Vella Munn - The Return of Cord Navarro

She didn’t want this conversation. Not now and maybe not ever. “Thank God, things ended the way they did for Matt,” she blurted. “I think he’s going to look back at it with a sense of pride. I couldn’t have stood it if…if-” Stop babbling.

“If you’d lost Matt, too.”

“Yes. Summer…”

“What about her?”

“She-I never got to hold her, Cord, not really.”

Despite the turmoil of her thoughts, she was aware that he’d taken a few steps toward her. “Finally.” He breathed the word.

“Finally, what?”

“We’re going to talk about our daughter.”

After everything she’d been through, she didn’t know how she could handle this, but before she could escape, he continued. “We should have said more before. So much more.”

When? What was he talking about? She tried to think how to ask the question, but he was so close, and despite her exhaustion, she wanted him, wild and unthinking.

Oh, yes, unthinking. Unwise.

“I felt Summer’s spirit all the time we were following Matt,” he said. “I’d like you to know that.”

Summer is in the wilderness with Gray Cloud. That’s what he had said years ago when she desperately needed him to mourn with her. “I’m glad you did.”

“Shannon, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Shut me out.”

Stop this conversation, now! Before it’s too late . “That’s how you felt? Shut out?”

“Yes.”

He scared her, or maybe it was herself she was afraid of. “I didn’t know. You never told me.”

“Neither of us told the other what we should have.”

His words rocked her, forced her beyond herself. Had she failed him as badly as he’d failed her? “Maybe…maybe we didn’t. There weren’t any guidelines, no one telling us how to say goodbye to our baby daughter.”

“Tell me now. What was it like for you?”

He was wounded and weak, maybe as tired as Matt. If she told him that, maybe she could back away from what stirred and simmered between them, but if she did… “Do you remember what the doctors said, that she didn’t have a chance? That we were lucky she lived such a short time.”

“I remember.”

“They were right. She would have never really known what it was like to be alive. She’d…she’d never ride a horse or go hiking with you or trail after her big brother.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Cord, do you remember what you said to the doctors the day she was born?”

Instead of answering, he simply looked at her until she felt the words boil out of her. “You said that some things weren’t meant to be.”

“Sometimes they aren’t.”

She wanted to lash out at him. If she could feel anger, maybe saying this would be easier. But he’d given her back Matt, and they’d made love last night and she could never hate him. “I carried her inside me, Cord. Before we knew what was wrong with her, I’d lie there at night feeling her move. I had so many dreams-so much…I felt her being born. Me. Not you.”

“I gave her a name.”

She felt bombarded and off balance. Felt like crying all over again. “I…yes. You did. A beautiful name. And you took that picture of her, the one you carry. Why didn’t you show it to me before?”

“Shannon, you were locked up inside yourself. I didn’t know how to reach you, didn’t even know how to begin. I was afraid that no matter what I did or said, it would be the wrong thing.”

Because we were so young? Because neither of us knew how to communicate, not just you ? She started to touch him, then pulled back, afraid of the risk.

“I held you when she died,” he told her in a tone that sounded as hollow as the wind racing across a barren plain. “It was the only thing I could think to do.”

“I cried. You didn’t.”

“I didn’t need to.”

“Didn’t need…”

“I tried to tell you that. Tried and failed. I know that now. Through Gray Cloud, I found peace, something I was unable to give you. I wish it could have been different, that your grief hadn’t scared me.”

“Scared? Peace?”

“Shannon, I went into the woods right after she died because I needed answers, a way to deal with what had happened. I asked Gray Cloud to take care of our daughter. He told me she was in the air, the earth, water. She would always be in those places, always be safe and happy.”

It hurt to speak. “You told me Summer was with him and I shouldn’t be sad. Cord, I didn’t have your belief in Gray Cloud and his world. I needed more than words about her being with her great-grandfather. I needed you.”

He looked as if she’d slapped him. Still, he didn’t lean away. “I had-”

“I know. You had to work so you could pay the bills. I understand that much better now than I did then. But-”

“But I shouldn’t have let it take me away from you. I wanted to talk to you, wanted to help you start talking, but I was afraid that whatever I said, it would be the wrong thing.”

“You did?”

“I knew how you felt about my being gone. I thought I knew how much you hurt. I didn’t want us to dwell on that. I thought-I wanted to avoid causing you any more pain. Only, that was the wrong thing to do. I know that now.”

“Cord, I just saw you with that man. You aren’t afraid of anything.”

“Back then I was afraid of your emotions, your grief. My inability to give you the sense of peace I’d found.” He continued slowly, his voice rough. “I can’t be anything except who I am. I was shaped, to a large extent, by my grandfather.”

“I know that.”

“Do you? Really?”

Not sure what he wanted from her, she waited.

“Gray Cloud came to the hospital just before my mother died. He found me in an empty room where I’d gone to hide and told me I was going to live with him. Then he took me to see my mother. She opened her eyes and looked at him and he looked back, but they didn’t say anything. After she died, he held me, but he didn’t say a word. I don’t think he ever spoke her name again.”

“Why… not?”

“It was too hard for him. I knew that, in my heart. He’d be watching me and I’d see something in his eyes that told me he was thinking of her. Mourning lost years. He’d touch me or we’d go off into the mountains together and I’d know that was his way of being close to her. And of bringing us together without having to talk about it.”

As she stood listening to the breeze and unseen birds with Cord beside her but not touching, she felt exhaustion seep into her very being. He’d told her something important, something that might, finally, allow her to understand him. But searching for and finding their son had stripped away her ability to think. To feel.

“Cord, we need to get off this mountain. Maybe then…”

He gazed at her for long seconds, then let his attention shift to Matt’s huddled form. Looking at him, she was once again filled with an urgent need to put distance between them. She’d nearly died when their marriage collapsed around her; she couldn’t handle any more emotion. Couldn’t handle anything.

Without telling Cord what she was doing, she walked over to where he and Chuck had fought. She wasn’t sure whether she could see his blood or not; it didn’t matter. What did was facing the fact that Cord had risked his life and now she felt nothing, absolutely nothing. Their marriage had ended seven years ago. It had to remain buried.

When a full minute passed without Cord having said or done anything, she turned back around. He wasn’t where she’d left him. Where-

A sound so light she couldn’t be sure she’d heard it pulled her attention toward Matt. Cord was standing over him, looking so much a part of his surroundings that she wasn’t sure whether he was real. He stared down at his son.