Making Faces(77)

“He's gone, Ambrose.”

“I know.”

“I can't stand it. It hurts so bad that I want to die too.”

“I know,” he repeated softly, his voice steady.

And Fern knew that he did. He understood, maybe better than anyone else could.

“How did you know I needed you?” Fern whispered in broken tones.

“Because I needed you,” Ambrose confessed without artifice, his voice thick with heartache.

Fern sat up and his arms enveloped her, pulling her into him as he sank to his knees. She was small and he was wonderfully large and he enfolded her against his chest. She nestled into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and sinking into his lap like a child who had been lost and then found, reunited with the one she loved most.

It was a testament to Ambrose's love for her, the length of time in which he knelt on the hard floor with Fern in his arms, letting her sorrow wash over and through him. His knees ached in steady concert with the heavy ache in his chest, but it was a different pain than he'd felt when he'd lost Beans, Jesse, Paulie and Grant in Iraq. That pain had been infused with guilt and shock and there had been no understanding to temper the agony. This pain, this loss, he could shoulder, and he would shoulder it for Fern as best he could.

“It wouldn't hurt so badly if I didn't love him so much. That's the irony of it,” Fern said after a while, her voice scratchy and thick with tears. “The happiness of knowing Bailey, of loving him, is part of the pain now. You can't have one without the other.”

“What do you mean?” Ambrose whispered, his lips against her hair.

“Think about it. There isn't heartache if there hasn't been joy. I wouldn't feel loss if there hadn't been love. You couldn't take my pain away without removing Bailey from my heart. I would rather have this pain now then never have known him. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.”

Ambrose rose with her in his arms and settled them both on her bed, his back against the wall, stroking her hair and letting her talk. They ended up curled around each other, Fern flirting with the edge of the mattress, but supported by Ambrose's arms that were wrapped securely around her.

“Can you make it go away, Ambrose? Just for a while?” she whispered, her lips against his neck.

Ambrose froze, her meaning as plain as the devastation in her voice.

“You told me that when you kiss me, all the pain goes away. I want it to go away, too,” she continued plaintively, the tickle of her breath against his skin making his eyes roll back in his head.

He kissed her eyelids, the high planes of her cheekbones, the small dollop of an earlobe that made her shiver and bunch his shirt in her hands. He smoothed her hair from her face, gathering it in his hands so he could feel the slide of it through his fingers as he found her mouth and did his best to chase memories from her head and sorrow from her heart, if only for a while, the way she did for him.

He felt her breasts against his chest, her slim thighs entwined with his own, the press of her body, the slide of her hands, urging him on. But though his body howled and begged and his heart bellowed in his chest, he kissed and touched, and nothing more, saving the final act for a time when sorrow had released its grip and Fern wasn't running from feeling but reveling in it.

He didn't want to be a temporary balm. He wanted to be a cure. He wanted to be with her under an entirely different set of circumstances, in a different place, in a different time. At the moment, Bailey loomed large, filling every nook and corner, every part of Fern, and Ambrose didn't want to share her, not when they made love. So he would wait.

When she fell asleep, Ambrose eased himself from the bed and pulled her blankets around her shoulders, pausing to look at the deep red of her hair against her pillow, the way her hand curled beneath her chin. It wouldn't hurt so badly if I didn't love him so much. He wished he would have understood that when he'd found himself in a hospital full of injured soldiers, filled with pain and suffering, unable to come to terms with the loss of his friends and the damage to his face.

As he stared down at Fern he was struck with the truth she seemed to intuitively understand. Like Fern said, he could take his friends from his heart, but in purging the memory, he would rob himself of the joy of having loved them, having known them, having learned from them. If he didn't understand pain, he wouldn't appreciate the hope that he'd started to feel again, the happiness he was hanging onto with both hands so it wouldn't slip away.





The day of the funeral, Fern found herself on Ambrose's doorstep at nine a.m. She had no reason to be there. Ambrose had said he would pick her up at 9:30. But she was ready too early, restless and anxious. So she’d told her parents she would see them at the church and slipped out of the house.

Elliott Young answered the door after a brief knock.

“Fern!” Elliott smiled as if she were his new best friend. Ambrose had obviously told his dad about her. That was a good sign, wasn't it? “Hi, Sweetie. Ambrose is dressed and decent, I think. Go on back.”

“Ambrose!” he called down the hallway adjacent to the front door. “Fern's here, son. I'm going to head out. I need to stop by the bakery on the way. I'll see you at the church.” He smiled at Fern and grabbed his keys, heading out the front door. Ambrose's head shot out of an open door, a white dress shirt tucked into a pair of navy slacks making him look simultaneously inviting and untouchable.