The Parting Gift(18)

“None of my business?” Mara carefully set her teacup down. “I don’t understand—”

“It isn’t for you to understand.”

Mara sat in silence for the rest of the meal as Blaine continued to ignore her. She had said her piece and he had said his, but this conversation was by no means over.

He disappeared right after breakfast. Mara didn’t see him again until she called him for lunch.



****



After lunch, Blaine went to the living room to escape Mara’s judging glower. The woman was unrelenting in her nagging insistence – her constant lecturing about the forgiveness and reconciliation he could find in God. Add to that her enticing beauty, and it was a recipe for an impossible interaction every time they came near one another. Blaine grew increasingly flustered in her presence, unable to string more than a few words together at a time. He must have seemed like an imbecile to her.

“Captain Graham, I think we need to talk.” The sound of her voice sent his heart racing again. There was no escaping her today.

He stood to leave. This was a conversation he wanted no part of.

“Why won’t you just listen to him? He wants to explain!” she pleaded, clasping his arm to keep him from going, but he wrenched out of her grasp. “Errrggghhhh!!! You’re so frustrating!” She stomped her foot on the wooden floor, rattling the lamp on the end table.

“He had his chance long ago,” Blaine muttered, growing uncomfortable.

“But don’t you see? It’s not about what he deserves! It’s about what the bitterness is doing to you now! You have to make a choice – for your own good!”

Blaine rolled his eyes in irritation. “You’re worried about me now?”

“You! Yes! Holding on to all that hate is destructive! His pain will all be over soon, but if you don’t forgive him, your suffering is never going to end!”

He didn’t answer her. What did she know about his suffering? And if he was hurting only himself, what difference did it make to the old man?

“Why won’t you just hear him out?” Mara pleaded again.

“It would be futile.”

“Futile? You really want to know what’s futile? Talking to you! You have no concern for anything other than yourself! It’s like you’ve allowed your soul to die, and you’re nothing but an empty shell!”

The woman was positively irrational, and Blaine’s stifled frustration threatened to suffocate him. He could feel the fury building deep within him, constricting first in his abdomen and then in his chest, spreading into his biceps and working its way down his arms to his fists, which clenched and released in turn.

His practice of maintaining a fa?ade of impenetrable control melted away in the molten rage surging through him. Searching for a way of escape before he reached his boiling point, he backed away from her tremulously. But with every step he took, she advanced toward him with the flames blazing in her self-righteous glare. He knew she wasn’t going to let him run away from the confrontation.

“You are so arrogant! You’re not even trying to understand his side!” Mara bellowed in exasperation, inches from his face.

The precarious balance of his composure cracked.

“What’s to understand? I was there! I witnessed it! He didn’t care I lost my mother. The man refused to acknowledge she had ever existed from the day we buried her.” The anger rushed out with a roar. Blaine was pacing back and forth now. The tears he had been fighting to restrain rebelled against his control and streamed unashamedly down his cheeks. “I was eleven! Eleven years old, and no mother. He should have held me! He should have told me it was going to be okay. He should have told me he understood my pain. But he didn’t. Instead, he left me to deal with it alone; instead, he made me think my grief wasn’t worth his time.”

Mara said nothing, but stared at him wide-eyed, tears streaming down her own face as she shared in his anguish.

Everything he had kept bottled up and hidden away for fifteen years gushed out of him like an erupting geyser. There was no stopping it now.

“Did he come to me when I woke screaming from nightmares? No! If he had felt anything at all for my mother—for me—would it have killed him to say so? Just once! I would’ve died to hear him say it just once. It’s too late now. He’s too late! I lost both my parents many years ago, and I’ll be hanged if I’m going to go through that heartache again!”

Blaine stopped abruptly and crumpled to his knees, holding his head in his hands. He had no more words. Only the groans of his unutterable grief – long since overdue – were left, and he surrendered himself to them.

When he felt a light hand on his shoulder, he turned involuntarily into Mara’s enfolding arms and wrapped his own arms around her waist, weeping against her. She held him, stroking his hair until his sobs subsided and were no more than faltering breaths.

“He still loves her, you know. I know it’s hard to hear this, but he never stopped loving her. His pain was just as – is just as excruciating as yours,” Mara whispered as she fingered a strand of his hair. Blaine didn’t want to move out of her embrace; he didn’t want her to let go, so he held completely still. Her warm voice spoke healing directly into his soul.

“He loves you too. I’ve seen it in his eyes, heard it in how he speaks of you. A love just as real as the pain he suffers from losing you. His only wish – his soul’s desire – is to have that one chance to put things right between you.”