Her Secret, His Son

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS a warm summer’s day in Virginia but Ethan had the beginnings of a cold.

Mary frowned as she reached over the breakfast table to lay a hand on her son’s forehead. He’d started coughing during the night and this morning his nose was snuffly and his skin slightly warm. If he had a raised temperature she would have to keep him home from school today.

‘Is your throat sore?’ she asked, noting the way he dawdled his spoon around and around his bowl of cereal, then sipped half-heartedly at his orange juice.

Ethan nodded, and beneath his floppy blond fringe his big brown eyes grew round as he sent her his sad puppy look.

She’d seen rather too much of that look lately.

‘Why didn’t Dad come home for Fourth of July?’ he asked her. ‘He promised.’

Mary sighed. Ever since she’d received the terrible news that her husband was missing in action and presumed dead, she’d tried to keep the news from Ethan. Coping with her own sickening fear was hard enough.

Ethan idolised Ed, and Mary was concerned that his cold was a symptom of his distress as much as a seasonal chill.

‘Sometimes soldiers can’t keep their promises, but I’m hoping Daddy will be home very soon, sweetheart.’

She wasn’t prepared to tell him the truth. She still clung to the hope that Ed was safe and well.

But the boy was supersensitive to her tension, to her friends’ kid glove treatment of them both, to Grandma McBride’s open concern and Grandpa McBride’s stoic acceptance.

Not knowing was the worst. There was so little news—just that Ed was missing behind enemy lines. She couldn’t stop thinking about what might have happened to him. As an Army wife, she’d always known something like this might happen, particularly when he’d joined the Special Squad, but she’d pushed that knowledge to the back of her mind.

But now he was missing. And missing could mean so many things. Awful, unbearable things.

‘What’s the matter, Mummy?’

Oh, God, she’d nearly given in to tears in front of Ethan. Flashing him a quick, tight smile, she said, ‘Would you like to stay home from school and rest up today?’

He nodded listlessly. ‘Can I watch TV?’

‘Sure,’ she said, frowning as she watched him wander through to the adjoining family room.

Until they’d received the news about Ed, Ethan had always loved school. She told herself that one day wouldn’t hurt. Perhaps today, when he wasn’t well, the comforting sight of the familiar bright puppets on his favourite children’s show would cheer him up.

As her son settled on to a beanbag, in front of the television, she poured herself another cup of coffee, put her feet up on the opposite chair and forced her thoughts to practical things—like the changes she would have to make to her day’s plans.

With Ethan sick, she wouldn’t be able to play tennis this morning but, because she ran her business from home, she would still be able to get on with her work this afternoon. She reached to the phone on the nearby kitchen counter, planning to call one of her tennis friends, but she’d only dialled the first digit when the doorbell rang.

Surprised, she swung her feet from the chair and looked around for her slip-on shoes. Where had she left them? Her hand flew to her hair. She hadn’t taken any trouble when she’d brushed it this morning and she hadn’t given a thought to make-up. Who would be calling her at this hour? It was too early for tennis.

Could it be someone from the Army?

Oh, God. The unwelcome thought hit her like a smack in the face. The Army would send someone around if there was bad news about Ed.

Her stomach screwed itself into a nervous knot as her feet found shoes beneath the table. Ed, please be safe. Please let him be safe.

Her hand was shaking as she opened the front door.

‘Good morning, Mrs McBride—’

Oh, help!

In an instant she recognised the man standing on her doorstep.

Tom.

Tom Pirelli…Staring at her as if he’d seen a ghost.

After eight long years.

‘Mary!’

Tom. She couldn’t get a word out. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Her hands pressed against her chest as she felt something snag in its centre, as if a pulled thread was unravelling her heart, spooling her back into the past.

Within a mad second she was twenty again, feeling the same swift clutch in her throat, the same painful, aching rush she’d always felt whenever she saw Tom.

Her legs trembled. She was drenched in a thousand sweet memories.

Eight years had hardly changed him. He was dressed in neat civilian trousers and a snowy white open-necked shirt, but his black hair was still clipped short, military style.

Perhaps he was more mature-looking—his body more honed and muscular, his face a little more rugged, lined and lean—but in every other way he was the same Tom. His eyes were the same haunting, deep black-brown and were teamed with the same strongly defined cheekbones and, heaven help her, the same mouth.

But today there was no slow smile. Tom Pirelli looked as shell-shocked as she felt.

‘It’s you. It’s Mary Cameron.’

‘Yes. I—I’m M-Mary McBride now.’

‘McBride?’ He seemed to wince as he bit off an exclamation. ‘You don’t mean—don’t tell me you’re Ed’s wife.’

He looked so suddenly ill her heart almost stopped beating. She opened her mouth to ask him how on earth he was connected with Ed, but confusion and fear held her back.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m Ed McBride’s wife.’

‘Oh, God, Mary. I can’t believe this. I—I—’ He shook his head and rubbed the back of his hand over his brow. ‘I had no idea you were still here in America.’

She was so numb she couldn’t think of the right way to respond.

‘I hadn’t heard you were married,’ Tom went on. ‘I heard that your father was posted back to Australia and I assumed—’

‘No, I didn’t go back with my parents.’

Tom muttered something harsh beneath his breath and Mary felt her face heat. Seeing him sent her compass points suddenly haywire, her emotions swinging wildly between joy and despair. She had loved this man. She’d broken her heart over Tom Pirelli and it had taken far too long to mend.

But this was the very worst time to be meeting him again. If she’d had Ed by her side, she would have been able to handle this. But alone?

‘Why are you here?’ she managed to ask.

At first he shook his head, as if he couldn’t remember, then blinked and said, ‘Uh—because of Ed. We were in the same Special Squad.’

‘Really?’ His words sank in. ‘You mean you’ve found him? No one told me. Is he OK?’

‘No, Mary. I’m sorry if I misled you. Ed hasn’t been found.’

‘Oh.’ She swayed against the door frame and her eyes closed as tears burned against the insides of her eyelids and stung her throat. The combined shock of seeing Tom on top of her worries about Ed were too much to take in. Covering her mouth with her hand, she tried to hold her emotions in check, but beneath her fingers her lips twisted as she struggled not to cry.

Tom’s throat worked. His dark eyes shimmered as he said, ‘Please accept my sympathy, Mary. Ed was—the best.’

‘Don’t say that. You make it sound like he’s dead.’

He frowned. ‘But—’

She shook her head. ‘He’s only missing. I haven’t given up hope. I’m sure he’ll be found, that he’ll come back.’

‘Yes, of course. I understand.’ Tom’s eyes avoided hers and his tone implied that he understood her words but didn’t quite agree with her.

There was an awkward pause while he stood on her doorstep and she stood with her hand on the door, knowing that if he were any other man she would invite him inside. But inviting Tom into her home seemed impossible. It felt too momentous, too meaningful.

‘What about you, Tom? Are you married?’

‘No.’

The single syllable seemed to hang in the warm July air the way the boom of a brass gong lingers.

Mary groped for another question. ‘So…What have you been doing?’

His mouth twisted into a bitter smile. ‘Same as your husband—defending the free world.’ For a moment he studied her with hard, dark eyes. ‘I have something for your son,’ he said. ‘Ed wanted me to bring it to him.’

At the mention of Ethan, Mary felt a fresh surge of dismay. Her stomach churned. Their gazes locked and her cheeks burned as years of silence and buried emotions hung in the air between them. So many unanswered questions…

After all this time…What was Tom thinking? What was he feeling? What did he expect from her?

She turned back and could see through the house to the family room. Ethan was lying upside-down on the beanbag, laughing at the antics on the television screen. Already he looked much brighter than he had at breakfast.

‘Ethan’s home from school today,’ she told Tom. ‘He has a cold.’

‘Would it be better if I waited till he’s feeling better?’

Goodness, that would mean seeing Tom again. Was that wise? ‘How long will you be here?’

‘Just a few days.’

‘Well, I don’t want to mess you around. I’m sure you have lots of other things you want to do. And if you’ve brought Ethan a gift from his father it might cheer him up.’

‘It’s a watch.’ Tom patted his pocket.

‘A watch?’

‘I believe it’s the McBride family watch.’

‘Oh, no!’ Ed treasured that watch; it was his talisman. To have it returned seemed so symbolic. A tangible sign. Surely it meant that he must be dead.

This time Mary couldn’t hold back her tears. She covered her face with both hands.

‘Mary—’

She could hear Tom’s voice. His hand patted her arm tentatively and for a brief moment she thought how comforting it would be to cry on his shoulder. But, heavens, how inappropriate.

She sniffed loudly and dragged her arm over her face, trying to wipe her tears away on the sleeve of her shirt. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not usually so fragile. It’s such a strain, waiting to hear.’

‘I’m sure it must be. Look, I’ll just give the watch to you. I don’t want to upset your son. And if he’s not well he wouldn’t want to have to meet a stranger.’

‘That might be best.’

He reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a bulky envelope. ‘There’s no fancy packaging, I’m afraid.’

‘Thank you,’ she said softly, staring at the packet he held out to her, almost afraid to touch it. But as her fingers closed around it she said, ‘I don’t understand how Ed could give you this if he’s disappeared.’

Tom grimaced. ‘He wanted me to keep it safe for him till he got back from his last mission.’

‘But he didn’t come back?’

‘No.’ He avoided eye contact and bent down quickly. For the first time she saw a box-shaped parcel covered in brown paper on the step at his feet. ‘I knew the watch wouldn’t mean a great deal to a little kid, so I bought him something else as well. A toy.’

‘Tom, that’s so thoughtful.’

He gave a dismissive shrug. ‘It’s no big deal. Ed and I were good mates so I wanted to do something for his son.’

Suddenly it felt wrong to keep this man standing on her doorstep. She had to forget about the past and the wild riot of feelings that tumbled through her. The past was behind them and the sane thing to do was to leave it there, locked away.

Her life and Tom’s had taken different paths and they were different people now. These days Tom Pirelli was a good friend of her husband and he’d very thoughtfully brought Ed’s son a gift.

That was how things were and how they must remain. Nothing more complicated than that.

She gestured to the box. ‘This is very kind of you, Tom. You must come inside and give it to Ethan.’

‘Are you sure it’s OK?’

‘Absolutely. I’ll make some fresh coffee.’

‘I must say I’d like to meet Ed’s boy.’

Mary stepped back to allow Tom entry, and as he walked past her into the hall she drew a sharp breath. He was taller and more broad-shouldered than Ed and he seemed to fill the narrow hallway.

With the front door closed behind them she took Tom through to the kitchen, where the breakfast things were still on the table. Then she put the packet with Ed’s watch on the counter and resisted the impulse to dash about madly trying to clear away cups and bowls and cereal packets. She didn’t have to impress Tom; he hadn’t come to check out her homemaking skills.

He stood in the middle of the room, holding the boxed gift in both hands.

‘Ethan,’ Mary called. ‘We have a visitor.’

As the boy came running into the room her heart jolted painfully. Had Ed told Tom that he wasn’t Ethan’s biological father? She glanced from her son to Tom and saw the intense expression on Tom’s face as he stared at the boy.

Oh, Tom, don’t look like that.

For one horrible moment she thought the storm inside her might break through, but then she dragged in a deep breath and walked over to Ethan. The simple journey across her kitchen felt as dangerous as walking across thin ice, but once she reached the boy she drew him against her and brushed his fine blond hair with her trembling fingers.

‘This is my little man,’ she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as shaky as she felt. ‘Ethan, honey, this is Tom. He’s a friend of your daddy’s.’

A brief frown creased Tom’s brow when she said that, and she wondered if he expected her to add that he was also an old friend of hers. But they’d been so much more than friends and she couldn’t say that.

‘Hello, Ethan.’ Tom smiled and held out his hand, while Ethan hesitated and leaned shyly against Mary’s leg.

‘Say hello to Tom,’ she urged, giving him a gentle nudge.

‘Hello, sir.’ Ethan’s big brown eyes seemed bigger than ever as his hand disappeared inside Tom’s.

To Mary’s surprise, Tom dropped to squat at Ethan’s level as he offered him the box. ‘Call me Tom,’ he said.

‘Hi, Tom.’

‘Your Dad told me about you. I figured that you probably like knights in armour.’

The boy’s eyes widened and he nodded solemnly.

‘This is for you.’

To Mary’s relief, her son remembered to say thank you without being prompted.

‘Would you like a hand to open it?’

Ethan nodded and Tom set the box on the floor. For the next few moments the two males were silent and focused as they stripped the brown paper away and opened the box to reveal a toy castle, complete with towers, turrets and pennants. There was even a moat and a drawbridge.

‘Wow!’ exclaimed Ethan.

‘The knights are inside,’ Tom told him, and he swung a hinge that opened the castle.

‘Wow!’ Ethan breathed again as he reached in and drew out a model of a knight in shining plastic armour seated on a black horse. ‘Oh, this is so neat.’ He looked back to Mary, his eyes shining.

‘Aren’t you lucky?’ she said.

‘Is this from my dad?’ Ethan asked. ‘He said he’d bring me a present.’

Before Mary could set her son straight, Tom said without hesitation, ‘Sure, mate, this is from your father.’

Ethan’s eyes shone and Mary suppressed a choking sob.

‘Now, these guys with bows and arrows go up in the keep,’ Tom said, lifting out some models and setting them in place.

‘And this one can be riding across the drawbridge,’ Ethan chimed in excitedly.

Mary was so absorbed by the astonishing sight of them together that at first she didn’t notice the way her eyes were brimming with tears again. When a damp splotch rolled down her cheek she hurried away to clear the breakfast things and to make coffee.

After a while, Tom straightened again and left Ethan to play. He crossed the room to where Mary was taking a blue and white sugar bowl from an overhead cupboard.

His eyes drifted to her feet and his mouth quirked into a grim smile. Mary followed his gaze. Good grief! She was wearing one red shoe and one lime-green. Heavens, there must have been two pairs of slip-on shoes under the kitchen table and she’d taken no notice.

‘So you still have trouble making decisions, Mary-Mary.’

‘I jumped up to answer the door in a hurry,’ she muttered as she crossed the room and extracted the odd shoes from under the table. She slipped off a lime-green shoe and swapped it for a red one. ‘There, that’s better,’ she said, forcing a tiny laugh. ‘At least I’m colour coordinated now.’ She was wearing a red shirt and blue jeans.

She looked back towards Tom and their gazes linked. One corner of his mouth lifted into a tight, rueful smile. Was it her imagination, or could she see a shadowy sadness in his eyes as he looked at her for a long moment without speaking?

‘Ethan looks like you,’ he said at last. ‘Same big brown eyes and soft blond hair.’

She nodded and gulped.

‘Ed’s mighty proud of him,’ he added.

At the sound of his father’s name Ethan’s head snapped up. ‘My dad’s a Ranger,’ he announced with pride.

‘That’s right, General.’

The boy’s eyes grew huge and worried. ‘Why did you call me General?’

‘It just kind of slipped out. That’s what your dad called you when he talked about you.’

Ethan’s lower lip trembled.

‘That was Ed’s special nickname,’ Mary explained. ‘No one else called him General—only Ed.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.’ Tom walked back over to Ethan, bent down and touched him on the shoulder. ‘Your dad and I were good mates.’

Don’t talk in the past tense, Mary pleaded silently. Ethan’s very bright and he picks up on any subtleties.

‘Do you know when my dad’s coming home?’ Ethan asked.

‘No,’ Tom admitted with reluctance.

The light died in Ethan’s eyes. He turned back to the knights and the castle and played with them quietly, keeping his head low, as if he needed to retreat. Sensing his mood, Tom backed away, but tension hovered in the air.

Mary fetched milk from the refrigerator and set it and the sugar bowl on the table. After a very short while Ethan asked her, ‘Can I go back to watch TV?’

‘I guess so,’ she answered, nodding.

The boy hurried away and left the castle and its splendid knights on horseback lying abandoned in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Mary worried her lower lip with her teeth. ‘He’s not dealing very well with the bad news about his father,’ she said.

‘I dare say it will take a long time.’

She frowned. ‘Why do you keep acting as if Ed’s already dead? Surely, while there’s a chance he’s alive, we should hope?’

Tom kept his gaze fixed on the abandoned castle. ‘I don’t think there’s much chance, Mary.’

‘Why are you so sure?’ she asked quietly. ‘The Army has a great support network but I can’t find out what happened. Were you there? Can you tell me?’

He swung his gaze back to hers and for the first time she saw how tired he looked. Smudges of shadow lay beneath his eyes and creases bracketed his mouth. ‘We were involved in a hot extraction. You’ve heard about them, haven’t you?’

‘Where ropes are lowered from a helicopter?’

‘That’s it. Well, we’d finished a mission in the jungle and we were ready to be winched back up—’

‘Where? Where was the mission?’

‘South-East Asia.’

‘But which country? Which jungle?’

‘You should know better than to ask me that, Mary.’

She sighed. ‘It was worth a try.’

‘Anyway, the chopper was in position above us and we were below in the jungle and we had to get out fast. Really fast. There were guerrilla fighters all around us and it was pitch black. Even with night vision goggles we couldn’t see a lot because of the dense timber, so we’re not absolutely sure what happened. But somehow, when it was Ed’s turn to ascend, the rope got tangled.’

‘Oh, no,’ Mary whispered.

‘Sometimes trees, brush or ground debris can snag it. It hardly ever happens that the rope breaks, but it did this time.’

Mary flinched and tried to blot out the picture that formed in her head. ‘So Ed fell,’ she whispered.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘But what happened then? Couldn’t you find him?’

Tom heaved a loud, painful sigh.

‘You did search for him, didn’t you?’

‘We tried, but we couldn’t hang around for long. There was too much enemy fire. We had to consider the safety of the rest of the squad. And—’ He looked as if he was about to say something else and changed his mind.

‘So you just left him there?’

‘Believe me, if I had my way I’d still be looking for him now, but that’s not how the Army works. I had to follow orders. When I demanded permission to go back I had a run-in with the brass. A proper ding-dong confrontation.’ He let out a hiss of air through gritted teeth. ‘By the time I persuaded them that we should at least go back and recover his body there was no trace of him.’

Looking away from her, he stared through her kitchen window to a view across Arlington parkland. ‘I think you should resign yourself to the fact that Ed won’t be coming back, Mary. Everyone is convinced that he couldn’t have survived that fall.’

She didn’t answer, but she shook her head.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tom added, and his throat worked.

The smell of coffee filled the room and Mary distracted herself by collecting the coffee pot and their mugs and setting them on the cleared kitchen table. They took seats opposite each other and Mary felt painfully self-conscious. She wondered if Tom felt as awkward as she did to be sitting in such a domesticated setting—after all these years. It was so strange to be taking coffee with Tom Pirelli as if he were no more than a friend of Ed’s.

Was he feeling as self-conscious as she was? Was he inwardly calm, or was he battling memories? She couldn’t stop thinking about the past…Their past.

Good grief, here she was, worried about her husband, and yet she was remembering it all. Dancing and laughing with Tom, kissing him, riding on the back of his motorbike, walking hand-in-hand with him in the moonlight along a beach of silver sand. Making love…

And then her father’s insistence that Tom Pirelli couldn’t possibly love her.

‘Do you take cream or sugar?’ she asked, forcing the memories aside.

‘I’ll have a little milk, no sugar, thanks.’ He watched her fill his mug and then his face broke into a smile.

‘What’s amusing you?’ she asked tightly.

‘The way you call milk cream—like a proper Yank.’

She gave an offhand shrug. ‘It happens when you spend eight years in a place. After a while you don’t even notice the differences.’

‘There are differences, though, aren’t there?’ he said, as if he were deliberately trying to steer their conversation into safe, pedestrian waters. ‘I mean, on the surface Australians and Americans seem to speak the same language, but—’