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Yes. It had happened this way before. Even in the fog of whatever he’d been given during his medical crisis, Kevin remembered the similarities of that time so many years ago. Then as now, he’d woken up to her touch. And then as now, he’d been washed in the relief of her presence. Her faithfulness.
It could have gone so very differently.
Kevin remembered that part with heart-piercing acuity. Thirty-some years ago that terrible moment, for all that was right and fair,shouldhave gone differently. Beginning with the fact that he did, in fact, wake up. And not in hell.
And ending with the grace that Helen had held his hand, had stayed with him. God knew, she could have made a different choice. No one would have blamed her—him least of all. He had failed her utterly. What woman deserved a drunk for a husband? What woman would show up to the hospital, tired from mothering two toddlers, carrying her third child, and having come off a late-evening shift at a diner to sit with her damaged husband—and that, broken by his own stupidity?
Against all reason, Helen had.
Kevin swallowed the lump of emotion growing in his throat. He blinked through the haze of lights and blurred reality, searching for the face of his beloved. She didn’t come into perfect focus, but he knew the loveliness of her face enough. “Thank you,” he rasped.
She moved, fingering the locks of his short hair that had likely matted to his forehead, and then bent to brush his mouth with hers. “No thanks required.” She kissed his temple. “Where else would I be?”
He’d not deserved the love of this woman. It amazed him all over again, because though he’d been that fool who had miraculously survived rolling his truck into the banks of Sugar Creek while driving drunk, the fact that she’d stayed with him through those dark years remained stunning.
For all his life, he would not forget that. He’d determined toalwaysremember. And so, as Helen kissed his knuckles one more time before the medical people insisted she leave his side, Kevin determined to remember it again.
They moved him to a different bed and belted him in place, all the while using words liketransferandflightandcardiologist. But it all mostly faded to the far reaches of his mind. Once again, history took center stage, and Kevin allowed the overwhelming power of it to reach in deep.
He’d not understood right away. The incessant beeping and constant motion of someone always at his side did not make sense. He had little willpower to understand though, as the overpowering concern was the pain. It sizzled and throbbed through his head and neck. A duller but no less concerning ache pulsed in his leg.
Not a normal hangover, to be sure. Why was the agony in his brain so sharp? And what had he done to his leg?
Twenty-four-year-old Kevin Murphy could not think straight enough to formulate an answer. Not immediately.
But then.
Then the facts whaled upon him with such a vindictive intensity that he’d wished them gone forever in the same instant. Though he’d been wicked drunk, what had happened marched through his pain-seized memory frame by frame, as if he were watching it from an outside point of view.
Keys in his hand, the weak warning sounded in his mind.Don’t go. Not like this.
He’d told that voice, whatever it was intruding on his inebriated purpose, to shut up. He’d go find his wife. Tell her the way things were—namely that he was coming home and that was the end of it.
You’re not fit.
Not fit? To drive? Pshh. He was fine.
For her?
A burning nausea churned in his gut. It made him angry and also made him want to curl up like a little boy and cry.
Kevin did neither. Instead he marched out of his dad’s lonely shack of a cabin, slamming the wafer-thin door shut in his wake, and made his way to his truck. The second time he stumbled, that voice touched his mind again.Don’t do this.
He ignored it.
A full moon lit the narrow highway as he turned onto it. This way was familiar. He’d been traveling it since he’d been driving illegally at the age of fourteen—something he’d started doing by necessity. How else was he going to get to school?
Kevin could drive this road asleep. Or thoroughly sloshed. “I’m fine.” He spat the claim into the dark cab, a strangely delayed response to that voice that rankled him.
Nothing responded back. Which was deeply satisfying.
Kevin sagged back against the seat, hooking his forearm over the steering wheel.
Helen would take him back. She had to. He needed her to. Otherwise, what did he have in life? An empty cabin full of crappy memories, both of which he’d like to dump kerosene over and light a match.
The emptiness of that answer threatened to swallow him. Instead, Kevin focused on what he did have with Helen.
As mad as he was with her right then—her kicking him out of his own home and everything—the fact was helovedher. Fiercely. Because she’d loved him. Of all the guys she could have been with, and as beautiful and smart and kind as she was, Helen had plenty of choices—she’d chosen to be with him. To promise a lifetime with him.
