Her eyes came back to his, and he was shocked to see them brimming with tears. One sat shimmering suspensefully on her lower lash, then tumbled over. Devastated, he lifted his hand and brushed it with his thumb…cradled her head with his palm, fingers sliding through her hair to touch the tender spot behind her ear. The moisture from the tear felt warm and soft, and he watched in awe as his thumb smoothed it like oil across her cheek.

Maybe, he thought. Maybe…

He held his breath…the door in his mind he’d kept barricaded for most of his life creaked open…just a hair. And he heard the noises…the pounding. Boom…boom…boom… A voice…thundering. “Open up this door, Cory! I’m gonna break it down!” Terrible sounds…cracking, splintering, screaming…the little ones crying. “Mama!”

Terror overwhelmed him. The door slammed shut.

“Don’t ask me to do this,” he whispered brokenly. “I can’t. Not now.”

For a long minute more she looked into his eyes. Then she jerked her gaze away and swiped recklessly at her tears. She caught his hand in both of hers to pull it away from her face as she rose. “I have to go,” she said, breathless and rushed.

And then, impulsively, she bent down and kissed him, one quick hard brush of her lips, and to him that was worse than nothing at all. Pain knifed through him. It felt as though his heart was being ripped out of his chest.

She crossed the room in her long, tomboy’s stride, then paused at the door and said without turning, “I’ll be going home to Georgia to see Mama and Daddy after I’m done in Washington. When you’re ready to talk, that’s where I’ll be.”

She opened the door, and was gone.

Sam sat in one of the old creaky white-painted rocking chairs on Grandma Betty’s wide front porch. Her eyes were closed and the sleeping baby on her chest made a small puddle of warmth as she rocked them both gently in the hazy heat of a Georgia July morning. The humid air was heavy on her shoulders, and scented with the roses that sprawled across the porch roof and the lighter, softer fragrance of the baby’s down-covered scalp just below her chin. Birds and insects sang them a lazy lullaby, and Sam’s mind drifted on meandering rivers of memory.

The scent of roses, and Cory’s finger stroking a velvety petal in the garden at the White House…and I tell him I’m worried about my dad, because he won’t talk about what happened to him in Iraq. “You talk about it,” I tell him, and he replies, “I’d much rather write about it. Writing is what helps me. Everybody’s different. Your dad has to find what works for him…”

Then…I talk about Vietnam, about how some who went there never did find their way home…and he looks at me with his gentle eyes and smiles his gentle smile, so full of compassion and understanding, and because I’m young and selfish and wrapped up in my own trials at the moment, I don’t see the pain that’s in them, too.

He sees inside my soul, and all I see is myself reflected back in his eyes. I don’t see him at all.

Oh, God, Pearse…I’m so sorry.

Tears made warm puddles under her lashes, and for once she let them stay. The grief and regret lay lightly on her, now, a poignant ache that, like the sleeping infant, the humid air, the scent of roses, seemed only a natural part of this particular morning. Tomorrow, she would leave all this again. The day after the July fourth holiday, she’d be back in Washington, and after that, off to only God knew where. It had been over a month since she’d left Cory in that Mindanao hospital…nearly three weeks that she’d been here in Grandma Betty’s house, waiting for him. Three weeks and he hadn’t come.

When you’re ready to talk, Pearse…

She had to accept that maybe he never would be.

The crunch of tires on gravel wasn’t loud, but it destroyed the mood of the morning nonetheless, the way even a twig dropped onto the smooth surface of a pond shivers the mirror image.

Sam hastily dashed the tears from her eyes and brought the rocker upright, careful not to disturb the sleeping baby as she looked across to where an unfamiliar car was just pulling to a stop under the huge oak trees on the edge of the yard. She stopped breathing and her heart thumped beneath the baby’s warmth as she waited for the driver to emerge.

The car door opened, and there was a long suspenseful pause before someone appeared, unfolding awkwardly to stand with a hand braced on the roof of the car while he tugged at something still inside. Then the tall figure was moving toward her across the lawn, limping, leaning heavily on a cane.

She watched him come, rippling inside, and waited until he’d reached the steps before she said, “Hey, Pearse.” And dipped her head to hide her trembling smile against the baby’s downy head.

He paused with one foot on the step, one hand on the newel post, and his smile grew wry. “I must say, in my wildest dreams, this isn’t how I expected to find you.”

“What? Oh.” Of course everything she was feeling must surely show, and he would know it already, but to protect herself a little while longer, she kept her eyes on the baby’s open mouth and fat velvety cheeks, impossibly delicate lashes. “I’m babysitting. This is Lizzy-Beth-well, actually, it’s Elizabeth Ashley Starr-she’s my cousin J.J.’s-Jimmy Joe and Mirabella’s first grandbaby. Isn’t she sweet?”

“How old is she?”

Her breath caught as she heard the top step creak, and then his uneven footsteps cross the wooden porch floor. She lifted her head and shook back her hair, and began to rock gently as she watched him. “Five weeks yesterday. She was born while I-while we were in the Philippines.” There. No sense in avoiding it, pretending it all hadn’t happened.

A few feet away from her he stopped and leaned his backside and the cane against the porch railing. His face seemed even more angular than she remembered…the interesting lines and hollows hinting at even deeper secrets. And he was wearing new glasses, she noticed. Very stylish, with narrow, trendy lenses. She decided they looked good on him. Behind them his eyes rested on her with compassion, as all-seeing as ever, but with something different, now, too. Something she’d never seen before. Something she couldn’t quite name.

After a moment he shook his head, and once again she saw his smile slip. “Don’t take this the wrong way-I have to say it, Sam. She looks good on you.”

She snorted. “Hey-I never said I didn’t want one of these, eventually. Just not right now, okay? Actually, you might not believe this, but I used to be crazy about little babies when I was a kid. I don’t know, maybe it was because I always wanted brothers and sisters…”

“Sam-”

Ignoring the interruption, she dipped her lips once again to the baby’s head, ignoring, too, the tear-glaze that had come to fog up her vision. She drew a quivering breath. “God…I’d forgotten how good they smell…I remember the first time Jimmy Joe brought Mirabella here. And her baby, Amy Jo-he’d delivered her himself, you know, in the sleeper of his truck, on Christmas Eve. He fell in love with her then, but Mirabella was too stubborn to believe it. So one day, Jimmy Joe just went and got her. He drove up to the house with her and the baby in his big blue truck. Mama and J.J. and I all ran out to see what the fuss was, and there was Amy Jo sitting in the middle of the front walk in her car seat. We all just fell in love with her, right then and there. J.J. and I fought, I remember, over who’d get to hold her first.” She twitched her gaze up to Cory, and her smile felt brittle and false. “Amy Jo’s in college, now. Scary…”

“What is?” His voice was gentle.

“How fast the time goes.” She lifted her head and suddenly tears were streaming down her face and for once she didn’t care. “You think I don’t know how much you want this-all of this? The thing is, you know, I want it, too. I do. Eventually. But I’m only twenty-eight. Can’t I have a couple more years?”

“I think I’d give you the moon, if you asked me,” he said softly. “If it meant we’d be together.” But he wasn’t looking at her. His head was turned away from her and his haunted eyes were fixed on one swaying tendril of the climbing rose, thick with red-pink blossoms.

Sam closed her eyes. She could feel her heart tearing in two. “Oh, God, Pearse…”

He jerked as if he’d struck her, and she could see he’d misunderstood her tears. “Sam-what we talked about in Mindanao…”

“Wait-” she rushed to interrupt him, to get it said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. I was unfair. I did ask too much. I had no right. If you’re not ready-”

He was shaking his head. “No-you didn’t ask too much. It was time. Past time.” He dragged a hand over his face, then said grimly, “I don’t know if I’m ready or not, but I’ve been trying to remember what happened. Letting myself, I guess would be a better way to put it.”

She waited, heart thumping, slowly wiping away her tears. She knew, now, what it was she’d seen in his eyes. The horrors of his memories, lurking like monsters in the dark.

“I don’t think I can do it by myself, Sam. And…if I’m going to talk to anybody, I…the truth is, the only person I trust to see me through this is you.”

She could only stare at him…and go on holding the baby, rocking gently, heart pounding…She felt both humble and proud at the same time, overwhelmed and exhilarated, as if she was standing on the edge of a volcano, something awesome and beautiful beyond imagining, but terrifying, too.

Cory shifted with the new restlessness that seemed to have become a part of him now. Hell, she’s in shock, he thought as he watched her face drain of color. I shouldn’t have dropped it on her like this. “Is there someplace we can go? Where is everybody?”