Having The Soldier's Baby (Parent Portal 1)

Harold patted.

“‘I met someone over here, Mom. He reminds me of you and Dad more than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s got this wife...they’ve been together since they were fourteen...just like you and Dad. They grew up in the same small town, but met when they started high school, just like the two of you...’” Clara’s voice broke.

Emily’s breathing was erratic.

“‘He talks about how they just knew...how they planned their whole lives...’” Clara continued, crying openly now. “‘He proposed when they were fifteen, just like Dad did. He says that some people are just predestined to be together, like some are predestined to be heroes on the football field, or the battle field...’” She sniffled, caught her breath on a sob, blinked. “‘...or be millionaires.’”

Harold took the letter from her shaking fingers.

“‘Their grandparents died while they were in high school, and her father died, too, just like Grandpa Chambers,’” Harold continued. “‘His parents wanted him to follow his father into real estate, but he had to be a sailor, to join the military...’”

Looking up over a pair of reading glasses, Harold eyed Winston, his wet lashes taking nothing from the sternness of that look. “My father was a farmer,” he explained, putting the letter down for a moment. “A damned successful one. I was his only child and had been working the farm since I was old enough to ride on his lap on the tractor. But I wanted to be a police officer.”

Okay, this was getting downright eerie. He’d met people with whom he had things in common, but...

“Danny never said anything.”

He wanted to read the letter for himself. And didn’t at the same time.

“‘They want four kids, when you guys only wanted one, but then I was such a great one, who’d want more, right?’” Harold read, doing some sniffling of his own.

And then, looking at the paper in his hand, read, “‘I know I’m here to protect him, Mom, to see that he keeps his promise to his wife and gets back home to her...’”

Harold stopped. Clara and Emily were both crying.

And Winston broke.

Chapter Twenty-Two

They had a late-afternoon flight out of Milwaukee back to LA. Emily was just as happy to honor Winston’s seeming need for silence as they went about the business of traveling. Getting through security, boarding, landing, remembering where he’d parked his car in the garage early that morning, heading back to Marie Cove.

She had to work the next morning. He had appointments at the base, but not until later in the day.

“Why don’t you just stay here?” she asked him, weary beyond her means, as he pulled into the driveway of their home. He put the car in Park, but didn’t turn it off.

“Please, Winston. I won’t read more into it than is there. It’s lat

e. I don’t want to worry about you driving home after the day we’ve had. And... I don’t... Please, I just kind of need you close tonight.”

He still didn’t open the garage door. But he shut off the ignition. And walked with her to the front door.

Told her to go ahead and head to bed since she had to be up early in the morning.

“You’re coming in, right?” she asked him.

He hesitated, but then nodded, and she went down the hall to the suite that had started out as theirs. And now was just hers.

The Garrisons’ story, it had been nice. Okay, incredibly beautiful.

There’d been some pretty impressive coincidences between Harold’s and Winston’s lives.

But that didn’t mean Winston and Emily had what it took to make a marriage work in the real world. Not without the fantasy holding them together.

So it was a bit...confusing, that part about Clara teaching Danny that some lives are predestined to certain paths and mentioning couples...but that’s what made fairy tales fairy tales, right?

The fact that they contained things everyone wanted to believe.

And it’s what made fairy tales live from person to person, generation to generation, country to country—people’s need to believe in something bigger than what they had.