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The other women nodded, apparently already aware of the deadline. Susan had explained to Lindy earlier that because the Mitchell was deployed in unfriendly waters, the mail would be flown in with supplies only once a month.
“When are we going to eat?” Sissy asked, craning her neck to peek into the kitchen.
“Every time Bill’s gone, Sissy gains ten pounds.”
“I work it off once he’s home, so quit teasing me.”
“I could make a comment here, but I won’t,” Sandy muttered, and the others laughed.
“Well, if a certain someone doesn’t feed me soon, I’m going to fade away before your very eyes.” Dramatically Sissy placed the back of her hand against her forehead and released a long, expressive sigh.
“Okay, okay,” Susan said with a laugh. “Lunch is served.”
Everyone stood at once and moved into the kitchen. The table was arranged with a variety of salads, buffet style. Plates and napkins were arranged at one end and the forks fanned out attractively.
“I brought the recipe for the Cobb salad, in case anyone’s interested,” Paula commented.
“I wish you had said something,” Lindy complained under her breath to Susan. “I could easily have brought something.”
“You’re our guest of honor.”
“We’re all dying to know how you met Rush,” Sissy said and Joanna moved Lindy to the front of the line and handed her a plate.
“I think he’s sexy as hell, and Doug told me he could hardly believe Rush would marry someone he only knew two weeks.”
“Well, actually,” Lindy murmured as an embarrassed flash of color entered her cheeks, “it was closer to three weeks.”
The women laughed.
Sissy pressed her hand over her heart and sighed. “That’s the most romantic thing I’ve heard in years and years.”
Elly’s shoulders moved up and down as well in an elongated sigh. “I always knew when the big man tumbled, he’d fall hard.”
“He’s so handsome,” Mary interjected.
“So dedicated,” Paula added.
“Until the night of your wedding dinner, he was always so…detached and distant. We all noticed the change in him.”
“Thank you,” Lindy answered softly.
“I bet he’s a good lover.”
“Sissy!”
Lindy laughed because although the others had been quick to chastise their friend they eagerly looked in her direction for a response. Not willing to disappoint them, she wiggled her eyebrows a few times and nodded.
“I knew it. I just knew it,” Sissy cried.
“Are we going to eat, or are we going to talk about Lindy’s love life all afternoon?” Joanna asked.
The women looked at each other, came to some sort of tacit agreement and set their plates aside.
* * *
“Are you all right?” Jeff asked Rush as he moved past his friend to the engine-order telegraph.
“Fine.” The word was as sharp as a new razor. Rush wasn’t willing to discuss his problems with anyone, not even Jeff.
“There’s got to be some logical explanation why Lindy hasn’t written.”
“Right,” Rush answered, but he avoided looking at his friend, doing his best to look busy. He didn’t want to be rude, but he wasn’t going to discuss his troubles either.
“Susan’s letter says the wives’ association had Lindy over for lunch recently.”
“Is that supposed to reassure me?”
“I think it should.” Jeff unfolded Susan’s thick letter and scanned its contents. “Lindy’s kept in close contact with Susan and the others.”
“That doesn’t mean a damn thing.”
“Apparently they had a wedding shower for her.”
That made him feel a whole lot better, Rush mused sarcastically. Lindy seemed to have forgotten she had a husband, but she was busy accepting wedding gifts.
Jeff paused and cleared his throat. “It seems the wives went together and got Lindy a long silk nightie.”
Rush didn’t respond. His jaw was clenched so tightly that he was convinced his back molars would crack. He’d been four interminable weeks without a single word from Lindy. A whole damn month. The knot in his stomach was tight enough to double him over. His nerves were shot. He found himself snapping at his men, behaving irrationally, becoming angry and taking it out on everyone else. And worse, he wasn’t sleeping. For two nights now he hadn’t been able to so much as close his eyes. Every time he did, the images that filled his mind were of Lindy with another man, presumably Paul. The hot surges of anger and adrenaline that shot through him were so strong that any chance of falling asleep was a lost cause. Lindy might as well have taken a knife and cut open a vein as not written.
Unwillingly Rush’s mind leaped to a memory of how it had been with Cheryl. At first there’d been a flood of letters, filled with all the right phrases, everything a man longs to hear when he’s separated from the woman he loves. Then Cheryl’s letters had petered out to a handful in a month, and then just a sporadic few before his return.
But damn it all to hell, Lindy was his wife. He’d slipped a diamond ring on her finger and committed his life to her. He’d expected more of her than this. But apparently she took her vows lightly because she’d sure as hell forgotten him the minute he was out of sight.
It was a mistake to have married her. But he’d been so much in love with her that he’d refused to listen to the calm voice of reason. He’d lost one woman and feared losing another. He should have known standing before a preacher wasn’t going to make any difference, but he would never have believed Lindy could do this. All her reassurances about knowing her own heart had fooled him. She’d been so positive they were doing the right thing. None of that confidence was worth a damn now. They’d both made a mistake. A bad one. At the rate things were progressing, this marriage could be the single worst disaster of his life.
“I’m going below,” Rush announced, walking away from the gyrocompass repeater, which indicated the Mitchell’s course. The sight of Jeff holding a letter from home was more than Rush could take. He needed to escape before he said or did something he’d regret.
Jeff nodded, but his brow was creased with tight bands of concern.
Once in his compartment, Rush lay on his back with his hands cupped behind his head. Steve was right. Rush had known it the minute his friend had said as much. Lindy had married him on the rebound, and now that he was gone she’d realized what a terrible error in judgment she’d committed and wanted out.
They’d been living in a fairy tale, forced to share the apartment the way they were, and like a fool Rush had gotten sucked into the fantasy. Lindy had been wounded by love and Rush had been a convenient source of comfort to her damaged ego.
Now that he was gone, Lindy realized their mistake. The muscles of his stomach knotted when he realized how helpless he was in this situation. Lindy didn’t love him.
Now all he had to worry about was if she was pregnant. Not using any protection had been a conscious decision on his part. They hadn’t even talked about it the way couples should—hadn’t discussed the possibility of starting a family so soon. It wasn’t that Rush had been so eager for Lindy to get pregnant, he realized with a flash of insight. But he hadn’t wanted a repeat of what had happened with Cheryl. If Lindy’s stomach was swollen with a baby when he returned, he didn’t want any question in his mind about who was the father.
Rush refused to believe he’d actually done anything so stupid as to play that sort of silly mind game. Lindy wasn’t going to cheat on him—he refused to even consider the possibility. But then he’d honestly assumed she loved him, too—the same way he loved her. It hadn’t even taken her a month to forget him.
* * *
Lindy let herself into the apartment and stopped when she found her brother sitting in front of the television, watching a late afternoon talk show. Steve’s behavior was really beginning to concern her. He’d been assigned shore duty, and when he wasn’t working he sat around the apartment with a lost, tormented look that reminded her of how she’d felt when she’d first arrived in Seattle. His behavior wasn’t the only thing that was getting on her nerves. He’d become so cynical and so sarcastic about life. His thinking seemed so negative that she didn’t like to talk to him anymore. There’d been a time when she’d admired him for the way he’d handled the emotional trauma of the divorce, but his letters had been a convenient front. It became clearer every day that the healing process hadn’t even started in Steve. He still loved Carol, and he needed to either patch things up between them or accept the divorce as final. Otherwise it was going to ruin his life.
“Hi,” she said, and walked into the kitchen, setting down the grocery bag on the counter. “What’s Donahue got to say today?”
“Who?”
“The guy whose program you’re watching.”
“Hell, I don’t know. Something about nursing mothers.”
“And that interests you?”
“It’s better than staring at some stupid game show.”
“It’s a beautiful day. You should be outside.”
“Doing what?”
Lindy sighed. “I don’t know. Something. Anything.”
Steve stood and came into the kitchen. “Do you want me to do something for dinner? Peel potatoes, that sort of thing?”
She thanked him for his offer with a smile. “I’ve got everything under control.” Opening the refrigerator, she set the milk inside and decided now was as good a time as any to wade into shark-infested waters. “Is Carol still living in Seattle?” Lindy asked the question and then turned to face her brother.
“Carol who?”
His words may have been flippant, but he couldn’t disguise the instant flash of pain in his eyes.
“Carol Kyle, your wife.”
“Ex-wife,” he corrected bitterly. “As far as I know she is.”
“I think I’ll give her a call.”
A year seemed to pass before Steve answered. “Before you start meddling in someone else’s troubles, you’d better take care of your own, little sister.”
Lindy’s heart flew upward and lodged in her throat. “What do you mean by that?”
Steve pointed toward the mail that was stacked on the kitchen table. “You must have put the wrong address on that long letter you’ve been writing all month to Rush, because it’s been returned.”
“Oh, no.” A sickening feeling invaded her limbs and her eyes widened with dread. “Returned? But why?” She reached for the thick manila envelope and checked the address. “Oh, Steve, what will Rush think if he doesn’t get any mail from me?”
“The only thing he can assume under these circumstances. That you married him on the rebound and regret it.”
She raised her hands in a gesture of abject defeat. “But I don’t feel that way, not at all.”
“Lindy, sit down. You look like you’re about to faint.” Her brother pulled out a chair and carefully lowered her into it. He walked a couple of times around her, as though gathering his thoughts on how to handle the situation.
Tears of frustration were hovering just beneath the surface. She’d faithfully written Rush each night, pouring out her heart to her husband, reassuring him each day how much she loved him and how proud she was to be his wife. She’d written about meeting the other wives and told him about the social get-together they were planning to celebrate the halfway mark of the six-month cruise. She’d drawn a picture of the lacy silk nightie the girls had given her as a wedding gift and told him how eager she was to model it for him.
There were weeks when she’d scribbled long epistles as many as six and seven times. Since the mail was only going to reach him once a month, Lindy had written it in journal form, marking the days.
To her surprise, this long separation wasn’t anything like he’d suggested it would be. Rush had warned her that two weeks after he was gone she’d start to wonder how she ever imagined herself in love with him. Two weeks from the day he left, Lindy had made a giant card to tell him exactly the opposite had happened. If anything she loved him more than ever.
Over and over she had read the thick letter she’d received from him, until she had set each precious line in her memory. Rush’s letters had been her lifeline to sanity.
The realization that he had received only a short one from her early after he sailed out of Bremerton, if that, was almost more than she could bear thinking about.
“What are you doing?” Steve asked, when Lindy reached for the phone.
“Calling Susan.”
“What good is that going to do?”
“I…I don’t know.” But Lindy had to talk to someone before she went loony. Susan would know what to do.
“Hello?” Susan answered on the third ring, and Lindy could hear the twins crying in the background.
“Susan, it’s Lindy. Something terrible has happened, and I don’t know what to do.” She was speaking as fast as she could, her voice raised and shaky.
“Lindy? Slow down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“My letter to Rush came back,” Lindy explained, doing her best to keep her voice as even as possible, although it wobbled like a toy top winding down after a long spin.
“Did you have the right address?”
Lindy reached for the envelope and read off Joanna’s street numbers.
“Lindy,” Susan muttered, interrupting her. “That’s not the mailing address for the Mitchell.”
“I know…. It’s Joanna’s. She said we were supposed to get all the mail to her by the fifteenth. Remember?”
“You weren’t supposed to mail it to her,” Susan cried. “It was supposed to be mailed, period.”
“But I thought she was in charge of that.”
“No, Lindy, Joanna doesn’t have anything to do with the mail.”
“Oh God, Susan, what will Rush think?”
Susan hesitated, then sighed. “It isn’t that bad. I wouldn’t worry about it, since it’s only the one letter. He’ll receive the others.”
Lindy felt like weeping all the more. “But there was only the one letter. A long, long one…. Oh Susan, Rush must believe…I hate to even think about it. He’ll assume I don’t love him.”
The line was silent. “The important thing is not to panic.”
“I think it’s too late for that.”
“Now calm down,” Susan muttered, and Lindy could picture her friend chewing on her lower lip, trying to come up with something. “Jeff will tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“Everything. How you’ve gotten involved in the wives’ association and that we’re seeing each other regularly. Rush is a smart man, Lindy. Give him credit for some intelligence.”
“Right,” Lindy said, nodding her head once. “He’ll figure it out…. He knows I love him.” Lindy gnawed on her lip, remembering how the women’s group had told her if she had any problems, she should contact Joanna.
A long silence stretched over the wire before Susan spoke. “Should I call Joanna or do you want to?”
* * *
The phone rang just after midnight. Lindy rolled onto her stomach and checked the time. She hadn’t been sleeping well and had only turned off the light fifteen minutes before. The call was probably some prankster and she wasn’t eager to answer it, figuring Steve would. By the third ring, Lindy gave up on her brother and reached for the telephone receiver.
“Hello.” She tried to make her voice sound as gruff and unfriendly as possible.
“This is a ham-radio operator in Anchorage, Alaska,” the male voice explained. “A call is about to be transmitted to you from aboard the USS Mitchell. Talk as you would normally, but each time you’re finished speaking you must say over. Do you understand?”
“Yes….”
“Okay. Go ahead and hang up and I’ll connect you in about fifteen minutes.”
Lindy’s hand was shaking so badly she could barely replace the receiver. Rush. Somehow, someway, Rush had found a means of contacting her. She scooted off the bed and paced barefoot across the carpet, waiting. Fifteen minutes had never seemed to drag by more slowly.
When the phone rang, she nearly tore it off the nightstand.
“Lindy? Over.”
The line sounded as if it were coming from the moon. Static filled the air. Popping and hissing.
“Yes, this is Lindy. Over.”
“I only want to know one thing. Are you pregnant? Over.”
Chapter 12
“You want to know what? Over,” Lindy asked incredulously.
“Are you pregnant or not? Over.” Rush demanded a second time. The long distance wire popped and hissed, making it almost impossible to hear him clearly.
“Not. Stop yelling at me and let me explain.”
Silence followed.
A third voice interrupted. “Over?”
“Over,” Lindy repeated.
“I’m listening. Over.” Some of the bitter anger was gone from Rush’s voice, but his frustration and anxiety were evident even through the poor quality of the connection.
“There was a screwup with the letters. I’ll explain it later. Over.”
“Explain it now. Over.”
“I mailed the letter to Joanna instead of the address you gave me. Over.”
“Joanna who? Over.”
“Joanna Boston. She’s an ombudsman for the Mitchell. I thought she was handling all the correspondence. I didn’t realize it would go through the normal channels. Over.”
“In an entire month you only wrote me one letter? Over.” The words were shouted into her ear.
“It was sixty-two pages long. Over.” Lindy returned at equal volume.
Silence crackled like a morning breakfast cereal, and when Rush spoke again, his voice was more subdued, but still tense. “Do you regret the fact that we’re married. Over.”
“No. Do you? Over.”
Rush seemed to take his own sweet time answering, and when he did his voice was almost a whisper. “Not now. Over.”
“I love you,” Lindy whispered, “I…I told you before you left that I know my own heart, and I do. Over.”
“When I didn’t get any mail, I thought you’d decided to…hell, I don’t know what I thought. Over.”
“I’ll write every day, I promise. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice with the mail business. Over.”
“Damn good thing. I nearly went berserk. Over.”
“I’m really sorry, Rush. I felt terrible when the letter was returned. Over.”
“I understand. Over.”
They were married and hadn’t seen each other in two months and there didn’t seem to be anything more they had to say.
“I have to go. Over,” Rush said, after an awkward moment.
“I know. Goodbye, Rush. Don’t worry about anything at this end. I’m doing okay. Your letters help…. I’m really sorry about what happened with yours. It won’t happen again. Over.”
“Goodbye, Lindy. I need you. Over.”
The line went dead then and she was left holding the receiver in her hand. A tingling, burning feeling worked its way from her fingers down her arm and through her torso to settle in her stomach. Rush had been so angry with her. She couldn’t blame him for being upset, but once that matter had been cleared up their conversation had remained awkward and stilted. They didn’t have a lot to say to each other. His life was so far removed from hers now that there was nothing to share. He was a naval officer; she worked for an airline manufacturer. Their lives had briefly crossed paths for a three-week span and, when it came time to separate, they’d resisted and held on to each other. For the first time since Rush had been deployed, Lindy wondered if she had done the right thing in marrying him. At that moment it didn’t feel right. Not for her, and from the way it sounded, not for Rush, either.
Lindy leaned back against the headboard and released a slow, agonized sigh. The shaking started then, and she gripped her hands together in a futile effort to control the trembling. She had married a man she barely knew, on an impulse. Doubts whizzed through her mind like buzzards circling a crippled animal, waiting for it to die. The picture was all too graphic in Lindy’s troubled mind. She was stumbling and her family, particularly her brother, were all waiting for her to fall so they could tell her what a fool she’d been.
Lindy shook her head to dissolve the nightmarish image. She was being ridiculous. She loved Rush, and he loved her. He’d just ended their conversation by telling her of his need for her. A man like Rush Callaghan didn’t say those words lightly. The circumstances they were trapped in had led to this negative thinking. These doubts would be gone by morning and she’d feel as strongly as ever about her commitment to Rush.
Swallowing at the hard lump in the back of her throat, Lindy turned off the bedside lamp and lay back down, resting her head on the pillow that had once been her husband’s. Everything was going to work out fine. She’d done the right thing by marrying Rush. They were deeply in love with each other and if there were a few rocky roads ahead, that was to be expected. They’d weather those just fine.
But Lindy didn’t sleep that night.
* * *
The tall waiter handed Lindy the oblong menu with the gold tassel. “This is a pleasant surprise,” she said, looking across the linen-covered table at her older brother. Her relationship with Steve had gone much better this past month. He rarely mentioned Rush, and she stayed away from the subject of Carol. It wasn’t exactly solid ground they stood on, but stable enough for the two of them to coexist without too many personality problems. The gesture of dinner was a delightful one, and Lindy wasn’t about to refuse. They both needed a break from the humdrum of daily life.
These last couple of days Steve had been almost like his old self—teasing, joking and laughing. If she hadn’t known him better, Lindy might have been fooled. She toyed with the idea of talking to Steve about the doubts that had been haunting her since the ship-to-shore call from Rush. She was terribly frightened that she’d done the wrong thing in marrying him, and she was unsure what, if anything, she could do about it.
“I figure I owe you at least one evening out before I leave,” Steve said as a means of explanation for the unexpected invitation.
“You didn’t need to pick the most expensive restaurant in town.”
Steve glanced over the top of his menu and shrugged. “What else have I got to do with my money?”
“You could start dating again.” She offered the suggestion flippantly, not really meaning it. Like Rush, Lindy had recognized almost immediately that her brother was still in love with his ex-wife.
“I could,” Steve answered thoughtfully. “But I won’t.”
“I know,” Lindy said, understanding perfectly.
“What do you know?”
It was almost as if they were children again, Lindy mused—the way his eyes sparkled with mischief and his mouth quirked with a teasing half smile.
“Well?” he pressed.
“I know you won’t date again.”
Slowly Steve set the menu aside, his fingers lingering over the gold tassel. The humor drained out of his eyes. “The lobster sounds good, doesn’t it?”
Lindy didn’t want to introduce a subject that would embarrass or intimidate her older brother. Any mention of Carol was taboo and they both knew it. Sadly she recognized that talking over her fears about her marriage wasn’t going to work, either. She didn’t know what she’d tell Steve anyway. She was scared to death she’d married the wrong man, terrified that everything her brother had accused her of was true.
Her biggest concern was that she’d accepted Rush’s proposal on the rebound and her marriage was based on emotional insecurity. Two weeks wasn’t sufficient time to know a man well enough to commit her life to him. Even the regrets Rush had prophesied were beginning to come true. There were days when she had to struggle to remember what her husband looked like. A thousand unknowns haunted her. His phone call had only served to remind her how arrogant he could be, and the letters from him that had followed were filled with his angry frustration at not hearing from her.
Although Steve seemed more open than he had been, Lindy didn’t feel she could discuss her doubts. Her brother was struggling with his own problems.