys faded to silence. “Are you the author of Uncommon Courage?”
“William Reed wrote it,” John answered.
“But it’s about you,” the man stated. “Right?”
“Yes.”
“That was a terrific book!” He laughed with surprised delight. “I’m so glad to meet you. Thank you for your service to our country, sir.”
The men shook hands.
“I listened to the audio version of it on my phone,” the attendant continued. “I listen to a lot of books when I’m commuting. Anyway, by the end of it, I felt like I knew you. That’s crazy, huh? I don’t know you. But it was just that well-written.”
Nora studied John, amused. He’d set his jaw in a way that was both formal and distant. He said little. The man who could slay dragons wasn’t exactly lapping up the praise.
The staffer continued to extol John and John’s book before sliding two key cards toward them. “Have a wonderful stay here at Conifer Crest, Mr. Lawson and Ms. Bradford.”
“Thank you.”
Their luggage had already been taken to their rooms, so John led her straight to the restaurant off the foyer. He bypassed the indoor seating and held open one of the thick doors leading to the patio.
Nora caught her breath as she stepped outside and took in the panoramic view. It reminded her of a scenic stop along a highway.
People filled the patio’s tables. In both directions, walkways beckoned, hugging the sides of the lodge and wrapping all the way around the building.
Nora moved to the edge and peeked over. It wasn’t a particularly steep drop. The tips of the trees below reached almost to her toes. The land sloped down and away gradually, melding into a wide valley, until it finally reached the lazy, curving line of the Deschutes River in the distance. Beyond the river, peak after soaring, craggy peak jutted heavenward like raggedly torn pieces of construction paper in an impressionist collage.
Nora turned her back to the sun, still hours from setting, and walked along the balcony in the other direction, her fingertips trailing the flat-topped log that formed the railing. She stopped at the walkway’s far corner. The muted noise of the guests on the patio filtered over her while she drank in the rippling mountainsides flanked with lush trees and the hazy river at the base of it all.
“Beautiful,” she whispered. It was the sort of beautiful that made your heart hurt and tugged at the bravest and most fanciful parts of you.
John stopped a few feet away from her position. He placed his forearms on the railing and leaned forward onto them, one leg cocked.
For long moments neither spoke.
True peace wisped through Nora, as gentle and sweet as the breeze on her cheeks. Peace. And companionship, too. She and John had spent most of the day side by side, but she didn’t want a break from him. In fact, the opposite was true. She didn’t want to let him go—
Don’t, she warned herself. Don’t cherish his companionship. His companionship wasn’t something she’d be able to hang on to. She’d have to let him and his friendship go, and maybe soon, depending on how long it took them to locate Sherry.
A waitress approached, offering them a shy smile.
“Do we want to grab a table or are we good here?” John asked Nora.
They’d spent too much of the day sitting and this spot was perfection. “I’m good here,” Nora answered.
“Me too.”
They ordered two iced teas and, after some debate, a cheese and meat board.
“I’m pleased with the progress we made this afternoon,” Nora told him when the waitress had gone.
He nodded. “You said once that you’d helped a few other people who were trying to find their birth mothers.”
“Yes.”
“Were you able to find them? The birth mothers?”
“We were. I’m always determined to help my clients. Any type of client with any type of genealogical goal. But because I’m half-adopted myself, I think I’m wired to feel extra determined on behalf of my clients who are adoptees.”
He focused that intent and powerful gaze of his on her. It was so powerful that the backs of her knees tingled in response.
“What do you mean, you’re half-adopted?” he asked.
“I’m only biologically related to my dad.”
When she didn’t offer more, he said, “Explain.”
She arched an eyebrow. “How about we make a deal?” He was a private, self-contained man. She needed a stick she could use to prod information out of him. “If I tell you about me, then you’ll tell me something about yourself in return.”
“What kind of something?”
“The kind of something you’re willing to share. If I ask a question that’s too personal, just let me know, and I’ll move on to another.”
His masculine lips quirked. “You have a whole list of questions waiting for me?”
“Yes.”
“Just how intrigued do you think I am by your half-adoptedness?”
“Sufficiently intrigued to agree to my terms.”
He smiled, and she didn’t know whether to laugh because of the joy that smile brought her or cry because he loved someone else.
“I agree to your terms,” he said. “Go ahead and explain.”
“It’s all a bit confusing, so hang on to your hat. As you know, I have two sisters.”
“I’m hanging on to my hat pretty well so far,” he said dryly.
“I’m the middle sister. Willow is two years older. Britt is four years younger. We have the same father, but all three of us have different mothers.”
Upon hearing this information, people always reacted in the same whistling, eye-rounding type of way that basically communicated, Your dad must have been a world-class womanizer.
John didn’t react that way. He merely watched her, hazel eyes serious.
“When my dad was in his early twenties, he met this beautiful French woman named Sylvie,” she said. “Sylvie was backpacking through America at the time. They were the same age, but she was much more worldly and adventurous and freewheeling than he was. She was a painter. Extremely creative and talented . . . the kind of person who might talk about philosophy for two hours, then smoke a cigarette, then make crepes, then skinny-dip in the lake. She’s still that type of person.”
“Skinny-dipping? Suddenly Sylvie is sounding like someone I’d like to meet.”
“Did I mention how beautiful she was? She was very beautiful. Not the normal kind of beauty. The I-can’t-believe-my-eyes kind. Sylvie’s daughter, my sister, became a model, but Sylvie’s rumored to have been even more exquisite in her day.”
“And your dad fell for her.”
“Like a stone.”
“They had a fling.”
“Yes, even though my dad was raised by sensible Christian parents and even though he was a believer and should have known better. He fell totally and completely in love with Sylvie.”
“And she got pregnant.”
“Exactly. My dad wanted to marry her more than anything. But she refused.”
Their waitress arrived and carefully set their food on the balcony’s ledge. Three kinds of cheese. Nuts and olives and dates in tiny matching bowls. Crostini. Wafer-thin crackers. Small mounds of capicola and peppered salami. Lovely fanned-out slices of pear and green apple. All arranged on a wooden platter.
Before Nora had finished marveling over it, the waitress had returned with their iced teas. “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.
“I think we’re good,” John said, and she left them to it.
John, always gentlemanly, motioned for Nora to go first. “You were telling me about the skinny-dipping French beauty.”
Nora took a bite of crostini, sharp cheese, and salami. She almost moaned aloud but caught herself at the last second.
John went for the olives first.
“The skinny-dipping French beauty stayed in Washington with my dad during her pregnancy,” Nora said. “A month after Willow was born, she put Willow in his arms and continued on her tour.”
“She was never a mother to Willow?”
“Not in the traditional sense. She didn’t want custody. She lives in France, where she’s made a celebrated career for herself with her art. She calls Willow or sends cards or blows through for a visit now and then. When she does, she treats Willow like an amusing friend. Willow calls her Sylvie and she calls Willow Cherie.”
“So what’s your mom’s story?”
“My mom’s story is sadder, I’m afraid.”
John stopped eating, and his regard turned solemn.
Nora toyed with the corner of a downy paper napkin that lay half-pinned beneath the platter. “My dad works for Bradford Shipping, the import/export company that’s been in my family for generations. The company had been worth a fortune in prior eras, but right around the time that Sylvie left, it was on the brink of collapse. The company needed him, and of course Willow needed full-time care. On top of those pressures, I think the loss of Sylvie completely devastated him. He hired a Russian housekeeper slash nanny named Valentina who’s still with us to this day. And he set about finding a wife.”
“On the rebound?”
“He’s never said that to me. In fact, no one has ever even hinted at that within earshot of me. But, yes. If I had to guess, I’d say he was on the rebound big time. The timeline alone points to it. Only five months passed between Sylvie’s departure and my mom’s entrance into his life. What that tells me is that he was lonely and overwhelmed and maybe also bent on the path of repentance after what had happened with Sylvie.”
“What was your mom like?”
“My mom, Robin, was Sylvie’s opposite. She grew up in church, and everyone I’ve ever talked to about her says that she was family-oriented, kind, and dependable. I think my dad knew that, above everything else, he could trust her. Finding someone he could trust must have seemed like a shelter in the storm. It couldn’t have hurt her cause that she was the type of woman who’d obviously make an excellent mother to his motherless baby. They got married when Willow was one and had me a year later.”
“And did she make an excellent mother?”
“The best, according to everyone.” Nora’s throat began to tighten. The topic of her mother was not new to her. It was an old familiar road she’d been driving over all her life, conversationally and emotionally.
She could remember whispering about it to her fascinated elementary school friends when their teachers or parents weren’t listening. During her high school years, when her peer group had loved to wallow in all things tragic, her friends had wanted to plumb the depths of what had happened to her mother for hours at a time.
Nora had grown up with a bedroom full of pictures of her mother in expensive frames. And every year until she’d left for college, her family had celebrated her mother’s birthday with cake and shared memories. In the Bradford family, her mom held a sainted place of respect and fondness. Sort of like a beloved heirloom Bible.
There had been times when, considering her mother’s fate, Nora had felt guilty about the normal, stable, mostly happy life she’d gone on to lead. But there had never been a time when Nora had felt she couldn’t talk about her mother. All that talking didn’t prevent fresh eddies of grief from washing over her, however. She missed a woman she couldn’t even remember. Loss was woven into the fabric of her life just like her memories, her family, her faith, and everything else that made her who she was.
“My mom and a friend of hers used to meet four times a week to go walking,” Nora said, “often at Blue Heron Park. It has lots of jogging trails through the woods and along the lake. Do you know the place?”
“I do.”
“Sometimes my mom and her friend would bring their kids along in strollers for their walks. But if their husbands were home, they’d go without the kids. And if my mom or her friend couldn’t make it, they’d occasionally go alone. Which is what happened the night my mom . . . was killed. Her friend couldn’t make it, so she went alone.”
He frowned. The lines of his face were a study in grave, war-hardened beauty.
“She died on a night that had seemed totally ordinary. My dad came home from work and took over with Willow and me. My mom told him about the dinner she’d made, they exchanged a kiss, and she darted out the door. It was late summer, so she had a few hours left before darkness fell.”
“She never came home?”
“No. A man named Brian Raymond dragged her off the walking path at Blue Heron Park. He duct-taped her mouth and her wrists.” She refused to be ashamed of the facts surrounding her mother’s death. She spoke about them to anyone who asked, and she never sugarcoated them. She wanted people to know her mother’s story. She did. That said, these facts were ugly and brutal and disgusting. Always heavy to acknowledge. Always difficult for someone who knew nothing of them to hear. “He raped her,” she said quietly. The words brought a flash of inward pain. “Then he strangled her.”
Silence sifted between them.
“Nora,” he finally said.
Tears pricked her eyes at the sound of her name, spoken by him with compassion.
She drew herself up. “I was seven months old when she died. It wasn’t until many years later that my dad told me about the violence she’d endured at the end. To my dad’s credit, he held himself ruthlessly together after her death. He stepped up and poured all his energy and focus into his daughters. He’s a wonderful dad.”
The mountain air smelled of pine, earth warmed by sunlight, and the honeyed fragrance of the lupines growing in shocks of vertical color from a nearby pot.
“What happened to Brian Raymond?” he asked.
“Just to give you some background, Brian was raised by a mother who battled alcoholism and a father who committed suicide when he was ten. It’s unsettling because in pictures he looks somber but also handsome and athletic. We know for a fact that he was intelligent. He had a good job. He had friends. But beneath the normal trappings, he was broken and vicious.” She considered John. “You’ve come face-to-face with some vicious men during your time with the SEALs.”
“Yes.”
They were both adopted. And both her life and his had been marked by encounters with cruel people. She and John might look like a strange pair. The genealogist and the Special Ops vet. But the more she knew him, the more she realized how well their backgrounds qualified them to understand each other. “Brian Raymond was thirty when he killed my mom. By then he’d already raped five other women.”
“Did the other women survive?”
“Yes. He was increasingly brutal with each one, but my mom was the first and only one he killed. Evidence from her murder led the police to him.”
“Is he serving time?”
“No. After his sentencing, he hung himself in his jail cell.”
Nora wondered what John’s astute eyes saw as he assessed her.
“After what happened with my mom, my dad decided that love and marriage were not for him.” She gave a rueful laugh that came out sounding sadder than she’d intended.
“Yet you have a younger sister.”
“My dad had decided love and marriage weren’t for him, but God hadn’t.” Time to steer this conversation to something more hopeful. Seriously! She didn’t want, and surely her mom wouldn’t have wanted, their spirits to sink with depression while surrounded by the stunning evidence of God’s majesty. “Two years after my mom’s death, my dad met Kathleen. They both worked at Bradford Shipping. My dad says that he tried his hardest to resist her, but over time, he couldn’t help falling in love with her. They’ve been happily married now for a long time.”
“And Kathleen is Britt’s mom.”
“Yes, she’s Britt’s biological mom. Shortly after she married my dad, she legally adopted Willow and me so she’s been a mom to me since I was three and to Willow since she was five. She’s the one who gave us baths, made us do our homework, nagged us to clean our rooms, took us to the DMV for our driver’s test, and bought us prom dresses. I have a special place in my heart for my mother. But Kathleen’s the only mom I can remember.” She shrugged. “She’s our mom.”
“That’s how I feel about my mom.”
“I understand completely.”
Their waitress came to check on them.
“Is there anything you need, Nora?” John asked.
You. To love me in sickness and in health till death do us part. “Not a thing.”
“Just the check, then,” John told the waitress.
“This, and anything else you’d like, are complimentary,” she replied. “Stefan, at the front desk? He told the chef about, you know, who you are. So . . . this is the chef’s treat.”
John’s posture stiffened. “That’s very kind, but I’d like to pay.”
The waitress replaced Nora’s bent napkin with a fresh one. “No, no,” she said cheerfully, walking off. “It’s already been comped. Enjoy!”
Nora nibbled a sliver of pear. “You seem a trifle uncomfortable, John.”
“Hmm?”
“You were uncomfortable at the check-in desk, too.”
His eyebrows dipped together in the center. “Thanks for pointing that out, Nora.”
She laughed.
He piled a cracker with cheese as if that ended their discussion.
“So?” she asked. “How come recognition makes you uncomfortable?”
“According to our deal, you get to ask me one question. Is that your question?”
“No, no,” she hurried to say. Goodness, she didn’t want to spend her one question like a kid who accidentally asked a genie for a wish before thinking things through.
He finished his cracker, then funneled nuts into his mouth, his vision trained far away. His black watch glimmered. Over the month of their friendship, Nora had noticed everything there was to notice about things like John’s watch, eyelashes, the scuffs on his boots, and the network of veins on the undersides of his wrists. It also hadn’t escaped her attention that he occasionally hummed what sounded like “Sweet Child O’ Mine” when concentrating. Or preferred his water without ice. Or never seemed cold and often wore T-shirts in weather that made her shiver.
Weighing her options, she selected a slice of apple and balanced a scoop of cheese on top. In the end, she decided to ask him the question she wondered about the most often. “Why are you searching for your birth mother?”
———
A hurricane of black feelings stirred within John at Nora’s simple question.
Should he tell her why he was searching for Sherry? He was searching because of his diagnosis, but his diagnosis still felt raw, like he’d received it yesterday. In the time since he’d learned about it, he’d only brought himself to tell his family and Allie. No one else.
It seemed like a betrayal of Allie, to tell Nora something so personal. Yet, Nora was his partner in this search, so in some ways, it seemed like she had a right to know.
He wanted to tell her because he wanted her to know him.
And he didn’t want to tell her because he needed to keep the distance between them in place.
Why are you searching for your birth mother? she’d asked.
Because I’m going blind, Nora.
The words waited inside of him. It’s an inherited condition. So you see, if I can’t keep my sight or my independence, which I value more than just about anything, then I want answers.
If he said that to her, she might pity him. It made his heart stop just to think about her pitying him. He’d rather her go on thinking he was better than he was.
Nora waited patiently for his answer, golden light behind her.
He felt a pull toward her—a loyal and intense pull.
“Your question’s too personal,” he finally said.
“John!” she scolded, laughter in her tone. “I just spilled my heart out, telling you about my mother.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“And?”
“And you said from the beginning that if your question was too personal, I could tell you, and you’d move on to another.”
“Fine,” she said lightly, obviously deciding not to test the boundary he’d put down between them. “In that case, I’d like to know what happened that night in Yemen.”
“You already know. You read the book and saw the movie.”
“I want to hear about it from you. In your own words.” Nora rubbed her arms.
“You’re cold.” His voice held a rugged edge of concern.
“I don’t want to leave, though.” Kneeling, she grabbed a light green sweater from her purse. She slid her arms into it. “I’m good. So . . . spill. You were a member of SEAL Team Six . . .” she offered encouragingly.
“People still call us SEAL Team Six because it sounds cooler than our official title, which is Naval Special Warfare Development Group.”
“Your focus was counterterrorism.”
He smiled. “Who’s telling this?”
“You are.”
“The objective of our mission in Yemen was to extract hostages from a group of militants. They were holding two American journalists, one American aid worker, and two Canadian aid workers. We’d been following the situation for a while, but it became urgent when the terrorists announced that they planned to execute the journalists within forty-eight hours. The president gave the order, and we were on our way to Yemen.”
“You didn’t have much time to plan.”
“We had enough time,” he stated. “Intel on the compound where we suspected the hostages were being held had come in a few days before the execution threat. Our people had been working on a strategy since they’d received the intel.”
“Okay.”
“Two Ospreys transported us to a position about seven kilometers from the compound.”
“In the dead of night, right? You SEALs seem to like nighttime missions.”
“We SEALs are all about concealment. Hostage extraction is extremely difficult. Our mission was to protect hostages from captors who were very close, in proximity, to them. We did everything we could to ensure that we’d be able to neutralize the captors before they suspected we were there.”
“I’m trying to look like I’m accustomed to talking about the neutralizing of captors. How am I doing?”
“You’re doing fine.”
“Continue.” She made a go on motion.
“Two of our snipers simultaneously took out the night guards. One guard was sitting outside. One was walking by a window inside. When those shots went off, several of us were already waiting close to the rear of the house. We entered, engaged with the guard in the hallway and the two who’d been sleeping. It couldn’t have taken us more than twenty seconds to deal with all five of them.”
“That part went according to plan.”
He nodded. “None of us heard the guy in the hallway alerting reinforcements on his walkie-talkie right before we entered the house. It wasn’t until much later that we found out that’s what had happened. The Ospreys landed at the compound. We’d started loading hostages and team members onto them when we saw three open-topped trucks speeding toward us. As soon as they were within range, they started spraying us with machine gun fire. The first Osprey lifted off safely. I was in the second Osprey. It got up, but they fired an SA-7 surface-to-air missile and hit the tail of our aircraft.”
Nora looked worried that he wouldn’t make it out of the story alive.
“You know all this already,” he reminded her.
“Hearing you tell it is bringing home the fact that you really did live this. It’s not fiction, like what I’m used to. You were actually trapped in a doomed helicopter.”
He’d relived it through nightmares for a long time afterward.
“How many of you were inside the Osprey?” she asked.
“Seventeen. Three of the hostages. Two medics. The rest of us were military. The pilots pulled off an incredible piece of flying to get us down as well as they did. Even so, it was rough. Two SEALs died in the crash. Two more were pinned inside the wreckage and died in the fire.” His felt a muscle in his neck tick. “All but three of us were injured.”
“You say that, but the three of you who were still on your feet did have injuries.”
“Right, but not the kind that would slow us down. The three of us pulled everyone from the Osprey that we could, then loaded up with guns. The other two guys took up positions between the militants and the crash site. Their goal was to hold them at bay. I stayed behind with the survivors. I got them down into a gully so they’d be out of range, then climbed to the top of the ridge and waited in a stand of trees.”
“Did you think that reinforcements would make it to you in time?”
“I knew they’d make it to us, but I didn’t know if they’d make it in time. The terrorists were on us fast and I was spending all the ammunition I had. Lobbing grenades. Shooting. Reloading. We were outnumbered. They were well-armed and well-organized.”
“You were shot twice.”
“Both were flesh wounds.”
“But they bled.” She looked deeply offended on his behalf. “A lot!”
“They weren’t the kind of injuries—”
“That would slow you down?”
He grinned wolfishly.
“Continue your tale.” She reached for her iced tea.
“The militants killed one of the SEALs in the forward position. They wounded the other.”
“Who you then rescued at risk to your own life.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I continued to do what I could to hold the attackers off. Let’s put it that way.”
“While relaying information to the reinforcements,” she added.
“If you say so.”
“And did our guys really make it to you in the nick of time?”
“Just in the nick of time.”
“So tell me something that’s not in the book or the movie.”
He’d been trying to talk sense to her about what had happened in Yemen, yet her expression was full of softness and respect, and he knew she was building it all up in her mind. He’d admitted to himself a few minutes ago that he wanted her to think he was better than he was. But never about this. “I’m going to tell you the honest truth about it. You ready?”
“Ready.”
“I’m not a hero, Nora. To me, a hero’s someone who weighs the situation and searches his soul and then sacrifices himself. That night in Yemen, there was no time to weigh the situation or search my soul. I didn’t decide to sacrifice myself.” He needed to make this point clear. “I just did my job. My instincts and my training took over, and I picked up my gun and started firing. I reacted the same way any other SEAL on that mission would have reacted. It’s just that I was able to do what others weren’t because I was uninjured and because I was standing farther back, in the trees.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” he asked, relieved.
“You were doing your job. That day in Yemen was another day at the office.”
“Another day at the office,” he agreed. “A very bad day. But just a day.”
“The praise of others makes you uncomfortable because you feel as though you were fulfilling your duties, same as everyone else.”
“Several SEALs gave more than I did that night. I knew them and their families. They were brothers of mine, and they deserve thanks.”
“Yes, but the people who cross your path only have you. In their path. To thank. They won’t have the opportunity to thank the others.”
He scowled.
“You did something for America and for those people that a lot of us would have loved to have done in theory, but could never do in reality. So thank you, John. Very much. For what you did.”
The link of their eye contact grew heavy and meaningful.
Protectiveness of her, fierce tenderness for her, swept through John. So strong that his lungs physically tightened. So strong that sexual desire rocked him.
He wanted her.
He wanted her badly.
“I’d better go in,” he said.
“John . . .”
“I’ll see you in the morning.” He didn’t look at her. He was already stalking past. He was afraid of what he’d do or say if he looked at her.
Not one more glance.
“Bill your dinner and breakfast to your room,” he growled. “I’m paying.”
Phone conversation between Allie and her best friend, Lizzie:
Text message from Allie to John:
Hi, sweetheart. How’re things going in Oregon?