It's Only Love(49)
“Here you are,” Hannah said, smiling widely at her husband as she handed him the platter of bruschetta.
“You’ve been thoroughly domesticated, Nolan,” Gavin said in a teasing tone.
“Watch out,” Nolan said, nodding to his and Ella’s joined hands. “It could happen to you, too, my friend.”
Ella grinned at him, and suddenly the thought of being domesticated didn’t seem so bad if she were the one doing the training. He could get on board with her brand of domestication.
Hannah filled more trays, and they helped her carry them into the room that used to be her sitting room and was now a gathering place for inn guests. A roaring fire added to the cozy atmosphere as groups of women enjoyed drinks and the food Hannah had lovingly provided.
Gavin’s parents circulated, filling glasses and checking on their guests. On a table laden with food, Gavin retrieved a bottle of beer out of a bowl of ice and cracked it open. Ella’s parents joined the party as did her brother Will and his wife, Cameron, who’d designed the inn’s website.
A lot of work had gone into creating this oasis for women struggling to put their lives back together after unimaginable loss. Sadly, even with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over or winding down, the need for the services they provided here was still acute. The inn was sold out through next summer.
Amelia used the handle of a fork against her crystal glass to get everyone’s attention.
The din in the room quieted and all eyes turned to Gavin’s mother.
“I want to thank you all for being here tonight,” Amelia said. “We hope to make these parties part of our overall effort to include our lovely guests in the community of Butler so they will always feel like they have a second home here. In the months since our opening, we’ve had more than fifty guests from twenty different states come to spend some time with us. All have left with new friends, an enhanced support network and yet another place to call home. I want to say a special thank you to Cameron Abbott, who is here tonight, for her amazing work on our website.”
A polite round of applause had Cameron smiling and blushing from the attention. “My pleasure.”
“And to my daughter-in-law for life, Hannah Roberts . . . This was all your doing, and Bob and I couldn’t be more proud of all you’ve done to ensure that Caleb’s legacy lives on forever.”
As Hannah blinked back tears and kissed his mother’s cheek, Ella looked up at Gavin, seeming to check on him. He smiled down at her, hoping he was reassuring her.
“I’ve asked Cindy, one of our current guests, to say a few words,” Amelia said, “so I’ll turn it over to her. Cindy?”
A petite blonde walked to the front of the room, her cheeks flushed with what might’ve been nerves. Gavin noticed she still wore her engagement and wedding rings on her left hand, and the sight of those rings made him unreasonably sad for someone he’d never met.
“Thank you so much, Amelia, Bob and Hannah for this lovely gathering tonight as well as the warm welcome I’ve received this week. It’s been such a treat to get away from it all, to spend some time in this beautiful corner of the country and to be with you all.” Her gesture encompassed the other guests. “I feel like I’ve made lifetime friends here, and I’ll always be grateful for the respite.” She took a deep breath before she continued. “Like many of you, my life has been split in half—before and after. On a regular Tuesday morning, I was getting my kids ready for the day when my doorbell rang. I expected my neighbor who came two mornings a week to take my daughter to preschool. Because my son was an infant, she saved me the trouble of packing up both kids to deliver Brianna to her. I had my son on my hip when I swung open the door to men in uniform. I don’t remember much of that day. Apparently, I passed out at the sight of those men, but my maternal instincts were still intact because I somehow managed to shield my baby with my own body so he wasn’t injured. I can’t even think about what my poor daughter had to endure with her mom out cold on the floor, her brother screaming and men she didn’t recognize at the door. She was four then. I hope she won’t remember it, but she also won’t remember much about her father, and that breaks my heart.”
Listening to Cindy’s story, Gavin broke out in a cold sweat as the memories from his own darkest day came back to him like a horror movie he could never escape.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen to us,” Cindy continued. “Lance’s unit was one of the last to deploy to Iraq before the final troops left. They were on a humanitarian mission, bringing badly needed aid to the Iraqi people, who’d endured a decade of war. He was hit and killed by a stray bullet fired in one of the villages where they were working. The bullet had nothing to do with the war, apparently. Sometimes, when I allow myself to think about that—how his death had nothing at all to do with the war . . . Well, it’s better if I don’t think about that.”
Gavin couldn’t do this. He couldn’t stay in this hot, suffocating room and listen to Cindy’s tragedy unfold before him. Releasing Ella’s hand, he slipped out of the room, hoping no one would notice him leaving. He didn’t want to be rude, but he also didn’t want to pass out from overheating either.
He cut through the kitchen and went out into the backyard, where he could finally breathe again in the cold November air. Bending at the waist, he propped his hands on his knees and focused on drawing deep breaths of cold air into his lungs.