Once in Every Life

And yet the memories persisted, thrived in the dark, twisted recesses of his mind.

Once he'd thought that talking about it might help. After so many years alone, sitting in that lightless, airless hospital room, with nothing to do but think about?dwell on-?the horror, he'd thought all he had to do was share his memories and they would go away.

Except there had been no one with whom to share them. No one who would listen. He still remembered the day he'd finally made it home. The endless, aching months on the road between the hospital and home had dissolved the instant he'd seen the tall, graceful mansion. On bare feet that had walked hundreds of miles over rocky, dirty roads, he'd run to the front door.

He told himself it didn't matter that there was no one to greet him. They didn't know he was coming home, after all. They hadn't even known he'd been in the hospital. They knew only that the war had been over for months, and neither of their sons had returned.

At first the welcome had been everything he'd hoped for. His father and mother and Amarylis and Savannah had crowded around him, hugging, laughing, weeping, welcoming. He and Amarylis had shared a wonderful, magical night of love. A night that had given Jack his wonderful Katie.

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In the morning, though, everything changed. All it had taken was a single, casually spoken word. "Hospital."

We thought you were a prisoner of war, son.

Jack cringed even now, remembering the gut-wrenching shame he'd experienced at his father's quiet words.

No, I was in a hospital.

Where were you hurt? His mother's words, filled with concern.

That had been the hardest question of all to answer. He had no physical scars, no limp, no missing limbs; no injuries of the kind they could understand and accept.

He didn't blame them?or at least, he tried not to. Hell, he'd lived through it, and he couldn't understand.

He'd tried his best to explain. / don't know what happened, Dad.... They shouted the order to attack. But I... I couldn 't move. Then Johnny yelled to me, and I ran after him, but it was too ... late. He was dead. After that, I woke up in the hospital?

You froze like some two-bit coward because things got a little bloody? His father turned away from him in disgust. His voice had been full of quiet condemnation. You 're no son of mine.

Jack said nothing more. He realized then, when he looked into his father's cold, disgusted gaze, that the doctors had been right. He should have sealed his lips and borne his heartache and guilt like a man. In silence.

He'd disgraced them, and to his father, a third-generation Georgia gentleman, there was no greater crime.

He and Amarylis had been asked to leave. His wife hadn't wanted to go?she'd made that more than plain? but there was Savannah to worry about, and Amarylis had no money and no family. That's why she'd married Jack in the first place.

Then the hatred began. Not a little bit at a time, day by day like some marriages, but bang! all at once. One day

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she loved him, the next day she despised him. And Jack understood her contempt. She'd married him for security and respectability, and in one miserable sentence, he'd stripped her of both.

Together and yet horribly separate, they left Rafferty Farms, left Georgia, left the South. Jack hadn't known then where they were headed; he knew only that he had to be as far from the South as possible, as far from other men as he could be.

By the time they'd reached North Dakota, Amarylis had started to show with Katie. Every new inch on her waistline added to her hatred for Jack and their unborn child. Even Savannah, who had once been the apple of her mother's eye, became just another tainted fruit from the poison tree.

He understood her contempt and almost respected it. It mirrored so closely how he felt about himself.

The gun. The thought burrowed in his mind and grew. This time he could do it. This time he wouldn't let fear stop him. This time he could pull the trigger for sure. This time?

Lissa.

Memories of her spilled through him, warming the cold, dark spots in his soul. All thoughts of suicide and failure vanished.

We 'II get through this together, Jack. I promise.

A broken sob escaped him. He clamped a bloody hand over his mouth. God, it sounded good. Jesus ...

He closed his eyes, remembering the strength of her arms as she'd held him, the taste of her tears as she'd begged him never to leave her. Then he remembered the night he'd left. She'd reached for him, held him in shaking, desperate fingers, tried to keep him from running.