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‘Shall we talk in private?’ Ben asked, indicating the main office.
With a nod of acquiescence Thea managed to make her legs move towards the quiet room. Stepping inside, she sat down on a chair and looked at him expectantly.
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nbsp; ‘What I have to tell you...’ Ben sat in front of her, taking her hands in his as he leaned in. ‘Well, it isn’t going to be easy to hear.’
‘Because it’s about Daniel?’ she acknowledged.
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t think you have a choice, Ben.’ She tried to quell the anxious jangles. ‘I think you need to tell me—whatever it is. I think everything inside you is all hopelessly bound together, and until you actually say the words you’ve no chance of ever untying it in here.’ She tapped the side of his head, as if to illustrate her point.
He nodded, but stayed silent, his hands still holding hers.
Thea watched their two sets of hands, together but not quite entwined, unable to draw her gaze away. Eventually the silence weighed too heavily.
‘You have to tell me, Ben. Whatever it is, I can handle it—as long as you’re the one who is telling me.’
‘Are you really sure you want to do this, Thea?’
She swallowed hard. No turning back now.
‘I’m sure.’
Ben nodded, taking a moment as if to compose himself, then starting.
‘You once asked me why I really married you. I told you that part of it was a promise I made to Daniel.’
Thea nodded.
‘You never quite understood—never could see the significance—and I don’t blame you. But the truth is I made that promise to him the day he died.’
Thea felt as though wheels were spinning in her head.
‘The day he died?’ she repeated slowly.
‘I’m sorry, Thea. I should have explained it to you a long time ago. When he made me make that promise Dan was dying.’
It sounded as though Ben was trying to talk with a tongue too thick for his mouth. As if it was an effort for his mouth to form the words.
‘Pardon?’ Thea swallowed hard. A deathbed promise? Had she really been prepared to hear this?
‘We’d been heading to the front line. There had been a battalion manoeuvre and there were thousands of soldiers out there. Hundreds wounded. They couldn’t get the injured back through the lines to our field hospital fast enough. A few two-man medical teams chose to advance, to try to help as many as we could in the field—stabilise them until they could be moved back.’
‘You and Daniel were one of those teams?’ Her heart was practically battering down her chest wall.
‘Yes. We were ahead of the other teams. There was a small enemy section closing in on one flank that no one had seen. We got pinned down and Dan took a bullet. He couldn’t move. I was trying to drag him behind some rocks for cover when we fell into a foxhole in the dirt. We stayed there whilst I tried to stem the bleeding, but...he was badly hit.’
‘He was dying?’ Thea whispered, lifting her head to look at Ben.
‘I’m sorry.’ His eyes pinned her in place. Sincere and full of apology. ‘You asked for the truth.’
So help her, she had.
‘I was concentrating on stemming the wound. Trying to see if there was any way I could possibly get us out of there. But they were all around us. Searching for us. We could hear them passing less than a foot away. It was all Dan could do not to make a noise.’
No, Thea realised, because even if he’d known he was dying he would never have wanted to risk his best friend’s life.
