To Part 22
Back to Story Menu
"Honey, do you really love me?" she asked tentatively.
"What?!" She had wanted to shock him, and she had. "Where did that come from?" He pulled away from her to roll onto his side to see her face.
She regarded him solemnly, her eyes dark with a fathomless emotion. "Why won't you tell me what's been bothering you? Did you know that you are doing to me, exactly what *I* was doing to you? We need to talk about this, Honey. Don't shut me out this way. Please don't. When you're happy, I laugh. When you hurt, I cry. Let me in, Peter. Please."
He broke off eye contact with her and looked out over the top of her head without answering.
When he didn't speak, she threw back the covers and slid quickly from their bed, heading out the bedroom door.
She had taken only two steps into the living room before he caught her in his arms. "OK, OK, OK. Sweetheart, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She held herself stiffly in his embrace, now having erected protective walls of her own.
Leading her over to the couch, he pulled her down onto his lap and held her, idly combing his fingers through her hair.
"I didn't mean to shut you out, Kace. This is just hard for me to talk about with you."
"I know, Honey. I know. But it breaks my heart to know you're in such pain. I love you. I made a vow to you, remember? For better or worse? In good times and in bad? I'm here for you, if you'll let me be."
He strove to put his thoughts into words. "Eppy's sentencing is tomorrow."
She nodded in understanding. "I know. I heard you and Paul talking about it a few nights ago when we were over for dinner."
"He's looking at ten to fifteen years hard time. If he gets put away like that, I just don't think he'll make it. Someone will get to him there; I just know it."
She slipped her arms around him, holding him closer. "What happened to him, Peter? I know about his son being killed in prison, but there had to be more to it, wasn't there? A veteran cop like him doesn't just snap after one hard knock."
"I think it was a lotta things over a lotta time." Peter rubbed his cheek against her hair. "He'd already lost his family by the time I met him. Maybe it was being shot at one too many times, or dealing with one too many bad guys. Or seeing one too many good cops killed. One day, at lunch, he told Paul and me about how his last rookie partner died in his arms after only two days of working together." He cleared his throat as his voice thickened. "Eppy had three sons. One is missing and presumed dead. Another has become a leg man for a syndicate family in another city. The youngest you already know about."
The raw anguish in his voice was as tangible as a bleeding wound. Kacie could feel his pain as it throbbed throughout his system. "What can be done to help him, Peter?" she asked softly.
"Nothing."
"Oh, Honey, surely there's something someone can do, isn't there?"
"You amaze me, Katherine Christine. How can you have any sympathy for a man you barely know? A man who abused you and almost killed you?"
"I don't know," she answered honestly. "I guess it's the idea that hating someone does more harm to the one who carries the hatred, than to the person that they hate. It shrivels the soul and blackens the heart."
"You been talking to Pop?"
Smiling sadly, she answered slowly. "No-o-o. That's what my dad told Kevin and me after our mother was killed by a drunk driver. And Dr. Harmon was really great about helping me to see that, too."
Peter cradled Kacie's head against his chest and kissed her brow tenderly as she softly continued, "I thought my world had ended that day. My dad was like a rock for Kevin and me. He's what held us together, and taught us not to let something like that make us bitter." She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and nestled more closely in his arms as they both became lost in their thoughts.
Peter started thinking out loud. "Eppy won't see anyone, won't talk to anyone. The DA is pushing for the maximum sentence to make some kind of example out of him."
They sat in silence for a time before Peter spoke raggedly. "I think he's given up on life. On himself. He knows what'll happen to an ex-cop in prison. I think he wants to die, and this is his way of committing suicide."
In a mercurial change of mood, he went from sad to angry. "What a stupid way to handle your problems!" he raged. "First to drown yourself in drink , and then to try and destroy yourself! I just don't understand how anyone can handle the tough breaks of life by crawling into a hole and giving up like that!"
"I can."
The full impact of what he had just said to her horrified him. "Oh, Jesus, Kacie, I didn't mean..."
"It's all right, Honey. I understand what you meant." She settled herself more firmly in his arms and said, "Peter, we both know what it's like to lose someone we love." She ran her hand up and down the muscles of his upper arm comfortingly. "You had the Blaisdells to help you, and I had Uncle Mike." Resting her head in the niche between his neck and collarbone, she continued softly, "Who knows what might have happened to either one of us, if we hadn't had special people to take care of us when we couldn't take care of ourselves?"
"I just...keep thinking that I should have been able to see this coming. That I should have been able to stop it. I feel so...guilty about what happened to you...and what's happened to him. If only I hadn't been so blind to everything. If only I hadn't gone to work that day. I should've..."
"Peter, stop it!" Kacie sat up and held his face in both her hands. "Don't you dare do this to yourself. Don't you do it!" The look on her face reflected the love in her heart. "You listen to me!" she scolded him fiercely. "No one could be a better friend than you have been to him. You've defended him. You've stood by him. What more CAN you do?"
Peter felt the knot in his guts begin to loosen at the absolution in her words and her touch. His eyes dampened as she went on.
"He never told you what really brought him here. He never told you about his boys. And how were you supposed to know he would come here? You're not a mind reader, or a psychic." She kissed his lips gently. "And as for me, I have never felt so loved, so cherished, in my whole life, as I do with you. I love you, and I trust you...with all my heart...and I don't want to hear any more foolish talk from you about something that wasn't your fault."
"But I..."
"Peter, you are not responsible for every bad thing that happens in the world. You are the warmest, kindest, most caring man I have ever known, but you are still just a man. You are not God. You have got to learn to do the best you can and go on."
He started to protest once more, and she laid her hand over his mouth. "Honey, one of the many things that I have learned from Dr. Harmon is a prayer that a lot of twelve step programs use. I'm sure you've heart it before, but I think you need to hear it again: 'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference'."
She kissed him again, and he responded hungrily, her love for him a healing balm that soothed his innermost being and assuaged the aching guilt that had burdened him for so long.
They rested in one another's arms, each drawing strength from the other, and Peter experienced a lightness of spirit he hadn't known in days. "You ready to go back to bed now?" he murmured in her ear.
She ran her hands over his chest and kissed his jaw. "Haven't you figured out by now that I can't get enough of you?"
"I'm beginning to figure that out."
"If you're just beginning to figure that out, you are one slow learner, Sweetheart."
He pulled her up off the couch and swept her up into his arms. "Guess you'll have to keep tutoring me."
She nibbled at his throat as he carried her away to their bed. "Mmm, I think then that maybe for tonight's session, we'd better cover accelerated learning."