Page 61 of A Whim and a Prayer

“I’ll call in the morning, Amy,” Hope said, her smile faltering enough for Henry to notice, putting a chink in his homecoming. She blew a kiss to them. G’night, you lovebirds.”

“Hey, babe, what’s wrong?” The moment the door clicked closed, Henry grasped Amy’s arms, brows digging low as he gently buffed them with his thumbs. “Why did Hope seem worried just now?”

Amy wouldn’t look at him, so he gave her a little shake. “Amy—tell me, please—what’s wrong?”

She looked up then, and when he saw the gloss of tears in her eyes, his heart plunged into his stomach. In slow motion, she disengaged from his hold and picked up a manila envelope from the table, handing it to him before taking a step back. “Open it.”

Dread crawled in his gut like a swarm of spiders, chilling his body. His breathing shallowed as he pulled the sheet of paper from the envelope as carefully as if dismantling a bomb, then stopped altogether at the evil atrocity singeing his eyes. Blood drained from his face as bile rose in his throat, and with a silent groan, his eyelids sank closed like they were made of lead.

Hayden.

The bomb suddenly exploded into a blinding rage, discharging words from his lips he hadn’t said in a long, long time as he crushed the picture with a violence he hadn’t experienced since that awful night on Saipan during the war. Slamming it into the waste can, he turned to face Amy, jolting his world when she jerked away, stepping back with arms clutched to her waist and hands knuckled white.

“Please d-don’t touch me, Henry,” she whispered, her voice raspy and full of pain as she cringed further away, “not until you explain what this is.”

Chapter Forty

Henry’s Adam’s apple wrenched hard in his throat as he gave a slow nod, motioning toward the sofa in their living room. “Can we sit down at least?”

Without a word, she sidestepped far enough around him as if he were a predator of whom she was afraid. That single action sliced through his heart like the shrapnel that had shredded him in the war. Following behind, he sat on the opposite end of the sofa, facing her while she continued locking her arms to her waist in that blasted don’t-touch-me mode that shouted her distrust as loudly as if she had screamed.

Clearing his throat, he took a deep breath and launched into one of the saddest stories of his life that he just wanted to forget—not regurgitate. But, he had no choice. “First of all, Amy, that picture is a lie and a deception because I never slept with that woman or any woman on Blake Richardson’s island.”

Her lips pressed tight as he spoke—like a vault for which he had no key. But when she did speak, her voice was so taut and low, Henry had to strain to hear it.

“H-How am I s-supposed to believe that, Henry? You’re in bed with a woman, naked!”

He slashed quivering fingers through his hair as he wracked his brain, the foul image of him asleep with that woman not lining up with his memory, as soused as he’d been at the time. He shook his head while he grappled for words, his voice a soulless whisper. “I don’t know, but I can hazard a guess.”

He looked up, the sorrow glazing his eyes matching that on her face. “I was drunk out of my mind, Amy, because all I wanted to do was get over the pain of losing you, so yeah—I got plastered, more than I ever had before. And, yeah, I was in that room with that woman—”

“What was her name?” Her whisper, barely there, cut him off.

A gulp ducked in his throat. “I don’t remember.”

“Why were you both naked?”

He shook his head again, gaze lagging into a distant stare as he silently prayed God would bring it back to his memory. He closed his eyes to think … and slowly, the details of that ugly night slithered back into his mind, causing his body to shudder. “As far as I remember, I was never naked, Amy, I swear.”

He scraped a hand over his mouth, eyes squinted hard in thought. “I had a tuxedo on when Hayden dumped me on that bed, and the woman in the picture started unbuttoning my vest—I do remember that. But I didn’t let it go any further, I swear, because I got sick to my stomach, not just from the booze, but from something you once said to me.”

“W-What?”

His ribcage expanded and contracted as he stared at her through tragic eyes, nausea roiling in his stomach at the thought of ever losing her ... “You said, ‘You’re a devil, Henry Dennehy, more interested in satisfying your own lust rather than me or God.’”

He shot up from the sofa and began to pace, clenching and unclenching his fists. “That’s when I knew you had ruined me for other women because I couldn’t do it, Amy, and I asked her to leave.”

“That doesn’t explain the picture, Henry.”

“I know, I know,” he said, gouging the back of his neck, “but I also know that I never got undressed that night, I swear, and I know that the woman left my room within five minutes or so, as God is my witness.”

He turned to face her head on. “I know it sounds crazy and illogical, but the only thing I can think is that I passed out cold, and she came back to set me up by undressing me and taking a picture.”

He leaned in, praying the intensity of his gaze and tone would help confirm the truth of his words. “Because that’s what they did, Amy—I saw it firsthand on the second time I was on the island as part of the FBI sting. It was how we set the traffickers up. I laid on the bed in just my boxers with a rumpled sheet covering them, which mostly blanketed the girls too—Li, Sora, and Kei.”

He swallowed the knot of emotion in his throat, just the memory of that heinous place scalding his cheeks with shame. But he would have done anything to rescue the three Japanese orphans he’d grown to love on Saipan from the traffickers who abused them.

Anything. And he did.