be nearby in case I need backup.”
As much as Jennifer didn’t want to go, the panic in Rich’s eyes told her she had to.
Rich followed the nurse down the corridor feeling as though his feet were encased in concrete. He wanted to see Sherry, yet he dreaded what he might find. He’d had more than his share of shocks today.
“Wait here,” the nurse said as they reached a door. There was a nameplate of sorts: a strip of masking tape with Connolly scrawled on it with a red marker. They waited outside for what seemed like the longest moment of his life while the nurse went in.
“Richie?”
It sounded like Sherry. Only softer, huskier. The lump returned with vengeance, and Rich’s eyes burned. Had the change in the timbre of her voice come from her injuries or the passage of time?
The nurse beckoned, and Rich stepped inside.
“Richie. It is you,” a pale apparition inside an Erector set project of braces and stainless steel said. She looked as if she were being tortured by something from the Spanish Inquisition, but the smile on her face was angelic. She reached through a maze of tubes and wires toward him.
“It’s me. In the flesh,” he said, taking her hand. That lump made it damned hard to talk.
“And so much more flesh than the last time I saw you,” Sherry said. “I guess they feed you pretty well in the air force.”
“They did. Now I feed myself. And I work out.” As if two hours of hard PT every day would qualify as a workout. It was more like the Olympic Decathlon with the Bataan Death March combined.
“You look wonderful.” Sherry smiled ruefully. “Don’t feel you have to compliment me in return. I know what I must look like.” She let go of him and waved, encumbered with tubes from a nearby intravenous setup, toward the halo apparatus. “I promise, I’m not into body piercing,” she said, indicating the brace that appeared to be anchored directly into her skull.
“You look damned good to me. I didn’t think I’d ever see you ag—” He stopped, his throat too constricted to go on.
“I’m so sorry, Richie. It was so stupid of me to leave the Parkers after I graduated and not tell anybody where I was. I was so upset about you going overseas and leaving me behind, I wasn’t thinking clearly. At the time, I really thought you didn’t want to be bothered with me.”
“You know that wasn’t why I couldn’t take you. I explained it.” Rich’s throat was still tight, his voice husky, but he swallowed and went on. “I was just an airman. We had to have orders just to pi—” Remembering where he was, he stopped.
“I know that now.” She paused, her welcoming smile gone, replaced by one more melancholy. One that matched the dull blue of her eyes. “Mike explained it all to me.”
Rich sucked in a deep breath. He had hoped they could avoid the topic of her husband. He wasn’t sure he knew what to say to a woman who’d been hurt and bereaved all at the same time. Even if she was his sister. “I’m sorry….” It seemed so inadequate, but he didn’t know what else to say.
“I wish you could have known him,” Sherry said, her eyes misty, her voice thick. “He was the best thing that ever happened to me.” She paused. “Him and the kids.” She reached through the apparatus and wiped at her eyes.
“Yeah.” Rich didn’t know what else to say. His eyes burned like crazy and for a moment his world looked as though he were seeing it through rippled glass. He swallowed. He was supposed to be strong for Sherry.
He rubbed at his stinging eyes with the back of his hand and looked away. When his vision finally cleared and the lump in his throat shrank from baseball to golf-ball size, he looked back. Sherry was looking at something on the tray table at the side of her bed and making no effort to disguise her streaming eyes.
“This is a picture of us,” she said, her voice watery and thin. “We took it at Easter. It was one of the rare moments we were all dressed up at the same time.”
Rich followed the direction of her gaze and focused on the framed picture of a happy family. The lump in his throat swelled once more. It was past tense. Sherry’s husband would never pose with them again.
“Sometimes it doesn’t seem real,” Sherry said, her voice cracking. “But at night I get snatches of memory. I hear the rain. I feel the moisture on my face. I see Mike lying so impossibly still.” She sniffed back more tears. “I remember the policeman muttering to his partner about the guy being a goner.
“I couldn’t even go to the funeral.” She broke down then, her sobs wracking and harsh.
He had no idea what to do, so he took her hand and held on. He squeezed it from time to time until she stopped weeping. “I’m so sorry, Sherry. I wish it had never happened. I wish I had been there for you.” Rich paused. “Hell, I wish I could’ve taken you to Germany with me. Maybe, none of this would have happened.”
“No,” Sherry said, her tone emphatic. “My time with Mike was short, but I wouldn’t give up a minute of it if it meant not knowing him at all.” She smiled sadly. “I loved him, but I have the kids to keep me going. His kids. He’s gone, but he left a big part of him in the world.”
Rich couldn’t look at her. He didn’t know how to act, how to respond. Instead, he stared at the picture and tried to get some sense of the brother-in-law he’d never know. Mike had been a big man. He had the tanned, fit appearance of someone who worked outside. Rich wondered if he worked with his hands.
He couldn’t tell much about the baby—they all looked like Yoda to him. But the little girl, a pixie with a mop of curly red hair, had mugged for the camera like she didn’t have a care in the world.
“I wish you could’ve met Mike,” Sherry said softly.
“Yeah, me, too.”
Sherry opened her mouth to speak, but a commotion in the hall stopped her. She turned her gaze toward the door as a pretty young woman with a mane of chestnut hair came bursting in.
“I’m sorry I’m so late,” she said breathlessly. “But Mrs. Garrigan couldn’t come to sit until her daughter picked up her ki—” She stopped, apparently only just noticing Rich.
“It’s okay, Rebecca. Catch your breath, then I have someone I’d like you to meet.”
Rebecca, still flushed from rushing, turned toward Rich. “Are you…?”
“Yeah. I’m the long lost brother.” He offered his hand.
“We’ve been trying to find you, since…How did you know Sherry was here?” She stopped, obviously still flustered, and looked at his hand. “Oh, I’m Rebecca Tucker. Sherry and I were roommates in college.” She pushed her hand toward him.
“Rich Larsen,” he said. “I guess I should thank you for stepping in with the kids.”
“Thank you,” she answered. “I love those kids as if they were my own. I couldn’t imagine anyone else taking care of them.”
“What about that lady next door?” Hadn’t she said she’d been baby-sitting the night it
