Текст книги "Midnight Secrets "

Автор книги: Lisa Marie Rice

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Chapter Two

Portland

It was freezing cold and windy, but Isabel Delvaux, now Isabel Lawton, went out anyway. Her daily torture session—a one-hour walk. It had to be done. If she didn’t grit her teeth and force herself to go out, she’d never leave the house.

Staying in her house forever. It scared her that the thought didn’t scare her.

The wind was as raw as she felt. She had three layers under her down coat but the wind made her shiver anyway. Probably because of the exhaustion. It had been another horrible, sleepless night. Just like the night before and the night before that and like tomorrow night would be. She hadn’t had one decent night’s sleep since the Massacre.

The night she lost her whole family, the night she lost everything.

Don’t think about it. Her daily—hourly—mantra.

Don’t think about Mom or Dad. Or Teddy or Rob. Or—God!—Jack. There hadn’t been anything found of Jack to bury.

Don’t think about her aunts and uncles and cousins—all gone. Her tribe—gone.

In a moment she could remember only in her nightmares, her life had been swept away and what was left was the husk—a shell of a woman who couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, could barely walk.

She made it past the gate and after a moment’s hesitation turned left. It was a shorter walk to the park, there was no way she’d make it to the Green. Already her body was screaming for her to turn around and go back home. Close her front door behind her, curl up on the couch and stare at the wall until the light faded.

No.Keep on walking.

There was a stone wall fronting her house and she put out a hand to steady herself. It was in pristine shape, thanks to her incredibly helpful next-door neighbor, Joe Harris.

She’d left her largest pot filled with boeuf bourguignon on Joe’s doorstep. She could barely choke down yogurt herself but having Joe to cook for made cooking fun again. Running through her endless list of recipes for something Joe might enjoy was the one bright spot in her day, though she probably didn’t need to stretch and be creative—he seemed to like more or less everything she cooked for him.

Joe was always so incredibly grateful, as if she’d gone out, sheared wool off sheep, carded it, spun it and knitted him things. Or butchered the cows and harvested the wheat. As if she’d done this amazingly complex and elaborate thing just for him. It was only cooking and it kept her sane. Well, sort of sane. Sane had gone out the window on the night of the Massacre.

It barely compensated Joe for what he did for her. Everything in her house was in perfect condition. Joe would scour the place for things to fix or improve. She didn’t trust herself to drive but last month Joe had started driving and he drove her everywhere she wanted.

He’d been as messed up as she was when she’d moved here three months ago. But Joe had moved on. He’d used a cane that first day and he later told her he’d been on crutches the week before. The cane disappeared a few days after she arrived and every day after that he celebrated some milestone in putting himself back together again.

He was still thin but he was all muscle.

Yeah.

A wave of heat shot through her. Just thinking about him made her weak at the knees and her knees were already weak.

When doing repairs, Joe wore an ancient tee that was soft and thin from so many washings that every single muscle was visible through the thin cotton. When she’d first set eyes on him, thirty pounds ago, he’d been all muscle and sinew. Now he was even more muscle and sinew. Even when thin, his shoulders had still been the broadest she’d ever seen. Though, of course, in her previous life, muscles weren’t important in her crowd. She’d known more men with money than men with muscles.

Muscles were better. Who knew?

She often caught herself staring at him as he stretched or reached for something, trying to keep her jaw from dropping. He was just...magnificent.

Watching Joe move became her new favorite thing at a moment when all her favorite things had been taken from her.

He was pure sex, whether standing still or moving. Such a waste to have a guy like that for a next-door neighbor. Enticing, but out of reach.

Because the fact was that sex had fled from her world. There were the occasional nonmenopausal hot flashes when Joe was doing something manly around the house but they were rare. Mostly, she felt numb. And cold. Dizzy spells would come and go, leaving her shaken and sweating.

She had continuous flashbacks of when she’d woken up in the hospital, completely alone because her entire family had been wiped out. The nurse who had told her that had burst into tears. That horrible moment was never covered by the gauze of memory. No. Horribly, her flashbacks carried the emotional weight of living through the horror, again and again.

Isabel carefully masked what she felt about Joe because, well, what would a man as vital as Joe want with a shell of a woman like her? He’d put himself together in three months and she was exactly as he’d found her that first day—dazed, halting, wounded.

She wasn’t getting better. She was getting worse.

These were thoughts she had a billion times a day. Buzzing round and round and round in her head like angry bees. It took an almost physical effort to wrench those thoughts in another direction. Joe was off-limits because she had no business yearning after him, not in the state she was in. That day—the day she found out she lost her family, the day she lost her life... She backed away from those thoughts as fast as she could. Don’t think about that.

So many things she couldn’t think about. Things she chased from her head the instant they appeared.

No past, no future. What was left was the here and now. Pay attention to the here and the now, she told herself constantly, because it’s all you have. The here and now, though, was vicious. She suffered from crippling bouts of dizziness that attacked her without warning. In the supermarket, shopping, in bookstores, in the bank, even at home. She’d suddenly feel the world swirl around her, no shape or meaning to anything. The ground would feel shaky under her feet. The only thing to do was freeze. She’d done that in the bank and in the supermarket and it had taken everything she had not to faint.

She’d stood in the middle of the bank’s lobby and in the frozen produce aisle, unable to move, feeling nauseous and dizzy, and wishing with all her heart she could just press a button and be home, in her bed, with the covers pulled up over her while she waited for her wildly pumping heart to slow down.

It had felt like a heart attack and she’d gone to the emergency room twice. It wasn’t a heart attack. It was her craziness, it was her broken heart. No hospital in the world could fix that.

Fix it. How? Nothing short of the miraculous restoration of her family to life could work. She was in a deep hole and it kept getting deeper, blacker. The second time she went to the hospital in an ambulance, she found herself hoping she was about to die. Just put an end to it.

That really scared her. As much as the outside world did.

The outside world terrified her, because she could never be sure she wouldn’t simply pass out.

Think of something else.

Okay. What?

It always came back to him, her neighbor, Joe. That made her dizzy, too, only in a good way. No matter that she couldn’t even think about sex, about relationships, no matter that she was alone in the world in a way that nobody could understand. She couldn’t be with anyone. She was too crazy. But... though she knew thinking about him was perfectly useless, her thoughts always circled back to him.

He always moved with grace and economy, even when he’d been barely upright. He watched her carefully with those keen brown eyes of his, the color of a hawk’s eyes, that seemed to see everything so clearly. He seemed to take his cues from her. When she was really down, which was most of the time, they barely spoke. He came in, fixed something for her or carried something for her or set up something for her and then left.

On the days that were just awful and not horrible and she had the energy to talk, they’d carry on a conversation. Nothing personal, oh no. The weather, maybe, though Portland weather wasn’t very interesting. Mostly wet. It was either getting ready to rain, raining, or rain was coming. They discussed the hell out of the weather.

Then, her cooking, which he seemed to find miraculous, which was a laugh. He was a former SEAL. Those guys could send a slingshot around the moon, they could kill with a pinkie, they trained hard to be the best soldiers on earth. All she could do was cook, but he seemed to find that ability fascinating. Since he was helping her so much, she offered to teach him how to cook and he eagerly accepted her offer. It turned out, though, that he was severely cooking-challenged. Everything came out burned and oversalted and disgusting.

But that was okay. She liked cooking for him. It gave her something to do. And since he seemed to have some kind of rota system of buddies stopping by, she cooked for them too.

She had the world’s best TV and sound system, carefully put together by Joe. She could probably receive TV signals from outer space. There wasn’t one creaky door or drawer in the house. He took her bathroom’s leaky faucet as a personal challenge and not a drop had fallen since.

Wow. She stopped and blinked. She was almost at the park and she’d had very few bad thoughts along the way. Thinking of Joe had carried her from her house to the park, though the thoughts were useless. If she wasn’t such a head case, she’d have been thinking of her future, of what to do with her life instead of mooning over her gorgeous, built neighbor who had better things to think about than her.

Okay, Isabel, now focus, she told herself sternly.

Describe your surroundings.Be in the moment. That’s what a psychotherapist told her when she consulted her. She couldn’t sleep and wanted something that wasn’t pills. Pills were awful. They didn’t work but they did render her a numb walking automaton during the day. Anything was better than taking sleeping aids, even insomnia.

Focus on your surroundings. Her surroundings. Well, mostly single family homes. It was a residential neighborhood, which was what she liked about it. The small park, whimsically called Strawberry Fields, was coming up. It was a pretty park even with bare trees and gray evergreen bushes. You could see the flower beds that would blossom in spring. It would be glorious in summer.

Would she still be here in summer? Yes. Probably. Because...where else would she go? Back East was full of memories, no way. There was always California, much nicer climate. But Portland suited her. Everyone was friendly without being obnoxious. Lots of concerts. It was so green. Very little crime.

Joe Harris.

She sighed. Joe Harris was so something she should not be thinking about. Focus on something else. Focus on...that cute little pup trying desperately to dig in the flowerless flower beds. He was making it his life’s mission. His mistress was pulling so hard on the leash he rose on his two hind legs, the two front legs scrabbling in the air.

Isabel laughed. She nearly looked around to see who’d done that, it felt so weird. She’d done it. The laugh had come from her. You’d have to be dead not to laugh at the pup, tongue lolling out its smiling mouth, scampering to leave its mark on the park.

Its mistress—a young girl with golden hair tucked up in a Peruvian Chullo hat—was bending over, finger raised, doing her best to teach her pup etiquette. The pup barked and licked her finger. There was very little etiquette-learning going on.

Isabel laughed again. The pup rolled its eyes toward her and barked. Their eyes met and the pup barked again, grinning and slobbering, straining now in her direction.

Was that dog flirting with her?

Isabel was not far from the small enclosed doggy section of the park, a square filled with sand where dogs could play and do their business. Owners took them off the leash to enter the small enclosure. The girl walked the puppy over to the doggy section. At the entrance, she bent to unsnap the leash.

Instead of heading into the doggy park, the pup took off like a rocket, making a beeline for Isabel, fur rippling with speed.

The girl straightened, gasped, called out to her dog. “Freddy! Freddy! Come back here right now! Bad dog! Bad dog!”

Freddy paid his mistress no attention at all, leaving the ground several yards from Isabel, leaping straight at her.

Isabel froze. The pup was heavy. It was going to be a big dog. It was big now. Hurtling straight at her, it was going to knock her to the ground and she didn’t have the reflexes to get out of its way.

The dog barked, hit her in the chest, trying to lick her face. Isabel slipped on an icy patch, stumbled back and...

Didn’t fall.

Something big and strong caught her, kept her upright.

She looked up, startled.

Joe.

Freddy was barking and writhing at her feet. He barked enthusiastically, put his paws up and wriggled, trying frantically to lick her.

“Down, Freddy,” Joe said sternly. “Sit.”

Freddy sat, butt wriggling on the ground.

Joe had barely raised his voice.

The girl came running up, face scrunched in apology. She held her hand out to Isabel. “Oh gosh, I am so sorry! Are you okay?”

Was she? Isabel patted herself down. She’d expected to hit the ground hard, but hadn’t. It had happened in a flash. The dog jumping on her, guaranteed to bowl her over and then whoosh, like magic—Joe was suddenly there.

“Yeah,” she said cautiously. “I’m, um, fine.”

She looked up, way up, at Joe’s grim face. Sober, harsh features, standing there like a rock, big hand holding her arm.

“Thanks,” she said and he nodded.

Her voice seemed to unlock something in the puppy. It scrambled up, tail wagging furiously, body language clear. It wanted to jump on her again.

“Down,” Joe said firmly again and Freddy plopped back down.

The young girl looked at Joe wide-eyed. “How’d you do that? Freddy doesn’t obey me at all. How’d you get him to sit?”

Isabel took pity on her. Being female, the girl was probably blaming herself for a ton of dog-training inadequacies.

“Joe here is a former navy SEAL,” she explained kindly and the girl’s face smoothed out. Clearly she wasn’t inadequate. No one could expect her to show a SEAL’s ability to command.

“Oh.” She looked up at Joe. “That true?”

He nodded seriously. Isabel looked carefully and saw that Joe was biting his lips not to smile.

“You’re not—you don’t...” The girl took a deep breath and blurted it out. “You’re not a dog trainer, are you? Because man, I would pay anything to get Freddy to obey me like that.”

“Sorry,” Joe said in his basso profundo voice and the girl slumped. “Not in that line of work.”

The girl sighed and bent down to clip the leash to Freddy’s collar. Freddy shook, hindquarters up, front paws extended. His hindquarters braced. The girl pulled at the leash but it was a big puppy and she had no hope of stopping another jump at Isabel.

And then Joe worked his magic, this time with one sharp movement of his big hand. Freddy subsided.

Isabel exchanged glances with the girl.

Yep. You had to be a SEAL to be able to do that.

With a smile, the girl walked off, an obedient Freddy trotting alongside her.

Isabel looked up at Joe. “Thanks,” she said again and he shrugged.

* * *

Fuck, that was close.

Joe had excellent balance, always had. Even after being injured, he’d never fallen, not once. He also had superb spatial awareness. When that rambunctious pup made a leap for Isabel, Joe had been able to see the consequences exactly as if it was a game of chess. Isabel was standing next to a steel post holding the wooden slats of the enclosure. She was in the exact right spot to ensure that she’d bash the back of her head against the steel post, drop and smash her head against the concrete piling. Maybe bounce off the wood, too, and get sharp splinters while she was at it.

He’d seen it, as inevitable as geometry. Which was why he broke land speed records getting to her and breaking her fall.

Joe knew how to make his face a mask. Nobody saw what he didn’t want them to see and he knew he wasn’t betraying the absolute panic he’d felt at the thought of Isabel cracking her head open. He’d watched one helmetless marine die when he fell and cracked his head on a rock.

Isabel, dead. Fuck. Not going to happen, not while he was around.

She was pale but she sketched a smile. “That puppy needs some manners.”

“She’d better hurry up and teach him some because Freddy’s going to grow up to be a big dog,” Joe said sternly.

He had no patience for those who acquired animals they couldn’t handle. That woman could have cost Isabel a bad concussion, or worse.

“So,” he said, holding her elbow. He’d rather put his arm around her waist, but one way or another, he was going to be touching her. Isabel looked pale and shocky. She was not going to fall. “Since I’m here, do you want to walk around the park or are you ready to go back?”

“Back,” Isabel said immediately. She peered up at him, frowning. “How did you happen to be here at exactly the right time? Are you Superman or The Flash?”

“I didn’t go for my run and I wanted some exercise. I like this park and I just happened to see you and see that dog come running at you,” Joe lied cheerfully.

Because the truth would have sounded too creepy. You looked unsteady on your feet so I followed you, and made sure you couldn’t see me.

“Well, you showed up just in time, like a superhero.” She smiled at him. Her smiles were rare and they lit up her face. Joe should have felt bad about lying to her, but he didn’t. She wouldn’t have been smiling at him if he’d told her the truth.

“Ma’am?” He stuck out his elbow at an exaggerated angle and she put her arm through his. “May ah have the honah of accompanyin’ you home?” He laid on a thick ole-timey Southern accent. Rhett Butler offering Scarlett his arm.

“Why, sir.” She batted her eyelashes extravagantly. “It would be mah pleasure.”

He was playacting but...whoa. It wasn’t hard to imagine her in some big ball gown, curtsying. She had such an old-fashioned beauty to her, made up of fine features, huge eyes with eyelashes that were like fans and perfect ivory skin. Those eyelashes of hers were so long they could create a breeze when she fluttered them.

She frowned, the playacting completely dropped. “Joe?”

Whoa. He’d been standing there staring at her like a total moron. The playacting had allowed him to study her face. He rarely looked at her for long because he didn’t want to come across as creepy because really? He knew he could stare at her for hours and wouldn’t that scare her away.

“Raht here, ma’am.” He nodded and tipped an imaginary top hat. “Okay, let’s go.”

They walked back slowly, because Isabel wasn’t a fast walker and because he wanted to stretch out their time together. And it was no hardship walking slowly. Not with Isabel by his side.

She was watching the ground. Yeah, he recognized that. He’d spent two months walking carefully, watching every step. But he knew exactly why he had to watch his feet for months after being able to finally get out of bed.

He’d been blown up. He’d died and come back. He’d been really messed up there.

Why was she watching the ground so assiduously? Why was her balance so off? Why did she have to walk so slowly?

What the hell happened to you?

The words were there, on the tip of his tongue. She’d been wounded, hurt in some way. That was clear. But how? He’d caught that one glimpse of a scar on her forearm and that was it. It was a nasty one but not life threatening. She always wore long-sleeved sweats in the house and outdoors she was dressed for cold weather so basically he had her face and hands to judge by and they were...perfect.

Maybe her bad wounds were covered up. He’d have to see her naked to know.

And bam, just like that, the image of a naked Isabel rose up before him and his dick stirred in his pants. His very first hard-on since almost dying.

Oh...shit. His dick had been dead meat between his legs since the IED. Nothing had stirred it to life. When he’d discreetly asked Metal, he’d gotten a hard stare. Dude, you nearly died. As a matter of fact you did die and they shocked you back to life. That’s major trauma and you’re lucky to be alive, you ungrateful fuck, Metal had said. And then Joe got a long lecture about how penile erection was one of the last functions to return and that he was an ungrateful shithead who by the merest chance wasn’t bones in the ground and...

Metal started getting heated up and Joe had held his hands up and never asked again. And truth was, there was no time for women in his life after the IED, there was just long, painful rehab.

And then Isabel showed up and she fascinated him and intrigued him and he was vastly attracted but his dick basically stayed down. There was the added factor that she was clearly a traumatized woman and he wasn’t going to come on to a woman who looked so vulnerable.

So it was like this balance they’d achieved. She didn’t flirt and he didn’t push because neither of them was in a position to do something about it.

Except now...

Shit. It was just his luck that his dick surged to life at the wrongest possible moment. Before being blown up and dying, Joe would have said that an active dick was never a bad thing, but right now it was.

True, his parka reached midthigh and he had on heavy cold-weather camo pants from his navy days, but still. He had to work not to walk funny.

He couldn’t even think of something else, something to make it go down, not with Isabel right there, holding his arm. That was boner material, just her touching his arm through about a billion layers of clothing.

Christ, a dead man would get a boner with her around. The fact was that he hadn’t died that day. He’d lived and now his entire body was on the same page.

The top of her head reached his shoulder and, looking down, he saw absurdly long lashes, high cheekbones and an impossibly lush mouth. She was wearing a knit cap rimmed with pale mink fur, shiny mink-colored locks escaping from it.

Silvery gray eyes moved to look up at him and he shifted his gaze just in time. He didn’t want her to catch him staring at her.

“Are you having a poker night tonight?” she asked with a slight smile.

“Not tonight.” Shit. “Do we make too much noise? Sorry.”

She shook her head. “Oh no! Not at all. I don’t hear much, just the occasional shout or groan. I imagine they correspond to a win or a loss. Do you do much losing?”

“Nah.” He’d always earned extra money with poker. He could beat the pants off Satan himself. “But I’m sorry if we bother you.”

“It’s actually kind of...nice hearing you guys.” She bit her lips as if she’d already said too much. Her voice sounded wistful.

Was she lonely? Wow, that was a thought. And yet—she had to be. To Joe’s knowledge, he was the only person she saw. It seemed so outrageous to him that a woman as beautiful and as nice as Isabel could be lonely, but there it was.

Joe was really lucky. His company, Alpha Security International, was like a big, extended family. He’d been blown up at the end of his deployment in the military and ASI had carried him on its payroll since then, even when he’d been in a coma and had begun the series of operations that put him back together. ASI was mainly made up of his BUD/S buds who had shown their support in every way.

He had his teammates and soon would join them full-time in the job. They were like a family, tight and strong. Anything he needed, he got. And as soon as he was fully functioning, he’d be there for them, too—no question. He knew he was soaking up help, but that was the way families worked, wasn’t it? When you reached out for a helping hand, it was there.

His family hadn’t been like that, his old man would have been more liable to knock Joe down than extend a helping hand but Joe was no dummy. He’d seen how good families worked and it was like a little miracle.

Where was her family? Who cared for her? Why was she so isolated?

He burned with questions he wanted to ask her. Who are you? What happened to you? Where are your people?

“You can come over anytime you want,” he blurted. “Poker game or not. You play?”

She smiled and shook her head. “I’d lose every cent I had if I played poker. I don’t have much of a poker face and I can’t keep the cards straight in my head. Clearly, you can.”

Oh, yeah. After a day or two, he’d be kicked out of any casino in the country for card counting.

“You can sit beside me and be my good luck charm,” he said and she closed up. Bam. Just like that. Face as blank as that of a doll.

“I don’t bring anyone good luck,” she said softly.

Well, fuck. If a beautiful classy woman considered herself a jinx, what could he say?

They were back home. He walked her up to her front door. He opened his mouth to say something, anything—do you want to come over for the lunch you cooked for me? Do you want to go for a drive? Do you want to go to bed with me?—but before he could put his foot in it, she smiled at him, thanked him again and disappeared into her house.

Joe was left staring at the wooden door that was exactly like his until he snapped out of it and entered his own house. He had some paperwork to get through—he had to read through a contract ASI had signed with a local bank and which would be his first job for them at the first of the month—and he had some laundry to do.

What he did was head for the shower. He needed a long, cold one after his walk with the most beautiful woman in the world, Isabel Lawton.

But first, he had to check his email. There might be another contract for him to look at.

He shucked off his parka and sweater and boots and socks, standing barefoot in front of the keyboard.

There was an email from Jacko—We’re on for tomorrow! Metal’s bringing beer.

So—poker night tomorrow was confirmed.

And another email from an address he didn’t recognize. In the subject line: READ ME. It smelled of spam but if it had passed his spam filter, it was worth a look.

He clicked it open and felt his face tighten as he stared at the message.

PROTECT ISABEL

* * *

Do you want to come over and watch while we play poker?

Oh, God yes. Isabel had had to bite her lips to keep from saying that. She’d lied a little. The guys did make a lot of noise but she just lapped it up. Sometimes she sat in a chair close to the living room window that faced his house and listened to the rumble of deep male voices, closing her eyes and imagining she was home again, with Jack teasing their father, the twins, Teddy and Rob, chiming in.

Joe and his friends swore like the sailors they were. She heard more four-letter words in one evening than she normally did in a year. They were profane and funny and something else. There was affection there as they called each other names. It was absolutely unmistakable. Affection and fraternity. The kind of affection and fraternity that had existed among the Delvauxes.

The men were all close friends, a tight and unbreakable union, like her family had been.

And just like that, it took her. The room swirled and her head went light and her knees wobbled. She sat down heavily, still in her coat and boots, and bent her head low between her knees. In the very beginning, when thoughts of her family made her dizzy, she’d have to head as fast as she could to the bathroom, where she’d vomit the contents of her stomach together with her misery into the toilet bowl.

Maybe it was a mark of progress that she no longer vomited, but just felt dizzy. She sat, head bowed low, trying to ease out her breathing until the room stopped spinning. No tears, though. At times she thought she’d cried out all the tears her body could possibly hold. It had been months since she’d cried. Not because she didn’t want to but because tears wouldn’t come. The tears had dried up inside her, just like all the other emotions. Now she felt as dry and shriveled as a husk of corn. Most days she was surprised the wind didn’t just carry her away, she felt so insubstantial.

She wasn’t here. She was a ghost. She had already died only her body hadn’t noticed yet.

The only thing that told her she wasn’t actually dead were those flashes of heat when she was near Joe Harris. He seemed such a nice man, but she didn’t dare tell him he reminded her that she wasn’t dead.

It sounded so weird, so incredibly neurotic. Yes, she’d lost her family. But he’d been blown up. In battle. Her own physical injuries paled next to his. Her spirit had broken, not her bones. His spirit hadn’t broken at all.

Who knew if Joe would or even could understand that? He seemed so...straightforward. So sane. He’d probably had a Putting Joe Harris Back Together Program going the instant he woke up after the explosion. Yeah, that sounded like him. He probably had some kind of timetable for recovery, and was moving ahead with it, step-by-step.

Get wounded, do rehab, get better.

Whereas she was still mired back at step one. Lose family. She’d never really gotten beyond that in any way. Every night when her nightmares woke her up, she felt the pain of their deaths every bit as keenly as when she’d woken up in the hospital and the nurse had given her the news. She relived that, night after night after night, in some hellish endless loop, but was never able to remember anything else in the morning, only grief and horror and terror.

When the dizziness passed, Isabel stood, exhausted. She hung up her coat in the hallway and moved to the kitchen for a glass of water. Her feet were shuffling and she had to remember to pick them up, to walk normally. Every single thing she did had to be done like a child learning it all for the first time.

Except...except walking back home. That had been great. Arm in arm with Joe Harris she’d felt almost normal for the first time since the Massacre. He’d kept pace with her, moving as slowly as she did but making it seem perfectly normal. She had a feeling that if she’d crawled, he’d have crawled right alongside her.