stark and revealing. More than she had wanted to say to this stranger, more than she had even said to her friends. The fact that hell lived inside her was not something she felt compelled to inflict on her friends. She tried to keep it to herself as much as humanly possible. She knew she didn’t do the best job of it, but she still made the effort.
“Everything’s okay with the baby, though?”
“Fine.” It wasn’t really his business.
“And a nursery? Have you put one together?”
She felt a prickle of guilt. Her pregnant friends had usually attacked the nursery business early and had things ready months in advance. For some reason she had been postponing it, as if she could stay in this state of stasis forever. Unrealistic. Ducking. Evading what she couldn’t have said. “No. There’s a crib in the basement that was Johnny’s. I thought I’d use that.”
“Need help getting it up here?”
It was clear he wanted to do something more than knock down a few icicles. Well, this was one task where help would be welcome. “Yes, actually I do.”
She had just given him a wedge to drive farther into her life. She hoped like hell she didn’t regret it.
* * *
Glad of a useful job to do, Ryker headed downstairs to the basement. Marisa had told him where to find the crib, and he didn’t have any trouble locating it. The basement was clean, scrupulously organized and stocked with every tool a man could wish for. The only thing that bothered him was that the laundry machines were down here. That meant Marisa was going up and down those narrow steps at least once a week, and when the baby came she’d have to do them even more often. He didn’t like it. The railing didn’t seem stout enough; the steps were too narrow. How often would she attempt them with a baby in her arms? He hated to think.
But as he carried the awkwardly sized pieces of the crib frame up one by one, he had the opportunity to think about Johnny and Marisa, and his opinion was changing.
Had Johnny even once considered how his death would gut his wife? Had he ever looked at her and wondered what would become of her? In just a short time Ryker had gleaned a decent impression of the price Marisa was paying, a price compounded by the impending arrival of a child she would now have to care for on her own. He had no doubt she could do it, but there’d be no handy dad to spell her when she got tired or needed a break.
Lots of women did it. He got it. But Marisa should have had Johnny to lean on. Of course, Johnny had been so busy pursuing his new goals that maybe he’d have been no help at all.
Thoughts such as these had been one of the main reasons Ryker had avoided every opportunity to settle down. It wasn’t just that women wanted to change him. No, they had a right to expect certain things from a husband, things he couldn’t provide.
And the lie. The big lie. That they would travel together? Johnny would likely have never been assigned to any station where he could take his family. Not with his skills.
And another lie, his own. He and Johnny didn’t work for the State Department. They worked for the CIA. State was their cover. He hated having to perpetuate that with Marisa. At this point she deserved something better than lies. She certainly deserved to know about a black star on a marble wall at Langley that would never bear Johnny’s name.
But the simple fact was, the agency would put up the star, but it might never acknowledge that John had been one of them. It had happened before and would happen again, and setting Marisa on a quest to break through that huge barrier to truth seemed fruitless. Some names were never inscribed in the book, which was guarded as well as the crown jewels. Some families were never invited to the annual memorial ceremony. Some were never told what their loved ones had done. Some were left forever with stories such as those Marisa had been told because even one slip might cause an irreparable harm.
He didn’t even know himself exactly what had happened to John. He’d never know. But he didn’t like giving her the cover story when she deserved the truth.
But maybe the truth would upset her more. Maybe knowing that all that talk about exotic travel had been most likely lies would only compound sins that never seemed to stop compounding.
He’d been at this business longer than John had; he was more used to deceptions that went with it. But he found himself getting sick to the gills of it. That woman up there reminded him that secrecy had repercussions. Horrible repercussions. At least if John had been killed in a combat mission with the Rangers, she’d have been given some information about where, when and how that was truthful. Instead, she’d been given a lie. A street mugging?
Not much closure, especially when she was right that John could have taken care of himself.
He brought the springs up to the bedroom she had indicated. Her room, he guessed, at the back of the house. She wanted the child near. She was already working over the wood with a damp rag. He looked at the springs, though, and wondered if they should be replaced. A few rusty spots marred them.
“Can we get new springs for the crib?” We, as if he belonged.
She let it pass, though, and stepped over to look. “Maybe I should.”
“Can you get them in town?”
“I can order them. I know I need to order a mattress.”
But not a whole new crib. He didn’t need brilliant insight to understand that. “Let me measure them, then. Can you just call to order them?”
“Freitag’s?” She smiled faintly. “They’ll order anything anyone around here wants. We used to have a catalog store, but that closed. Miracle of the internet.”
“Where do I find a tape measure?”
He found it in the kitchen drawer she had directed him to and returned with it and the memo pad and pen from the fridge. He measured the frame, made notes about how it bolted to the bed, then joined her in wiping down the wood. At last she sat on the edge of her bed, holding her stomach and laughed. “That felt good!”
“Yeah? Somehow I think you need to tell that to your back.”
“How did you guess?”
“Because mine would have been aching after being bent over all that time.” He stepped back and looked at the crib. “It’s a very nice piece of furniture.”
“Johnny’s grandfather built it for him. Carpentry was his hobby.”
“A great heirloom then.” He looked again at the springs. “You know, I should probably take this back downstairs and work on it with some oil and rust remover. Maybe it doesn’t need to be replaced.”
She shook her head. “I want new springs if I can get them. Babies bounce when they get old enough to stand. I wouldn’t trust it.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed, and carted it back down to the basement. He could also put some wood slats in place to replace the springs, he thought. Peg them in so they couldn’t slip out.
But why was he even thinking of such things? He had no place here, and no sense of how long Marisa would tolerate him. Worse, with every passing hour he was building the wall of lies higher.
Sometimes
